Dinoflagellates - dinos a possible cure!? Follow along and see!

[RMS18]

I've also tried a natural approach different from yours but with similar results my Dinos have reduced . I've tried peroxide and lost coral and I'm sure microfauna. Ultimately I'm hoping my tank can find a balance even with Dinos still in the tank . These dinoflagellates sure are something else especially when some things work for others and some things don't .

Every system is different, that's what intrigues me. I think you will get there manual removal is the most important part, second I think is what the tank is feed. I used the red sea reef energy, I think it was designed to feed dinos only lol. Sometimes less is more, live worms and frozen brine/ mysis and my system can't be any happier. No need for all those additives.

 

[Donaldf973]

Does anyone have any input on activated carbon removing the chlorine we dose?

Also found this link don't know if anyone's read it:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23582993

 

[Reefer1978]

Does anyone have any input on activated carbon removing the chlorine we dose?

Also found this link don't know if anyone's read it:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23582993

Yes you should turn it off.

 

[Donaldf973]

Just removed it thank you

 

[Bob Escher]

So metro will not affect inverts? Why is it that almost all Ned's affect inverts? I would think that as so many of us have inverts they would make mess that don't hurt them
Just my two cents

 

[Hethari]

Hello
I'm having Dino I will try to get a picture they are moving under microscope I will try Dino x but I'm using zeolite should l stop it and what about carbon dosing does it feed them

 

[dansreef]

Hey Guys.

It has been a while since my last update where I notified you that I had a loss of fish. I still am unable to figure out what happened. Either the fish were impacted by earlier dosing of bleach or something that I scrapped off the tank sides were toxic and was then consumed by these fish... and they died. My large Fox Face and Tomni Tang I found dead. I removed them immediately and with the exception of discoloration.... nothing seemed wrong with the fish. No wounds.....fins and tails fully intact. I lost my carpenters flasher wrasse and flame hawk....but never found them. I looked everywhere. Nothing in the tank, no carpet surfing....no overflows or sump. They seriously disappeared.

Since this loss of fish, I have carefully watched the rest of the fish. The yellow tang seemed a bit skittish... probably not more so that usual... he is just a bit more noticeable without the others. The Naso, the Pintail Wrasse, my Beautiful Potters Angel, the Bi-Color Anthias and the diamond goby all are well... healthy and seem to be thriving.

I have done a ton of microscopic survey work and I can find no evidence of the two varieties of dinos I was messing with. I am a bit overrun with Cyno... see the bad picture attached. I have siphoned out small quantities of it every few days. The Cyno seems to be on the decline....but still very present. Other than the Hammer frags in my tank.... the rest of the corals seem fine. I have looked for the potential cysts of dinos I observed a while back. I find it in the green skim algae on the back of the tank. This is the stuff that seemed to me to be dino cysts. This is also the stuff I suspect caused the mortality of my fish. The FF and Tomni enjoyed comsuming what I scapred off the tank walls. I also witnessed the hawk fish eating materials. I have no idea about the wrasse. Again, not sure this was the cause of the fish deaths.

So... Water parameters... I had been seeing Nitrates 4+ and Phospates 1-2... I tested the water yesterday and my Nitrates are undetectable... I checked three times and used two different test kits. No trace... Phosphates are at .15. This is a bit high still.... but better than what I had been seeing. My guess is the cyno starting to slow dow or even start to die off is because of the nutrients coming down. I have also seen a natural increase of PH. With the temps down in the area.... AC has been off and the windows have been open.

My continued plan is to let things settle. As the cyno fades.... my hope is the DINOs stay in check.

More in a few days.

 

[mchartier]

I've been following this thread for a while along with most on Dino's. I've had them for over a year. The issue I have is my S. gigantea. That is probably the only thing in my tank that if I lost it I would probably breakdown the tank. So with that said I have been debating placing it in a QT, and start bleach dosing the display. I know there will be Dino with the anemone so there's a chance that they will be reintroduced when the anemone is placed back into the tank.
Anyone have any other options?

 

[dansreef]

So... against my better judgement... [emoji12] which usually gets me into trouble..... I decided to harvest the algae out of my turf scrubber. The usual plan is to harvest a portion but not all at any given time. I would say I ended up harvesting about 3/4 of it. The reason is that I did some microscopic sampling around the materials and though it was loaded with microfauna... I found some more of the gelatin-like material that had more of the cyst like materials I had scraped from the walls of the display. So...I threw caution at the wind and decided to harvest anything suspicious off the screens....with the hope that if the DINOs did indeed go dormant in this material I hopefully pulled a lot of it out.

All in all...I harvested what appeared to be a few pounds of algae as shown in the white container. I will watch the nutrient levels to make sure they don't spike with the removal of so much algae. I also fixed a nagging issue with the flow in the scrubber... now I am getting a nice uniform flow pattern again....with a bit more flow.

The cyno seems to also be continuing to recede.... will provide another update in a few days.

 

[puffy127]

Ok, time for me to weigh in with an update. I did the initial 3-day metro dosing and waiting the however many days (was it 10?) after with daily removals. It did seem to clear things up a bit, but they always came back, though never as bad as before I started. I let it go maybe a month after this with daily removals and things did not get better. Then I did a 10-day regiment of H2O2 2x daily, which again, not sure if it helped (as it never helped before), but continued with daily manual removal and then I added some pods. This may have been the tipping point in outcompeting and killing off the dinos, as I started getting less and less in my manual removals. Then I started to get a little bit of cyano (which I took as a good sign in that the dinos were dying off). I did one bout of chemiclean and things looked good. I then added even more pods and no longer needed to do manual removals. A little bit of cyano came back a few weeks later and I did another round of chemiclean a few weeks ago. Things have never looked so good in my tank! I sent twilliard a water sample and he said he saw no dinos! He did note that my biological life was limited probably due to my H2O2 dosing and 2 rounds of chemiclean. I'm considering dosing some Dr. Tims to help build my bacterial population back up. Nitrates are a little high (25 ppm) whereas they are normally around (2.5-5 ppm), which kind of confirms the lack of biological life. Pictures to come.

Again, thanks twilliard for all your work on battling these dinos. I still believe the initial metro dosing helped kickstart all of this. Although not completely effective alone, after another round of H2O2 and adding pods, it seemed to eradicate them in my tank.

 

[puffy127]

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[Hethari]

Could you tell me what dose and % of h2o2 you used

 

[terri_ann]

Checking in as I have time. First, @twillard-rock those classrooms Hon as you are an OWL!!

Some of you have considered moving your fish and inverts to QT, which I totally support and which I did. I know some are concerned about placing the fish and inverts back in to the tank which is now (hopefully) dino free! I'm not making any guarantees here but here's what I used for my fish and inverts while they were in QT so as to try not to transfer dinos back : Microbe-Lift Artemiss It's an herbal/all natural expellant for bacterial diseases. No dinos anymore

 

[terri_ann]

Could you tell me what dose and % of h2o2 you used

3% h2o2 Some have used as little as 1ml/10g and others have gone up much, much higher. H2O2 seems pretty mild as compared to bleach but it will burn gills...

 

[Hethari]

Are these Dino can't get a better picture no movement after first dose of Dino x they were moving

 

[terri_ann]

I can't tell from the pic, sorry. This might help?

https://www.google.com/search?q=din...jOujX0CoSCfQVWLpYdEomESGHcWJKmGJt&safe=active

 

[Hethari]

I've got it in a short video

 

[Hethari]

Still moving

 

[twilliard]

Hi all thought I would drop in before class!
I see this is still moving forward
To date I am free of dinoflagellates still.
@Hethari I can not tell if that is a dino cell but the movement can suggest one.

Between H2O2 and bleach these are a killing combo.
If a method doesnt work 100% but instead see a 80% success re-evaluate the dosing methods and ask the question "why" not 100%
If they hide from exposure the may very well reproduce again.

I hope you all continue the venture as I am away!

 

[csb123]

I dosed metronidazole at 250mg/10 gallons daily for 10 days and it cured my Dino problem...hooray!
But by day 8 I had an RTN event that killed all of my SPS within 3 days...moan!
I can't blame anything but the treatment for this, so proceed with caution. All of the corals were doing well till this happened and parameters have, and continue to be rock solid stable. SG 1.025, ph8.0,ca405,dKH 8.0,po4 0.04, nitrate<1,mag 1380.temp 80.