Dinos with high nutrients?? Please help!

[taricha]

Ahhh that makes sense then, thank you! Is dosing silicates the best way to start treatment? And increasing biodiversity?

Those are fine interventions. I do like UV also.
You can see from your first video that this type is a faster/ better swimmer than the slow gliders that are large cell amphidinium.
Based on the amount of brown material in your tank pics, manual removal should have a big role too.

 

[Ziggy17]

Don’t touch your sandbed for at least a month. Once diatoms are coating the glass, scrape them down to the sandbed with pumps off for about 15 minutes. Do that once a week for a couple months. You will hate looking at your tank for awhile but it’s really the best way. UV won’t work on these guys as they don’t enter the water column with lights out. They just hunker down in the sand bed. I can assure you that the new love you will have for your spotless sand will be worth the brown grind.

 

[Ziggy17]

Ahhh that makes sense then, thank you! Is dosing silicates the best way to start treatment? And increasing biodiversity?

diatoms are the nicest option. Realistically, you can get rid of Dinos by replacing it with any another algae. What makes diatoms so nice, is that unlike most nuisance algae, they disappear very quickly after the silicates are all used up. So no long term affects from diatoms. And dosing silicates almost instantly starts to grow diatoms. It’s a nice little system. Eventually your biodiversity will catch up with everything else in your sandbed and prevent nuisance algae to come back, unless there is an opening again. Zero nutrients is typically the culprit. That’s why you don’t hear of many stable established tanks running ultra low nutrients or even ultra high nutrients getting over run by Dinos. The biodiversity in those tanks keep everything in balance.

 

[dwest]

I dealt with SCA for almost a year. I did NOT dose silicates, so try that first. But, I finally decided to remove most of my sand bed (while cranking UV), and they went away relatively quickly.

Also, mine killed a lot of snails and a few corals.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Hey guys, I’ve been battling this algae for a few weeks now! Phosphate used to be at around 1ppm however I’ve brought that down now to a stable 0.25ppm. Nitrates have been sat between 10-20ppm. Which makes no sense as from what I’ve read the general consensus is that Dino’s is from low nutrients? It started as cyano months ago and has now gone to this. I need all the advice I can get! I’ve done 2, 3 day blackouts which have helped massively but with a few days it’s back already! I’m currently dosing MB7 and ordered pods, phyto and to tigers to see if those will help. It’s only a 10 gallon nano so a UV sterilizer might not be an option. Any advice is appreciated!

Tank is just over 1 year old

I see cyano in lieu of dino but confirm with microscope

 

[jack3103]

Don’t touch your sandbed for at least a month. Once diatoms are coating the glass, scrape them down to the sandbed with pumps off for about 15 minutes. Do that once a week for a couple months. You will hate looking at your tank for awhile but it’s really the best way. UV won’t work on these guys as they don’t enter the water column with lights out. They just hunker down in the sand bed. I can assure you that the new love you will have for your spotless sand will be worth the brown grind.

Sounds like a good plan. Will do some research on dosing silicates and then crack on with that and see how we get on! Will keep you updated with how’s it’s going too!

 

[jack3103]

I see cyano in lieu of dino but confirm with microscope

There’s some microscope shots in the middle of thread if you wanted to take a look!

 

[vetteguy53081]

There’s some microscope shots in the middle of thread if you wanted to take a look!

I see them now. Problem with UV is that it will help with any new cells that pass through unit and not what is pre-existing. Its not an eraser. Its biological deficiencies that are causing the dino structure .
When we see zero readings, automatically we assume this is the cause but by the time you see zero numbers, its because the dino has consumed the po4 and no3 and are multiplying and in turn many dose no3 and po4 to bring numbers up not realizing they are feeding these flagellates even more.
No light is first key followed by the addition of bacteria to overcome the bad bacteria allowing them to thrive
Prepare by starting by blowing this stuff loose with a turkey baster and siphon up loose particles. Turn lights off (at least white and run blue at 10% IF you have light dependant corals such as SPS) for 5 days and at night dose 1ml of 3% hydrogen peroxide per 10 gallons for all 5 nights which works as an oxidizer. If you dont have light dependent coral- turn all lights off. During the day dose 1ml of liquid bacteria (such as micro bacter 7 or XLM) per 10 gallons. Clean filters daily and DO NOT FEED AMINO OR ADD NOPOX which is food for dinos, however you can feed coral, food which will help no3 and po4 to increase. If increasing nutrients, try to keep no3 to about 5 until you are done battling these cells.
Doing a daily siphoning will help greatly But . . . . . Siphoning will reduce nutrients , so siphon the water into/through a filter sock and save the water and return it back to tank. Obviously clean the filter sock each time.
You can feed fish as normal and if doing blackout, ambient light in room will work for them