First setback is a doozie. ostreopsis dinoflagellates

[BryanM]

I'm not sure what I did in a past life to fall victim to a Redsea G1 tank, only to upgrade to avoid THOSE issues, only to get this one.

Seems treatment generally advised is:

UV
Add nitrate/phospate
Add beneficial bacteria
run carbon

Apparently another option is adding silicates, promoting a diatom bloom, which apparently out-competes the dinos.

I vacuumed 90% of the dinos off the sand yesterday, I've turned white lights out completely, blues only @ 15%. Woke up today, sand clean. right now (6pm), sand is covered in dinos, i've had to blow them off corals 3x today as well.

UV's a dang expensive option, I have a 25w, but that's not big enough for this tank (220 gallon waterbox infinia)...

Looking for options, or if the UV, add nitr/phos, run carbon, and add bacteria, is the "right" answer to rid myself of this BS.

I'm depressed, and I feel for all the folks that have dealth with this before me.

 

[Tamberav]

I felt like these were the easiest dino's to beat...

You could always get a cheap jeabo UV just to use temp for this.

Pretty sure I did a short blackout with the UV to try and get them in the water column.

Surprised you have this issue using gulf live rock and sand...

 

[Lavey29]

Did you ID with a microscope? Put some filter floss on a nori clip overnight.

 

[BryanM]

I ID’d with a microscope, though I am no expert, and couldn’t figure out how to get a pic with my phone.

@Tamberav — I hate buying throw away tools, it’s just this tool is pricey.

Also, I didn’t have this issue at all with the redsea tank. But for obvious reasons I swapped, and I chose to use new crushed coral substrate while keeping the live rock.

I’m flabbergasted that just this change I went from 12 nitrates and .5 phos, to completely bottomed out

 

[Tamberav]

I ID’d with a microscope, though I am no expert, and couldn’t figure out how to get a pic with my phone.

@Tamberav — I hate buying throw away tools, it’s just this tool is pricey.

Also, I didn’t have this issue at all with the redsea tank. But for obvious reasons I swapped, and I chose to use new crushed coral substrate while keeping the live rock.

I’m flabbergasted that just this change I went from 12 nitrates and .5 phos, to completely bottomed out

Very odd

I agree, I don't like throw away stuff. Lifeguard makes very good UV's that I think are more affordable. Otherwise perhaps used but factor in the cost of the bulb.

The 25w would help still, just will take longer.

I put a 55w on a 20g tank once... it erased the dino in 12 hours

 

[JoJosReef]

Think the new substrate is binding up all the phosphates? Nitrates, I don't know. At least it's ostreopsis and not prorocentrum or amphidinium. UV will fix it right up.

 

[BasementBox]

Well. I joined Mack’s Dino group in Facebook.

I’m in the midst of a fight too with a 25w uv for my 125.

Most effective I’ve seen so far is having my UV pump directly into the DT and hose return to the sump. It keeps the Dino’s in check. Filter floss is certainly a help. I’ve begun dosing silicates. Loud wolf, 2ml daily. It seems to be making an impact. I’m also dosing phyto and soon aquaforest ocean mud and bacteria.

It’s gonna take some muscle to clean it out. Patience. I’m struggling too but I seem to be on the right track.

 

[JoJosReef]

Well. I joined Mack’s Dino group in Facebook.

I’m in the midst of a fight too with a 25w uv for my 125.

Most effective I’ve seen so far is having my UV pump directly into the DT and hose return to the sump. It keeps the Dino’s in check. Filter floss is certainly a help. I’ve begun dosing silicates. Loud wolf, 2ml daily. It seems to be making an impact. I’m also dosing phyto and soon aquaforest ocean mud and bacteria.

It’s gonna take some muscle to clean it out. Patience. I’m struggling too but I seem to be on the right track.

I recommend mixing up the Aquaforest mud in a container first and then placing a very strong magnet at the bottom of the container and stirring the mud a good bit before dosing it into the tank (holding the magnet to the container the entire time). The Aquaforest mud has magnetic particles in it that you probably don't want finding their way to your magnetic equipment like powerheads. I use my OctoAquatics SHU isolation box magnet bexause it is super strong and pull out the magnetic particles really nicely.

 

[BryanM]

Tonight I left 1/4 of the stringy nastiness and vacuumed the rest.

Lights out, stringy is all gone, so it’s pretty clear uv is the way to go it seems

 

[skey44]

UV worked for me very quickly. I highly recommend aqua uv. Check the reviews of some of the other brands closely for melted housings after a year and what not.
I personally plumbed it inline with my return and got it beat fast.
My magic sauce was 25w Aquaultraviolet plumbed inline with return. My tank is an 80 gallon display. I also continued manual removal and blowing off corals for a few days to completely beat them.
How old is your UV? I wonder if a bulb replacement and sleeve cleaning on your old one would do the trick before you buy a whole new UV.

 

[BryanM]

UV worked for me very quickly. I highly recommend aqua uv. Check the reviews of some of the other brands closely for melted housings after a year and what not.
I personally plumbed it inline with my return and got it beat fast.
My magic sauce was 25w Aquaultraviolet plumbed inline with return. My tank is an 80 gallon display. I also continued manual removal and blowing off corals for a few days to completely beat them.
How old is your UV? I wonder if a bulb replacement and sleeve cleaning on your old one would do the trick before you buy a whole new UV.

It’s 2nd hand, and small. New tank is 220 gallon.

I’m going to call brs tomorrow and talk to them.

 

[skey44]

It’s 2nd hand, and small. New tank is 220 gallon.

I’m going to call brs tomorrow and talk to them.

I understand it’s undersized… but might be worth a shot if it’s a lot cheaper and you really don’t want to fork out the cash for a 40 or 57watt. I would probably buy the appropriate size uv, buy once/cry once. Then be happy about having a nice big UV and no more Dinos. I’ve left mine on the system as once you see that UV clarity its hard to go back IME
It looks like aquaultraviolet gets some negative reviews too. I’ve just had good luck with them I guess.

 

[JoJosReef]

Another plus to having an good UV unit, they can help with the other dinos: prorocentrum has a partial planktonic phase (ostreopsis always goes into the water column at night and gets zapped) and while amphidinium does not go into the water column, I've had some success "keeping it down" by blowing off affected rocks/macros/corals with a pipette (probably turkey baster for your size tank) while running UV. You could get some repeat use out of it.

 

[rtparty]

Get the UV on there. Even at 25w it will definitely help. Make a quick rig so it pulls from the display and returns to the display. Very easy and costs next to nothing. Just some PVC

Then start dosing ammonia and phosphate to get those numbers up. A new setup always needs way more N and P than we tend to think. All that new real estate and clean surfaces are breeding grounds for all the bacteria, slimes, biofilms, etc to fight over and they all want N and P to dominate.

If you have any of that great live sand from the swap, get it in the system somehow. Even a tub of it in the sump will do wonders.

 

[BryanM]

Get the UV on there. Even at 25w it will definitely help. Make a quick rig so it pulls from the display and returns to the display. Very easy and costs next to nothing. Just some PVC

Then start dosing ammonia and phosphate to get those numbers up. A new setup always needs way more N and P than we tend to think. All that new real estate and clean surfaces are breeding grounds for all the bacteria, slimes, biofilms, etc to fight over and they all want N and P to dominate.

If you have any of that great live sand from the swap, get it in the system somehow. Even a tub of it in the sump will do wonders.

It’s been sitting dry in the old tank in the garage for a month. Pretty sure it’s dead sand now.

 

[BryanM]

So I decided to just go with dosing first and see where we get. I'll give this a few days and if needed I'll add UV to the mix.

Due to my dorkness, definitely over dosed. Set the neptune dosers to on instead of auto. Fixed, but literally seem to have dosed the entire bottle of MicroBacter7 and NeoNitro. Plenty of NeoPhos left, so yay I guess, I only screwed up 2 out of 3? Geez.

That aside todays numbers:

Nitrate, 23 ppm
Phosphate, .21 ppm

Some dinos have come back, but I'd estimate 1/2, or less that previous days, so I'm already seeing improvement... And the torches and hammers and toadstools all look better today as well.