I've got Dino, not the Jurassic kind

LOL!! I got you!

 

Thanks all. I am going to go slow, try a few simple changes as mentioned here.

I guess after 20-25 years in the hobby it was bound to happen.

Just curious, other than a missed maintainance there have been no changes in over a year. Any chance my frozen food like larrys or prime reef cubes could have bought them in?



I post when I beat it, thanks all.

 

Please keep updating with what you try and your results. I am currently at a stalemate; not getting worse, not getting better.

I'm not sure what my next plan of attack is.

 

I have some now. I seem to get it every couple of weeks. I think it's from feeding my corals. I siphon it out and that last about 2 weeks. Clean my GFO.
What I'm worried about is I'm trying to redo my aquascape to accommodate my new corals. Going to use acrylic rods and whatnot. Once I get it in the tank and completed it won't be easy to move. Now I can move everything to clean

 

Do you have any plans to address your current rock when you are re-scaping? Like give it a brush and a SW rinse?

I'm going to try and eliminate the troublesome rocks in my system when I re-scape. We'll see how it works...

 

Yeah I usually do give a light brush. Right now I just have 2 large rocks and a couple small ones in my sump just to keep them alive. Going to use dry rock for re scape so will need to keep my 2 large rocks until my dry rocks seed.
I'll post a picture when I get home.

 

Sorry about your pain. I had Dino for over two months. Nothing I did seemed to work. But I finally rid myself of it.

Here's what works:

First and foremost know that not one technique will completely eradicate your problem. You need a multi pronged approach because there are different strains of Dino and some are more immune to certain tactics than others.

Here's what worked for me.
Over the course of a week I
Lowered my salinity to the lowest acceptable range.
Lowered temp to lowest acceptable range.
Elevate PH to 8.6
Elevate Magnesium levels.

During this week I skimmed pretty wet.
Also i had to cut off the dinos food source.
I Turned off all reactors and did zero water changes and added no trace elements.
I fed fish every 2 days in sparse amounts.
And turned the lights on only 4hrs a day.
After two weeks the Dino was visibly dying back but still there. So clearly this was effective but not 100%

Now that the enemy is week it was time for the final blow.

I did a full 3/day blackout. I wrapped my tank in thick black plastic bags.

And the secret weapon was unleashed.
Fauna Marin has a product called Ultra Algea X. During the blackout I dosed this into the sump. You have to remove all macro because this product kills all agae. Micro and macro alike. It is completely reef safe.

After the blackout I kept dosing the product for a week. It had killed the majority of the Dino but a few strands were clinging for life.
After the blackout I only allowed ambient room light into the tank for a day then only actinics for two days. Then full lights for 4 hrs a day. All while still dosing ultra algea x.

I am glad to say that I am a year Dino free. All thanks to this product and some diligent tactical warfare.

It can be done. Just stay the course.
The quest is a like walking on the edge of a sword. Stray but a little and it will fail.
DILLIGENCE!

 

With all due respect to the previous poster, I suspect the lights out regimen he describes would work without all the other fluff and all that other stuff combined would have no effect without the lights out.

I also suggest anyone that thinks they have dino go get a microscope and take a picture of the dino for identification. If its not a huge pain to eradicate, its probably not dino. The only sure way to ID dinoflagellates is with a microscope.

 

Good call Servillius. There is a member here who wants to see/ID all of our dinos.

http://www.3reef.com/threads/dinoflagellates.152251/

I'm currently waiting to borrow a scope to get some pictures of the dinos.

 

Neat trick. When I had this problem I was able to hold my iPhone camera up tot he eyepice of my cheap microscope and get a great picture of the offending critter. The pic is in the other thread you refer to.