Have you ever experienced Dino in your tank?

[Chris5]

Poll: Have you ever experienced Dinoflagellates in your tank?

As title explains -- wondering if you ever experienced Dinoflagellates in your tank at all ?

As amazing and terrifying as it is, with all the research and speaking to dozens of LFSs etc, everyone has there own way of handling it and yet some get it so bad it pushes them out of the hobby -

Since i already have a tank thread up i wont get into my progress on here (which currently has me thinking for the 2x in 4 mos of throwing in the towel and using my money on my home projects instead) - but wondering just how many people have experience this crazy nuisance -

 

[ecvernon]

Ive had a brief Dinoflagellates outbreak in my tank recently. I dose 15 ml of vodka daily in my 150 gallon to keep nitrates at 2-5ppm. I left my dosing pump running accidentally(Did not have a low PH function set properly for stopping vodka dosing pump on Apex) and dosed approximately 200-300 mls over a few hours which had my nitrates, PO4 at Zero. My Ph was also down to 7.3. I recovered which dosing kalk solution to bring Ph up and water changes and had no casualties.

Following the incident I had chronically low pH and bacterial blooms followed by the appearance of Dinos. I stopped dosing vodka and started feeding reef roids, amino acids, until parameters raised; nitrates up to 10 ppm and Po4 up to .1ppm. I also dosed Microbactor 7 during this time and switched over to a Kalk reactor with litermeter pump dosing 1 gallon of Kalk water daily to help keep PH up between (8-8.4).

All of this occured over 2 months and started to show improvements. I still have signs of Dino in my tank but its only in the refugium which its more of an inconvenience now that it interferes with my chaetomorpha growth.
I still would not have considered mine as a bad outbreak but I acted quickly because I felt that since my tank is overstocked and fed heavily it would have got bad really quickly.

 

[Wilson416]

I won that battle with Dino x

 

[Chris5]

Ive had a brief Dinoflagellates outbreak in my tank recently. I dose 15 ml of vodka daily in my 150 gallon to keep nitrates at 2-5ppm. I left my dosing pump running accidentally(Did not have a low PH function set properly for stopping vodka dosing pump on Apex) and dosed approximately 200-300 mls over a few hours which had my nitrates, PO4 at Zero. My Ph was also down to 7.3. I recovered which dosing kalk solution to bring Ph up and water changes and had no casualties.

Following the incident I had chronically low pH and bacterial blooms followed by the appearance of Dinos. I stopped dosing vodka and started feeding reef roids, amino acids, until parameters raised; nitrates up to 10 ppm and Po4 up to .1ppm. I also dosed Microbactor 7 during this time and switched over to a Kalk reactor with litermeter pump dosing 1 gallon of Kalk water daily to help keep PH up between (8-8.4).

All of this occured over 2 months and started to show improvements. I still have signs of Dino in my tank but its only in the refugium which its more of an inconvenience now that it interferes with my chaetomorpha growth.
I still would not have considered mine as a bad outbreak but I acted quickly because I felt that since my tank is overstocked and fed heavily it would have got bad really quickly.

Yeah Vodka dosing and water changes only fuel the dino outbreak, ive now seen more research about keeping nutrients up and tank acceptably dirty to out compete with it ...the h202 (peroxide dosing is still up for debate) as some people swear by it as daily maintanance - Dino X something i tried for a month did nothing for me! but it did work for my LFS guy so not sure ...anyone know whats in Dino X no ingredients are listed on bottle!!

One thing i know is that eventually it will run its course but that can vary from a couple weeks to a year or more ive seen / heard so it depends on tank maturity and rock quality, availability of pods etc etc....

There is no miracle cure and some people get it, and some don't but i can assure you that this is something happening more and more so something is off out there on the reefs, 15 yrs ago i never heard of this unless it was under wraps on the West Coast somewhere

 

[jd371]

Had them for a month. What worked for my tank was I started with a round of Metroplex. It looked like the Metroplex stopped them from spreading but didn't kill them. From there I hooked up my UV to a spare canister filter and set that up on a timer to run through the night when the lights were off and the Dinos in the free swimming stage in the water column. I had the canister intake in the corner of the tank with the PH's directing flow to that corner. I would also spend a few minutes before the lights shut off to use a turkey baster and blow off the dinos from the surfaces in the tank. I did this every night for three weeks straight and a month later they were gone and haven't been back. This worked for the strain I had but some of these strains are relentless.