Advice on fighting dinos

atul176 · Aug 22, 2022

Hey everyone, I have been battling prorocentrum dinos for 1.5 years at this point. It likely started due to phosphate bottoming out as well as me using tap water. I am a student so I'm a little tight in the financial department so it took a while to get an RODI. My params: Alk 8.6, pH. 7.9, Calc 490-510, Mag 1430, NO3 8-10, PO4 .04 all tested using salifert. Temp and SG are around 77-80 and 1.025-1.026.

So far I have dosed phos and Nitrate and it successfully led to a huge algae bloom, but that became a problem because it was suffocating my corals and the dinos just started growing on the algae. Recently I got fed up with it and scrubbed all of the algae off with a toothbrush and some hydrogen peroxide. That wasn't the best idea because the dinos are back worse than usual. So for now I've decided to take a more laid back approach instead. I am planning on adding live sand and a piece or 2 of live rock. I also plan on adding a cup of florida pets mud, reducing the lighting, and just keeping up with water changes from there. Has anyone had experience with using live rock/sand to combat dinos. I regrettably started the tank with all dry rock. Any advice? #reefsquad

What I have tried: Silica dosing. Since I don't have any sand right now I don't think it was particularly useful, but when I add some live sand I will probably dose a little silica.
Blackouts with H2O2: Useless.
UV: Useless
Manual removal: Also Useless

I am not keen on using any chemicals like vibrant or dino X so I will be avoiding those.

Fudsey · Aug 22, 2022

What worked for me was a couple large doses of pods and feeding my tank Phyto at a little more than recommended rate. But I didn't know which strain of dinos I had as I don't have access to a microscope.

saltyhog · Aug 22, 2022

atul176 said:
Hey everyone, I have been battling prorocentrum dinos for 1.5 years at this point. It likely started due to phosphate bottoming out as well as me using tap water. I am a student so I'm a little tight in the financial department so it took a while to get an RODI. My params: Alk 8.6, pH. 7.9, Calc 490-510, Mag 1430, NO3 8-10, PO4 .04 all tested using salifert. Temp and SG are around 77-80 and 1.025-1.026.

So far I have dosed phos and Nitrate and it successfully led to a huge algae bloom, but that became a problem because it was suffocating my corals and the dinos just started growing on the algae. Recently I got fed up with it and scrubbed all of the algae off with a toothbrush and some hydrogen peroxide. That wasn't the best idea because the dinos are back worse than usual. So for now I've decided to take a more laid back approach instead. I am planning on adding live sand and a piece or 2 of live rock. I also plan on adding a cup of florida pets mud, reducing the lighting, and just keeping up with water changes from there. Has anyone had experience with using live rock/sand to combat dinos. I regrettably started the tank with all dry rock. Any advice? #reefsquad

What I have tried: Silica dosing. Since I don't have any sand right now I don't think it was particularly useful, but when I add some live sand I will probably dose a little silica.
Blackouts with H2O2: Useless.
UV: Useless
Manual removal: Also Useless

I am not keen on using any chemicals like vibrant or dino X so I will be avoiding those.

Have you identified what type of dino you have? That has everything to do with how you treat it. When you say you did silicate dosing, what product did you use? How much did you use? What size is your tank? When you used UV,what size was it, how was it plumbed and what was the flow through it. Both of these modes of treatment have to been done under pretty detailed/specific conditions.

nereefpat · Aug 23, 2022

Keep at it. It can be a long and frustrating fight.

Testing has proven Vibrant to be algaecide, and the same specific one that's in API's Algaefix...so take that for what it's worth. I don't know about Dino X.

I agree it's easier to beat if you know what specific dino you're fighting.

What is the temperature in the tank?

Idoc · Aug 24, 2022

I battled dinos for a couple of years as well. I've tried all the things you did as well with minimal to no success, besides the UV which helped with the ostreopsis dinos. But my small cell amphidinium dinos were living through everything.

What finally worked for me: Elegant Corals Cyano/Dino recipe/protocol. This basically controlled the dinos well enough to stabilize my system and keep the dinos away. I haven't seen any in my system for the past couple of years. There are few threads on here about this system...but it can be found by searching google as well.

Good luck.

atul176 · Aug 26, 2022

saltyhog said:
Have you identified what type of dino you have? That has everything to do with how you treat it. When you say you did silicate dosing, what product did you use? How much did you use? What size is your tank? When you used UV,what size was it, how was it plumbed and what was the flow through it. Both of these modes of treatment have to been done under pretty detailed/specific conditions.

nereefpat said:
Keep at it. It can be a long and frustrating fight.

Testing has proven Vibrant to be algaecide, and the same specific one that's in API's Algaefix...so take that for what it's worth. I don't know about Dino X.

I agree it's easier to beat if you know what specific dino you're fighting.

What is the temperature in the tank?

I have prorocentrum dinos and my tank is at 80-80.5 F

GarrettT · Aug 26, 2022

When you did a blackout, did you run UV at the same time?

atul176 · Aug 26, 2022

GarrettT said:
When you did a blackout, did you run UV at the same time?

Yep, I used a green killing machine at the same time as the blackout.

saltyhog · Aug 26, 2022

Couple of things. I know many say Prorocentrum go in to the water column and they may to some extent but I have not seen wide spread success treating this type with UV. Secondly GKM UV units rarely work even for Ostreopsis or Coolia. It's likely because of the inappropriate (for dinos) flow rate of their built in pump. People also often go by manufacturer's recommendations in sizing UV's when battling dinos which is a recipe for failure also. The manufacturer's recommendations don't take dinos in to consideration and won't work the majority of the time for dinos.

The best treatment for Prorcentrum IMO is silicate dosing (water glass), dosing phyto daily if possible, keeping nutrients balanced, stable and in the 5-15 range for NO3 and the 0.06-0.15 range for PO4.

saltyhog · Aug 26, 2022

atul176 said:
I have prorocentrum dinos and my tank is at 80-80.5 F

atul176 said:
Yep, I used a green killing machine at the same time as the blackout.

Did you use water glass to dose silicates? How much did you dose, how often and for how long? Did you confirm (microscopically) a diatom bloom. Recent microscopic slides still showing Prorocentrum?

kecked · Sep 11, 2022

Vibrant killed all my monti cap in 24 hours. I put literally 1ml in 75 gal. MAmes sense since what it did is killed all the algae in the coral bleaching it. Would think any hosted coral would be the same. Anyway what worked for me is dosing a full bottle of cycle bacteria. That seems to allow the good bacteria to outcompete the other and also raise up nitrates a little to knock down the Dino. If your lucky the bacteria will then eat the carcass left over and process out the new nutrients in the tank. Add a 30% water change week later and you might find your temp solution. I end up repeating this about twice a year but my reef is 12 years old and my rock is loaded. I really need to strip it down and flush the rocks in fresh salt for a few days and. Then change my sponge filters out.