Dinoflagellates my experience......h2o2 reefing tool!!!!!

[Swordfish215]

Gotta say that dinos pretty much drove me insane at one point......But the kalkwasser method(Dripping heavily at nite and slightly during the day)worked really well for me...The hardest part was controlling salinity levels...One thing about dinos, they leave as fast as they come...:clap2:

 

[H2O]

Does anyone have a picture of the real deal Dinoflagellates ? diatom ? cano ? side by side a lot of confused newbies here mixing hair alergy into the toxic stuff some clear pic would help see whats what .

 

[alberthiel]

Does anyone have a picture of the real deal Dinoflagellates ? diatom ? cano ? side by side a lot of confused newbies here mixing hair alergy into the toxic stuff some clear pic would help see whats what .

Dinos

Cyano

Hoe this helps ... Usually in both cases you will see air bubbles under the Dinos and most of the time under the Cyanos but they are not as visible and the red coating you see is actually a slimey cover over and above the actual Cyanobacteria and the red is why we call it red slime, the actual bacteria are underneath.

 

[Lacktaters]

I'm struggling with what I originally thought were dinos. I'm starting to question whether they are or not since they don't seem to be effected by peroxide. My nitrates are undetectable with Elos kit, and my phosphates are at 0.036 PPM according to a Hanna phosphorus checker. I'm running GFO and carbon in TLF reactors and biopellets in a Reef Octo reactor. I went three days with lights out and started dosing peroxide at 1mL per 10g. Coming out of the lights out period, I was very optimistic. My sandbed was the whitest I'd ever seen it, and this nuisance was gone...at least I thought. I have continued dosing peroxide for a period of 11 days now. Three days after the lights came back on (actually one day after the white T5s came back on) they were back even worse than before. The peroxide doesn't seem to be doing anything. I'm losing tons of corals, not from the peroxide, but from this algae/bacteria. My zoas stay closed all the time, and it's really irritating my chalices. Here are some pics of it...sorry about the poor quality.

Growing up the rocks:

Growing on the sand bed:

 

[rocride]

I hear ya,the H202 was a short term fix for me too.
I have been reading about and dealing with Dinos for too long,most people would have tore down and re-started.I'm considering it,actually started another tank for temporary housing.
I don't have much for corals so I'm not losing valuable livestock but since you do there's a couple things you could consider.
Dinoflagellates supposedly can't tolerate nitrates,I have wanted to try this theory out but never have.I run Bio-Pellets too so of course our nitrates are going to be zero.
Also,I'm waiting on Ultra Algae X by Fauna Marin,I'm curious how this will work since the success rate seems very high for Dinos with this product.So I'm going to give it a shot.
I'm pulling out the display sandbed (sugarsand) first,I'm pretty sure that's nothing but a nutrient sink.

 

[Reefer_Larry]

I have had dino's for over 5 months now. I have tried raising ph to 8.6 for 5 days with kalk, lights out for 3 days on many occasions, varying alkalinity, varying temperature etc, but the dino's still persist no matter what i try. They get much worse with lights on (dormant with lights off) and smother many of my acros killing off the tips of my birds nest acro along with affecting my other acros and monteporas. Turkey baster blowing easily removes them from the corals but hours later they are back in full force attacking the corals tips again. If you are not there to blow them off they will smother your coral tips. I spend literrally 2-3 hours daily in the morning and evening blowing off the dinos. I am tired of all this, a real nightmare. What is a little unusual here is that both my rocks and send bed are clean and do not seem affected by the dinos. Seems like they love to attach to my corals primarily although i do have some dines:whip: on the glass and pre-filter box which i remove daily.
After four months of this ongoing aggravation i have decided to experiment with the hydrogen peroxide (3%). My first dose was today in the morning (1ml per 10 gallon) and will also do a 1/2 dose (.5ml per 10 gallon) in the evening for the next 7-10 days. I will post my future results here after a few days. I hope and pray this works as i so want this to be over with.
Take note: my orp meter registered 330 this morning before the peroxide dosing, then dropped to 315 immediately right after the dosing and now two hours later has climbed to over 370 so this proves the peroxide is affecting the water chemistry. Lets see how it affects the dinos.

 

[Lacktaters]

Reefaddict I have found that syphoning the dynos off my acros with a .25" ID vinyl hose works much better than just blowing them off with a baster. When I baste them off, they immediately get caught on another acro. When I siphon them, I put the end of the hose in the filter sock in the sump. This allows me to work for hours at removing the dynos without shutting off the return pump or replacing water in the tank...just replace the sock when I'm done.

 

[Reefer_Larry]

Yes the siphoning off the dinos with a filter sock vs blowing them off with a turkey baster makes much more sense as the idea is to remove them from the tank and not just move them around in the tank.
Well I am on day 3 addition of peroxide 1cc per 10 gallon and the lights have been off since i started the treatments. One observation i noticed so far is that the orp redox meter has now today climbed and holding at 405 (was at 330 before i started the peroxide treatments), yesterday it climbed and held at 385, so the addition of peroxide appears to have a cumulative effect on the water chemistry. I did not do the night 1/2 strength additions i originally was planning to do since i would rather raise the redox slowly and not shock the fish and corals. Looking in the sump, my pods so far do not appear affected at all by the peroxide addition, still plenty of the tisbe pods in the sump moving around, so that is good. As far as the tank goes, i will wait to report what i see when the lights go on tomorrow. Will the dinos be gone forever or are they going to reproduce like so so many times before when the lights come on. **stay tuned**

 

[Reefer_Larry]

ok im on day 3 of lights on for 11 hours per day after a 3 day blackout and dosing with peroxide 1ml per 10 gallons since the start six days ago. Since the lights have come on i decided to dose twice daily morning and night instead of once a day. This helps keep the orp meter reading around 400 all the time without a drop in orp. Here are the results up to date so far.

1. Most important, the dinos appear to have been almost completely gone,:clap2: i say almost because i have spotted 3-4 dinos hanging on to one of my acros this morning. So i would say the dinos are not 100% removed but maybe 97-99% gone. I do know from past experiences with these monsters that had i not added the peroxide at all, then by the second day of lights on 11 hours/day following a 3 day blackout my corals would be covered with dinos by now. So its been a success for me and i plan on continuing to add the peroxide for another 4 more days (10 day treatment). If i spot them coming back later on after treatment i will re-dose again.
2. Also the peroxide with this dosage regimen does not affect the corals negatively. I guess keeping the orp reading at around 400 helps prevents stress on the corals. So this dosage recommendation 1ml per 10 gallons is good. I would not recommend overdosing (greater than 1ml per 10 gallon) with peroxide as the redox readings could easily jump to over 500 which could stress and destroy everything.
3. Pod population in sump remains normal. No noticeable decline. Again staying away from overdosing peroxide probably helps the zooplankton.
4. Macro algae appears normal also. No negative effects so far..

I hope this information helps others who have similar problem as me.

so far, so good !!!:angel:

 

[jtomasi]

Any update?

 

[alberthiel]

Works for all types of algae...

It does but IME not on macro-algae such as Caulerpa or Bryopsis ... those do not even get killed off by ChemiClean from Boyd Enterprises. Manual removal is IME about all that works for those and when it comes to Bryopsis manual removal is not that easy as they are so strongly attached to whatever they grow on that removing them completely usually does not work and as some of them is left behind they will regrow. I am testing a new product from Continuum Aquatics right now that is supposed to get rid of Bryopsis but the treatment is 2 + weeks and I am only at day 3, but what I have noticed so far is that the Caulerpa runners come loose a lot easier than they used to so maybe it is working indeed .. I'll update the thread in a few days.

 

[Reefer_Larry]

i have some very bad news here, they came back with a vengeance on day3 with lights on.
i have decided today to try lights out for 7 days, raise redox to 450 from 400 with peroxide dosing twice daily during the blackout, also will raise ph/alkalinity to high levels.
will report back later after treatment is completed. I Pray this works.

 

[alberthiel]

i have some very bad news here, they came back with a vengeance on day3 with lights on.
i have decided today to try lights out for 7 days, raise redox to 450 from 400 with peroxide dosing twice daily during the blackout, also will raise ph/alkalinity to high levels.
will report back later after treatment is completed. I Pray this works.

OK thanks. Good luck I hope this will do it for you

 

[lofty78]

I started 1ml per gallon total volume approx 100 gal. What I have determine to be Dinos... Stringy green algae with a bubble floating up on top. There are also lots of bubbles on the rocks which I have been blowing off with a baster. Everything looks better, although, my Monti, which was already bleached is looking more bleached in some spots, but coloring up in others. If this is the case I may just break off the bleached portion on let it re grow. The water is crystal clear and I have not had to clean the glass, except for after blowing off rocks where some of the sediment settles there. I read through about half of the previous posts from the OP up til about page 15 and decided to jump ahead to post here when I started seeing a lot op people re asking questions that are answered already. I have a lot of hair algae, which has been growing cyno on top of it. I cannot yet confirm that nothing will die, or that it will eliminate anything in particular, but I had read enough that I felt it would not harm much to try the recommended dose. So far I am please with the results, and I will update as I go... I am hpoing that I can get rid of hair algae as well, and I was thinking if I dislodged it with my super hemostats that it would kill it, once it is free floating. Any thoughts on this? Wish me luck :smile:

 

[Helios]

Ok so I am by no means saying the peroxide does not work on killing dino's but I am saying that I will NOT get rid of dinos. It will make all the visible stuff go away but will never fully wipe it out. I had a fight with dino's for about 3 years!!! I never won, peroxide did not do it. I thought it did and i kept up with my dosing and dosed 6 months after I saw any dinos. 3 months after I stopped they came back.

The only way to beat them Is starting over. If your just trying to get them under control and your ok with them being in the tank just a bit then dose peroxide daily. From my understanding peroxide increases how much the algae will perform photosynthesis. It increases the rate dramatically and this is why it turns a white color, kinda like bleaching out.

Hope this helps.

 

[lofty78]

Well starting over is not an option, so maintaining them is fine by me... this also seems to have other healthy attributes, like oxygenating the water and such. I am curious about it and don't see any ill effects, so I am giving it a go... I do however, have an extra pump I can use on my doser, if this proves to keep things in check, I would probably be interested in anyone's experience in using them with peristaltic pumps. Any problems with decreased life of the pump tubes (lack of proper terminology).

 

[Helios]

I used it for 2 years on a healthy tank and it does wonders really, just remember to get it in a light sealed container because it reacts with light. It kinda works like an ozone reactor, pretty much the same exact thing. Just cheaper

 

[lofty78]

You mean the container I use as a reservoir for the doser right?

 

[alberthiel]

I have had dino's for over 5 months now. I have tried raising ph to 8.6 for 5 days with kalk, lights out for 3 days on many occasions, varying alkalinity, varying temperature etc, but the dino's still persist no matter what i try. They get much worse with lights on (dormant with lights off) and smother many of my acros killing off the tips of my birds nest acro along with affecting my other acros and monteporas. Turkey baster blowing easily removes them from the corals but hours later they are back in full force attacking the corals tips again. If you are not there to blow them off they will smother your coral tips. I spend literrally 2-3 hours daily in the morning and evening blowing off the dinos. I am tired of all this, a real nightmare. What is a little unusual here is that both my rocks and send bed are clean and do not seem affected by the dinos. Seems like they love to attach to my corals primarily although i do have some dines:whip: on the glass and pre-filter box which i remove daily.
After four months of this ongoing aggravation i have decided to experiment with the hydrogen peroxide (3%). My first dose was today in the morning (1ml per 10 gallon) and will also do a 1/2 dose (.5ml per 10 gallon) in the evening for the next 7-10 days. I will post my future results here after a few days. I hope and pray this works as i so want this to be over with.
Take note: my orp meter registered 330 this morning before the peroxide dosing, then dropped to 315 immediately right after the dosing and now two hours later has climbed to over 370 so this proves the peroxide is affecting the water chemistry. Lets see how it affects the dinos.

Use ChemiClean from boyd Ent. exactly as described on the label and then once the treatment is complete after 48 hours start doing water changes for several days in a row to really clean up your tank and blow all detritus off the rock, from between and behind them and wherever it is and get it out of the tank each time you siphon water out ... Then keep NO3 below 3 ppm and PO4 at a non detectable level and make sure you have no dead spots in the tank .. add a Power Head if needed ... and clean the tank very regularly ... FWIW works for many I know ...

 

[Helios]

You mean the container I use as a reservoir for the doser right?

Yes