Help! How to get rid of dinos in nano

[GothFishKeeper]

My tank is getting overrun with what I believe to be dinoflagellates. I know small/new tank syndrome is probably part of it, but is there any way to get rid of it? I heard that raising nitrates and phosphates could help, but that’s a scary idea to me as I have some sensitive animals in the tank. Tank is a fluval evo 13.5g with 10g of water total, running eshopps nano skimmer in the rear corner of the display tank, and the stock filtration for now. I have media baskets coming in the mail today and I plan on using filter floss and ammonia removing carbon in chamber 1, and a fuge in chamber 2. I also have a jebao slw-10 wavemaker running on low power random flow in the display tank.

Here are pics of the stuff building up on the rocks and sand, with the last two pics being taken after the wavemaker ran for a couple days.

 

[Budman93]

Does it go away at night? Typical treatment would include cranking up flow (which you have done) Changing filter floss each morning, halting water changes to raise nutrients and feeding more, adding a uv steriliser, and dosing phyto/pods among other things.

Someone smarter than me will tell you if you should run carbon or not. I've heard it can help neutralize toxins from dying dinoflagelletes but i actually took mine out when I was fighting mine as I figured nutrients would rise faster. Seemed to work.

 

[DDenny]

Are you sure it’s Dino’s? Some of that looked like cyano to me. Only way to know for sure if to look under a microscope. On the rocks and snotty like that could be Dino’s. What are your NO3 and PO4 at right now? My NO3 is at 25ppm and PO4 I have to dose to keep it at 0.1ppm.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

If you do end up having dinos Look at this article

 

[thedon986]

That looks more like bacterial slime or cyano than dinos

 

[Ziggy17]

First you need a microscope to identify what’s there.
Read this document. It’s the bible for treating dinos.

 

[Ziggy17]

If you do end up having dinos Look at this article

Ya, there’s a few problems with that article. Perhaps it needs a revamp with updated info and corrections.