How i beat dinos and a question. Now can i turn off my UV Sterilizer?

[Reef Puncher]

So I had dinos for the last month. At one point about a week ago they were so bad they started covering my corals!! my zoas wouldn't open, it looked HORRIBLE. I caused the dinos because i over filtered. I have filter socks, a small refugium, and a skimmer. I was trying to avoid No3 and PO4 so much that i caused dinos. i didnt even know it was bad to have low nitrates.
Anyways i dosed nitrates, did a 24 hour blackout, and every night vacuumed up the dinos. every night they came back. Finally i bought a UV sterilizer. This one.

UV sterilizer

the 15 watt for my 70 gallon. bought a cheap AC 600gph pump and put a valve on tubing and closed it to run somewhere between 400-550 gph. Which gave me about a 6x turnover. pretty fast flow. This time i put a toothbrush and zip tied it on the small end of a gravel vacuum. i vacuumed up at same time i scrubbed my rocks, sucking up all the dinos and it went right back into my sump. i stuck large end into my inflow filter sock chamber, and also put extra filter floss pads in there to catch all the dinos. I also ran the sterilizer at same time. I did this 2 nights in a row, and in less than 48 hours the dinos are all gone. Looks like they were never there.

My question is, now that they are dead, can i turn it off? I know alot of people just keep it running and say why not. But i would rather not kill any more beneficial bacteria. i gravel vacuumed the crap out of my tank and scrubbed all the rocks very well so i know i scrubbed off alot of bacteria. i want it to flourish with beneficial bacteria. so can i turn it off? Will they just come back if i turn it off?

 

[fishmonkey]

I assume the only way to really know is if you try it out yourself. I would just to know I don’t have to rely on UV to have a Dino free tank.

 

[Tired]

Dino can't be completely eliminated from your tank, just dropped to harmless levels. Fixing the conditions that caused them should keep them away.

It's not just nitrate, BTW. You need phosphate. Low phosphate kills faster than low nitrate.

 

[Reef Puncher]

Dino can't be completely eliminated from your tank, just dropped to harmless levels. Fixing the conditions that caused them should keep them away.

It's not just nitrate, BTW. You need phosphate. Low phosphate kills faster than low nitrate.

should i dose phosphate? my nitrates have been sitting at about 10 now for past few days, but my phos is still reading at 0.1

 

[beesnreefs]

@Reef Puncher I'm glad to hear the UV helped so much! Dinos can be such an awful PITA.

The only way to be certain this is/was dinos is by microscopic identification. Unfortunatley, a dinos outbreak can look an awful lot like diatoms or crysophytes, etc. That said, the fact it grew fast, came back quick after vacuuming, and UV blasted it right quick suggests to me you have Ostreopsis.

As @Tired mentioned, you never fully eliminate dinos from your tank. They are always there. They become problematic when there's a void in your microbiome. Think of it this way...there are always mice around most of our properties. But these mice are scared of us humans, our dogs, our cats, etc....however, if we move out and no one moves in, over time the mice will fill the void and propagate. Dinos are the same.

The reason we see dinos pop up when our nutrients bottom out for extended periods of time is that most of the beneficial biome critters need a bit of nitrates and phosphates to thrive. Dinos can thrive in any conditions. When we have consistently good nutrient levels in a tank with a diverse mix of good biome, the good guys grow enough to outcompete the bad guys. When nutrients bottom out and stay that way "long enough" the good guys weaken and the dinos jump in with vigor.

So, eliminating the dinos in your case is step 1. Step 2 is filling the void with "better" biome.

I'd recommend continuing your UV until you can:

1. Get your hands on some good biome boosters*
2. Get your nutrients to a consistently healthy measurable level and keep them there.

*In order, I think the best good biome boosters are live sand/live rock (for example from @AquaBiomics or @LiverockRocks), Prodibio Biodigest (which has been tested to be a good mix of potentially beneficial bacteria you can dose into the tank), and Dr Tim's EcoBalance (which is a known strain of beneficial bacteria)

Once you have your good biome booster, stop UV, add the biome, keep your nutrients at a good level (I think increased feeding of fish/corals is the best way to do it, but dosing to get it there is helpful too), and keep an eye on things. It may take a few weeks for the good biome to build up enough to keep the dinos at bay.

 

[Reef Puncher]

@Reef Puncher I'm glad to hear the UV helped so much! Dinos can be such an awful PITA.

The only way to be certain this is/was dinos is by microscopic identification. Unfortunatley, a dinos outbreak can look an awful lot like diatoms or crysophytes, etc. That said, the fact it grew fast, came back quick after vacuuming, and UV blasted it right quick suggests to me you have Ostreopsis.

As @Tired mentioned, you never fully eliminate dinos from your tank. They are always there. They become problematic when there's a void in your microbiome. Think of it this way...there are always mice around most of our properties. But these mice are scared of us humans, our dogs, our cats, etc....however, if we move out and no one moves in, over time the mice will fill the void and propagate. Dinos are the same.

The reason we see dinos pop up when our nutrients bottom out for extended periods of time is that most of the beneficial biome critters need a bit of nitrates and phosphates to thrive. Dinos can thrive in any conditions. When we have consistently good nutrient levels in a tank with a diverse mix of good biome, the good guys grow enough to outcompete the bad guys. When nutrients bottom out and stay that way "long enough" the good guys weaken and the dinos jump in with vigor.

So, eliminating the dinos in your case is step 1. Step 2 is filling the void with "better" biome.

I'd recommend continuing your UV until you can:

1. Get your hands on some good biome boosters*
2. Get your nutrients to a consistently healthy measurable level and keep them there.

*In order, I think the best good biome boosters are live sand/live rock (for example from @AquaBiomics or @LiverockRocks), Prodibio Biodigest (which has been tested to be a good mix of potentially beneficial bacteria you can dose into the tank), and Dr Tim's EcoBalance (which is a known strain of beneficial bacteria)

Once you have your good biome booster, stop UV, add the biome, keep your nutrients at a good level (I think increased feeding of fish/corals is the best way to do it, but dosing to get it there is helpful too), and keep an eye on things. It may take a few weeks for the good biome to build up enough to keep the dinos at bay.

wow thanks for the detailed response. So I purchased two biome boosters.
Seed, and fritz turbo start last week. They said Seed is dormant bacteria, and fritz has to be refrigirated, and are live bacteria. the fritz smells horrible too which they said is good.
Anyways i started dosing them yesterday but my UV is still on, and I'm worried its just killing the beneficial bacteria im pouring in. but if i turn it off, the dinos start returning.
the only thing i can think of, is to do either
A.) during the day turn off UV and dose with beneficial, and at night turn UV back on.
or
B.) just turn off the UV for good and let dinos come back some but start dosing with beneficial. ugh. so complicated.

 

[beesnreefs]

wow thanks for the detailed response. So I purchased two biome boosters.
Seed, and fritz turbo start last week. They said Seed is dormant bacteria, and fritz has to be refrigirated, and are live bacteria. the fritz smells horrible too which they said is good.
Anyways i started dosing them yesterday but my UV is still on, and I'm worried its just killing the beneficial bacteria im pouring in. but if i turn it off, the dinos start returning.
the only thing i can think of, is to do either
A.) during the day turn off UV and dose with beneficial, and at night turn UV back on.
or
B.) just turn off the UV for good and let dinos come back some but start dosing with beneficial. ugh. so complicated.

You're welcome!

I'm not familiar with Seed and Fritz is likely a small blend of nitrifying bacteria. The reason I prefer EcoBalance is they openly share the strain it includes. The reason I like Biodigest best is an AquaBiomics test confirms it has multiple potentially beneficial strains so is a more diverse (and possibly more helpful) mix of bacteria.

If it were me, I'd run the UV until I saw little to no dinos. Then, once I knew I had nutrients in a good place, I'd turn off the UV and dose beneficial bacteria daily for a few weeks.

 

[Tired]

should i dose phosphate? my nitrates have been sitting at about 10 now for past few days, but my phos is still reading at 0.1

That's a perfectly fine phosphate level. You want it much lower than the nitrates.

 

[Reef Puncher]

You're welcome!

I'm not familiar with Seed and Fritz is likely a small blend of nitrifying bacteria. The reason I prefer EcoBalance is they openly share the strain it includes. The reason I like Biodigest best is an AquaBiomics test confirms it has multiple potentially beneficial strains so is a more diverse (and possibly more helpful) mix of bacteria.

If it were me, I'd run the UV until I saw little to no dinos. Then, once I knew I had nutrients in a good place, I'd turn off the UV and dose beneficial bacteria daily for a few weeks.

what i think ill do, is what you originally said. ill run the UV until i fix the underlying issue which was imbalance of nitrate and phosphate. my phopshates were reading 0.0 most of the time, the highest reading was 0.01 just once. i ordered a hannah phosphate kit too. imma start dosing reef roids, i heard that raises phophates. once i have a balanced nutrient load, and no dinos, ill turn off UV and start dosing bacteria. i think thats a solid plan.

 

[Ziggy17]

Did you look at the Dinos under a microscope to identify what type you had?

 

[Reef Puncher]

Did you look at the Dinos under a microscope to identify what type you had?

of course. prorocentrum. i killed 95% of the dinos though. With Dino X. (it also killed all my corals though too) my luck the dinos will come back

 

[Ziggy17]

Yeah. Dino X kills corals and not dinos.