Hi all,
i just wanted to share my 8 month fight with Dino’s, as it has been long, expensive; but ultimately, educational. To condense a long story short, I made the mistake of bottoming out my nutrients in my (then) 5 month old 300gal, with a super powered diy algae reactor (lol). Once realizing the Dino growth on the sand, and realizing its the kind that floats to the water column, I bought a 75w UV sterilizer, and immediately started over feeding (not grossly, just many small batches throughout the day) which after 2 months seemed to only control the population. I then started dozing 30ml of hydrogen peroxide twice a day (7am and 7pm), dosing phosphate and nitrates, which definitely helped clear the rock work, but still wouldn’t eliminate the Dino’s after about a month of dosing and I could barely keep nutrients detectable (PO4: 0.01, NO3: 5) as per Hanna checker. I ended up buying a ton of blue leg hermits crabs, nerite and cerith snails, which ate massive amounts of Dino’s through out the glass and rock work, but generally stayed away from the sand. After all else had failed, I turned to dr Tim’s waste away, dosing religiously alongside microbacter 7, which ironically ended up causing another Dino bloom, which I assume is because of the rapid breakdown of nutrients/food. Around month 7 (ish), I read something online about dosing silicates to help other organisms out compete the Dino’s for space. At this point I was very close to restarting the tank as it seemed neverending and horrible to see, but I didn’t want to start manually dosing silicates, so I decided to start using good ol’ tap water, which according to ATI’s ICP test, had 4270 µg/l of silicates. In less than 2 weeks, I want to say more than 90% of my Dino problem had vanished! Right now I have an ever so slight tint of Dino on my sand, but my rocks, glass, corals, power heads, overflow weir and magnet cleaners have been all cleared. I cannot say for sure that tap water was the cure for my problem, but all else seemed to fail. I decided to post this in case anyone else may be losing their fight with Dino’s and wanted to try one last thing. I lost all of my acros, some chalices and some favities due to the heavy coverage of Dino’s over them but this is what I was left with
i just wanted to share my 8 month fight with Dino’s, as it has been long, expensive; but ultimately, educational. To condense a long story short, I made the mistake of bottoming out my nutrients in my (then) 5 month old 300gal, with a super powered diy algae reactor (lol). Once realizing the Dino growth on the sand, and realizing its the kind that floats to the water column, I bought a 75w UV sterilizer, and immediately started over feeding (not grossly, just many small batches throughout the day) which after 2 months seemed to only control the population. I then started dozing 30ml of hydrogen peroxide twice a day (7am and 7pm), dosing phosphate and nitrates, which definitely helped clear the rock work, but still wouldn’t eliminate the Dino’s after about a month of dosing and I could barely keep nutrients detectable (PO4: 0.01, NO3: 5) as per Hanna checker. I ended up buying a ton of blue leg hermits crabs, nerite and cerith snails, which ate massive amounts of Dino’s through out the glass and rock work, but generally stayed away from the sand. After all else had failed, I turned to dr Tim’s waste away, dosing religiously alongside microbacter 7, which ironically ended up causing another Dino bloom, which I assume is because of the rapid breakdown of nutrients/food. Around month 7 (ish), I read something online about dosing silicates to help other organisms out compete the Dino’s for space. At this point I was very close to restarting the tank as it seemed neverending and horrible to see, but I didn’t want to start manually dosing silicates, so I decided to start using good ol’ tap water, which according to ATI’s ICP test, had 4270 µg/l of silicates. In less than 2 weeks, I want to say more than 90% of my Dino problem had vanished! Right now I have an ever so slight tint of Dino on my sand, but my rocks, glass, corals, power heads, overflow weir and magnet cleaners have been all cleared. I cannot say for sure that tap water was the cure for my problem, but all else seemed to fail. I decided to post this in case anyone else may be losing their fight with Dino’s and wanted to try one last thing. I lost all of my acros, some chalices and some favities due to the heavy coverage of Dino’s over them but this is what I was left with
