Catjuggler
Premium Member
Hi everyone its Catjuggler again. I wanted to share my experience with the dreaded dino. My setup is a 90 gallon reef with fish and a 35 gallon long refugeium. I use ro/di from my 5 stage ro/di filter. I have a few koralia 3s so the flow is great. 2 250 metal halides and 2 96 watt super actinics all with new bulbs that i change every six months. Well my tds started to go up in the water from my filter( bad membrane). I didnt think using it while i was waitng for the new filters would be that bad,man was i wrong. I started to have brown snot with bubbles in it that first week my tds went up. I did alot of research and i figured it was dinoflagellates. I brought a sample to a couple fish stores and they told me it was cynao, since i have only been in the hobby for about a year I figured they were right and i was wrong so i started to treat for cyano. I started to use chems that were made for cyano and started to do water changes at 30 percent every few days. Wow is that when it got bad, I started to have snails and crabs die and when one of my favorite fish the dragon goby died i had had enough. It was covering everything now. I care about my fish alot and it tore me up. So I decided that i was gonna try another route, In the back of my mind i keep thinking back to the pics i saw of dino and i just decided I would get another opinion about my problem. I went and got a hd camera from a friend and took some really good pics of it. I also took another sample of the snot to a few more stores. What do you know everyone told me it was dino this time, So now i was at least pointed in the right direction.
I did lots of research about dinos and found that it was a hobby killer. I started to get afraid i wouldnt be able to handle the problem and more stuff would die, BUT I decided I would not be impeded from fixing the prolem. I started to look for ways to get rid of it and I found many, so many it was making me dizzy. To make things worse it didnt seem like anyone used the same cure and the fix for some people didnt work for others. Here are the things i found to help.
1. black out for 2 to 3 days at a time.
2. raise ph to 8.6
3.uv filter
4.taking out rocks and scrubing them or just getting new rocks.
5. hydrogen peroxide 1ml to 10gal dose
6.sucking it out. which i didnt want to do because i would have to put fresh saltwater in and it would cause the dinos to bloom, which brings me to 7
7. Absolutely no water changes, none what so ever. It just fuels it
8. 100 micron filter sock, it will filter the dinos out and catch the dying dinos too
There were a few more but these were the ones most people were using
As soon as i knew it was dino I started the blackout and the raised ph. I would turn the lights out for 3 days and put black sheets over my tank. I raised my ph by using limewater and reducing my aeration by lowering my powerheads. On the third day i would turn the lights on for 5 hours and feed and let my corals fluff up again. I would just repeat that over and over for a month. during this time i took out my rocks and cleaned them twice. Wow what a pain. I was starting to realize why it would make people leave the hobby. After all that the dino would just come back full force after having the lights on for a few hours. Thats when i came across a thread about using hydrogen peroxide, that really scared me because some of the people that were trying it had stuff die(ie. snails and fish), but the more i looked into it it seemed like these people may have been over dosing. I decided i was gonna try it, I mean shoot it only cost 70 cents for hydrogen peroxide and $2000 for everything in my tank. haha. So that first night I tried the hydrogen peroxide, the dinos was covering everything. I used a turkey baster and blew off all the dinos off the rock,walls, and powerheads I even blew off the stuff in the refugium so it would be in the water column. I then poured in the hydrogen peroxide next to the return pump. I used a 1ml to 10 gallon ration, so i ended up using 12mls. The next morning I checked on the tank and man was it cleaner then it had been in months. I still had some spots with dino but there were parts of my rock that looked better then before the dinos. I was floored that hydrogen peroxide could have done so much in so little time. I repeated that for two days and things were looking awesome. I decided I would turn it up a notch and bumped it to 2 doses a day 12ml in the morning and 12ml at night, still using the turkey baster to clean the surfaces off before dosing. Im at day four and I decided I would let my lights run for the full eight hours. At the end of todays light cycle there was no dinos that I could see expect a few of the big patches that were on the back but they are almost gone and they didnt grow at all today, and on top of that my tank looks so beautiful. To be honest my corals look the best i have ever seen them. They are open and growing again. I dont know if Im cured yet But Im going to continue the treatment for a week to make sure everything is gone, but it looks great so far. I cant imagine how easy it would have been if i would have tried this the moment i saw the dino. If this helps one person I will be happy. <u>GOOD LUCK AND DON'T GIVE UP </u>
I did lots of research about dinos and found that it was a hobby killer. I started to get afraid i wouldnt be able to handle the problem and more stuff would die, BUT I decided I would not be impeded from fixing the prolem. I started to look for ways to get rid of it and I found many, so many it was making me dizzy. To make things worse it didnt seem like anyone used the same cure and the fix for some people didnt work for others. Here are the things i found to help.
1. black out for 2 to 3 days at a time.
2. raise ph to 8.6
3.uv filter
4.taking out rocks and scrubing them or just getting new rocks.
5. hydrogen peroxide 1ml to 10gal dose
6.sucking it out. which i didnt want to do because i would have to put fresh saltwater in and it would cause the dinos to bloom, which brings me to 7
7. Absolutely no water changes, none what so ever. It just fuels it
8. 100 micron filter sock, it will filter the dinos out and catch the dying dinos too
There were a few more but these were the ones most people were using
As soon as i knew it was dino I started the blackout and the raised ph. I would turn the lights out for 3 days and put black sheets over my tank. I raised my ph by using limewater and reducing my aeration by lowering my powerheads. On the third day i would turn the lights on for 5 hours and feed and let my corals fluff up again. I would just repeat that over and over for a month. during this time i took out my rocks and cleaned them twice. Wow what a pain. I was starting to realize why it would make people leave the hobby. After all that the dino would just come back full force after having the lights on for a few hours. Thats when i came across a thread about using hydrogen peroxide, that really scared me because some of the people that were trying it had stuff die(ie. snails and fish), but the more i looked into it it seemed like these people may have been over dosing. I decided i was gonna try it, I mean shoot it only cost 70 cents for hydrogen peroxide and $2000 for everything in my tank. haha. So that first night I tried the hydrogen peroxide, the dinos was covering everything. I used a turkey baster and blew off all the dinos off the rock,walls, and powerheads I even blew off the stuff in the refugium so it would be in the water column. I then poured in the hydrogen peroxide next to the return pump. I used a 1ml to 10 gallon ration, so i ended up using 12mls. The next morning I checked on the tank and man was it cleaner then it had been in months. I still had some spots with dino but there were parts of my rock that looked better then before the dinos. I was floored that hydrogen peroxide could have done so much in so little time. I repeated that for two days and things were looking awesome. I decided I would turn it up a notch and bumped it to 2 doses a day 12ml in the morning and 12ml at night, still using the turkey baster to clean the surfaces off before dosing. Im at day four and I decided I would let my lights run for the full eight hours. At the end of todays light cycle there was no dinos that I could see expect a few of the big patches that were on the back but they are almost gone and they didnt grow at all today, and on top of that my tank looks so beautiful. To be honest my corals look the best i have ever seen them. They are open and growing again. I dont know if Im cured yet But Im going to continue the treatment for a week to make sure everything is gone, but it looks great so far. I cant imagine how easy it would have been if i would have tried this the moment i saw the dino. If this helps one person I will be happy. <u>GOOD LUCK AND DON'T GIVE UP </u>
