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Thread: Dinoflagellates.

  1. #11

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    OMG, this stuff sinks like death. If this takes over the tank ill be crying.

    How do I kill it?

  2. #12
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    It does smell awful!!!!!! Mine is slowly retreating. I cut back on feeding, increased ATS flow, wipe it off the back glass where it grows on the coralline once or twice a week, and reduced the intensity of the LED fixture. I have thought about the peroxide dosing treatment but am not sure if I dare try that.
    150G. Reef/Mix
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    75G. 20+ Africans
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    10G. SW Hospital/new fish quarantine/pod breeder tank
    6 stage RO/DI system 200 GPD.

  3. #13
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    In my experience, it stays in the scrubber as long as you have surface skimming i.e. overflow in the display tank. There are many methods that are suggested to keep it under control, I know there are a few articles out there, here's a few from googling "dinoflagellates reef"

    http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-11/rhf/index.php

    http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog...ons-i-learned/

    Most involve raising the pH to 8.4 (especially at night - scrubber can help this) but that can be difficult to do, so at least keep your alk high enough to maintain proper pH and run your scrubber lights all night if you can.

    Many solutions mention cutting back the DT lights (even a 3-day total blackout in extreme cases, but this doesn't solve the root problem), but SM told me to do the opposite and it actually worked. I think the idea is that if you provide the coral a lot of light, they will consume the nutrients and starve out the dinos. Of course you need a lot of photosynthetic corals for that to work I would think. But cutting the lights out completely will generally cause more die-off which then feeds the dinos, so I guess I hate to go against the recommendations of Randy Holmes-Farley, but it seemed to work for me, so it's up to you.

    Cut feeding drastically in any case, only feed a small amount right before lights out is what I did, and every other day or every 3 days if your fish can take it.

    Basically you're keeping the fish alive and letting the corals and CUC (and scrubber) drain the nutrients out of the tank and starving out the dinos.

    Keep the scrubber running, if they're still wanting to grow, they'll grow there and that's where to want them - where you can control them.

    If you have a place for filter floss, a sock, or a pad, put that there too to keep the dinos from recirculating in the system, or to catch them if they detach from the scrubber. I had tons of dinos in my UAS until it started growing green, but very little signs of detachment. In the top-of-tank waterfall scrubber, I had much more detachment, most of which snagged on a block of bio-balls that I had set up as a bubble-blocker. So do what you have to do to trap them.

    Also I take a piece of airline tubing and siphon off the dinos out of the DT when I see them. They come back pretty quick so this is something you need to stay on top of on a daily basis. Using this method and pinching the airline hose when not sucking the dinos I was able to only empty out about 1/4-1/2 gallon in a 120g system, and I had dinos everywhere. Also get all the dinos off the top surface in low-flow areas (if you have them)

    The hardest coral to keep happy was my ORA Green Birdsnest, you can drop those things on the ground and step on them and they'll survive but dinos take them out because they're 'snaggy' - they are a dino magnet.

  4. #14

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    I hope it stays on the scrubber..... If so scrubber saves the day once again.
    The just seem to be some stringy bits in the tank that are getting stuck on things.

    That second link seems very interesting.

    There doesnt seem too much info about it on the internet. Does anyone know if chemiclean dose anything to it??

  5. #15
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    Yeah my birds nest is taking a beating, I blow it off once or twice a day and am considering moving it to the 150G. I almost did the black out thing but decided against it so I just cut back a little mainly for the cyano. I will incorporate this advice as well Floyd, thank you Sir.
    I hope yours gets better sounduser!! Its driving me crazy!!! I dont really have any on my screen though is the strange thing, its holding to anything that snags it.
    150G. Reef/Mix
    125G. 3 Regular Oscars/1 Jack Dempsey
    75G. 20+ Africans
    40G. Fish/Reef. Algae Scrubbers on ALL my SW
    10G. SW Fish/Reef.
    10G. SW Hospital/new fish quarantine/pod breeder tank
    6 stage RO/DI system 200 GPD.

  6. #16

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    I had it in my tank for about a month and what I did was on the weekend when I clean my screen I would go in the dt and just catch want I can with my net. I did not turn my dt lights down any, Just left them as normal and as of today I have none. Feed the fish and corals like normal and just let the scrubber take over. It will catch up and take care of your problem. I have LED's on my tank also. No filter socks or anything only have the scrubber on the tank. This tank has been setup since Jan. Also this is a LED scrubber.

  7. #17
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    wgraham, pics and a description of your scrubber setup might help. Anything that can point to a workable solution to this problem would be of great benefit to many I believe.

  8. #18
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    Wgraham - hi there, just a quick question. Do you EVER clean or disturb your sand bed ? Told you it was a quick question.

    Kerry and Floyd. - same question predictably !!

  9. #19

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    Never touch my sand bed, well I have this scrubber on a 90g tank. I have a mag 18 on the tank and I split it with the scrubber. I just remade my scrubber out of plexi and it is basically a sm100 with LED's. I have 4 stings of 8 red's and 2 blue's running in series and the four strings in parallel at about 500mA with a computer power supply control by my arduino controller. This arduino controls my dt led's my heaters and wavemaker. I'm going to change the power supply with another computer supply that can handle more voltage and current. That way I can bring the current up to 700mA. And like I said the arduino can be programmed to come down in current if need be. But right now I'm getting good results with the led's at 500mA. Only thing that has been change on the scrubber is that I put plexi around it. It was just a free fall to my sump.

  10. #20

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    I'm at work as soon as I can I will take a pic of the tank and scrubber

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