UV has worked for me in the past to beat Dinos. I usually do a 48 hour blackout and run UV at the same time and the problem subsides. However the Dinos I'm dealing with now which are basically a rust color film that accumulates on the sand bed the UV sterilizer hasn't worked at all. I've tried manual removal, upping my nutrients, lowering my light schedule and nothing seems to work.
You have formulated a good plan to fight the dinos. You’re right, it’s a battle and a lot of people don’t realize that dinos are present in our systems. It’s just about keeping a good nutrient balance within our tanks.
@@MyFirstFishTank I just did that very same thing two days ago, and it had the opposite result for me. When I got to just above 81 degrees the Dino population exploded and it has been a lot harder to keep them back. So be careful if you try it
Thanks for making this video, you are very good at it and I just subscribed. Do you ever think about if the reward of having a reef tank is worth the frustration? I change my mind on a weekly basis.
OMG, I think about that weekly for sure! I will say this. When I had five tanks up and running, it was not worth it for me. Too much time testing, feeding, and cleaning. But I have found three tanks to be much more manageable. But honestly, one-two tanks would be idea. It's a super frustrating hobby, and I've broken down my share of tanks after dealing with issues. But the hobby always draws me back in! Thanks for your kind words, subscribing, and commenting!
I have a 75 and a 150 tank both got the same Dino’s at the same time,. Put identical UV on them, they’re gone from the 150. They’re just as bad as ever on the 75. The main difference between the two tanks is the 75 uses a 50 gallon refugium filled with cheato as the main nutrient export, the 150 uses a protein skimmer and a much smaller 20 gallon refugium with cheato. My plan is to add a protein skimmer to the 75, and start vodka dosing. Might even try some Brightwell macrobacter clean as well. The 75 has had Dino’s for over two years.
Yikes, I hate dinos. But I will say that when I followed my own plan in this video, I was able to get rid of the dinos in 2-3 months. It took a while, but they are gone!
Hey When I started carbon dosing vodka in my tank all my dinos on my rock started dying within 2 days. Web like stuff was oozing off my rocks. Which indicated that matter was dying on my rocks. And since I started carbon dosing coralline algae has sky rocketed! Coralline algae is a competitive algae. So whenever my purple coralline algae had grown no other algae has been able to grow
The only dinos that remained was only on the sand after this. So I would stir up the stand bed everyday (while maintains carbon dosing ) and let those dinos get in the water for the skimmer to go take or the UV to take and kill. And I’ve seen good results
@@MyFirstFishTank my tank is 75 gallon. There’s charts out there that will tell you numbers but I just started with 1ml of vodka for three days. Then tested my water and saw it helped but needed more to bring my nitrates down. I went up to 2ml of vodka and then after a week a lot of my dinos were dead on my rock. Once I got undetectable nitrate and phosphates I started to feed a little more Just so I have a little reading. And my sand I stir up everyday . The sand is the hardest part for me personally
Just keep inCreasinf your dosage by 0.5ml a week till you get the results you need.Just be careful because being at undetectable levels of nutrients can be bad for you tank and corals. So the moment you cant get a readings cut your vodka dosing in half! And just maintain that. You’ll have to test a lot in this period
My dinos disappeared within a week of removing Chemipure Blue from the back chamber of my AIO tank. It was an immediate improvement. Recommend ditching chemical media except for carbon if you have any.
I have the mean green killing machine on my 90 gallon cube reef tank. I absolutely love it it’s not but $100 and I have had absolutely no problems with the tank at all since putting one in. Do you have any experience with the mean green killing machine? If so do you like it?
Throwing the kitchen sink at the Dino’s. I hope it works for you, I have two reef tanks a 75 and a 150, they both got Dino’s, at about the same time, I put identical UV on them. The 150 no longer has Dino’s, and the 75 has them just as bad as ever. The only difference is the 75 has a large refugium with
Wanted to get your thoughts on this - battling amphidinium dino's for months. Seemed like it was getting much better after I pulled my UV Sterilizer offline. I saw some good algae growth that started to outcompete the dino's. I put the UV Sterilizer back online in hopes of killing them off for good and they have overtaken the tank again. My theory is that the UV Sterilizer is killing the good algae along with the bad. Just curious what your thoughts are?
Thanks for the question. That is a tough one. I'm glad to hear you are still in this fight though. Let me link you to an article I wrote. myfirstfishtank.com/how-to-get-rid-of-dinoflagellates/. There are so many different types of dinos out there, and I found this process to work well for me. Not sure why adding the uv sterlizer would bring the dinos back, but it could have something to do with the free floating bacteria. There is bacteria that lives on surfaces and then there is bacteria that floats in the water column, and maybe adding the uv sterilizer back just upset that balance enough.
Could i have made dinos worse by adding some dead sand? Seems to have gotten worse. I pull out so much sand vacuuming sand bed. I had it in one tank and not the other but now after adding the sand not only did one tank get worse but seems to be growing in other tank. Why would it only be only glass? i do or did have some of whatever it is on my rocks and sand bed but that has gotten way better but glass looks weblike now and has bubbles attached to it and the only rock with bubble is leaning up against tank wall so Ithink it spread it there. Chemiclean does nothing so I assume its dinos and came on after dosing nopox and phospates bottomed out. Why is the wattage so low on that brand of uv sterilizer? I have a 10 watt one that was made for a small 20 gallon aio from innovative marine so I placed it in sump of my 36 gallon and dosnt appear to be doing a thing. I cant tell if it is even on. It has a small pump on the bottom pushing it through though and I can hear it running so I suppose it is working. I am thinking of buying a cheap jaebo because it only 100 bucks and I cant afford to spend 300 plus dollors. It dosnt tell you that you need a pump so do you think that means it comes with it? I also have rock like cement and not porous at all. Its a lot of the pretty bridges and tonga rock. I thought I had more bioball sin the sump then I do. I am soaking some more balls in mb7 but kind of scared to add them. I also put in some frag holders that were not alive with bacteria. The big ones that hold 5 frags apiece. It actually holds the frag plugs to make a zoa garden. Was that a bad idea? I added 3. Should I have soaked inb mb first? Do you know the ratio and how to do that? I also have been adding mb7 and vibrant. I skip 2 night and so on about every third night I dose one of them. I a so glad you said its safe to dose daily! I iwll start doing that! Is it ok to dose more than directions say? The directions arent for dino removal. What if I double the dose? Is it ok to use only blue light for corals? Sorry so many questions! Great video! I have a lot of new corals or I would do a 3 day blackout! lastly ,how did this plan work for yoy. It is pretty much the plan I had as well and it did seem to work once but I idint even have the sterilizer. The only difference is my nirates and phospates arent low anymore. Not sure why it came back. I might have been running lights to high and long!
Hi Karen, sorry for the delay! Lots to talk about here. Send me an email with some photos and some questions, and I'll send you a voice memo back with all my thoughts! my email is contact (@) myfirstfishtank (.com)
You just gotta outcomete the Dino something that outcompetes dinos is Green hair algae , you know what eats green hair algae tangs ... bamn problem solved lol
The first and only step with dinos is to get a sample under a microscope..... installing a UV is effective against certain strains of dinos those which go into the water column at night osperosis and coolia, other types go into the sand bed / rock work and UV is pretty much useless against them. This is why ID is crucial before trying to deal with them. If the ID comes back positive for ostreopsis or coolia then the UV should be installed set up in your main display min 1watt per 3 gallons of tank volume at a low pathogen flow rate so you get maximum water contact time with the UV... Anyone interested in learning more about dinos and needs help we run a group on Facebook called macks reef.. we’re currently doing a bit of a study with users and asking them to complete ICP tests so we can see if there is a link between trace elements and dinos staying dominant in systems.... before anyone states the obvious yes it’s generally 0 no3 and 0 po4 that allows them to become dominant initially in our systems and yes it’s all about increasing micro biology and dosing silicates with some strands to outcompete them
This is super helpful. Do you have a background in microbiology or something similar? I used to have a microscope actually, and I was able to identify diatoms vs dinos and it was pretty cool. But I've never taken it to the point of being able to distinguish between species. I'm excited to see what the results or your study is. It would be great to have customizable dino plans based on the type. Or at the very least, to have some sort of proof of what causes dinos to thrive, so at least we can go on more than just anecdotal evidence. Thanks again!
@@MyFirstFishTank hi yes we do have specific plans for specific types of dinos some are easyish to beat others are a complete nightmare... if you join that group I stated in my last post ‘’ macks reef” there is loads of information in the pinned post / announcements section which also has an ID guide and a method against specific types 👍 I’m an admin on there so drop me a PM if you like and I can fire the bits over to you on messenger... full names Alistair Logan 👍
@@logansreef3079 I am trying to ID mine but it's almost impossible from comparing with pictures. Is there some way to identify them by how they act when you are looking at them? Because that would be a lot easier
I wouldn't say uv is useless against dino's who don't go out of themselves in the watercolumn, because you can force them to go (by stirring the sand, brushing the rocks, etcetera). UV defenitely can help keeping those populations down.
Excellent, thanks so much. Have had Dino's for about 3 months now. Just installed UV today,
UV has worked for me in the past to beat Dinos. I usually do a 48 hour blackout and run UV at the same time and the problem subsides. However the Dinos I'm dealing with now which are basically a rust color film that accumulates on the sand bed the UV sterilizer hasn't worked at all. I've tried manual removal, upping my nutrients, lowering my light schedule and nothing seems to work.
This is exactly what is happening to me now.😂 I’m ordering a uv tonight
You have formulated a good plan to fight the dinos. You’re right, it’s a battle and a lot of people don’t realize that dinos are present in our systems. It’s just about keeping a good nutrient balance within our tanks.
We'll see if it works! I'm also going to raise the temperature to 81-82, so we'll see!
@@MyFirstFishTank I just did that very same thing two days ago, and it had the opposite result for me. When I got to just above 81 degrees the Dino population exploded and it has been a lot harder to keep them back. So be careful if you try it
Enjoyed the video. Nice work as usual bro. I’m a fan of UV sterilizers. I only run them periodically when I need them though.
Right on! Thanks for watching Rob!
Thanks for making this video, you are very good at it and I just subscribed. Do you ever think about if the reward of having a reef tank is worth the frustration? I change my mind on a weekly basis.
OMG, I think about that weekly for sure! I will say this. When I had five tanks up and running, it was not worth it for me. Too much time testing, feeding, and cleaning. But I have found three tanks to be much more manageable. But honestly, one-two tanks would be idea. It's a super frustrating hobby, and I've broken down my share of tanks after dealing with issues. But the hobby always draws me back in! Thanks for your kind words, subscribing, and commenting!
For me a uv sterilizer and raise temperature did the job.
One of the best explications I’ve seen on Dino’s thanks for the info hope it works !
Thanks Jesse! Took me 2-3 months, but I got rid of them!! Hope it works for you too!
I have a 75 and a 150 tank both got the same Dino’s at the same time,. Put identical UV on them, they’re gone from the 150. They’re just as bad as ever on the 75. The main difference between the two tanks is the 75 uses a 50 gallon refugium filled with cheato as the main nutrient export, the 150 uses a protein skimmer and a much smaller 20 gallon refugium with cheato. My plan is to add a protein skimmer to the 75, and start vodka dosing. Might even try some Brightwell macrobacter clean as well. The 75 has had Dino’s for over two years.
Yikes, I hate dinos. But I will say that when I followed my own plan in this video, I was able to get rid of the dinos in 2-3 months. It took a while, but they are gone!
Hey When I started carbon dosing vodka in my tank all my dinos on my rock started dying within 2 days. Web like stuff was oozing off my rocks. Which indicated that matter was dying on my rocks. And since I started carbon dosing coralline algae has sky rocketed! Coralline algae is a competitive algae. So whenever my purple coralline algae had grown no other algae has been able to grow
The only dinos that remained was only on the sand after this. So I would stir up the stand bed everyday (while maintains carbon dosing ) and let those dinos get in the water for the skimmer to go take or the UV to take and kill. And I’ve seen good results
Are you using vodka as your dosing? HOw much per day and how big is your tank?
That's good to know, thanks for sharing!
@@MyFirstFishTank my tank is 75 gallon. There’s charts out there that will tell you numbers but I just started with 1ml of vodka for three days. Then tested my water and saw it helped but needed more to bring my nitrates down. I went up to 2ml of vodka and then after a week a lot of my dinos were dead on my rock. Once I got undetectable nitrate and phosphates I started to feed a little more
Just so I have a little reading. And my sand I stir up everyday . The sand is the hardest part for me personally
Just keep inCreasinf your dosage by 0.5ml a week till you get the results you need.Just be careful because being at undetectable levels of nutrients can be bad for you tank and corals. So the moment you cant get a readings cut your vodka dosing in half! And just maintain that. You’ll have to test a lot in this period
My dinos disappeared within a week of removing Chemipure Blue from the back chamber of my AIO tank. It was an immediate improvement. Recommend ditching chemical media except for carbon if you have any.
Hey, how many watt per gallon do you recommend for dino?😊
I have the mean green killing machine on my 90 gallon cube reef tank. I absolutely love it it’s not but $100 and I have had absolutely no problems with the tank at all since putting one in. Do you have any experience with the mean green killing machine? If so do you like it?
What size micon sock did you use?
Great information!!!
Thanks!
Very informative
Glad you think so!
sounds like a good plan.
:-)
Have you tried the green killing machine. If so what were your results?
Noooooo. It’s cheap doesn’t work. Pay the extra money
Throwing the kitchen sink at the Dino’s. I hope it works for you, I have two reef tanks a 75 and a 150, they both got Dino’s, at about the same time, I put identical UV on them. The 150 no longer has Dino’s, and the 75 has them just as bad as ever. The only difference is the 75 has a large refugium with
:-) replied to a different comment already!
Wanted to get your thoughts on this - battling amphidinium dino's for months. Seemed like it was getting much better after I pulled my UV Sterilizer offline. I saw some good algae growth that started to outcompete the dino's. I put the UV Sterilizer back online in hopes of killing them off for good and they have overtaken the tank again. My theory is that the UV Sterilizer is killing the good algae along with the bad. Just curious what your thoughts are?
Thanks for the question. That is a tough one. I'm glad to hear you are still in this fight though. Let me link you to an article I wrote. myfirstfishtank.com/how-to-get-rid-of-dinoflagellates/. There are so many different types of dinos out there, and I found this process to work well for me. Not sure why adding the uv sterlizer would bring the dinos back, but it could have something to do with the free floating bacteria. There is bacteria that lives on surfaces and then there is bacteria that floats in the water column, and maybe adding the uv sterilizer back just upset that balance enough.
Were you ever able to beat them? Been battling amphidinium for almost a year and it’s known that a UV steralizer actually benefits that type of Dino
Great vid :)
Thanks Anthony!
How did you get on in the end? Did you find out what species it was and did you keep them away long term?
Hey Ben, yes I did finally succeed! Didn't find out the species, but after 2-3 months of battle, I won and the dinos never returned!
Could i have made dinos worse by adding some dead sand? Seems to have gotten worse. I pull out so much sand vacuuming sand bed. I had it in one tank and not the other but now after adding the sand not only did one tank get worse but seems to be growing in other tank. Why would it only be only glass? i do or did have some of whatever it is on my rocks and sand bed but that has gotten way better but glass looks weblike now and has bubbles attached to it and the only rock with bubble is leaning up against tank wall so Ithink it spread it there. Chemiclean does nothing so I assume its dinos and came on after dosing nopox and phospates bottomed out. Why is the wattage so low on that brand of uv sterilizer? I have a 10 watt one that was made for a small 20 gallon aio from innovative marine so I placed it in sump of my 36 gallon and dosnt appear to be doing a thing. I cant tell if it is even on. It has a small pump on the bottom pushing it through though and I can hear it running so I suppose it is working. I am thinking of buying a cheap jaebo because it only 100 bucks and I cant afford to spend 300 plus dollors. It dosnt tell you that you need a pump so do you think that means it comes with it? I also have rock like cement and not porous at all. Its a lot of the pretty bridges and tonga rock. I thought I had more bioball sin the sump then I do. I am soaking some more balls in mb7 but kind of scared to add them. I also put in some frag holders that were not alive with bacteria. The big ones that hold 5 frags apiece. It actually holds the frag plugs to make a zoa garden. Was that a bad idea? I added 3. Should I have soaked inb mb first? Do you know the ratio and how to do that? I also have been adding mb7 and vibrant. I skip 2 night and so on about every third night I dose one of them. I a so glad you said its safe to dose daily! I iwll start doing that! Is it ok to dose more than directions say? The directions arent for dino removal. What if I double the dose? Is it ok to use only blue light for corals? Sorry so many questions! Great video! I have a lot of new corals or I would do a 3 day blackout! lastly ,how did this plan work for yoy. It is pretty much the plan I had as well and it did seem to work once but I idint even have the sterilizer. The only difference is my nirates and phospates arent low anymore. Not sure why it came back. I might have been running lights to high and long!
Hi Karen, sorry for the delay! Lots to talk about here. Send me an email with some photos and some questions, and I'll send you a voice memo back with all my thoughts! my email is contact (@) myfirstfishtank (.com)
Curious if you’ve since discovered the 7 day Dino treatment plan by Elegance Corals?
Worked like a charm for me...and I don’t have a UV. Cheers
What?!?! No I have not! Tell me more!
I hate dino the most. Hair algae is super easy to fight. In fact, I grow hair algae in my algae scrubber!
You just gotta outcomete the Dino something that outcompetes dinos is Green hair algae , you know what eats green hair algae tangs ... bamn problem solved lol
:-)
The first and only step with dinos is to get a sample under a microscope..... installing a UV is effective against certain strains of dinos those which go into the water column at night osperosis and coolia, other types go into the sand bed / rock work and UV is pretty much useless against them. This is why ID is crucial before trying to deal with them.
If the ID comes back positive for ostreopsis or coolia then the UV should be installed set up in your main display min 1watt per 3 gallons of tank volume at a low pathogen flow rate so you get maximum water contact time with the UV...
Anyone interested in learning more about dinos and needs help we run a group on Facebook called macks reef.. we’re currently doing a bit of a study with users and asking them to complete ICP tests so we can see if there is a link between trace elements and dinos staying dominant in systems.... before anyone states the obvious yes it’s generally 0 no3 and 0 po4 that allows them to become dominant initially in our systems and yes it’s all about increasing micro biology and dosing silicates with some strands to outcompete them
This is super helpful. Do you have a background in microbiology or something similar? I used to have a microscope actually, and I was able to identify diatoms vs dinos and it was pretty cool. But I've never taken it to the point of being able to distinguish between species. I'm excited to see what the results or your study is. It would be great to have customizable dino plans based on the type. Or at the very least, to have some sort of proof of what causes dinos to thrive, so at least we can go on more than just anecdotal evidence. Thanks again!
@@MyFirstFishTank hi yes we do have specific plans for specific types of dinos some are easyish to beat others are a complete nightmare... if you join that group I stated in my last post ‘’ macks reef” there is loads of information in the pinned post / announcements section which also has an ID guide and a method against specific types 👍 I’m an admin on there so drop me a PM if you like and I can fire the bits over to you on messenger... full names Alistair Logan 👍
@@logansreef3079 I am trying to ID mine but it's almost impossible from comparing with pictures.
Is there some way to identify them by how they act when you are looking at them? Because that would be a lot easier
@@geirfammestaddonski4835 yes join the group mentioned about and upload a video we can help you ID them 👍
I wouldn't say uv is useless against dino's who don't go out of themselves in the watercolumn, because you can force them to go (by stirring the sand, brushing the rocks, etcetera). UV defenitely can help keeping those populations down.
Wait so you have Chinese lights but bought a par meter? lol