Best Method for killing Dino's?

[SunnyX]

Well I am having a HUGE diatom bloom. Its brown,oily and nasty.
I have no Phosphates and very little nitrates in my tank but it just keeps coming pack. I use RO/DI water. My TDS meter is now reading 1 PPM for my RO/DI water, could this be the cause? I know that the diatoms thrive on silica, could the 1 ppm be silica? Should I go ahead and replace stuff in my RO/DI unit?

[Curtswearing]

oily? Are you sure it's not dinoflagellates

[Montanareefer]

I am assuming your tank has been set up for awhile. You may need to add more current to the areas affected and use a turkey blaster and suck as much up as possible or blow it off the LR and get it up into the water current and out of your system. Also how much do you feed your tank and how often? If alot then cut back on feeding and I had problem with cyano and did what I just mentioned and in about 2-3 weeks it was all gone.

[Scooterman]

Originally posted by SunnyX

I have no Phosphates

If you don't everything will soon die!

I just replaced my filters not even after a year, it is a good start.

[ste]

i used to suffer bad with diatom and i picked up my tank cleaning by converting an old external filter into a vacuum cleaner put a gravel cleaner pipe on the end of hose for vacuuming sand. I fill the filter with filter wool to catch the muck and a bag of carbon to polish the water. started vacuuming every day at first now just once a week cleared it up a treat.just change wool regular, you would be amazed at the muck it fetches up.

[SunnyX]

I have dinoflagellates

What do I do??????

[Curtswearing]

Are you running a protein skimmer?

[SunnyX]

yea

[SunnyX]

I have had this stuff for a while now and cant shake it. It killed 2 corals,2 fish, and some inverts. Replaced all my bulbs,VHo and MH. Swithed from 10k to 20k on the MH's. Im dripping kalk 24/7 and just got 100 Scarlet hermits,150 Blue leg hermits and 100 snails.

[NaH2O]

Curt, excellent call. You are my linking hero!!

[SunnyX]

How do I get rid of them?????

[Curtswearing]

The crabs won't help.

Dino's are nasty little buggers aren't they? The reason I was asking about the protein skimmer is not the reason you thought I was asking. I wanted to make sure you had enough dissolved oxygen.

I was stuck on the phone last night for ages and I only got 2 hours of sleep. I also ran around all day and I'm dealing with some family issues. The link I provided is a good start.

I don't you to think I'm ignoring you as I'm not---I have 6 different ReefSanctuary windows on my computer right now. I'm trying to do several things at once and I'm [alt]-[tabbing] between them. I will be more help tommorrow-----I'm just pooped right now.

However, the basic gist of what I'm going to go into detail about tommorrow is kill your lighting for a day at least (your corals will not die.....storms happen in nature where they don't see the light of day for a while). Crank up your pH to a level that you are told never to go to. Then do a waterchange with RO/DI water with a good quality salt mix. We still have to determine why the dino's were expelled.....heat, chemistry issues, etc.

If you have an idea how the dino's were expelled, please describe what happened.

[NaH2O]

According to Curt's link (last paragraph before links), bumping up pH and reducing the photoperiod significantly will help. Along with standards for cyano. Hopefully, Curt will jump back on here and let us know what he did. I thought he turned his lights of for a few days, but I'm not sure on this.

[Curtswearing]

99% of the reefers in the world have never had dino's beyond their initial cycle. Most people have never even experienced dino's in their initial cycle.

I have had them TWICE!!! What does that say about me ?

Actually, one of the times was due to temperature issues and one time was due to a major tank chemistry swing. The extent of the dino's determines how aggressive you should be IMO.

[SunnyX]

Well I added some Red slime remover, hopefully that will help.

During the day my tank is foggy and slimy. At night its crystal clear and no brown slime at all. I turned off the lights before for a whole day and then 4 hour photoperiods for a week straight . It seems that they dont like 20k lighting too much, there seems to be less slime with these new bulbs.