An experiment with ongoing Dino...
 

I can't remember the last time my frat system did not have dino. its been at least 6 months and probably longer. Most everyone gets it sooner or later and usually beat it. For me a combination of chemistry clean and manual cleaning, Pools coral snow dosed with Zeobak or Cyano clean (whatever I happen mohave) for about 30 days and its gone. I have used this method in every system I have had and beat it every time.But I have been unable to beat it this time. Probably the tank being into basement is "out of site, out of mind" .

Since I hav no curls in this system I have done a complete blackout for weeks. But that really cleans out a system. But 2-3 days after turning the lights on, its back and worse than before.

I also tried going letting the tank dirty up. Get the nitrates and phosphates up high, then after another blackout, turn on only th algae reactors lights and a fresh batch of cheato. No good. AR is full of dino.

Reading that there is some positive effect to UV Sterilizers on Dino , I went on eBay and scored a Gamma 25 watt unit for $6.50. Yup. $18 for the shipping. But the seller disconnected the bulb connection but did not remove the bulb so it arrived with a smashed quartz tube. Eventually got a full refund and bought the tube and new bulb for $33 on Amazon.

Now on a 29 gallon system, 25 watts is a bit overkill. but the price was right. I hard plumbed it into my system and after a week of blackout I turned on the main lights. After day 3 still clean so I began to turn up the lights. Its been over a week and still clean. Today I turned back on the AR reactor. Fingers crossed.

LOL spell check...FRAG system... Not FRAT system So week 2. still looking good. lights are back on almost full and algae reactor is growing cheato. seems to have a little green cyano in it. I could not go 2 or 3 days before without the dino coming on strong. tons of HA from dirtying the tank up. Some bubbles sticking to the HA but nor dino. Gonna give this till the end of the month before I call it cured.

Well 3 weeks and it still looks good. Gonna call this good. With all the Dino threads I searched over the past 6 months I really did not see much on UV. It will be nice to put frags back in here again.

How do you know if you have dino?

Well there are those who say you don’t really know unless you look at it under a microscope. But it’s pretty easy to spot. I like to describe it as snotty bubbles that grow on everything. For me it would take over the tank in 3 days.

As an update I seem to have just a little after several weeks. Doing the daily manual cleaning thing. Dosing bacteria and we will see if it’s just a nuisance or if it takes over. I have been a adjusting the flow through the skimmer to see if that helps.

I have small cell amphidinium which lives in the sand. It does not go into the water column like other varieties. This means is less susceptible to being killed by UV. As unsightly as it is... I've learned to just live with it. It does not affect my corals and just stays on the sand.