Reuse from tank with dinos

[richiev]

My Reefer 170 has had dinos for awhile. It's mostly under control now, but they're still present. For instance I tossed some filter floss into the display as part of my anemone traps, and there's dino strands all over it during the day.

I'm debating what to do as I set up my new tank. I'd like to reuse the main rock, and by default the sand. If I get these anemones all off though, I won't need to move that rock over.

On one hand it seems like I should just start over. I have some cooked rock that I can use, and I could just nuke the 170's rock and sand before I use it. I've once before done the bleach, rinse, muriatic acid, process and I could even do that again. This would greatly reduce the transfer of stuff to my new tank.

On the other, I could just transfer it all over as is. I'm going to get uglies and dinos again anyway probably, so I can save myself a bunch of pods, good bacteria, and hassle by doing this.

The middle ground options:

• Just move the rock, ditch the sand
• Move the rock and rinse the crap out of the sand. Based on the info on reef2reef on this topic it won't actually nuke bacteria, but certainly would kill the pods.
• Rinse the rock and sand

Any thoughts? I again would prefer to not start over, but I don't want to do something stupid.

I'm not planning on reusing the water, given I have the dinos that go water born. I in theory could, doing either a minor bleach treatment or by running it dark with UV for awhile, but that seems too extreme.

 

[Srt4eric]

I would keep the rock and get new sand. I've always heard it's never a good idea to reuse sand.

 

[Meshmez]

Sand is cheap. Get new sand.
If your dinos are under control, I would probably just use the rock. Since it's the kind that goes waterborne in dark, maybe do a few tank transfers during dark hours to reduce their quantity? I don't know if that would actually help, but maybe.

 

[richiev]

Ok, tentative plan:

* Ditching the sand
* Continue getting the anemones off the rock (last coral on it)
* Black out tank for a day with UV going
* Pull rock, rinsing the crap out of it with tank water, then with clean saltwater
* Manually kill any vermetids I see
* Transfer rock to the new tank

New tank:
* New sand will be in there
* Rock I've been cooking
* Will try and get another cup of sand from folks, maybe the "mostly killed my dinos" magic sand I got from @under_water_ninja and toss that in
* I still have a tiny bit of fritz, and some microbacter so I'll use that too
* Fish might go in 24hr after I get the rock in, assuming I don't see any weird numbers, with heavy feeding to keep numbers up
* Live Phyto and some bottled pods will go in too. Previously I'd do that before fish, but we'll see how timing works out

That should at least get me going with a fighting start. I might leave my snails and clean up crew in the old tank and ghost feed just to let the new tank get some algae going and avoid starving those guys.

 

[Schmitty]

Man Dino’s and vermetid has been haunting me for a while now… I got bumble bee snails and they help a little with vermetid but haven’t had too much luck with Dino’s other than black out and uv but they returned over time

 

[kinetic]

If you want to avoid dinoflagellates, know you may eventually get it still. The idea is to build up enough biodiversity and all that jazz before dinoflagellates can come in and take over. But if you mix anything from the two tanks, you're going to introduce it early. Even taking a glass scraper out from one to the other, you'll transfer some.

Depending, it might be better to fight dinos earlier, or if you can delay it as long as you can (a couple years and your system should be able to take it on).

 

[richiev]

I decided to take a 3rd alternative option. I'm going to get the new tank setup with cooked rock and new sand (including some live sand). After I confirm it can cycle ammonia I'll dump a bunch of extra pods and some phyto in, and then after that I'll transfer livestock.

Before I transfer the rock, I'm going to run a Dino X treatment + black out on the current tank. After I do that I'll do the rock rinse + transfer.

Seems like at a minimum I'll get some interesting info on my ability to fight dinos through various tactics, and doesn't cost me anything but a bottle of dino X and a bit more time.

 

[Flagg37]

If you want to avoid dinoflagellates, know you may eventually get it still. The idea is to build up enough biodiversity and all that jazz before dinoflagellates can come in and take over. But if you mix anything from the two tanks, you're going to introduce it early. Even taking a glass scraper out from one to the other, you'll transfer some.

Depending, it might be better to fight dinos earlier, or if you can delay it as long as you can (a couple years and your system should be able to take it on).

I almost tagged you on this since I remember your long lasting battle with dinos.

 

[kinetic]

I almost tagged you on this since I remember your long lasting battle with dinos.

Haha yes! It wasn't pretty and lost all my corals.

I actually beat it with NoPox (the bacteria beat out everything else) at first, but that wasn't great nor sustainable, because as soon as I let up, dinos would come roaring back. Ultimately I identified them correctly as the Osteropsis (sp?) kind which you can easily kill with UV. Within a couple of days with a cheapo green-machine 50watt I threw in the display, they were gone.

Another good thing I did was added Aquabiomics live reef rubble. It really helped add a ton of diversity (pods were everywhere after awhile) which I think helped.

I can still find some with a microscope, but you can't see them anymore, and I don't even run a UV or anything.

 

[Darkxerox]

Haha yes! It wasn't pretty and lost all my corals.

I actually beat it with NoPox (the bacteria beat out everything else) at first, but that wasn't great nor sustainable, because as soon as I let up, dinos would come roaring back. Ultimately I identified them correctly as the Osteropsis (sp?) kind which you can easily kill with UV. Within a couple of days with a cheapo green-machine 50watt I threw in the display, they were gone.

Another good thing I did was added Aquabiomics live reef rubble. It really helped add a ton of diversity (pods were everywhere after awhile) which I think helped.

I can still find some with a microscope, but you can't see them anymore, and I don't even run a UV or anything.

If anything this plus all the BRS work and what happened in my tank really shows how important micro crustaceans are for keeping ugly pest growth away. Live rubble from an established tank or seeding is really effective. Benthic succession as Rich always says!