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Dinoflagellate Dinos are one of those reefing topics that is intensively emotional. Many reefers decommissioned or restarted their aquarium due to dinos, while many others claims that dino can be wiped out by simply adding product X or equipment Y. Truth is, if the aquarist takes correct actions, dino problem does not automatically means high casualties or tank reset. On the other hand, what some aquarists' triumph against dino, may in fact be victory against a less insidious foe. Let's take a closer look at dinoflagellates to understand better what we are dealing with. I would like to start by discussing two myths about dinos. 1. All dinos are the same/similar There are about 2000 different species of dinoflagellate, almost half as much as that of corals. These different species of dino occupies different niche in the ecosystem. It's therefore unhelpful to consider all dinos the same, especially when it comes to considering treatments for dino bloom. 2. We can identify dino infestation just by looking at the aquarium. Of course, there are certain signs which point strongly towards dino outbreak. For example, stringly bubbly brown films hanging on the coral. We can only have positive identification once the sample is observed under microscope. See a brown patch on the sand bed? Is that diatom, dino, or cyano? Identification with naked eyes is unsatisfactory. To make matter worse, several different species of dinos may look the same to our eyes, but require somewhat different approaches to overcome them. Therefore, the first step of winning against dino is to know exactly which species of dino we are dealing with. If not, any action we take is just a shot ib the dark. As my aquarium is in the midst of a dino outbreak, it's a perfect opportunity for me to take a closer look at the topic of dinos.

Update after a long time....:) Here is the pictures of my current tank: Few notes: 1. I added a purple tang since and yes, i know..i have to upgrade very soon! I am hunting for deals and hopefully can get a bigger home for them soon or else will have to sell them away (blue & purple) 2. My RBTA survived and i have since added hammer & torch. All the corals are actually doing very well. I did had a red monti but it died after some time and i realized that my kalk was actually very low despite using Red Sea Coral Pro sands. I must admit i got lazy and didn't test much but i assumed its because the corals were much bigger and weekly water change is no longer sufficient. I have since started manually doing red sea alk. 3. I opted to once again have sands but this time i decided to have only a one inch sand...I am hoping that it would still give me the benefits of having a layer of sands and forgives me if i am unable to keep up to the weekly water changes. 4. My sump is pretty much settled. I started dosing kalkwasser to my ATO although i realize it is not the best ATO to dose kalk but since my alk is very low, i do not really have a choice. Once i manage to get it stable, i might stop doing kalkwasser via ATO. I have my seneye reef there connected to my intel stick! Very cheap solution compared to getting the seneye PC.. 1. RBTA is doing very well. It is not splitting like my other RBTA but I really do like the colors. Mushrooms are also doing very well.. 2. I managed to reuse my chiller and AI PRIME 16HD. P/S: the pictures looked a bit white as I increased the White so i can take better pictures otherwise i am doing about 20% white i think.