Hydrogen Peroxide (H202) vs Dinoflagetttes

Right now I’m sitting outside with the BBQ slowly warming up and I got thinking about the last week or so an what I’ve been doing with the Triton Lagoon.

A few weeks back I had a nasty out break of the “beautiful” (my neighbours words) red slime algae, aka Cyanobacteria. It took over my lovely white sandbed in just a few days. I did what most reefers these would do, I hopped on the ‘net and started trying to figure out why it had appeared how I could get rid of it… At this point I’m confident my macroalgae crash was the cause of the slime outbreak. Once the refugium was replinished and growth resumed the red slime faded away.

Roughly 6 days after the slime had moved on, I noticed a new slime forming on the sandbed, and on the liverock. This wasn’t like the Cyanobacteria, but more of a brown snot that liked to grow bubbles… Hello potential Dinoflagetttes. I tried a lights out approach for 3 days. Lights back on on day 4 and everything looked good… But by the end of day 4 the brown snot was again everywhere and appeared annoyed as it was thicker and worse than before.

Many hours were spent online looking up possible ways to rid my system of this plague and time and time again I came across the use of hydrogen peroxide. Why not give it a try I thought.

Got a 250ml bottle of 9% H202 solution from the local pharmacy for less than £2, went home and promptly dosed a conservative 3ml. According to the ‘net, one should dose 1ml per 10 US gallons of water if using the 3% concentration.
The Triton Lagoon’s total water volume comes in at roughly 45 US gallons. 3ml at 9% seemed right. 3 days of dosing 3ml per day and the potential Dinoflagetttes were still going strong. I then double dosed, 3ml in the morning and another 3ml in the evening. This double dosing went on for 2 days with again no visual changes.
Throwing caution to the wind, I dropped 3 capfuls of H202 into the sump by the return pump, each capful is roughly 10ml… A large dosage increase…

I woke up the next morning fearing the worst but what greeted me was a distinct lack of the potential Dinoflagetttes on the sand bed. They weren’t gone but they looked a lot less ‘aggressive’ – in went another 3 capfuls of H202. Came home from work and the sandbed and the liverock were all looking so much better.

That was yesterday and I’ve already dosed 3 capfuls again this morning – at the moment everything is looking amazing. I’m due to keep the dosing up for another 2 days and then I’ll stop and see if the snot stays away.

Can hydrogen peroxide cure your reef tank of Dinoflagetttes? It could, it appears to have worked for other reefers and right now appears to be working for me and I’ve had zero livestock losses during this ‘treatment’

Would I endorse this form of treatment, no way! I’m not 100% certain I’m dealing with Dinoflagetttes but dosing the H202 has certainly worked in making the Triton Lagoon a cleaner reef system again.

Time to get the meat on the BBQ…

Disclaimer: I will not be held responsible for anything that goes wrong should you try dosing H202 in your reef aquarium. Proceed at your risk!