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I have just read through this entire post and thought I would chime my 3 cents in. I have just fought the Dino's for an entire year. I tried every possible solution. No sooner I would see an improvement, it would come back full force. Nitrate and Phos. were undetectable on the Sailfert test kit. I was running Allgone, Chemi-clean, carbon, phosban, skimming wet, black-out, and dripping Kalk like a mad man. Nothing worked. I realized that my sandbed was probably holding all the nutrients but was afraid to disturb it to much, because everything in the tank was alive except for the snails. The last advice was to raise Ph to at least 8.4 during the day and not letting it drop below 8.2 at night. Do you know what kind of task that was. I too got the same advice about not changeing the water because the new water would just add more stuff to fuel the Dino's. Then the miracle happened, and I say that lightly. Becuase I was dosing so much Kalk to keep the pH up the Ca precip stated building up on all my pumps. I had a pump explode. Corals started dying within 12 hours. I didn't notice that the pump exploded until I saw the corals suffering. So, I took everything out of the tank. I scrubbed and washed all my rock, snails, crabs in freshwater. I put them in a rubber maid tub with fresh SW and 2 power heads in the garage with the lid on. I soaked all my pumps in vinegar. I put all my fish in another tub with a skimmer and fresh SW. I vacuumed all my sand from my tank. I filled the tank up with tab water and about 1/2 a cup of chlorox and let the tank run for 48 hours. I then drained and filed again with tap water and dechlorinator for another 48 hours. I then drained and filled with Fresh SW made from RO/DI and Bio-spira. Put new sand in and ran it with lights on about 24 hours. Then I started putting the rocks back in after washing and scrubbing them again with freshwater. Next came the animals. Now they are extremely happy and the tank looks great with no Dino's. I know there are people out there that have really had succes with these fixes for the Dino problem. I believe I tried everyone of them. It's hard to believe that something so small, and simple can cause this amount of fustration. Once you've had Dino's you will do anything not to get them again. It's also kind of hard to find info on the problem. And like this post there's so many different remedies. Some work for some while other do nothing at all. However, I do think the key is nutrient exportation.
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