Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[cchomistek]

Keep an eye on your phosphates and to be honest I don't put much faith in tritration po4 testers. They can shift. If you know anyone with a hanna phosphorous ULR or phosphate LR checker, they will be more accurate. Plus easier to use.

I do suspect though that maybe with recent algae die off or any snail/invert die off, you could have seen a temporary nutrient increase. Also the best time to test is in the AM before feeding or in the PM before feeding.

In my experience with dinos, I will see a 0.03 to 0.05ppm po4 daily reduction.

I am using red sea phosphate pro. So not a titrant type but being that I have always shown phophate on this test kit and never seen it be zero means there must be phosphates in the tank. I would be surprised to see it as zero as I have only went to RO water since 3 months ago and thus the tap water was most likely adding phosphates to the tank.

On another note. Thus rust type sand dyno's has been in the tank for a few years for sure if not longer. We have gotten about 6 orange spotted sand sifting gobies over the years and all have died possibly due to eating the dinos and them being toxic to them.

As I have stated before is there a clean up crew that is known to eat these Dino's??

 

[reeferfoxx]

I am using red sea phosphate pro. So not a titrant type but being that I have always shown phophate on this test kit and never seen it be zero means there must be phosphates in the tank. I would be surprised to see it as zero as I have only went to RO water since 3 months ago and thus the tap water was most likely adding phosphates to the tank.

On another note. Thus rust type sand dyno's has been in the tank for a few years for sure if not longer. We have gotten about 6 orange spotted sand sifting gobies over the years and all have died possibly due to eating the dinos and them being toxic to them.

As I have stated before is there a clean up crew that is known to eat these Dino's??

Fair enough.

As far as inverts that eat dinos, there none we can just purchase. No recorded snails either.

Taricha actually has a macro shot video of a tiny invert eating amphidinium. Since the goal of this thread is to builder competitors, its most assuredly at a microbial level. Now, if any has the patience to find such organisms and can help ID'ing them that would be beneficial. Very difficult work though.

Typically the rhythm of beating dinos with nutrients is we start to see an increase of dinos, almost to a hair pulling level, to a daily decrease. I for one became a victim of throwing in The towel until they started disappearing. Its pretty cool to see it happen.

 

[xilez]

Typically the rhythm of beating dinos with nutrients is we start to see an increase of dinos, almost to a hair pulling level, to a daily decrease. I for one became a victim of throwing in The towel until they started disappearing. Its pretty cool to see it happen.

Hopefully this is where I am at... getting ready to throw in the towel. I cant take another 3 months of my tank looking this ******.

 

[taricha]

I was doing vodka at the time to reduce the nitrates and phosphates which helped get rid of the algae aswell. I was up to 17mls of vodka per day at one point. I was seeing bacterial blooms sometimes...

Vinegar/vodka overdose was my method to first encounter the dinos in my system.

@taricha
Can I get an ID. Talking with my wife she believes we possibly have two types the amphidium and the prorectrum type of Dino's.
Or if anyone else wants to chime in it would be appreciated. As the latter type is toxic could it have been what may have killed the snails?

I see some large cell amphidinium. Can't be positive on the smaller but would guess a small cell species of amphidinium from the last pic.

Agree. Large and Small Cell amphidinium. I don't see any prorocentrum cells in these pics.

Also since the amphidium that it appears I have you guys are saying is non toxic.

I'd say low to non toxic. some amphidinium strains are significant toxin producers, but in our tanks they tend to be less toxic than most other stuff we deal with. I think smaller strains may be more closely related to ones that have been demonstrated to be toxic.

Then I guess that is not the cause of my trochus snails not making it. Is there another reason these snails parished? Also is housing a seahare after the other algaes take over not a good idea?? What other clean up crew species are good at eating these amphidium dinos that are on the sand?

I mean in the end do we not strive to have a reef tank that is hair algae free or close to it?

Free? no. Close to it? sure. On a real reef, lots of algae is produced every day, everywhere (see my post linked in the OP "what is the end game?") The algae on a real reef is just eaten voraciously so it doesn't look like there's much of it.

You have a toxins issue. GAC for toxins currently in system.
You have amphidinium dinos. The large ones won't go into the water, so UV won't help, but UV has helped knock out the small-cell ones for some people. We don't have a method at the moment for direct cell removal of large cell amphidinium other than manual removal by siphoning. I made a couple of posts in here with basically my best effort of things that I've done to knock Amphidinium out in my system. I'll dig up links later.

Beardo has messed with these a good bit too, and also has some quality posts on this particular strain.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Hopefully this is where I am at... getting ready to throw in the towel. I cant take another 3 months of my tank looking this ******.

Lol! Yeah its not fun. I know there is a slue of pages in this thread but somewhere in the hay stack is my progressions and frustrations. I cycled through 4 different species but mainly because the "end game" was never clear. We never understood where to go post infestation. I tried routes to reduce the GHA and cyano but resulted in another dino bloom. It wasn't until I gave up that thing took a turn for the better. I literally stopped doing anything to the tank. Not caring about corals or water parameters. Doing that made all the difference.

My tank went from this.



To this...


Then midway through the not caring process. You'll notice my dinky UV and added live rock.


All of a sudden my tank was back to this!


But if you notice something, there was never any cyano(which is to be expected). So i messed up and started water changes....Guess what...Cyano.


Where do I go from here? Back to do nothing. Letting the cyano process what it needs to to get back to where it needs to be.

I'll keep you guys posted on the cyano cycle.

 

[xilez]

What was the difference in dates between those photos?

Should I remove the Chaeto from my Refug?

 

[reeferfoxx]

What was the difference in dates between those photos?

This was taken 9/28/2017 or around the first of October. Keep in mind, I didn't decide to give up on the tank just yet. The getting worse before better was to be expected.

In between 9/28 and 10/23 I mostly had GHA growing. I stopped dosing nutrients at that point. I let the GHA starve it self out. I also started dosing bacterias to help the process(<--stupid mistake). October 23rd I received my microscope and found a new dino thriving. That day i threw in the towel. I had enough. Started a 10g for fish during the rebuild.

This was 11/06/2017

Since the tank started progressing, I started clearing excess rock and tried straightening up the tank.

6 days later on 11/12/2017

They cyano picture was 9 days ago last week.

Now the progression of the cyano is troubling. Some started growing, then it stopped growing. I didnt take pictures. But after two water changes within 7 days totaling 30% the cyano took off.

This is where I start looking at my salt mix, source water(ro/di), lighting, flow, feedings, etc etc.

 

[cchomistek]

Lol! Yeah its not fun. I know there is a slue of pages in this thread but somewhere in the hay stack is my progressions and frustrations. I cycled through 4 different species but mainly because the "end game" was never clear. We never understood where to go post infestation. I tried routes to reduce the GHA and cyano but resulted in another dino bloom. It wasn't until I gave up that thing took a turn for the better. I literally stopped doing anything to the tank. Not caring about corals or water parameters. Doing that made all the difference.

My tank went from this.



To this...


Then midway through the not caring process. You'll notice my dinky UV and added live rock.


All of a sudden my tank was back to this!


But if you notice something, there was never any cyano(which is to be expected). So i messed up and started water changes....Guess what...Cyano.


Where do I go from here? Back to do nothing. Letting the cyano process what it needs to to get back to where it needs to be.

I'll keep you guys posted on the cyano cycle.

Man your tank looked splendid before the Cyano bloom. Are you now just letting it run its course. Did you even dose any alk or calc during the not giving a crap stage or just let everything equilibriate? We're you dosing phosphate and nitrates to keep a higher than normal amount??

 

[cchomistek]

Vinegar/vodka overdose was my method to first encounter the dinos in my system.



Agree. Large and Small Cell amphidinium. I don't see any prorocentrum cells in these pics.


I'd say low to non toxic. some amphidinium strains are significant toxin producers, but in our tanks they tend to be less toxic than most other stuff we deal with. I think smaller strains may be more closely related to ones that have been demonstrated to be toxic.



Free? no. Close to it? sure. On a real reef, lots of algae is produced every day, everywhere (see my post linked in the OP "what is the end game?") The algae on a real reef is just eaten voraciously so it doesn't look like there's much of it.

You have a toxins issue. GAC for toxins currently in system.
You have amphidinium dinos. The large ones won't go into the water, so UV won't help, but UV has helped knock out the small-cell ones for some people. We don't have a method at the moment for direct cell removal of large cell amphidinium other than manual removal by siphoning. I made a couple of posts in here with basically my best effort of things that I've done to knock Amphidinium out in my system. I'll dig up links later.

Beardo has messed with these a good bit too, and also has some quality posts on this particular strain.

First I would like to thank you @taricha for your post. I appreciate the help and anyone else who has weighed in thus far.

@taricha you say to siphon out. I assume you mean siphon into a filter bag but I thought this was not asvised as the dinos would just go through. If not what micron filter bag is needed??

Will increasing the nitrates and phosphates help at all or the fact that they are already are significantly above zero do what is needed as it is??

I have read your "end gane" post already @taricha and I do understand what you mean that some algae is going to occur. Any thoughts on why the snails died off if it was not the dinos? Possibly the vodka making the algae not what was needed and eating Cyano killed them off??

 

[reeferfoxx]

Man your tank looked splendid before the Cyano bloom. Are you now just letting it run its course. Did you even dose any alk or calc during the not giving a crap stage or just let everything equilibriate? We're you dosing phosphate and nitrates to keep a higher than normal amount??

Thank you. It's confusing to give a timeline. Mostly because things started before the 'not giving a crap phase'. Let me try to be clear about this.

1. At the beginning of the dino outbreak, i dosed N and P to a stable daily dosing and kept numbers at or near 0.10ppm po4 and 10ppm no3. Dino progressed and disappeared. GHA took over.
2. Once GHA took over, I stopped dosing no3 and po4. Let the GHA starve out. New brown growth.
3. Dosed N and P back up. Started getting more GHA. Stopped dosing nutrients around Oct. 15th.
4. Oct. 23rd received microscope. ID'd brown growth as Coolia spp. Gave up on tank.
5. I didn't dose anything between Oct. 15th and Nov. 12th. I let detritus(and nutrients) build up(naturally) without wc's and alkalinity fell from 8.5dkh to 6.6dkh. No major swings, so no coral losses.

 

[cchomistek]

Thank you. It's confusing to give a timeline. Mostly because things started before the 'not giving a crap phase'. Let me try to be clear about this.

1. At the beginning of the dino outbreak, i dosed N and P to a stable daily dosing and kept numbers at or near 0.10ppm po4 and 10ppm no3. Dino progressed and disappeared. GHA took over.
2. Once GHA took over, I stopped dosing no3 and po4. Let the GHA starve out. New brown growth.
3. Dosed N and P back up. Started getting more GHA. Stopped dosing nutrients around Oct. 15th.
4. Oct. 23rd received microscope. ID'd brown growth as Coolia spp. Gave up on tank.
5. I didn't dose anything between Oct. 15th and Nov. 12th. I let detritus(and nutrients) build up(naturally) without wc's and alkalinity fell from 8.5dkh to 6.6dkh. No major swings, so no coral losses.

Ok so up until stage 5 you were maintaining calc and alk levels. And as for lights did you keep the same light schedule or reduce it some to try and fight the battle?? Also what type of Dino's did you have to begin with?

 

[reeferfoxx]

Ok so up until stage 5 you were maintaining calc and alk levels. And as for lights did you keep the same light schedule or reduce it some to try and fight the battle?? Also what type of Dino's did you have to begin with?

Yes, i manually dosed alk and ca when needed up until 5.

I kept lights the exact same during the entire process. No black outs. Less variables to deal with.

I never did get an ID of the first run. I think with snail loss and corals STN'ing at the beginning, it was assumed prorocentrum, I think. The other two other than the Coolia was a brown growth on the glass. Those protists were too small for a picture. I believe taricha said there were possible two different tiny dinos(1/50th the size of your dinos) due to different movement patterns.

 

[taricha]

@taricha you say to siphon out. I assume you mean siphon into a filter bag but I thought this was not asvised as the dinos would just go through. If not what micron filter bag is needed??

eh, I just siphon and discard. You can also wash siphoned sand in fresh water if you want. Amphidinium don't form cysts and won't survive it. I do water changes whenever I need to. I don't consider that part necessary. Fun experiments though!

Hmmm. Insane thought: a gravel vac that connects to a UV unit. Is this possible to do without sand clogging corkscrew path of water through UVs? I suspect it'll clog. But maybe worth a try?

Will increasing the nitrates and phosphates help at all or the fact that they are already are significantly above zero do what is needed as it is??

I have read your "end gane" post already @taricha and I do understand what you mean that some algae is going to occur. Any thoughts on why the snails died off if it was not the dinos?

It is important - if elevated N & P allows algae to grow, then you are on the right path. If not, then you may need some water changes etc in addition to having N & P present to let competition get a foothold.

Oh, I definitely do think dino toxins are why your clean up crew died. Basically all grazers have some tolerance to eating dinos, and some limits. Snails, amphipods etc do eat them, but if the toxin content is high, they get slower and slower. They show increasing symptoms (lethargy) of Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP) and they eventually die. Unless they have other significant food sources, and can eat stuff that isn't dinos (grow algae), and munch an occasional toxic dino on the side.
More toxic dinos (Ostreopsis) grazing is less of a factor, lower toxin dinos (amphidinium) grazing seems to be more important.

Here's my post that's a mini-round-up of some successful Large Cell Amphidinium fights from myself and others.

And here's that oddball Tanaid Shrimp and it's young eating amphidinium by the fistful.

 

[taricha]

Hey everyone I started a new threading figured I'd post here as well.

I've just started battling what I believe to be dinos. My tank is about 4 months old and this stuff just came out of nowhere. It's attached to all my rocks, on my sand, my overflow, and when I blow it off it even will get stuck on my fishes fins. I don't know of it can be toxic to my livestock but I don't know where to start. My foxface will graze at it and my conchs go to town but it is always back with a vengeance. It will get all over my toadstools and mushrooms and now my torch and frogspawn won't open (not sure if the dinos is causing this).

I'm scared for my fish because as soon as I seen it stuck on the find I was thinking fin rot but noticed it wasn't really rotting the fin.

I also have a huge chunk of chaeto in my sump and have been running the lights opposite the dt cycle.

It looks a little Dusty but will get stringy when clumped together.

I need help!!!!!

Temp 78
Salinity 1.025
Ph 7.8
Ammonia/nitrite 0
Nitrate 20
Phosphate 0
Calcium 370
Magnesium 1300
Alkalinity 8

Those are some nice pics, and from them and your details it certainly seems very likely it's dinos, like paulawr said. Coral response suggests toxins are involved. stringiness (rather than dusty) suggests it might go into the water column and be susceptible to UV.

Take a look at the first post in the thread. It's got a few things you can start addressing. GAC for toxins, work on that low P (by dosing), Tests you can do with no microscope.
Post up with questions.

 

[James Barton]

Those are some nice pics, and from them and your details it certainly seems very likely it's dinos, like paulawr said. Coral response suggests toxins are involved. stringiness (rather than dusty) suggests it might go into the water column and be susceptible to UV.

Take a look at the first post in the thread. It's got a few things you can start addressing. GAC for toxins, work on that low P (by dosing), Tests you can do with no microscope.
Post up with questions.

I'll get on it. Now is this stuff Going to harm my fish that eat it? And are my corals going to make it?

 

[taricha]

I'll get on it. Now is this stuff Going to harm my fish that eat it? And are my corals going to make it?

Fish death from dinos in a tank has happened but is rare. Would have to be pretty bad. Corals will do better as toxins in water are reduced from GAC, and the toxic dino cells themselves are removed through siphoning, UV, or other water column micron filtration.

 

[James Barton]

Fish death from dinos in a tank has happened but is rare. Would have to be pretty bad. Corals will do better as toxins in water are reduced from GAC, and the toxic dino cells themselves are removed through siphoning, UV, or other water column micron filtration.

Sorry, but what is GAC?

 

[Beardo]

Sorry, but what is GAC?

Granular Activated Carbon

 

[Javamahn]

I juts finished plumbing a Coralife Twist 12 36w UV Steralizer into a manifold on my return with about 210 GPH running through it back into the sump. My phosphates finally came off 0 and are now at .06 after 3 days of dosing Brightwell Neophos. and I will continue dosing 10ml until I get to .1 ppm. My nitrates are currently 5ppm and I wil keep feeding heavier but stop the KNO3 dosing. I will blast my rockts with a squirt feeder every night after light s out to get them into the water column. GHA is growing on some of my zoanthid frag plugs and in the fuge which still has Chaeto. GFO is off. Carbon is in a filter bag in the sump chamber. I am still not 100% on the iD but I am beginning to believe it is large cell amphidinium as the movements are linear and occasionally a "back-flip" Lights out periods reduce the number on the sand bed but they never disappear. Has anyone tried to run super fine filter socks to mechanically trap them? I was searching amazon and found a 10 micron 7" filter sock. If anyone has any more suggestions let me know. I was considering DinoX

 

[Beardo]

I juts finished plumbing a Coralife Twist 12 36w UV Steralizer into a manifold on my return with about 210 GPH running through it back into the sump. My phosphates finally came off 0 and are now at .06 after 3 days of dosing Brightwell Neophos. and I will continue dosing 10ml until I get to .1 ppm. My nitrates are currently 5ppm and I wil keep feeding heavier but stop the KNO3 dosing. I will blast my rockts with a squirt feeder every night after light s out to get them into the water column. GHA is growing on some of my zoanthid frag plugs and in the fuge which still has Chaeto. GFO is off. Carbon is in a filter bag in the sump chamber. I am still not 100% on the iD but I am beginning to believe it is large cell amphidinium as the movements are linear and occasionally a "back-flip" Lights out periods reduce the number on the sand bed but they never disappear. Has anyone tried to run super fine filter socks to mechanically trap them? I was searching amazon and found a 10 micron 7" filter sock. If anyone has any more suggestions let me know. I was considering DinoX

Did you post pics of your dinos under the scope? If they are large cell amphidinium, the UV won't be much help since they don't enter the water column. As far as filter socks, the same would apply that if they don't enter the water column they won't be filtered out. Manual removal will help though. I've been trying to siphon small cell amphidinium out with extra water changes and just received some 1 micron filter socks today so I can just siphon through the socks on a more frequent basis. Time will tell how it works.