Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[five.five-six]

Let’s try this again with audio.

 

[zachxlutz]

Let’s try this again with audio.

I wish I had used something like this while I was fighting ostreopsis. I think it would have helped immensely.

 

[Oberst Oswald]

Thank you 5.5-6 for the Dino trap video. Too bad I don't have the 4" inner sock to make one right now. Good idea and when I get to the fish store I will pick a 4"er up.

 

[wopadobop]

Holy cow!

I have never even seen color in the Hanna ulr checker . It flashed 200 .
Those of you dosing phosphates and wondering where they are going . Dino’s suck up a lot ! Get those water changes ready. And run carbon , keep it fresh.

Lowering temp may be an irradication method . But I would suggest not letting your heater fail to do it .

Full bleach event . And the Lps in my system are still ticked off. Can’t tell if it was the temp swing , the phosphate spike or the toxins .

Sad day.

 

[Paullawr]

Let’s try this again with audio.

Really good and thanks for sharing.

 

[Paullawr]

Holy cow!

I have never even seen color in the Hanna ulr checker . It flashed 200 .
Those of you dosing phosphates and wondering where they are going . Dino’s suck up a lot ! Get those water changes ready. And run carbon , keep it fresh.

Lowering temp may be an irradication method . But I would suggest not letting your heater fail to do it .

Full bleach event . And the Lps in my system are still ****** off. Can’t tell if it was the temp swing , the phosphate spike or the toxins .

Sad day.

Jeeeezus 200!!! That's literally bonkers...

Yes sad day and many of have been there.

Now time to pick yourself up and go again.

If you get dinos again think groundhog day. If Bill Murray eventually got it right then so can we.

 

[Jolanta]

Holy cow!

I have never even seen color in the Hanna ulr checker . It flashed 200 .
Those of you dosing phosphates and wondering where they are going . Dino’s suck up a lot ! Get those water changes ready. And run carbon , keep it fresh.

Lowering temp may be an irradication method . But I would suggest not letting your heater fail to do it .

Full bleach event . And the Lps in my system are still ****** off. Can’t tell if it was the temp swing , the phosphate spike or the toxins .

Sad day.

So sorry

 

[bh750]

I’ve been dosing Si from sodium silicate mixed with RO water for a week now. I ended up pretty close to your numbers, NO3 8ppm , Si around 3ppm. Diatoms heavy on the glass so snails are happy. LPS corals look better than ever, SPS good also. Tank seems to using up 1ppm Si so I’m dosing every other day
Sand areas of amphidinium Where looking darker so i was going to vacuum out those areas but decided to scope some samples and found the diatoms far out numbered the amphidinium cells. With that I thought it may be better to let the micro-war wage on and leave the sand bed alone. Also took some photos of an organism I haven’t seen before Si dosing and have not been able to ID. Doesn’t look like a diatom. I’m curious as what it is. It’s the leafy shaped organism in the photo.
Looks like the next week maybe the key, we will see!

Wow. Watching this closely and crossing my fingers...

 

[Paullawr]

In the name of science...

Phosphate removing pads - check.
Nitrate removing pads- check.
Water change - check.

Countdown to armageddon 48hrs 32mins...

Keen to see the state of affairs. Been heavy feeding for about three weeks. Algae have gone super nutty. Found some nice algae as well. One is definitely some form of kelp or sea lettuce another is padina sp or onion ring. Bit of hair come bryopsis but I don't worry about such things now. Sure I stole that line off @saltyfilmfolks (top bloke by the way).

Anyway things are under control again so let's see. What I won't do is starve the system. Nothing good comes of it.

 

[Paullawr]

I’ve been dosing Si from sodium silicate mixed with RO water for a week now. I ended up pretty close to your numbers, NO3 8ppm , Si around 3ppm. Diatoms heavy on the glass so snails are happy. LPS corals look better than ever, SPS good also. Tank seems to using up 1ppm Si so I’m dosing every other day
Sand areas of amphidinium Where looking darker so i was going to vacuum out those areas but decided to scope some samples and found the diatoms far out numbered the amphidinium cells. With that I thought it may be better to let the micro-war wage on and leave the sand bed alone. Also took some photos of an organism I haven’t seen before Si dosing and have not been able to ID. Doesn’t look like a diatom. I’m curious as what it is. It’s the leafy shaped organism in the photo.
Looks like the next week maybe the key, we will see!

This is really interesting. Thanks you for doing this on behalf of everyone. Such things always have a small risk and more so are time consuming.

People like yourself allow us to move forward from hypothesis to fact or fiction.

Presumably and based on papers if you stop dosing and diatoms disappear then dinoflagellates will fill the void again. However if they can be considered controlled in minimal numbers for long enough those cells will be predated.

Soon be time to go nuts with the pods to see if the can mop up.

 

[O'l Salty]

I ordered a UV sterilizer and it will be here by the weekend. Can I plumb it in the sump or do I need to draw water directly from the tank?

 

[Paullawr]

I ordered a UV sterilizer and it will be here by the weekend. Can I plumb it in the sump or do I need to draw water directly from the tank?

Sump will be fine.

 

[Jolanta]

Really good news from here my corals are dino free, I took few samples from where I could see brown strings but thats definitively is not ostreopsis. Chrysophyta maybe?

I see some dino like cells but they are messed up.

 

[Peng]

holy cow this is gotta be the most comprehensive/longest thread on dinoflagellates!!! I wonder if people have generated working methods battling difficult dinos like ostreopsis ovata so far.

 

[IKD]

I'm not seeing any Ostreopsis at this point with the few water samples I've done, but I am seeing some Coolia but much fewer in number. I was also seeing a bunch of these little guys cruising around and was hoping someone would be able to ID these.
Video:
see around the 3 second mark, something swimming bottom to top

Pic:

 

[Beardo]

I'm not seeing any Ostreopsis at this point with the few water samples I've done, but I am seeing some Coolia but much fewer in number. I was also seeing a bunch of these little guys cruising around and was hoping someone would be able to ID these.
Video:
see around the 3 second mark, something swimming bottom to top

Pic:

Kind of difficult to tell from the video but my best guess would be cilliates.
Glad to hear you are seeing a reduction in dinos.

 

[taricha]

Interestingly enough. I had a heater failure last night. Tank got down to 73 degrees. All my sps are super pale! But , all of the Dino’s are practically mia.
So temp definitely plays a part here.

Going back and checking things out. Tank got down to 71 degrees during the night. Looking like a complete loss at this point. Uggggg.

Dinos all dead. Huge nutrient spike . Po4 ppb shot to 81 from 20.

temps in the upper 60s can cause ostreopsis to encyst, but not really die off immediately. I think there was a toxic event involved.

Yeah it’s crazy man. I caught it pretty quick I think and made sure to bring it back slow over a few hours back to 78 . But everything is super ****** off. Could it be toxins ? I changed the carbon and upped the flow on that. Time will tell. Trying to keep the changes to minimum . The po4 spike is crazyyyyyy though right ?

Full bleach event . And the Lps in my system are still ****** off. Can’t tell if it was the temp swing , the phosphate spike or the toxins .

Was this a titanium heater or what? and how did it fail? Just stop working, or come apart in the water?

What time frames have you all seen as far as signs of recession if not total reversal of Dino’s being present. I know the saying regarding reefing so I’m not remotely expecting anything fast. I’ve read s9me have seen improvements in a few days while others it’s been longer so any shared experiences is all I could expect.

Usually a couple of weeks - but this can vary a lot- after nutrients addressed to see the tank growing healthy green algae replacing the dinos.

The real stumper for me was I had this outbreak in a single frag tank and not others. The odd part to that is I have 4-frag tanks tied into the 1 sump that feeds my 400 gallon display. So I have 5 tanks all tied together using the same water yet only 1 tank of that 5 shows Dino’s.
To further complicate things, since someone may say different lights, flow or whatever besides the one Dino tank, the tank directly below has the identical 8bulb ATI fixture, using the exact same bulbs, exact same age of bulbs and both of the tanks each have 2 QD 40s for flow and are bare bottom-so they are about as close as I could say as identical yet one has Dino’s.

You made up this riddle just to taunt us right?
What is stocked in the tanks? Rock, fish? etc. Also, just because tanks are plumbing-connected doesn't mean they necessarily have the same parameters everywhere.

I took few samples from where I could see brown strings but thats definitively is not ostreopsis. Chrysophyta maybe?

It does look like those tiny golden-brown round motionless super-tiny things. Possibly Chrysophyte.

I'm not seeing any Ostreopsis at this point with the few water samples I've done, but I am seeing some Coolia but much fewer in number. I was also seeing a bunch of these little guys cruising around and was hoping someone would be able to ID these.
Video:
see around the 3 second mark, something swimming bottom to top

Pic:

I agree with Beardo. I think ciliates. Check my post #191 for some ciliates seen eating dinos. That one you pointed out looks kinda like a Coleps ciliate, and ciliates are transparent, so the dark shapes inside are ingested particles of that I'd bet are dinos.

 

[Paullawr]

Really good news from here my corals are dino free, I took few samples from where I could see brown strings but thats definitively is not ostreopsis. Chrysophyta maybe?

I see some dino like cells but they are messed up.

FINALLY some progress.

 

[Jolanta]

temps in the upper 60s can cause ostreopsis to encyst, but not really die off immediately. I think there was a toxic event involved.




Was this a titanium heater or what? and how did it fail? Just stop working, or come apart in the water?



Usually a couple of weeks - but this can vary a lot- after nutrients addressed to see the tank growing healthy green algae replacing the dinos.


You made up this riddle just to taunt us right?
What is stocked in the tanks? Rock, fish? etc. Also, just because tanks are plumbing-connected doesn't mean they necessarily have the same parameters everywhere.



It does look like those tiny golden-brown round motionless super-tiny things. Possibly Chrysophyte.



I agree with Beardo. I think ciliates. Check my post #191 for some ciliates seen eating dinos. That one you pointed out looks kinda like a Coleps ciliate, and ciliates are transparent, so the dark shapes inside are ingested particles of that I'd bet are dinos.

I had those in my big tank and now that I feed almost natural food only and a lot of it, they all disapeared and my rock is clear, only some with a bit of green,but I love grean

 

[Jolanta]

FINALLY some progress.

Yes Im really happy! Do you think it would be good to leave UV maybe a month and then only put it on in the night for some time and then fully shut it off and observe?