Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[anomeda]

"Possibly. You might be able to cut back on the floss and siphoning....unless you think the tank needs it. Do you get a lot of mess out with the siphoning? The activated carbon probably isn't necessary, nor the extra bio-media if you have anything close to 1 pound per gallon of live rock.

You might also be able to feed more."

I mostly syphon the sand to get rid of the big debrie on the surface from the livestock. The sand otherwize is clean every time , but i only have 1/2" and even some bald spots. However, i do stir the sand twice a week to prevent gas pockets, maybe that could be enough for now?

Noted. l'll get rid of the carbon. Oh and i'm also using a small piece of poly filter pad. I had around 45ppm nitrate the first 2 1/2 months so that's wy. That might be the cause when i think about it.
No i think i have less than 1 pound. Started with dry rock btw.

Thanks.

 

[mcarroll]

Started with dry rock btw.

That means your tank didn't get it's first "wild" inoculation until you added your first snails or coral, if then.

Worth building your tank's bio-load extra slow then IMO....and keep coral in balance with fish, or even slant your stocking plan toward corals.

 

[anomeda]

I started with a small clown pair/2 hermites two months after the tank cycled. I just kept feeding with ammonia while i was waiting.
I don't have a single coral yet.

Not sure i understan you right. Do you mean that i should go coral only or not at all?

 

[Medic755]

I'e also found that whatever my specific strain is that it didn't like elevated pH, 8.2-8.4 I maintained this with kalk in the ATO and the Apex to make sure the pH didn't go to screwy high. It seemed to keep it at bay until I could find the true solution to it.

 

[mcarroll]

CO2 deprivation (aka high pH) has worked in a lab on some dino's....pH 9 and up seems to be what they've experimented with, going from memory. Not sure you'd have to go that far, but maybe close.....I know I'd be making changes in that direction slowly too!! Seems risky.

The cool part is that we don't work in a lab and there are lots of variables in play....in your case it didn't take extreme CO2 deprivation. Great!!

 

[zachxlutz]

Posting about my adventures in the great Dinoflagellates War.

Here's a link to my thread regarding ID'ing the nasties. I've never gotten a positive ID, but I'm fairly certain it's dinos.

Long story short, PO4 dropped to non-existent levels at the same time as a dino outbreak rearing it's head.

I'm going to give dosing phosphates a shot... Wish me luck!

 

[mcarroll]

Good luck, @zachxlutz!

 

[mcarroll]

Minor update to the front page to include important mentions for UV and diatom filtration.

 

[rog2961]

Did a dose of bleach for 3 days, and have been dosing nitrates since that. The first day everything was super clear from the bleach. On the 2nd day I started seeing them come back, I manually removed what I could.

It's the 4th day now and I am seeing positive signs in the corals, opening up bigger,, faster growth. Seems my tank was nitrate limited for some time. Would explain my slow growth.

Seems right when I add the nitrates the next day dinos flare up, but if I dose more, they go away.

 

[mcarroll]

@rog2961 Could be true, or you could see something else co-blooming with them. Either way, you're on the right track now!

Don'y let either PO4 or NO3 bottom-out to zero while you're treating for this....or later. How does PO4 stand at the moment?

 

[rog2961]

I think that is what is happening now, I've been dosing nitrate to get some other algaes to show up. I was going 1.5ppm a day. I don't have a way to measure po4, but I would imagine its at 0 since I have a huge chaeto fuge. I want to try dosing some phosphate but there arent any calculators for it. Since im already using kno3, I wanted to try either monosodium phosphate or trisodium phosphate.

 

[becks]

My tank was originally set up with dry pukani rock and caribsea live sand, filtration was ATS, periodic use of carbon, purigen & UV. I never had any issues with cyano or dinos and my display tank was always algae free. To catch a fish in my display tank I had to remove most of the rockwork, this caused a big nutrient spike to around 70ppm no3 and then I started to get black/ dark purple cyano and dinos appeared on my sand bed. My ATS then struggled to grow green hair algae after so I took the ats down, purchased a skimmer, carbon dosed and used seachem denitrate in a reactor, I spent months combatting this and stopped dosing nopox and decided to try a brightwells nitrate brix which kept my nitrates stable and I could stop dosing nopox.

During the big nutrient spike I still never had any green algae grow in my DT, just cyano and dinos. No3 were always between 2ppm to 5ppm and po4 was around 0.03 to 0.05 after bringing the levels down.

I then downsized my tank and kept the rock and used caribsea dry sand with fresh water, I also changed my lights from dsuny to maxspect razor 15k incase the spectrum was off with the cheap dsuny leds.

Then diatoms came and went which was then followed by the black/dark purple cyano and dinos on the sand bed, what was interesting is if I allowed the cyano to take hold over the rocks the dinos would start receding. I got fed up with syphoning the tank etc so i used chemi clean which wiped out my cyano, this in turn allowed my dino to take over and I still never got any algae growing or even green algae on the glass.

If i siphoned my sandbed within a few hours golden brown patches would start developing on the sand and if I left it for to long they would slowly encroach on the rock work my nutrients remained stable around no3 at 5ppm and po4 around 0.03ppm.

I carried out the h2o2 test on a sample which confirmed it was not cyano, I also took a sample in a glass and tested with some filter paper and the dinos regrouped together and after a water change the population exploded which confirmed it was dinos.

They mostly stayed on my sand smothering it like a carpet with plenty of bubbles, it never got stringy but was not diatoms.

I then tried h2o2, vibrant and as a last resort dino X. All of which did not even make a dent in my dinos...so with a vacation coming up, I decided to bite the bullet and go for a 9 day total blackout with my filter socks filled with floss.

I came back and my tank look stunning! I was pleased hoping it would have been enough to beat back the dinos. However, I put my lights on a heavy blue bias very low intensive to not shock my corals and within the same day small brown patches started appearing which I tried to syphoning, but it was a loosing battle.

I finally thought I will attempt a more natural approach and see if I can raise my nutrients and see if anything else might be able to out compete my dinos...so I took out my GFO, stopped water changing and switched off my nitrate reactor. I stopped cleaning the sandbed and stopped cleaning the glass (dinos grew on the front glass, from the reefer outlet I think) I still kept changing my filter floss as soon as it was mostly brown.

My po4 rose to around 0.05 maybe slightly more and no3 around 20\25ppm I started to get green hair algae grow on the outlet of the return on the reefer, the front panel was mostly green, with some clumps of hair algae and some clumps started to grow from a few rocks....I also noticed the green algae start growing over the dinos on the sand bed and only where the dinos were...eventually the green algae moved across the sand bed to a thick green short hair algae mat.

Yesterday I cleaned the glass, replaced my carbon and siphoned up the sandbed, I left some bits growing on the rocks and will just monitor it, but so far there's no sign of dinos growing on the sand bed, keep in kind that previously would start reappearing a few hours after syphoning the sandbed.

I don't know if the blackout allowed the dinos to take a hit and allow the green algae to take hold im not sure, but so far it's very promising to see that raising my nutrient levels allowed my dinos to stay away, maybe because either my tank never had equilibrium or allowing other algaes to increase in population is now out competing the dinos.

My anecdotal experience seems to point to dinos taking hold in unbalanced systems where there is no equilibrium amongst all the other algae/bacteria species in the tank and by knocking back the dinos then raising nutrients might allow them to be kept in check so to speak.

 

[mcarroll]

I started with a small clown pair/2 hermites two months after the tank cycled. I just kept feeding with ammonia while i was waiting.
I don't have a single coral yet.

Not sure i understan you right. Do you mean that i should go coral only or not at all?

Definitely add some corals. I think you should try to have a balance between fish and corals if possible. They are what you want to be growing on the rocks instead of (or at least in addition to) algae.

I'e also found that whatever my specific strain is that it didn't like elevated pH, 8.2-8.4 I maintained this with kalk in the ATO and the Apex to make sure the pH didn't go to screwy high. It seemed to keep it at bay until I could find the true solution to it.

That's a known factor to induce programmed cell death in some types....at least in lab tests. (Got a doc on that somewhere on the blog.) Most folks haven't had luck doing it on purpose though.

Do you have a microscope?

 

[mcarroll]

Added Putting the N in dinoflagellates to the first post.

 

[anomeda]

"Definitely add some corals. I think you should try to have a balance between fish and corals if possible. They are what you want to be growing on the rocks instead of (or at least in addition to) algae. "

I did what you told me and removed both carbon and filter pad. So since that day all i've been running is floss.
Sand is now completly white, rocks looks great, and i'm starting to see a few flat patches green algae(better sign i guess?)
Still zero po4 though, and 4ppm No3.

 

[rog2961]

So i've been dosing nitrates for a couple days in the range of 1-2ppm per day. I don't have any tests right now so going purely off tank looks. I believe I have reached a point where phosphates have been driven down by the nitrates. Each subsequent addition of nitrate now makes no difference which leads me to believe there are no phosphates to feed on. I do have some cyano but its having a tough time competing with the dinos. Once I get a kit I'll be more comfortable dosing larger amounts. Going to gab some phosphate tomorrow and see if it makes a difference.

 

[Abhishek]

Love this thread and amazing info @mcarroll .
Just started getting Dinos (I don't have a microscope) but believe it's some form of dinos.Had a cyano attack a month back andit was followed by dinos .
Nitrates were around 5-10 and phosphates read 0.

Plan of attack :-

1. Just ordered 10000 pods with phytos - hopefully pods will start out competing the Dinos .
2. going to dirty up the tank further by feeding more and stopped lanthanum chloride which I use to control phosphates
3. Got 10 micron socks and going to siphon everyday as much as i can .
4. Was carbon dosing with Tropic Marin bacto balance . Have stopped all carbon dosing .
5. Was using KZ sponge power to increase sponges which it did but think the silicates might have fueled the dinos .Stopped now .
6. Will start running activated carbon passively .

Anything am misssing @mcarroll ?

Regards,
Abhishek

 

[mcarroll]

So i've been dosing nitrates for a couple days in the range of 1-2ppm per day. I don't have any tests right now so going purely off tank looks. I believe I have reached a point where phosphates have been driven down by the nitrates. Each subsequent addition of nitrate now makes no difference which leads me to believe there are no phosphates to feed on. I do have some cyano but its having a tough time competing with the dinos. Once I get a kit I'll be more comfortable dosing larger amounts. Going to gab some phosphate tomorrow and see if it makes a difference.

I'd either get some test kits or at least start getting your water tested at the LFS for nitrate and phosphate.

I wouldn't be in a hurry to dose larger amounts – especially not until you can see what you're doing in tests.

 

[mcarroll]

Love this thread and amazing info @mcarroll .

Thanks for saying so – I hope the info ends up helping!!!

Nitrates were around 5-10 and phosphates read 0.

Just ordered 10000 pods with phytos - hopefully pods will start out competing the Dinos .

I'd get those phosphates sorted out before adding the CUC/pods if possible. Quitting all your PO4-removers might not be enough.

going to dirty up the tank further by feeding more

This can work – especially in the longer term. But in the short term, you might want to get a liquid supplement.

stopped lanthanum chloride which I use to control phosphates

Good! I would try to eliminate everything aside from the skimmer and some activated carbon if you think you could do it.

 

[Abhishek]

@mcarroll @twilliard - need your help !
Took picture of the brown snotty that covered all my sand and onto rocks

To my untrained eyes , they look like dinoflagellates ostreopsis



Had 2 fishes die and I was out of town .wife couldn't take them out .
There's lots of bacterial bloom too !!

Nitrates registered at 5 ppm and phosphates 0 according to Hanna .

What do you guys feel ?

Ordered 10,000 pods and started feeding heavily .will start siphoning .

Regards,
Abhishek