Thanks Scott and Taricha. Yesterday I redid my plumbing and moved my UV to display temporarily. Aqua UV 25 watt for 65 gal display, 80 gal total using Sicce Synchra 1.5 (357 gph max). Is this enough? Still dosing Microbacter7 in the morning.
Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
- Thread starter mcarroll
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That should get it done. Relapses are very common. I've had ostreos outbreaks at least 3 times. They do remain in there even when suppressed. Try and keep track of your actions that precede relapses. My tank will relapse if I walk by it with a bottle of amino acids or let my PO4 go below .04.Thanks Scott and Taricha. Yesterday I redid my plumbing and moved my UV to display temporarily. Aqua UV 25 watt for 65 gal display, 80 gal total using Sicce Synchra 1.5 (357 gph max). Is this enough? Still dosing Microbacter7 in the morning.
ReefingFamily
"It's all about the colors"
Am so glad today that couldn't stop updating the thread .
After a gruesome week , looks like Dinos have finally receded.
Documented all the steps taken :-
Dinos detected last Sunday and with in 1 day tank turned into full blown Dino attack
Lost a prized charlenae anthias , 2 loris and a couple of acros including a Hawkins Echinata
Under microscope, looked like Dinoflagellates Osteropsis .
Steps taken :-
1. Started feeding crazily like 4-5 times a day
2. Phosphates hit bottom 0 and hence fed to bring it up slowly
3. Stopped all bacteria dosing
4. No water changes
5. Ran 10 micron socks and changed everyday
6. Biggest thing that helped is adding 10000 pods and lots of phyto - combination of nano , tet , ISO and thal ..
7. Added more flow with 2 gyres and 2 tunze 6095s
8. Added trochus snails as they seemed unimpacted by Dinos .
For the last 2 days , things looked way better and today it's almost gone
For everyone fighting Dinos , try and feed wayyy more and introduce predators in the form of phyto and pods .
Things should improve ..lots of thanks to @mcarroll for this thread .
Am convinced there's some predators for Dinos hidden among the phyto and zooplankton world .
Regards,
Abhishek
Abhishek,
I am wondering how this turned out for you. I am in the process of looking for a natural method of controlling my Dinos vs. chemical.
Jason
Abhishek
2500 Club Member
Oh This is so ancient !!! However I think I had Ostreopsis Dinos and going natural with increasing phosphates helped a lot I think .
Biologic
Active Member
advice needed-72 hour black out
So this is my first bout with dinoflagellates. While I haven’t ID them with a microscope. They fit the description of a photosynthetic type. See attached pH graph. Note the pH swing is highest when at 2 hours before lights out at 8 pm and lowest starting before 8 AM. pH rapidly rises and peaks at 7 pm. My lights slowly taper on/off. This is what my pH does every day.
The appearance is stringy. Brown. All on the sand bed. Goes away at night. Sand is dark brown by end of day. Nothing on rocks.
My starting procedure — mild infestation
nitrates at 5 ppm
Phosphate at 0.15 ppm
I started to aerate my skimmerless tank with outside air via air pump. Trying to drive out excess CO2.
Totally blacking out black garbage bags. Even over the top. Not a shred of light can get in. Will do this for 72 hours.
Will run activated carbon at 24 hours and 20% water changes
Any other suggestions going forward?
So this is my first bout with dinoflagellates. While I haven’t ID them with a microscope. They fit the description of a photosynthetic type. See attached pH graph. Note the pH swing is highest when at 2 hours before lights out at 8 pm and lowest starting before 8 AM. pH rapidly rises and peaks at 7 pm. My lights slowly taper on/off. This is what my pH does every day.
The appearance is stringy. Brown. All on the sand bed. Goes away at night. Sand is dark brown by end of day. Nothing on rocks.
My starting procedure — mild infestation
nitrates at 5 ppm
Phosphate at 0.15 ppm
I started to aerate my skimmerless tank with outside air via air pump. Trying to drive out excess CO2.
Totally blacking out black garbage bags. Even over the top. Not a shred of light can get in. Will do this for 72 hours.
Will run activated carbon at 24 hours and 20% water changes
Any other suggestions going forward?
Attachments
All dinos are photosynthetic and several will attach to the sand. LC amphids are almost exclusively sand dwelling, but they don't swim in darkness; they remain hunkered down in the sand. Without an ID, it is hard to make firm suggestions. I will say that most dinos bloom hard right after a water change. I am uncertain what it is they deplete, but there is a strong pattern here so don't be surprised.
A blackout is fine. A blackout with a properly sized and plumbed UV is great for all but LC amphids.
A $25 microscope will help take the guess work out of your treatment choices.
ReefingFamily
"It's all about the colors"
Thanks for your response. I know it has been awhile and I appreciate your time.
Biologic
Active Member
Dino’s or what appears to be — are gone.
From every picture and research I’ve seen it was a dino bloom. Appeared only on sand. Most present before lights out. Went away at night. Stringy and bubbles in the brown gold film. Killed snails that touched it. My corals were not growing. Drove pH up and down like crazy. So consuming lots of CO2. PH was highest at the end of day. My pH swing went from 7.75 to 8.33.
what I did—
-72 hour black out
-pH stablized at 7.77
-ran an air stone, I do not have a skimmer. Ran from outside. No change in pH observed.
-raised my tanks temperature from 78 to 80
-during black out, at the 12 hour mark, I dosed 3% h2o2, caused a sharp decrease in ORP, and a slow rise to the same normal level prior to dosing 12 hours later. I did this only once.
-post black out, running all blues, green, purple/violet and worked back in red and whites but max 10%. Previously running them at 40% max. I have a knock off radion, with very similar cree LED’s and configuration. Definitely at their worst when my lights were whitest. The blue seems to be better, thus far.
-parameters are 10 ppm NO3 and 0.15 ppm PO4, SG 1.026. Alkalinity 7.0+. Trying to hold it steady. PH continues to have a diurnal swing. From 8.1 to 7.85
-I am going to start using a sodium carbonate two part and focus on keeping alk stable, and boost pH.
-stop cleaning my glass
Added —
-ran a HOB protein skimmer on this tank, temporarily post treatment. Maybe for 72 hours. I don’t have enough bio load to sustain a big HOB skimmer on a 28 gal nano cube.
-BrightWell Microbacter 7 - 5mL’s per day for 5 days immediate post black out. I am going to continue with .5 mL here on out
-ZeoBak - 5 drops, started 4 days post black out, just trying to add as much biodiversity
-added really really old sand from my LFS’s sand vats. This stuff is ancient and has rubble and the sand itself is sticky, the bed was solid as a rock. Rubble pieces even had purple sponges. The system is plumbed into a live rock curing vat. I added the sand through a tube directly on the sand bed.
-shook a big ball of chaeto into the tank, releasing many different pods and critters.
-added an cheato reactor, not sure how well this is working. It’s a DIY reactor I made myself.
—observations
-lost one SPS, which seemed to be ill prior to treatment
-I have a species of brownish green hair algae growing on the sand bed, which was present prior to the outbreak. It’s not terrible. Far better than dinos.
-growth, color and polyp extension are better on all corals. Thank you blue spectrum
-coralline algae starting to grow again.
-trochus snails avoid dinos, asterenas try to eat it, and fall on their backs and never recover.
-glass appears fairly clean and *diatom* free. Dinos never landed on glass. I do have plenty of the typical hard to magnetic scrap green alage growing.
I kind of threw the kitchen sink at it.
You obviously did some homework. If you had large cell amphidinium, this is pretty much the best approach - kitchen sink and all. The others respond very well to UV but not LC amphids. It helps that you had nutrients available already. Adding in all that other competitive stuff was smart.
Do be aware that your dinos are not gone but have submitted. It could be temporary but hopefully it sticks. Whatever your system changes were that led to the outbreak you should try to avoid in the future. I have not "seen" dinos in my tank in over a year, but if I took a scraping off the glass and put it under my scope, I would find them but in small numbers. If I walk by the tank with a bottle of aminos it would break out. Same if I let my PO4 bottom out.
As to pH, that is a big swing. I don't recall noticing such an exaggeration, but I was focused on other stuff I guess. Here is mine now.
Do be aware that your dinos are not gone but have submitted. It could be temporary but hopefully it sticks. Whatever your system changes were that led to the outbreak you should try to avoid in the future. I have not "seen" dinos in my tank in over a year, but if I took a scraping off the glass and put it under my scope, I would find them but in small numbers. If I walk by the tank with a bottle of aminos it would break out. Same if I let my PO4 bottom out.
As to pH, that is a big swing. I don't recall noticing such an exaggeration, but I was focused on other stuff I guess. Here is mine now.
AbjectMaelstroM
Valuable Member
So I ordered a "real" microscope (amscope m150) to upgrade my toy scope.... Well, should have done this to begin with.
Went and took a sample from the sandbed and this is what I see.... First was that horror of sheer numbers of these bastages, oddly enough there was very little movement. Only on some outliers.
This large cell, yes? What are the little rice grains?
Going to take more samples to see if I get movement.
Went and took a sample from the sandbed and this is what I see.... First was that horror of sheer numbers of these bastages, oddly enough there was very little movement. Only on some outliers.
This large cell, yes? What are the little rice grains?
Going to take more samples to see if I get movement.
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That is what I make them out to be. The hooked beak being the tell. Rice grains maybe a type of diatom. A little different from what I have seen before.So I ordered a "real" microscope (amscope m150) to upgrade my toy scope.... Well, should have done this to begin with.
Went and took a sample from the sandbed and this is what I see.... First was that horror of sheer numbers of these bastages, oddly enough there was very little movement. Only on some outliers.
This large cell, yes? What are the little rice grains?
Going to take more samples to see if I get movement.
Good news is they are not toxic. Bad news is they are slow to get rid of. There is a specific thread for amphidinium treatment authored by @taricha . You can choose from a variety of treatment methods, none of which stand out to me as "sure fire". Most blend some mix of:
a) maintaining nutrients
b) adding Sponge Excel (silicates) to aid diatom competition
c) moonwalking and Gregorian chant during light ramp
d) diversifying your bacteria mix (MB7, Bio Spira, etc)
e) adding ocean live rock, mud, pods
AbjectMaelstroM
Valuable Member
Yup, that's where I got them IDd the first time with terrible toy microscope pics. Just wanted to confirm with better pics.
I've had nutries at 10:0.1 NO3
O4 last several weeks. Started dosing Si last weekend, slowly ramping up. So far they're coming hard as ever, I siphon the sand but they come back within a day. Snails have become a bit lethargic as well. Plan B is removing the sandbed, but that's the nuclear option as I don't know how my melanarus will handle that.
AbjectMaelstroM
Valuable Member
Haha, roomba pattern, so true. That's about as still as I could do by hand...took a few tries hahaha.
I'm 3d printing a mounting bracket as we speak.
Nuclear indeed. But many have finally opted for that. That brings around it's own instabilities though. It is a phosphate store, as well as an NO3 processing plant, so you kinda gotta watch measures and be ready to re-dial things a bit IMO.Yup, that's where I got them IDd the first time with terrible toy microscope pics. Just wanted to confirm with better pics.
I've had nutries at 10:0.1 NO3
Plan B is removing the sandbed, but that's the nuclear option as I don't know how my melanarus will handle that.
clhardy5
Active Member
I got the same microscope for Christmas! So far I'm loving it....another part of my present hasn't arrived yet - something you put on the eyepiece so you can project onto your computer....but I'm really interested in the mounting bracket you are making
A good scope is so worth it. I bought the 102MC for 400X to 1000X and use it often.I got the same microscope for Christmas! So far I'm loving it....another part of my present hasn't arrived yet - something you put on the eyepiece so you can project onto your computer....but I'm really interested in the mounting bracket you are making
The phone cradle is worth something, just not the $24 I paid. Find something better.
Amazon product
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Biologic
Active Member
I agree. I cannot imagine they are gone. They are just in a manageable number to the point where they are not noticed by me at least.
Snails are eating off my sand bed. One thing I forgot to mention. Oddly enough, the nassarius snails are not affected by the dinoflagellates that were there. They just don’t eat it.
pH continues to have swings. The lows being 7.88 and the highs being 8.19. Overall the average low is significantly higher than when I was previously infected at 7.73.
The chaeto reactor seems to be working, but the verdict is still out. At least it’s competing for excess CO2.
LC amphids are very low toxicity so I am not surprised the nassarius were unfazed. There are a couple videos around here of pods actually (apparently) eating LC amphids.
Manage the light hours on the chaeto judiciously so as not to loose too much nutrient. Enjoy.
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