Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[ReefMan692]

No, plumbed that way will not work. Your UV is also undersized for your tank (a little).

It is a good idea to check the sleeve on your UV....with your efforts at raising pH you may have caused precipitation on the sleeve that makes the UV ineffective.

I wouldn't worry with a black out. Ostreopsis go in to the water column at night anyway. A total blackout may just provide more stress to already compromised corals. Are you running GAC? Ostreopsis is very toxic.

Yes I am running GAC in a reactor -- with all due respect only certain species of ostreopsis are toxic. Mine may or may not be. Im not taking any chances, though, so I am leaving the GAC run.

My CUC is fairing surprisingly well -- if its toxic I would be able to gauge by their overall health, right?

 

[saltyhog]

I mean really though this doesnt make the most sense to me. Isnt chaeto a competitor for resources? It seems to me a healthy fuge growing chaeto efficiently neccesarily would hinder the onset of Dinoflagellate blooms if anything we ever float as theory is even remotely true.

Thought experiment -- If a tank has high nutrients spurring chaeto growth, which in turn lowers the nutrients. Is that a high nutrient system or a low nutrient system. I would argue the former.

If algae is a competitor against dinos and relies on elevated nutrients for growth, then a healthy fuge growing chaeto should mean your not likely to encounter the dinos according to the best info available.

First of all, isnt the fact that chaeto is growing well in a fuge evidence that the system has ample nutrients? Secondly, while tested nutrients might be low because of the succrss of the algae, surely this would lead to stifling the dinos from blooming.

Maybe I am a moron but I cant understand some of the advice that floats around tis very confusing but I start to get idea nobody knows what they are talkin about! Lol.

Of course, i dont know what Im talking about either-- so there is that.

The competition that is successful in defeating dinos is not nutrients but space. Macroalgae does not occupy that space and in fact creates more of it (you will frequently see dinos living on hair algae). Dinos don't need elevated nutrients to thrive....it's why they dominate in low nutrient systems.

The whole purpose of algae reactors is to lower nutrients....something they do very well. This is counter productive because it doesn't have any effect on the dinos, only it's competition . We don't want the macroalgae using the nutrients, we want smaller organisms that compete with dinos to use it.

 

[ReefMan692]

I see what you are saying -- but it still doesnt make sense to me.

Would defeat the purpose of anyone ever running a refugium and we know that cant be true. You make it sound like you think refugiums are bad for your tank?

Or are you simply saying its not good to have going while treating dinos. Or are you saying refugium cause dinos?

 

[ReefMan692]

And not to ask a million questions but I have a few more -- are dinos in everyones tank? Once you have them, do you always have them?

So in one persons case a refugium might be just fine to have because they simply dont have dinos in the tank, and in another persons case it could be bad to have because they do have dinos in the tank?

 

[ReefMan692]

And since I completely also misunderstood the competition we are hoping to create, if its not algae I want to outcompete it, what is it I am looking for?

Everyone said algae growth is a good sign.

I thought most people use scrubbers cause they struggle with chaeto but in both cases I think for most people the real goal is to get algae to grow where we want it to grow, and the most managable variety we can, so it doesnt invade the DT.

The purpose of a refugium is not to bottom out nutrients in order to get dinos in the DT....


I guess i am just struggling to understand the big picture to a successful reef biome when so much information seems contradictory.

In my mind a fuge growing macro algae successfully was a highly sought after component to a succesful reef biome

 

[Fredrxn]

Those are ostreopsis. UV is the primary treatment, but raising nutrients (NO3 5-10, PO4 0.06-0.12), dosing is also important long term.

I have a uv running not sure if its working right because it's a all-in-one tank tank is jbj 65....I been dosing nitrates and po4 I can't get po4 to go above 0 been dosing for weeks 10 ml of brightwell neo phos daily.... should I dose peroxide to help with the dinos...thanks for any help thank is only 3 months old...I have aqua ultraviolet uv 15 watt pushing 450 gph of threw it

 

[saltyhog]

I see what you are saying -- but it still doesnt make sense to me.

Would defeat the purpose of anyone ever running a refugium and we know that cant be true. You make it sound like you think refugiums are bad for your tank?

Or are you simply saying its not good to have going while treating dinos. Or are you saying refugium cause dinos?

Refugiums are great and I have a large one on my tank. I also have chaeto in it ....but, I have nitrates in the 10-15 range and phosphate in the 0.1 range. A refugium is a place to increase diversity, not just a place to grow chaeto. What I'm saying is that if you are struggling to maintain elevated nutrients when battling dinos, running an algae reactor or striving to grow macro algae in your refugium can be counter productive to your efforts to overcome the dinos. The same would be true for carbon dosing, lanthium, GFO, etc. If used indiscriminately they are an obstacle to creating biodiversity.

And not to ask a million questions but I have a few more -- are dinos in everyones tank? Once you have them, do you always have them?

So in one persons case a refugium might be just fine to have because they simply dont have dinos in the tank, and in another persons case it could be bad to have because they do have dinos in the tank?

Yes, dinoflagellates are a normal part of the ecosystem IMO. They become a problem in our tanks when conditions favor them over their natural competition. I.E. low nutrients don't "cause" dinos, they just make for an environment where dinos have a distinct advantage (as they aren't limited by low nutrients...their competition is).

Because of this, keeping nutrients elevated (dosing NO3 & PO4, temporarily shutting down alage reactors, stopping GFO, etc) is of value in all types of dinos....especially in long term success. If we don't fix the imbalance that gave them an advantage, eliminating them with things like UV for ostreopsis won't be a long term solution.

And since I completely also misunderstood the competition we are hoping to create, if its not algae I want to outcompete it, what is it I am looking for?

Everyone said algae growth is a good sign.

I thought most people use scrubbers cause they struggle with chaeto but in both cases I think for most people the real goal is to get algae to grow where we want it to grow, and the most managable variety we can, so it doesnt invade the DT.

The purpose of a refugium is not to bottom out nutrients in order to get dinos in the DT....


I guess i am just struggling to understand the big picture to a successful reef biome when so much information seems contradictory.

In my mind a fuge growing macro algae successfully was a highly sought after component to a succesful reef biome

The competition we want is microalgae type competition. Competition that is microscopic....like dinos are. Diatoms, phytoplankton, etc. We don't have an effective predator for dinos so we need things that take over their space that aren't damaging to the tank.

 

[saltyhog]

I have a uv running not sure if its working right because it's a all-in-one tank tank is jbj 65....I been dosing nitrates and po4 I can't get po4 to go above 0 been dosing for weeks 10 ml of brightwell neo phos daily.... should I dose peroxide to help with the dinos...thanks for any help thank is only 3 months old...I have aqua ultraviolet uv 15 watt pushing 450 gph of threw it

If your tank is 65 gallons the 15 watt UV is undersized. If you want to, you can try lowering the flow to around 150 gph and see if it helps. Ideally I would want a UV of 25-30 watts at 150 gph for best success.

Have you increased the dose of neo phos? If 10 ml is not raising it, step the dose up every couple of days until you see it rising. Monitor PO4 daily for a while till it's stable and in the 0.06-0.12 range. Where is your NO3 now?

 

[Fredrxn]

If your tank is 65 gallons the 15 watt UV is undersized. If you want to, you can try lowering the flow to around 150 gph and see if it helps. Ideally I would want a UV of 25-30 watts at 150 gph for best success.

Have you increased the dose of neo phos? If 10 ml is not raising it, step the dose up every couple of days until you see it rising. Monitor PO4 daily for a while till it's stable and in the 0.06-0.12 range. Where is your NO3 now?

Nitrates are at 6 ppm

 

[saltyhog]

Nitrates are at 6 ppm

I'd aim for PO4 around 0.06-0.08. A 10:1 NO3 to PO4 ratio is a good goal.

 

[Fredrxn]

If your tank is 65 gallons the 15 watt UV is undersized. If you want to, you can try lowering the flow to around 150 gph and see if it helps. Ideally I would want a UV of 25-30 watts at 150 gph for best success.

Have you increased the dose of neo phos? If 10 ml is not raising it, step the dose up every couple of days until you see it rising. Monitor PO4 daily for a while till it's stable and in the 0.06-0.12 range. Where is your NO3 now?

Would dosing peroxide help get rid of the dinos...and should I remove intank filter floss maybe the floss is preventing the dinos getting to the uv sterilizer

 

[ReefMan692]

Refugiums are great and I have a large one on my tank. I also have chaeto in it ....but, I have nitrates in the 10-15 range and phosphate in the 0.1 range. A refugium is a place to increase diversity, not just a place to grow chaeto. What I'm saying is that if you are struggling to maintain elevated nutrients when battling dinos, running an algae reactor or striving to grow macro algae in your refugium can be counter productive to your efforts to overcome the dinos. The same would be true for carbon dosing, lanthium, GFO, etc. If used indiscriminately they are an obstacle to creating biodiversity.


Yes, dinoflagellates are a normal part of the ecosystem IMO. They become a problem in our tanks when conditions favor them over their natural competition. I.E. low nutrients don't "cause" dinos, they just make for an environment where dinos have a distinct advantage (as they aren't limited by low nutrients...their competition is).

Because of this, keeping nutrients elevated (dosing NO3 & PO4, temporarily shutting down alage reactors, stopping GFO, etc) is of value in all types of dinos....especially in long term success. If we don't fix the imbalance that gave them an advantage, eliminating them with things like UV for ostreopsis won't be a long term solution.



The competition we want is microalgae type competition. Competition that is microscopic....like dinos are. Diatoms, phytoplankton, etc. We don't have an effective predator for dinos so we need things that take over their space that aren't damaging to the tank.

Thank you for the information everything makes more sense now -- you are talking about what needs to happen durring treatment. After the balance has been restored then things like macroalgae can be resumed as warranted or needed.

 

[ReefMan692]

And I think I had a "triggering" event that started the dinos about 8 days ago I overdosed Phosphate-E by mistake. Initially I was worried for livestock but next day everything seem fine and I didnt think too much about it other then "need to be more careful in future".

But come to think of it, it was probably that evening when the lanthanum bound up all my phosphate and crashed it to zero or at least made the usable phosphates disappear.

It probably didnt take much more than 12 hours to lead to biodiversity melt down basically the lanthanum attacked my biofilter in a round about way.

About 3 days later is when the dinos became visible.

Its kind of good to know how I ended up here, and so that after i get it corrected I can avoid making mistakes in the future.

 

[saltyhog]

Would dosing peroxide help get rid of the dinos...and should I remove intank filter floss maybe the floss is preventing the dinos getting to the uv sterilizer

I've never used peroxide and results seem to be mixed. Is your UV in a rear chamber with passive flow? I'm not familiar with the JBJ tanks.

 

[ReefMan692]

The competition we want is microalgae type competition. Competition that is microscopic....like dinos are. Diatoms, phytoplankton, etc. We don't have an effective predator for dinos so we need things that take over their space that aren't damaging to the tank.

I understand. Would introducing live phytoplankton be helpful? I could potentially grow some of my own or also I could consider purchasing.

I read algaebarn has a big thing on their site about dinos and oceanmagic live plankton being beneficial.

However, i was told repeatedly not to add any aminos and algae barn says their ocean magik has a lot of aminos.

 

[ReefMan692]

If it would help my situation though I could spend some money on new live pods and phyto and dose it in there. Just dont want to do anything that will hurt my situation

 

[kinetic]

I can't think of any scenario where chaeto or any other macro algae help with dinos. In fact chaeto lowering nutrients could have quite the opposite effect.

Going forward, I would be very cautious about trying to battle other pest algae with nutrient lowering efforts. What kinds of algae were you having that triggered the algae reactor restart?

Hmm, interesting. Should I just stop my algae reactor completely? What I had before was way better than dinos...

Though to be honest, maybe the small amount of algae was just a tiny bit of dinos in the sand.

The way I initially beat dinos was dosing NoPox. I basically starved the crap out of everything, including dinos. I had a ton of bacteria growth, which basically won.

I stopped dosing NoPox and things seemed to be just fine for over a year. Then recently I was kind of annoyed at how algae kept growing on my sand, so I decided to tinker with the tank and restart my algae reactor with some chaeto.

Interesting.

Alright, I'm going to bust out a little microscope and try to battle this again...

 

[kinetic]

I understand. Would introducing live phytoplankton be helpful? I could potentially grow some of my own or also I could consider purchasing.

I read algaebarn has a big thing on their site about dinos and oceanmagic live plankton being beneficial.

However, i was told repeatedly not to add any aminos and algae barn says their ocean magik has a lot of aminos.

I started getting dinos after dosing algaebarn phytoplankton. Not sure if it was related.

I was also dosing aminos for awhile, and that didn't seem to do anything good or bad (I wasn't dosing much).

 

[hurricain]

Hi, new to the hobby. Tank is about 3 months old. Battling a major dino problem. My kid has a super cheap microscope, and I think I got a picture of one? It's near impossible to know with such a cheap scope. Does this look like something? Thanks in advance.

 

[Fredrxn]

I've never used peroxide and results seem to be mixed. Is your UV in a rear chamber with passive flow? I'm not familiar with the JBJ tanks.

The jbj has 8 chambers chambers with the over flow has in media baskets with filter floss and bio media and carbon... camber number to after over flows is empty chambers 3 after over flow had the uv pump in chamber 3 and the return is in chamber 3 but on the other side of the sump and the middle chamber is the return for the tank