Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[ScottB]

Hello. I have an update.

This is what I already did: 1 day black out. H202 dose (only for one day). My phosphates needed a huge push in order to make it rise above 0.02 to 0.05. After my blackout my tank looked foggy. I tested my phosphates and it’s 0.2ppm!

There’s a significant decrease in dinos in my tank, but there’s now a massive spike in phosphates. I dosed plenty of silicates.

I turned on my skimmer, put in my 5 micron filter socks, changing my activated carbon media, and dosed CACO3 as an organic flocculant.

I stopped all liquid carbon and h202 dosing. No feeding either. I’m just worried that Dino’s will come back with all the nutrients.

Now I just be patient?

Don't sweat about .2 PO4. Dinos thrive (generally) when nutrients are too low to support competitive bacterial and film algae.

"Liquid carbon dosing" can you detail what you are using here? Foggy sounds like a bacterial bloom which can come from OD of vinegar/NOPOX/vodka/sugar

 

[Miami Reef]

Don't sweat about .2 PO4. Dinos thrive (generally) when nutrients are too low to support competitive bacterial and film algae.

"Liquid carbon dosing" can you detail what you are using here? Foggy sounds like a bacterial bloom which can come from OD of vinegar/NOPOX/vodka/sugar

I didn’t dose any liquid carbon for almost a week.

I thought that carbon increases bacteria so I was wondering if dosing carbon would help me? I won’t dose it!

I have a question: I’m dosing silicates now to get my diatom bloom. But honestly I hate diatoms. My Dino’s are mainly a problem visually. My end goal is to have my white sand again; not brown.

What do I do?

 

[attiland]

Hello. I have an update.

This is what I already did: 1 day black out. H202 dose (only for one day). My phosphates needed a huge push in order to make it rise above 0.02 to 0.05. After my blackout my tank looked foggy. I tested my phosphates and it’s 0.2ppm!

There’s a significant decrease in dinos in my tank, but there’s now a massive spike in phosphates. I dosed plenty of silicates.

I turned on my skimmer, put in my 5 micron filter socks, changing my activated carbon media, and dosed CACO3 as an organic flocculant.

I stopped all liquid carbon and h202 dosing. No feeding either. I’m just worried that Dino’s will come back with all the nutrients.

Now I just be patient?

The spike in phosphates means progress to me. Something was eating it is gone.

My understanding is that in nitrate and phosphate deprived tanks the Dinos take advantage over their competitors because they have other means of getting food than just nitrates and phosphates available in the water.
But once these are available they start to loose the battle
In more established tanks often just by sorting the available nutrition does the trick.

by adding silicates you have just given extra push for the diatoms one of the best competitors. So keep it up.

After a good bloom Dinos wil just die back to the level they will never able to recover again in the numbers you can not quickly sort. Relapse is happening very often but fixing it takes less and less time. I probably had small dusting kind of relapse but was fixed in a week with small amount of silicates. if you start to see film algae on the glass you are winning already.

Also cyano is possible guest after Dinos.

 

[attiland]

I didn’t dose any liquid carbon for almost a week.

I thought that carbon increases bacteria so I was wondering if dosing carbon would help me? I won’t dose it!

I have a question: I’m dosing silicates now to get my diatom bloom. But honestly I hate diatoms. My Dino’s are mainly a problem visually. My end goal is to have my white sand again; not brown.

What do I do?

Diatoms will die back by themselves once silicates used up. No worries about that one. While sand is on the corner

 

[Miami Reef]

Diatoms will die back by themselves once silicates used up. No worries about that one. While sand is on the corner

Oh, I thought I was supposed to be continuously dosing silicates. Whoops.

 

[ScottB]

I didn’t dose any liquid carbon for almost a week.

I thought that carbon increases bacteria so I was wondering if dosing carbon would help me? I won’t dose it!

I have a question: I’m dosing silicates now to get my diatom bloom. But honestly I hate diatoms. My Dino’s are mainly a problem visually. My end goal is to have my white sand again; not brown.

What do I do?

Pretty much concur with @attiland comments. Support diatoms to outcompete sand based dinos. Maintain nutrients so a broad base of competitors can be reestablished. Then as silicates are consumed/removed the diatoms will fade. This should all happen gradually. Nothing fast.

 

[SeniorReefer]

I used Fauna Marin Dino X, followed direction to the letter. Worked great for me.

I did the same, and lost a lot of colonies, but the Dino survived

 

[Miami Reef]

So here’s the summary about Dino’s from my perspective (correct me if I’m wrong).

Dinoflagellates like nutrients, but they can also survive in low nutrient systems.

Dinos are pretty bad at competing with other organisms for surface area when there is abundance of nutrients.

If you have low nutrients with low competition you get dinos.

So basically all we are doing is increasing competition by raising nutrients, and making it harder for dinos to compete by increasing biodiversity or harming the Dino’s population: (UV, silicate dosing, blackout, Phyto/pods, h202 etc).

 

[ScottB]

So here’s the summary about Dino’s from my perspective (correct me if I’m wrong).

Dinoflagellates like nutrients, but they can also survive in low nutrient systems.

Dinos are pretty bad at competing with other organisms for surface area when there is abundance of nutrients.

If you have low nutrients with low competition you get dinos.

So basically all we are doing is increasing competition by raising nutrients, and making it harder for dinos to compete by increasing biodiversity or harming the Dino’s population: (UV, silicate dosing, blackout, Phyto/pods, h202 etc).

A fine summary I think. The next layer of detail would be the different species of dino, and which tools are best per species.

 

[haitian_reefer]

All, I’m in urgent need for help. Are these Dinos? If so, I have the worse case documented . My microscope should arrive tomorrow.

October 11, 2021

youtube.com

 

[Miami Reef]

All, I’m in urgent need for help. Are these Dinos? If so, I have the worse case documented . My microscope should arrive tomorrow.

October 11, 2021

youtube.com

First off, I SMILED so hard and said “HIIIII!” in my baby voice when I saw the moorish idol. They have such innocent faces.

Second, it kind of looks like dinos, but best wait for the microscope and post some pics/videos tomorrow.

What are you nutrients?

 

[Miami Reef]

@ScottB

Question: I’m in the middle of a Dino outbreak (coolia) and I raised my nutrients and I’m overdosing silicates with no results yet.


I just had a question: is it normal for my tank to look SO DINGY? The water has this murkey cloudiness to it that I can’t stand.

The walls have the Dino’s and the rocks have the bubbly snot, but my main concern is the overall water quality. It looks gross but my PO4 is only 0.10ppm.

I kind of want to purchase DR Tim’s waste away. Will this help remove the sludges and murkiness? It’s so gross to look at.

 

[haitian_reefer]

First off, I SMILED so hard and said “HIIIII!” in my baby voice when I saw the moorish idol. They have such innocent faces.

Second, it kind of looks like dinos, but best wait for the microscope and post some pics/videos tomorrow.

What are you nutrients?

Lol i love my moorish idol. Huge eater! Thank you for your response. I got frustrated today and shut all my lights.

 

[ScottB]

@ScottB

Question: I’m in the middle of a Dino outbreak (coolia) and I raised my nutrients and I’m overdosing silicates with no results yet.


I just had a question: is it normal for my tank to look SO DINGY? The water has this murkey cloudiness to it that I can’t stand.

The walls have the Dino’s and the rocks have the bubbly snot, but my main concern is the overall water quality. It looks gross but my PO4 is only 0.10ppm.

I kind of want to purchase DR Tim’s waste away. Will this help remove the sludges and murkiness? It’s so gross to look at.

I think if you ran some GAC and fired up a UV you will improve clarity and the UV SHOULD make a good dent in the coolia population. You may want to try a 24-36 hour blackout as well. The UV should be sized at 1 watt per 3 gallons. Run the flow VERY slow as coolia have a very thick shell that protects them from UV.

 

[taricha]

I just had a question: is it normal for my tank to look SO DINGY? The water has this murkey cloudiness to it that I can’t stand.

The walls have the Dino’s and the rocks have the bubbly snot, but my main concern is the overall water quality. It looks gross but my PO4 is only 0.10ppm.

If your water is noticeably off color in a way that is not just film on the glass, then you probably have a lot of cells of some sort in the water itself and a functional UV will really improve things.

 

[haitian_reefer]

@ScottB

Question: I’m in the middle of a Dino outbreak (coolia) and I raised my nutrients and I’m overdosing silicates with no results yet.


I just had a question: is it normal for my tank to look SO DINGY? The water has this murkey cloudiness to it that I can’t stand.

The walls have the Dino’s and the rocks have the bubbly snot, but my main concern is the overall water quality. It looks gross but my PO4 is only 0.10ppm.

I kind of want to purchase DR Tim’s waste away. Will this help remove the sludges and murkiness? It’s so gross to look at.

Looks like a mixture? Hope this helps

Dinos suck!

youtube.com

 

[Miami Reef]

Looks like a mixture? Hope this helps

Dinos suck!

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It looks like a mix. But the most important one I think I see is Ostreopsis. Those are toxic and will free swim every night.

(I’m new to Dino’s identification so please someone double check me!)

What I would do is follow the steps in this thread:
Phosphates 0.08ppm-0.12ppm
Nitrates 5ppm-10ppm
Run activated carbon.

Change filters often. This is highly recommended if you have the Dino’s I mentioned above: UV sterilizer.

 

[ScottB]

Looks like a mixture? Hope this helps

Dinos suck!

youtube.com

Yup @Miami Reef called it: ostreopsis. Good news is that a properly sized and placed UV will knock them down in a matter of days to a week.

1 watt per 3 gallons
Very slow flow 2-300 gph. Ignore manufacturer instructions on flow.
Ideally, this should be run directly in/out of the display
Keep some steady nutrients

 

[jbeanz24]

For those of you that fought ostreopsis with a UV how long did it take for your tank to be Dino free ? What flow rate did you go with and finally did you run UV 24/7 or just nightly thanks .

 

[ScottB]

For those of you that fought ostreopsis with a UV how long did it take for your tank to be Dino free ? What flow rate did you go with and finally did you run UV 24/7 or just nightly thanks .

I ran 24/7 but you could get away with running after the photoperiod.

1 watt / 3 gallons

Super slow. You have to maximize contact time as these dinos have a protective shell. The actuall speed depends on the size of the unit. Whatever the manufacturer recommends for parasites I would cut in half.

None of our (mature) tanks are ever dino free. I could take a scrape today and find some. But they are being outcompeted for surface area by my healthy film algae, coralline, bacterial film and other microorganisms.

But with nutrients raised and UV blasting the population was under control after a couple weeks. Then you will often see some cyano, followed by some algae. Then after a while that settles down.