Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[Derek Clifford]

I'd say prorocentrum.
What size is your tank? People report success with uv at 1 watt for every 2 to 3 gallons or stronger. Seen people with 5 gallons per watt or weaker say it didn't work.
Address your P with dosing as recommended in the thread.

Prorocentrum?
It is a redsea reefer 350. I am running triton core 7. I have always had low P. This is driven by the use of rowaphos from day 1 and then SilicateX over time to reduce the silicates. I have since identified the source of the silcates and I have stopped them.
I have been thinking about dosing P, but it was not recommended by the LFS. The recommendation was not in relation to Dinos though, it was in regard to reducing nitrates. They recommended increasing feeding. I recently changed my sump light to a kessil A80 and my algae bed is showing huge growth now, hopefully this will help with the nitrates. The algae bed was very difficult to grow previously.
I have not tried Dino-x or similar. I have not done a black out. I have not used vibrant.
I did not think my UV was going to make an impact at 5w, but I already owned it so I tried it.
Syphoning and reduced lighting has been my main control. I have at times added phyto. I have added various bacteria cultures. I have been adding copepods occasionally.

Based on what I read over the last few months, I need to increase P.

The battle goes on.

 

[mcarroll]

Prorocentrum?

prorocentrum

This is driven by the use of rowaphos from day 1

This (plus any carbon dosing) might have been the foundation of your dino issue....reduce or eliminate

The algae bed was very difficult to grow previously.

Everything is difficult or impossible to grow in the absence of available phosphates.

 

[Beuchat]

Very nice post. Agree on most things.
This piece however seems to go against what most people experience.

Dosing phyto rather encourages dino growth for most people. Nor does it seem to grow dino predators directly. For instance, live phyto is in the range of 5 microns, oxyrrhis marina is 15-30 microns, and the ostreopsis and prorocentrum and large cell amphidinium are all in the 50+ micron ballpark. oxyrris marina is a good predator of amphidinium carterae (small cell amphidinium) but just can't do anything with most of our trouble dinos.

Hi Taricha, thanks for you imputs

Please find attached a vieo of oxyhrris marina predating into a osteropsis ovata specimen:

 

[Fr4nkthet4nk]

think im going to give Vibrant a try, if that doesn't work im going to reboot the tank.

@Fr4nkthet4nk did you turn off the UV while dosing vibrant?

No at all. It was always on.

 

[mcarroll]

@Beuchat – excellent video!

You did not mention whether your Ostreopsis infestation showed any signs of toxicity. My guess based on this reading is that toxins were low or nil.

Grazing in the heterotrophic dinoflagellate Oxyrrhis marina: size selectivity and preference for calcified Emiliania huxleyi cells

I think that article potentially contains the explanation.

During feeding, Oxyrrhis apparently select against toxic cells pretty well – self preservation.

In addition, they feed selectively on large, healthy, fast-growing and dividing cells. As "supplies" run low, they start ignoring low-concentration large cells and begin consuming the most-abundant cells of the next larger size....still individually rejecting toxic cells. They seem unlikely to eradicate anything in using this strategy. And it seems likely that they will avoid a toxic bloom if possible.

If we could get cultures of Oxyrrhis (which is an old-lineage pre-photosynthetic dino) it might be fun to experiment with "dosing" them to compare results with nutrient remediation and to see if combining them has a different effect than either one or the other.

Also, Oxyrrhis is known to be transparent....pinkish in dense cultures. How did you (or they)) get them to show up in the scope like that?

 

[mcarroll]

@Beuchat this Ostreopsis cells look HUGE compared to the Oxy's...seems like they should be about double the Oxy's size......did you get a positive ID on which Ostreopsis?

Harmful Marine Dinoflagellates indicates that O. mascarenensis is remarkable in the genus for it's size – >130µm!!!! ;Wideyed

O. ovata is "normal" with a range around 25µm-50µm....seems inconsistent with the scale of the critter being consumed.

 

[Orangutran]

I'd say prorocentrum.
What size is your tank? People report success with uv at 1 watt for every 2 to 3 gallons or stronger. Seen people with 5 gallons per watt or weaker say it didn't work.

I've been trying to wrap my head around this UV watt per gallon theory, and it doesn't make sense to me. Whether we have a 20 gallon tank, or 200 gallon tank, and both contained the same type of dino, wouldn't both require the same strength UV to neutralize the dino cells? Or is my understanding of how UV works incorrect... come to think of it, is it because smaller UVs are rated for less flow and longer dwell time, thus having the same effectiveness as larger UVs? *shrug*

"What is the End Game?" (from convo with @mcarroll)
Dino-X, bleach, ozone, peroxide, vibrant, metro etc, are all interesting interventions. Some need exploring. I'm not sure this thread is the place for exploring all of them. The main dino thread discusses a lot of them in 4500+ posts (I'm particularly interested in Dino-X vs amphidinium, since that one is harder to remove from sandbed)

Let me try to nudge this thread somewhat closer to topic.

Thesis of this thread is simplicity and patience.
ID your dinos.
Stop additions that fuel dinos.
Dose simple inorganic P & N (and anything else missing) to alleviate nutrient starvation and imbalance. For a time the tank will consume (surprisingly) large amounts of P & N with little visible change. In this time the dinos will grow and multiply with the additional nutrients, but other stuff should too, and eventually outpace dinos.
Selectively kill/remove dino cells. Use activated carbon to reduce toxins.
Soon other organisms should grow, gain a foothold and provide stability that once established will help to keep dinos at bay. Also the system consumption of P & N should return to sane levels as the effects of the dino bloom are processed out biologically.
So what then? what's the End Game?
Haven't really talked about it much here because the thread is mostly about trying to get people past the outbreak phase.
If you've reduced dinos to invisible and are now growing lots of algae that you didn't really want, what happens next?
How much algae should we be growing? This paper lays out the large daily algae production in a reef,

Notice that in a reef that looks coral dominated and algae free, algae production is higher than coral.
Algae generally have Carbon as ~25% of dry weight, so this 3 g of C is 12 g total dry weight per square meter. algae can be anywhere from 70-90%+ water, so this 12g dry weight would be ballpark 50 or 60 grams a day fresh weight of algae in 1 square meter (or two 55gal tanks.)
So if your 55gallon tank grew 30 grams of algae a day every day, would you freak out? Probably so!
But that's what real reefs do.

This is 30 grams of algae material (less actually - I couldn't get it fully dry). Reefs grow this on average every day in the surface area of a 55g tank. And yet on a reef, you never notice it...

The difference, I would argue is grazers. Real healthy reefs have a grazer army scaled to the job. When they don't for some reason, disaster occurs. (See how urchin disease wrecked caribbean reefs)

I submit that if you know all the algae grazers in your tank by name, you ain't got enough. Nor is going out and buying a few tangs going to create balance either. A sensible approach may be to find a heavy lifter or two and then fill the gaps with algae grazers that can reproduce in a reef tank and let their population scale up to the the tank's new healthy level of algae production, let these invisible armies keep your algae in check.
(admittedly, if your livestock is voracious invert predators, this could be a big challenge.)

You'll probably also want to grow some of that algae outside the display through a fuge or scrubber or similar, but if your scrubber is so effective that with minimal grazing, there's no noticeable algae production in the display, then that sounds like you've still got the same problem.
Above all we can't view algae growth as something to be avoided. That way lies madness.

or just run a sterile frag tank and nuke it every few weeks/months when something you don't like gets a foothold.

Those are the only sustainable end games I can see.

This post is gold! I think I need to print this out, and read it everyday to remind myself of the game plan against dino. I am almost 3 weeks into dosing nutrients, and the dinos is somewhat better. I have not scraped my tank in at least a month! Still no algae! Got my toy microscope delivered, just haven't had time to put it to use yet...

 

[Derek Clifford]

Has there been reported success with UV on confirmed Prorocentrum?
I think my next step is increase/dose phosphate and run a higher watt UV.
I have my eye on an internal 24w UV, but could get a bigger one if recommended.
I lost some snails recently, i assume to the dinos.

 

[reeferfoxx]

So what then? what's the End Game?
Haven't really talked about it much here because the thread is mostly about trying to get people past the outbreak phase.
If you've reduced dinos to invisible and are now growing lots of algae that you didn't really want, what happens next?

This really needs to be the emphasis of the discussion. I'll try not to get bitter with my discoveries.

So, N and P dosings helped my tank. Took maybe 3 weeks of regular and consistent dosing to keep parameters at ideal 0.10(po4) and 10(no3). This resulted in "invisible" dinos. However, turf algae followed by a huge bloom of hair algae and cyano quite literally took over the tank. In fact, the large amounts of nutrients cause a couple SPS frags to STN which allowed the hair algae to grow onto the coral.

For the next 4 weeks following the large algae growth, I increased clean up crew, water changes, small vibrant dosing, and manual scrubbing. At this point keeping NO3 stable was another chore on top of the amount of husbandry and hair pulling(my hair). Eventually, the cyano started growing onto the hair algae and my clean up crew no longer found it appetizing. At that point i stopped vibrant dosing thinking it was contributing to the increase of cyano. The smell of organics became strong so I added carbon. For the next 2 weeks, hair algae became worse. My options are limited because of space. Algae turf scrubber?(no) Cheato?(no) What I did next is something dino sufferers should stay away from - GFO. <----do not do it.

I added a small bag of 2 tablespoons worth of GFO and 1/4th cup of GAC to the overflow section of my AIO filter. 4 days later, a mucus film of brown started covering my sandbed. I immediately removed the GFO and GAC, dosed 2.5ml of seachem po4 and now my tank is in disarray. Its now is covered in dino/cyano mix with lots of hair algae. I added another 4 pounds of live rock from the LFS hoping to get more biodiversity. However, that seems to have back fired as the new rock is covered in dinos. Most if not all of my CUC is dead or dying. The smell in the water is getting worse and fish are starting to show stress.

What needs to be addressed at this point is how fragile the ecosystem is, that incorporating any type of nutrient reduction is detrimental. We most likely have to anticipate more coral losses and maybe this route of nutrient increase isn't the right way or isn't the happy outcome we should expect. I hope we can get a better foothold on this because, though I can't do it this week or next week, a reboot will need to happen. I suppose I'm only keeping the tank going for the fish and not the coral at this point. Cheers.

 

[Beardo]

I've been trying to wrap my head around this UV watt per gallon theory, and it doesn't make sense to me. Whether we have a 20 gallon tank, or 200 gallon tank, and both contained the same type of dino, wouldn't both require the same strength UV to neutralize the dino cells? Or is my understanding of how UV works incorrect... come to think of it, is it because smaller UVs are rated for less flow and longer dwell time, thus having the same effectiveness as larger UVs? *shrug*

A small UV unit will impact (kill, damage, sterilize or however it actually works) dino cells at the proper flow rate. The problem arises in how many of the cells are being affected. If dinos are able to propagate at an exponential rate and only a relatively small percentage are being impacted by the UV, the population is going to continue to flourish. You need to impact a large enough population with the UV that the population is no longer able to sustain itself (more are being killed than produced).
The UV needs to be large enough that at the proper flow rate, enough of the dinos are being affected to overcome the propagation rate.
On my 270g tank I was initially running a 57 watt UV (around 5 gallons per watt) and still had a flourishing dino population. Once I installed a 114 watt unit (2.4 gallons per watt) dinos were wiped out in a week. To be clear not all dino species were impacted. Those that freely enter the water column were, in my case this included Ostreopsis, Coolia and Prorocentrum. Both large and small cell amphidinium continued to thrive 3 weeks after the larger unit was installed.

 

[mcarroll]

I've been trying to wrap my head around this UV watt per gallon theory, and it doesn't make sense to me. Whether we have a 20 gallon tank, or 200 gallon tank, and both contained the same type of dino, wouldn't both require the same strength UV to neutralize the dino cells?

You aren't wrong!

The less expensive UV units aren't calibrated in the standard treatment units (mJ/cm2 I think?), so it's pretty much guesswork. @taricha has done some good experiments to work out that rule of thumb and it works in a lot of cases, but it's still just that, a rule of thumb. All UV's do not perform equivalently per watt. Some units expose a greater or lesser volume of water per watt inside the UV reactor so they get a greater or lesser dosage rate per watt. There may be other differences as well.

If I were in the position to need UV I'd get a rated unit if possible...or at least one from a maker you could possibly contact for those details. This allows you to work with a known dosage level.

Lifegard, AquaUV, Aquatic Ecosystem (Emperor/SmartUV) are all good candidates...there are others too...I know I'm forgetting the original....er...hm

 

[Derek Clifford]

To add to the ID of Prorocentrum from the sandbed.
Is this a different form of Dino that I took from a scraping of the glass? A slight green film on the glass. showed as green on the microscope slide. It is much smaller than the prorocentrum.

80x mag, at normal speed:


300x mag, at normal speed:


600x mag, at normal speed:

 

[TripleDogDareYah]

Manual removal worked for me. Continual manual removal... like an hour a day getting every speck... Painstaking.

The other thing is, something started eating the dinos. Some fauna... no idea which one it was but it makes sense as there is something out there in the ocean that will eat dinos or the oceans would be covered with it .

 

[taricha]

Hi Taricha, thanks for you imputs

Please find attached a vieo of oxyhrris marina predating into a osteropsis ovata specimen:

@Beuchat – excellent video!

You did not mention whether your Ostreopsis infestation showed any signs of toxicity. My guess based on this reading is that toxins were low or nil.

Grazing in the heterotrophic dinoflagellate Oxyrrhis marina: size selectivity and preference for calcified Emiliania huxleyi cells

I think that article potentially contains the explanation.

During feeding, Oxyrrhis apparently select against toxic cells pretty well – self preservation.

In addition, they feed selectively on large, healthy, fast-growing and dividing cells. As "supplies" run low, they start ignoring low-concentration large cells and begin consuming the most-abundant cells of the next larger size....still individually rejecting toxic cells. They seem unlikely to eradicate anything in using this strategy. And it seems likely that they will avoid a toxic bloom if possible.

If we could get cultures of Oxyrrhis (which is an old-lineage pre-photosynthetic dino) it might be fun to experiment with "dosing" them to compare results with nutrient remediation and to see if combining them has a different effect than either one or the other.

@Beuchat this Ostreopsis cells look HUGE compared to the Oxy's...seems like they should be about double the Oxy's size......did you get a positive ID on which Ostreopsis?

Harmful Marine Dinoflagellates indicates that O. mascarenensis is remarkable in the genus for it's size – >130µm!!!! ;Wideyed

O. ovata is "normal" with a range around 25µm-50µm....seems inconsistent with the scale of the critter being consumed.

Trying to figure out what we're seeing....
The same youtube user posted a couple other videos on the same day (maybe same system).
This one shows similar concentration of the tiny zooming predators and a clear (motionless) Ostreopsis Cell. The tiny zooming guys are indifferent to the cell.


This video shows a much lower concentration of the tiny zooming predators but more Ostreopsis and Prorocentrum cells. Their sizes are typical.


Here is clear video from Gregg Mendez (user Pants - site: algaeid.com) of Oxyrrhis Marina ingesting some small cell amphidinium.
The mode of feeding is engulfing the entire cell. It spins around the cell to force it into being ingested. You can see similar prey capture technique in lots of these tiny protists, like ciliates, etc. Oxyrrhis (and many heterotrophic protists) may be transparent, but the cell outlines and contour structures are easy to pick out in a scope.


This paper is a jaw-dropper: Feeding by heterotrophic protists on the toxic dinoflagellate Ostreopsis cf. ovata

As they say "The growth dynamics of O. cf. ovata have been extensively investigated, but data regarding the potential predators of this toxic dinoflagellate are lacking; in particular, no studies of heterotrophic protistan grazers have been conducted." No kidding.

Somehow they got all of these heterotrophic dinos to feed on large quantities of Ostreopsis - and all (but one) by engulfment. Also that's a huge Oxyrrhis marina, guess it was ambitious. I was obviously wrong that ingestion of ostis by oxyrrhis is excluded by size alone. Dude got hungry.

Here's the part that blows my mind. "Ostreopsis cf. ovata supported positive growth of only two of the investigated HTDs, namely, Gyrodinium moestrupii and Polykrikos kofoidii." Every other paper I've seen showed grazers failing to grow when their diet had too much toxic dino. Some even went so far as to say nothing grows on a diet of toxic dinos. They hypothesize that since these species normally munch on some toxic dinos, they likely have mechanisms to handle the toxins.
Caveats:
1. The Ostreopsis cell form was not our normal sesame seed shape, and seems a little smaller than ours.
2. They grew Ostreopsis in a very rich (f/2) media. Other papers point out that ostis grown in rich media have important differences from those grown in settings typical of seawater.
3. The richer growth media could explain difference in cell size (smaller to my eye), shape (rounder), and may make the strain less toxic, and perhaps more nutritious than ostis out of the ocean or our tanks.
4. they did not test for toxins in any of the cultures, to confirm they had a toxic strain of ostreopsis. There are reported non-toxic strains, and some that can be non-toxic under certain growth conditions.

All that aside, some hobbyist needs to get us some of those Polykrikos kofoidii. They look like beasts.

The other thing is, something started eating the dinos. Some fauna... no idea which one it was but it makes sense as there is something out there in the ocean that will eat dinos or the oceans would be covered with it .

I agree predation matters in our systems. Unfortunately there are sections of the mediterranean coast that have yearly huge ostreopsis blooms. Because there are times and places in the ocean where nothing can or will eat them, we are good at recreating this situation in our tanks.

Anyway, back to the original videos. All things considered, I think the small zooming predators may be something other than oxyrrhis marina, and I think they are consuming food particles or other organisms at the site of the death of that cell. They don't seem to have any mechanism to break off "bites" of armored ostreopsis, engulfment seems to be their game.

That was a fun rabbithole to go down.

 

[taricha]

To add to the ID of Prorocentrum from the sandbed.
Is this a different form of Dino that I took from a scraping of the glass? A slight green film on the glass. showed as green on the microscope slide. It is much smaller than the prorocentrum.

I want to say small cell amphidinium, but man those are fast. could also be tiny fast zooming dinos like what Jason has seen is his tanks, or not all that dissimilar from tetraselmis or a rhodomonas / cryptomonas.
Which is another way of saying I don't know, but things that swim that fast are often hunters (heterotrophs) and often cycle out on their own once food declines.

update us on how that progresses. I'd focus on your prorocentrum for now.

 

[Orangutran]

Ok I finally got a chance to put the (toy) microscope to use, not sure if the quality is good enough for an ID? (it was near impossible to focus with the dial that flexes the entire unit)

Edit: shoot, you gotta click on the image linked to flickr to make the video work. Sorry.





Thanks in advance!

 

[Derek Clifford]

I want to say small cell amphidinium, but man those are fast. could also be tiny fast zooming dinos like what Jason has seen is his tanks, or not all that dissimilar from tetraselmis or a rhodomonas / cryptomonas.
Which is another way of saying I don't know, but things that swim that fast are often hunters (heterotrophs) and often cycle out on their own once food declines.

update us on how that progresses. I'd focus on your prorocentrum for now.

Thanks for the reply. The tiny fast ones were taken from the glass, which is easily cleaned off. There was just a moment of panic when I thought the system was doomed with another type.
I will be buying the UV later today. I have settled with the V2 vectron. I just need to decide on the 400 or 600 version. 18w or 24w. The answer seems obvious to be the higher watt but I need to check the physical dimensions.

 

[Derek Clifford]

or not all that dissimilar from tetraselmis or a rhodomonas / cryptomonas.

I think you got it with tetraselmis. A quick google of images/description/videos seem to be a match.

 

[taricha]

I've been trying to wrap my head around this UV watt per gallon theory, and it doesn't make sense to me. Whether we have a 20 gallon tank, or 200 gallon tank, and both contained the same type of dino, wouldn't both require the same strength UV to neutralize the dino cells?

Like mcarroll said, it's a rule of thumb that seems to work ok.
also see my post #653 from this thread...
"...I did a test once with ostreopsis - poured them through a 24W UV (the pour was slower flow than normal operation) to see if it was a one-trip kill, in which case the only issue would be getting the dinos to go through. The ostis were still swimming happily immediately after as well as 24 hours later. It's only one very unscientific test, but I suspect this means the damage is done by repeated accumulated oxidative stress from multiple trips through the UV..."

Ok I finally got a chance to put the (toy) microscope to use, not sure if the quality is good enough for an ID? (it was near impossible to focus with the dial that flexes the entire unit)

Edit: shoot, you gotta click on the image linked to flickr to make the video work. Sorry.
Thanks in advance!

I see pic, but if there's a video I can't figure out how to get to it.

 

[Orangutran]

I see pic, but if there's a video I can't figure out how to get to it.

Does it work if you click on the image? It should take you to flickr, and the video works there. Otherwise, I will upload to youtube..

Thanks.