Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[Jose Mayo]

Looking for the other way ... the imbalance that favors the dinoflagellate can be in the silicate deficiency and not in the phosphate.

When GFO is run to reduce phosphate, it also reduces silicate.

Benthic diatom produce allelochemicals that inhibit benthic dinoflagellates, perhaps the imbalance that promotes dinoflagellate bloom is related to the suppression of diatomaceous by limiting silicate, not by phosphate:

Allelopathic effects of diatom filtrates on the toxic benthic dinoflagellate Ostreopsis cf. ovata

Possible "remediation"? Dosing sodium silicate, as taught by @Randy Holmes-Farley :

Silica In Reef Aquariums - By Randy Holmes-farley, Ph.D.

Best regards

 

[mcarroll]

@Derek Clifford Cyano is just a phase of "uglies" and doesn't usually last too long in most cases. Mostly it's a sign of things turning back to your favor.

If you aren't blasting your sand and rocks and siphoning as much crud as you can, then do as much of that as you can to help out your CUC.

Do you notice your current CUC (pods, snails, everything) being dead or lethargic? A lot of times the CUC takes a serious hit during a dino bloom, so beef them up if you think it's necessary. Too little CUC is not great. If you aren't running activated carbon, I would start. It's very good at removing dino toxins (related to palytoxin) so until there's no sign of them anymore, it's not a bad idea. I usually run 1/4 dose and change 4x as often to make sure it stays fresh.

 

[mcarroll]

@Jose Mayo taking advantage of diatoms and other algae has come up now and again as a potential remediation tool. I think a few folks might even have experimented with diatoms (@reeferfoxx?), but it was outside the scope of this thread if I recall correctly.

Here's one ref from July....Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

@taricha has experimented quite a bit with macroalgae, although I'm not sure with the types you mentioned. Interestingly, he's gotten positive effects with chaeto...interesting because I've read (separately) that chaeto will host much much higher densities of dino's than other common macro's.

So whatever benefits chaeto is providing in these experiments does not seem like it would be from an allelopathic response. Interesting!

You might also be interested in some of the articles I've collected around Dinoflagellates and Nutrients (among other things).

 

[Jose Mayo]

@mcarroll Yes, I think maybe a good script is to observe the proportions in which these microorganisms present themselves in a balanced natural environment and, from there, try to reach those proportions in our aquariums ... Sometimes, when we try to correct some parameter, it occurs unbalance another, beyond what is necessary. It seems to me that it occurs with silicate, which is also removed by the GFO when it is desired to remove phosphate, but by also removing silicates, we are limiting the growth of diatoms and favoring other organisms that the diatoms limited.

It's my hypothesis, in this case.

Studies like this may prove to be useful, to later define a target:

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1679-87592015000300239

Best regards

 

[chefjpaul]

@mcarroll Yes, I think maybe a good script is to observe the proportions in which these microorganisms present themselves in a balanced natural environment and, from there, try to reach those proportions in our aquariums ... Sometimes, when we try to correct some parameter, it occurs unbalance another, beyond what is necessary. It seems to me that it occurs with silicate, which is also removed by the GFO when it is desired to remove phosphate, but by also removing silicates, we are limiting the growth of diatoms and favoring other organisms that the diatoms limited.

It's my hypothesis, in this case.

Studies like this may prove to be useful, to later define a target:

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1679-87592015000300239

Best regards

What is a "balanced natural environment
Regarding an aquarium?
Also, what about those that don't use GFO, or silicate removing media etc.,
Yet still get an outbreak?

 

[Jose Mayo]

What is a "balanced natural environment
Regarding an aquarium?
Also, what about those that don't use GFO, or silicate removing media etc.,
Yet still get an outbreak?

There is no causeless phenomenon, which is sometimes difficult to identify the cause.

What I bring here is just a hypothesis.

Best Regards

 

[taricha]

Dosing Si to shift a tank away from dinos towards diatoms had been talked about several times and tried a few times. I think the results of these tests have been inconclusive. Would love to see it done in more detail.

Regarding macroalgae, I've found it crowds out non-toxic sand dwelling dinos (amphidinium) pretty well, but not so much for toxic dinos.

 

[Jose Mayo]

Dosing Si to shift a tank away from dinos towards diatoms had been talked about several times and tried a few times. I think the results of these tests have been inconclusive. Would love to see it done in more detail.

Regarding macroalgae, I've found it crowds out non-toxic sand dwelling dinos (amphidinium) pretty well, but not so much for toxic dinos.

Perhaps the dosage of Si + the correct species of diatoms (P. complanatoides and / or Navicula sp.), as is done with bacterial species, has not been attempted.

Best regards

 

[reeferfoxx]

I think a few folks might even have experimented with diatoms (@reeferfoxx?),

Not sure I can give much insight into this. I did add a few pieces of cured "live rock" that did have a few large Foraminifera(forams) growing. I've yet to do much scoping into recent growths as I haven't visually seen any dino growth lately. However, I do recall some diatoms in old samples I took. My approach was a little out of this threads norm. I let the big 3(ca, alk, mag) drop without dosing for more than a month. Alk went from 8.5dkh to 6.6dkh in that time. Doing this sort of put a pause on any coral nutrient uptake. With removal of all export media(bio-media) I left only the skimmer and a small UV. Upped feedings from once a day to twice a day with no water changes. This wasn't exactly on purpose but thinking about it in perspective this allowed nutrients to rebalance naturally without large nutrient swings. In this time I went through 3 possibly 4 different cycles of dino specie. Now I see more cyano but not like i've experienced in the past and alkalinity is back up to 8dkh without adverse reaction but with positive coral growth and response. No chaeto was used.

 

[taricha]

Perhaps the dosage of Si + the correct species of diatoms (P. complanatoides and / or Navicula sp.), as is done with bacterial species, has not been attempted.

Best regards

Yes. Quite true. People haven't tried adding particular diatoms.
However, navicula does show up in tanks regularly, Proschkinia I haven't seen in a tank sample before.

So someone could simply confirm Navicula presence, then proceed with dosing Si to experiment.

 

[Jose Mayo]

Yes. Quite true. People haven't tried adding particular diatoms.
However, navicula does show up in tanks regularly, Proschkinia I haven't seen in a tank sample before.

So someone could simply confirm Navicula presence, then proceed with dosing Si to experiment.

I thought something more practical, similar to Vibrant but with selected diatoms, instead of bacteria ... so the presence of the correct diatom would be guaranteed and then, yes, dose Si.

 

[rtparty]

If you read my other posts on amphidinium, then you've got a decent idea what you're dealing with. Worst thing about them is no easy way for direct cell removal/killing. Best thing about them is generally low toxicity and staying in the sand bed allows for patience and grazer pods/ciliates/snails etc to help with them.

Make the fish happy. You can work around it. (Also different foods have different N/P ratios, you might switch some foods to target tank nutrient needs) I'd also strongly consider slapping a ball of chaeto on the sand at the site of outbreak. You can easily pull it later when the brown subsides.


It does seem likely that this is also amphidinium, but can you get a video of movement? Or check the vids on algaeid.com and compare.

Well, these are starting to really take over my sand and will soon be around my corals. Upping phosphate doesn't seem to be working and hair algae is really starting to take off. The increased CUC hasn't seemed to help in this regard.

I am heading to the LFS for some chaeto and hopefully an urchin.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

@mcarroll and @reeferfoxx
So can you explain to me your thoughts on the need to to precisely ID the dino or diatom ect strain in over all systemic treatment.
I'm coming in with an open mind here , but I will warn I'm quite skeptical. (Nature of this beast )

I do understand the impact of nutrient limitation and how an organism can and does exploit that , systemically and locally (see cyano causality thread ).

And for those who are unfamiliar, Mc , Foxx and I are good friends and have together successfully treated many a members tanks together.

Id like all and anyone to chime in as well.


My observations have been, quite simply , regardless of the "pest" , the "cure " is always pretty much the same no it matter how it is applied.

So I'm kinda putting forward that for most folks and the average reefer , specifics are not needed as a generalist approach most often works.


Thoughts ?

 

[rtparty]

@mcarroll and @reeferfoxx
So can you explain to me your thoughts on the need to to precisely ID the dino or diatom ect strain in over all systemic treatment.
I'm coming in with an open mind here , but I will warn I'm quite skeptical. (Nature of this beast )

I do understand the impact of nutrient limitation and how an organism can and does exploit that , systemically and locally (see cyano causality thread ).

And for those who are unfamiliar, Mc , Foxx and I are good friends and have together successfully treated many a members tanks together.

Id like all and anyone to chime in as well.


My observations have been, quite simply , regardless of the "pest" , the "cure " is always pretty much the same no it matter how it is applied.

So I'm kinda putting forward that for most folks and the average reefer , specifics are not needed as a generalist approach most often works.


Thoughts ?

I can say that for my two strains, treatment has been totally different. UV killed Ostreopsis basically over night and it's never returned. This new stuff (Amphi- something) doesn't care about UV at all.

Raising nutrients seemed to spur on Ostreopsis after initially helping. This is where UV is needed to actually kill them off.

Raising nutrients is supposed to help with this new strain of mine and so far it's not doing a thing but feeding my hair algae like crazy. I had no hair algae during my chrysophytes or cyano stage. Now I have cyano, GHA and dinos! No chrysophytes though. I think I prefer chrysophytes at this point. They weren't fast spreading and didn't seem to bother anything.

While at the LFS I'm going to ask for a small piece of fully mature live rock from his established tank(s).

 

[sfin52]

Adding other organisms is a good idea.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Adding other organisms is a good idea.

I agree.

I can say that for my two strains, treatment has been totally different. UV killed Ostreopsis basically over night and it's never returned. This new stuff (Amphi- something) doesn't care about UV at all.

Raising nutrients seemed to spur on Ostreopsis after initially helping. This is where UV is needed to actually kill them off.

Raising nutrients is supposed to help with this new strain of mine and so far it's not doing a thing but feeding my hair algae like crazy. I had no hair algae during my chrysophytes or cyano stage. Now I have cyano, GHA and dinos! No chrysophytes though. I think I prefer chrysophytes at this point. They weren't fast spreading and didn't seem to bother anything.

While at the LFS I'm going to ask for a small piece of fully mature live rock from his established tank(s).

Interesting.

After long long discussions , everything including salts can spur growth depending on the organism.

I'm HUGE on microfauna , and belive that quite a bit of the ugly phase is the depletion of some elements by theses guys given some of the other conditions are right. Similar to diatoms.

IMO , it's what explains the old reef wisdom that many of these will cycle through tank over time. It's like a pod bloom, lots of food makes a bloom, then they use up the resource.

It's why when I see stuff I just observe.

 

[reeferfoxx]

@mcarroll and @reeferfoxx
So can you explain to me your thoughts on the need to to precisely ID the dino or diatom ect strain in over all systemic treatment.
I'm coming in with an open mind here , but I will warn I'm quite skeptical. (Nature of this beast )

I do understand the impact of nutrient limitation and how an organism can and does exploit that , systemically and locally (see cyano causality thread ).

And for those who are unfamiliar, Mc , Foxx and I are good friends and have together successfully treated many a members tanks together.

Id like all and anyone to chime in as well.


My observations have been, quite simply , regardless of the "pest" , the "cure " is always pretty much the same no it matter how it is applied.

So I'm kinda putting forward that for most folks and the average reefer , specifics are not needed as a generalist approach most often works.


Thoughts ?

I'll start by saying that overall the method to getting rid of dinos seems to be the same. However, like @rtparty stated, UV will impact some species more so than others. We've found that several strains can seem to disappear or disperse when lights are out. With that, some disperse into the water column and some sink into the sand bed. Also, some species are more toxic compared to others. Getting an ID will help with knowing what's to come.

Saturating your tank with the suggested nutrients and keeping it stable can impact or resume the tank maturity process. What some tanks experience is large hair algae outbreaks. So, for example my first run of dinos weren't ID'd specifically but died off with large amounts of nutrients quite easily. This resulted in large amounts of GHA which my tank never cycled through. Now, if my plan of action included adding large amounts of snails or clean up crew to the mix, I could have potentially pushed them to their death creating even more nutrient saturation. In fact, I think I witnessed a little bit of that was astrea snails dying off.

Eventually, and you know this, my tank was flourishing with hair algae and now a new strain of dinos. Actually ID'ing the new strain helped me understand that this form of dinos has a relationship with hair algae. And that is where fighting this not gets frustrating but fascinating at the same time. So at this point my tank is flourishing with hair algae and dinos that show a symbiotic relationship to hair algae. Not to mention, this form also likes to disperse into the sandbed at night. So for me, it didn't make sense to keep saturating the tank with nutrients as the algae would continue to grow and the dinos would get its nutrients from the algae. Also, another point I forgot to mention is some strains are N fixers, some P fixers, and then some are N and P. So knowing that would help you with knowing which nutrient needs to be focused on.

@taricha Showed a video and some pics of a tiny invert munching away on dinos. This gave me the idea that with my strain I might need a more of a detritus build up. We know that nutrients help build micro organisms that help compete but if we can target that type and cyano competitors, why not detritus competitors? If in fact my spur of hair algae was a response to maturing and my dinos liked hair algae, my best route would be to cycle through hair algae by letting it starve itself and let detritus build up for pods and inverts. That is what i've done and it worked great for me. In fact, at night I can see 1mm sized inverts that don't quite look like amphipods. However, this route has allowed a smaller and less invasive species of dinos.

After the first two run ins with dinos and figuring out what works for my tank, a new form of dinos popped up. However, this form was tiny, fast moving, and a predator. Yet, it only formed on the glass. So, the existing snails in my tank didn't actually clean up the glass walls. For me that is ok because my cherub pygmy angel did like picking at them. I haven't seen any adverse reactions to that either. So, I let this new strain of dinos do its thing. I cleaned the glass manually and after a couple weeks, I'm not seeing any more. Knock on wood, i might be done with this as I'm not finding anymore dinos. Only cyano.

ID'ing is beneficial. I hope this helps.

 

[Beardo]

@mcarroll and @reeferfoxx
So can you explain to me your thoughts on the need to to precisely ID the dino or diatom ect strain in over all systemic treatment.
I'm coming in with an open mind here , but I will warn I'm quite skeptical. (Nature of this beast )

I do understand the impact of nutrient limitation and how an organism can and does exploit that , systemically and locally (see cyano causality thread ).

And for those who are unfamiliar, Mc , Foxx and I are good friends and have together successfully treated many a members tanks together.

Id like all and anyone to chime in as well.


My observations have been, quite simply , regardless of the "pest" , the "cure " is always pretty much the same no it matter how it is applied.

So I'm kinda putting forward that for most folks and the average reefer , specifics are not needed as a generalist approach most often works.


Thoughts ?

With dinos specifically, identification can help with targeted treatment. As rtparty was saying species such as Ostreopsis, Coolia and Prorocentrum have a greater propensity for entering the water column and can be targeted with a properly sized UV, while species such as amphidinium, don't readily enter the water column and installing a UV for treatment isn't going to have much effect.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

With dinos specifically, identification can help with targeted treatment. As rtparty was saying species such as Ostreopsis, Coolia and Prorocentrum have a greater propensity for entering the water column and can be targeted with a properly sized UV, while species such as amphidinium, don't readily enter the water column and installing a UV for treatment isn't going to have much effect.

However , UV is like saying led. Or fruit.

How big is the UV dose ?
How low is the flow thorough for "contact time"?
Are you using a turkey Baster during treatment to make sure they are floating in the water colum ?
Or just adding UV to the system in hopes it works?

So UV may not actually be the best choice to oxidize the wc and the system , and a more general treatment may be more advisable to remove biomass of an organisim Scochteate oxidiser, ozone , peroxide , bleach etc.

A canister with heavy floss or micron filteres is also advised , but constant cleaning of the unit is needed and you must make sure the tank or stirred up to make sure stuff gets to the canister.
I'd also add that UV actually puts the elements like silicate/ nutints back into the system so a gfo actually should be run if silicates are high. A canister completey removes them from the system Esp if gfo or boxer is used in it.
If the can has UV. Bonus.

So again, those I just listed are also a cure /treatment for cyano and diatoms and actually , ick.

 

[reeferfoxx]

How big is the UV dose ?

As big as you can fit.

How low is the flow thorough for "contact time"?

Slow or low flow for longest contact period.

Are you using a turkey Baster during treatment to make sure they are floating in the water colum ?

Yes.

Or just adding UV to the system in hopes it works?

Yes. There is a good chance there is more than one specie during an outbreak.

So UV may not actually be the best choice to oxidize the wc and the system , and a more general treatment may be more advisable to remove biomass of an organisim Scochteate oxidiser, ozone , peroxide , bleach etc.

Chemical oxidizers might have more negative impact on micro organisms more so than dinos. Plus dinos have 3 stages. Encyst stage - when conditions aren't fair they protect themselves until conditions fair. Free swimming stage - conditions are just right. Mucus stage - We were free swimming but food is limited, I'm p'd off and will trap any organism that falls into the trap.

A canister completey removes them from the system Esp if gfo or boxer is used in it.
If the can has UV. Bonus.

Julian Sprung once said that a crack in a rock is a refugium.