Possible Dino Outbreak-Help with ID and treatment

blueberryblue · Apr 19, 2024

Hello all,

About 3 month ago I purchased Chaeto with what appeared to be dinos with brown strings on it and starting dosing Chaetogro which has great results. I tried my best to manually remove all the stringy stuff on the Chaeto but it appears not to have helped as it’s moved to my DT. I have definitely learned my lesson lol. Around this time I also received a rock from a LFS with bubble algae on it that hasn’t really spread much yet but I am working on manually removing it. For about 3 weeks, this brown film has been covering my rocks and some of my corals. There has also been stringy-ness coupled with it on a few spots that look like hair algae. Right now there are small bubbles on top of the film. Attached are some pictures of it including the growth on my glass.

After noticing the problem escalate 2 weeks ago, I lowered my refugium lighting to 12 hours instead of 16 and stopped my weekly 15 percent water changes since I read to increase nutrients. Since then the problem seems to have been slowly increasing or having no effect. Should I stop my skimmer or do anything with my filter socks? I plan on buying a UV light and some Seachem phyto but does anyone have advice for me? My system is overall high nutrient which is why I have been aggressive with my Chaeto nutrient removal, along with trying to increase my coral growth which has been slow for the 1 year I’ve had the system. I also have been struggling with vermetid snails as you might see in my pics so I was trying to feed a bit less the past few months. I’ve never dealt with dinos and mainly only dealt with high nutrient/po4 algae. Any ideas on the species of dinoflagellates or if it’s something else? As of now there is nothing on my sand.
Any help is greatly appreciated!!

Nitrate-6
Nitrite-0
Ammonia-0
Alkalinity- 8.5
Salinity- 1.026

Mechano · Apr 19, 2024

You will need to microscope sample the suspect Dinoflagellate otherwise you will never get an accurate answer.
Also what are your phosphate readings??

But definitely put run some carbon as some Dino’s like ostreopsis or coolia are quite toxic.

thedon986 · Apr 19, 2024

That doesn’t really look like typical dinos. How old is your tank? Having even a cheap microscope (~$40) is totally worth just to see what it is you are really looking at. Do you know you phosphate value, using a dependable test?

blueberryblue · Apr 20, 2024

thedon986 said:
That doesn’t really look like typical dinos. How old is your tank? Having even a cheap microscope (~$40) is totally worth just to see what it is you are really looking at. Do you know you phosphate value, using a dependable test?

Yeah it definitely seems unique. There are lots of micro bubbles around the algae film and the occasional classic snot-like bubble which makes me think it is Dinos. My phosphates have been reading around 0.1 but I know there are much more in the tank that are rapidly being consumed by the algae and my Chaeto that has been growing very quickly. Thanks for the advice, I ordered a UV sterilizer incase it is Dino’s bc the stringy film is starting to cover my corals in high flow like my clove polyps. if I don’t notice an improvement soon ill get a microscope and try to identify the species.

slingfox · Apr 20, 2024

The pictures you posted don't look too bad. When I had dinos the dark brown growgh was close to an inch long and coated 85%+ of my rock surface and sand bed. This killed most of my tester corals as well as almost my entire crew of snails. When I tried to add Trochus snails, they would wiggle around like crazy once they hit the sand bed and all died within minutes / hours due to the toxicity.

Unless your situation gets worse I would not do anything drastic. Adding a UV is fine. I would not stop water changes since it is not clear you really have dinos. If that is mostly algae growing on your rocks you should look into your clean-up crew (fish, snails, crab, urchin) and determine if you need more.