How I beat dinos: an ode to Brandon 429 work thread

[Gregg @ ADP]

@brandon429 asked for people to start dino elimination work threads, so here is my submission.

Let me start off with a confession…I am so old, I remember when there was no such thing as a dino bloom in a reef tank.

A lot of newer reefers probably can’t even imagine what it was like to set up a reef tank, have a few diatoms show up, then some bryopsis, then you were off and running. Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of nuisance algae issues, but they all seemed so beatable…often easily.

In ecology, generally speaking, unicellular organisms are easy come/easy go, as they often lack the staying power to outlast more complex organisms. But our reefing ‘advancements’ opened up the door for the those organisms by removing both the organisms that would consume or outcompete them as well as the matter required to maintain those more complex organisms.

I set up a reef tank in my classroom that I wanted to be ecosystem-centered, so I laid out some ground rules for myself:

1) no unnatural filtration (skimmers, socks, chemical media, reactors, sterilizers, etc etc).

2) no treatments, medications, or quarantine (if it is found in nature, it will be found in my reef)

3) no water changes

I set the tank up in August ‘23. Spoiler alert: the dinos definitely showed up. Follow along to see how I responded but still stuck to the rules I made for the tank.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

IIRC, Brandon’s request was for build/tank examples where dinos were beaten back without a subsequent bloom of some other nuisance algae.

In my experience, if we eliminate dinos with say, a blackout, there is almost invariably a cyano bloom. Then, depending on measures taken, one can get into a rut of having to decide between dinos and cyano. If we’re lucky, some GHA shows up, because that can at least be removed without being back nearly 100% by the next day like dinos and cyano.

So how does one:
a) eliminate dinos
b) avoid the blowback bloom of another nuisance algae, and…
c) do it without water changes, filtration, or treatment?

When I set the tank up, it had been set up for awhile, but I had it torn down for about 4 months before setting it up. Unfortunately, I had to leave all of my live rock in the classroom for a month dry. So while I didn’t set up a tank with dry rock, it was as close as you could get.

Here is the tank in October. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a ton of pics of it back then, so I don’t have many of the dino or bryopsis episodes. But as you can see, it’s pretty well covered with dinos:

Here are the offenders under the scope, Ostreopsis:

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Today, the tank looks like this:

How did I pull this off without a single water change, without filtration, and without treatment?

Follow along to see my ecological approach that not only got rid of nuisance algae, but helped create a reef that to this point has had nearly zero mortality of fish, coral, and inverts.

 

[brandon429]

I’m glad to see it! That’s a large tank and it’s a real challenge to work those, high order challenge for sure

 

[thrillreefer]

I like the nature-first ecosystem approach. But why no water changes? Water changes are the most natural part of the ocean.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

I like the nature-first ecosystem approach. But why no water changes? Water changes are the most natural part of the ocean.

True. It’s a challenge.

I’m taking a ‘mind over matter’ approach, as in trying to think of ways to manage the matter in the tank without resorting to physically removing it.

The water is simply the medium the matter is in. If the matter in the tank can be managed, gasses exchanged properly, and then elements replaced as used up, then in theory the water should be able to stay.

 

[taricha]

I set the tank up in August ‘23. Spoiler alert: the dinos definitely showed up.

Here is the tank in October. ...it’s pretty well covered with dinos:

Today [Feb], the tank looks like this:

Whatever else you did, your discipline and patience are to be commended.

Lots of people hypothesize about what might be different in the hobby now vs a couple of decades ago to cause nuisances (dinos) to be more prevalent. I buy some of these ideas more than others. But one thing I would say is different is a much shorter hobbyist expectation now for how long this stuff takes.

 

[Garf]

Whatever else you did, your discipline and patience are to be commended.

Lots of people hypothesize about what might be different in the hobby now vs a couple of decades ago to cause nuisances (dinos) to be more prevalent. I buy some of these ideas more than others. But one thing I would say is different is a much shorter hobbyist expectation now for how long this stuff takes.

Of course there is always the possibility that shame or the risk of ridicule prevented folks from talking about it, I suppose.

 

[brandon429]

What are the repeating steps others can use for the results, transmittal of results to others is the hardest thing in reefing

 

[brandon429]

I’m keen to read about controls for tanks that size too because rip cleans are not feasible at that gallonage so there’s no cheating our way clean. That has to be legit guided with bioartistry

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

I’m keen to read about controls for tanks that size too because rip cleans are not feasible at that gallonage so there’s no cheating our way clean. That has to be legit guided with bioartistry

I disagree that rip cleans are not feasible on large tanks. I’ve done many. It’s about having a system and procedure in place

We’ve talked before about how I do them before on big tanks:

1) set up large plastic bins, drain just tank water into them (I use 1” flex PVC to make it go quickly)
2) as bins fill up, remove corals and add to bins
3) drain water down to last few inches, then catch fish/inverts
4) using water in tank, brush, rinse, and remove live rock
5) have a 5g bucket of tank water for final rock rinse
6) remaining water and sand get vigorously stirred up
7) all sand is then pushed into one corner…try to flush material out of the sand as it is moved
8) the remaining water should be a soup of water matter is in the tank -> remove the rest of the water
9) add rock and aquascape, level sand bed
10) pump the water back in
11) add animals
12) add new water for the ~5% removed
13) done

I’ve done 500-700g tanks in as little as 3 hours.

All that said, I don’t think a rip clean is effective for dinos, because the conditions that typically encourage their blooms won’t change with the rip. However, a good rip + black-out + other bio controls would definitely eliminate them.

 

[brandon429]

Nice call, a matter of will for sure. Given the right incentive anyone can run a rc. Excellent summary. How do you prevent sand stirring from harming animals in some cases, some homes present as deadly in that phase

I guess even the dirtiest tank could begin some cleanup work in the sand long before it’s moved about in the display, they don’t have to start from a heavily dirty condition for safety

 

[Uncle99]

All we ever do for Dino’s is:
A) put nutrients back in check.
B) change filters daily before lights on.
C) run UV at night.
D) dose a small amount of phyto and bacteria daily.

This process takes about 1-2 months to fully complete.

A -creates the right environment for good guy algaes.
B and C -lower the dino population.
D- feeds the good guys to increase population.

At one point during the 1-2 months, good guys outcompete the bads and sand goes white ish rocks go clean.

As long as A remains in check, they don’t return.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

*DISCLAIMER*

I do a lot of things that most other reefers do not want to do, and many people probably shouldn’t do. But with my reefs, I try to stay true to the ecosystem, because I want ecosystem results.

I have two fundamental ecology philosophies that shape how I reef:

1) There are no good guys or bad guys. There is only a game with players playing the game.

2) Everything is food for something.

It seems to me that the primary dino we are dealing with is Ostreopsis, probably O. ovata. These are known to contain harmful palytoxins, and many of our typical CUC animals typically abound the dinos.

That said, in nature, there is resistance of the toxins by some consumers. I mean, there would have to be, right? Anecdotally, I have seen urchins graze on Ostreopsis, and have seen many cases where snails were grazing them as well. Interestingly (and again, this in anecdotal), I have seen snails such as Astrea and turbo grazers consuming Ostreopsis, and eventually, several snails end up lying down on the sand in some sort of distress, but there are still a couple of snails that just keep powering through the dinos with no ill effect. Can resistance be developed?

However, the primary consumer of dinos is copepods. There is some sci-lit out there showing that several copepod species have extremely high resistance to the toxins in O. ovata.

I went through a short cycle of introducing as many ‘pods’ as I could to a macro-algae tank that I would eventually hook in-line with the main system. During this time, I collected pods (cope and amphi) out of several reef tank refugia, bought some pods, and then the icing on the cake came when I added mariculture live rock shipped submerged from Florida. Populations of all the pods took off in this macro-algae tank, observable with both magnifying glass and algae scrapes viewed under a microscope.

At this point, the dinos in the main system were starting to really take off, so I patched the macro-algae tank inline to the main system (I still had t added macro-algae).

The dinos were beginning to form strands, and within a week, those strands viewed under a scope were showing decent numbers of copepods as well.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Nice call, a matter of will for sure. Given the right incentive anyone can run a rc. Excellent summary. How do you prevent sand stirring from harming animals in some cases, some homes present as deadly in that phase

I guess even the dirtiest tank could begin some cleanup work in the sand long before it’s moved about in the display, they don’t have to start from a heavily dirty condition for safety

I’ve never sensed that there was a significant release of toxins or H2S to actually harm anything. Remember, before the sand is ever touched, all animals and rock are removed from the tank. All that is in the tank is the sand bed and a few inches of water.

Even a lot of the benthic organisms seem to do OK with this…they get piled up in the sand pile, while the junk is left in the remaining water.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

I should also add the timeline post set-up for some context:

Tank started 8/23:
1) diatoms showed up w/in a week
2) dinos showed up a few weeks later
3) Bryposis showed up a couple of weeks later, grew like crazy, and eliminated the dinos
4) after a couple of weeks, I harvested most of the Bryopsis and then added snails, urchin, orange-shoulder tang, etc to finish the rest off
5) dino bloom this thread is focused on began a week or so later

The 2nd dino bloom was where everything was covered

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Now we have established populations of several pods…at least one of them is being found in the dino strands in under the scope.

So, we have at least one consumer of dinos present. That’s a start. Will one be enough?

Observe this pic again:

See that big guy in the middle? That is a ciliate, probably Euplotes (thanks to @ISpeakForTheSeas for help on the ID). These are known to consume dinos…in fact, I observed what appeared to be a ciliate consuming a dino (I don’t use cover slips when looking at this stuff under the scope, b/c I want to observe natural behaviors).

OK, now we have 2 known dino consumers. The pieces of the puzzle are coming together.

 

[Idech]

All we ever do for Dino’s is:
A) put nutrients back in check.
B) change filters daily before lights on.
C) run UV at night.
D) dose a small amount of phyto and bacteria daily.

This process takes about 1-2 months to fully complete.

A -creates the right environment for good guy algaes.
B and C -lower the dino population.
D- feeds the good guys to increase population.

At one point during the 1-2 months, good guys outcompete the bads and sand goes white ish rocks go clean.

As long as A remains in check, they don’t return.

Some dino types don’t respond to UV. You’ve been lucky enough not to have those in your tank.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

As is the case in a natural ecosystem, 1 or 2 consumers will typically not control a population. It takes more than that, but for now, let’s focus on direct consumption of dinos.

We have ID’d copepods and ciliates so far. But I also added a fair amount of ocean live rock. What else could have come in? There are some organisms that have been known to ingest dinos and incorporate them as symbionts rather than consume them. How many things like forams or radiolarians came in with the rock? I’m going to have to start doing some real scope work to find out, but it’s unlikely that I put rock and ocean water into my system and didn’t get any.

What about sponges? I’m seeing pretty good sponge growth in the system. Are they consuming dinos?

 

[Uncle99]

Some dino types don’t respond to UV. You’ve been lucky enough not to have those in your tank.

True.