2nd opinion wanted on nuisance growth (as viewed under magnification)

[sfin52]

In my system I had to dose 5mil a day for a solid week before getting any results. Dino will consume loads of phosphates you may want to consider dosing 2x a day. Just my experience.

 

[Cnidoblast]

To dose nitrogen you could probllay get away with using hydroponics grade urea - it's cheap and not illegal in any country

 

[wopadobop]

Just feed your tankfrozen food. No need to dose really. I have a question for you as i believe i may be dealing with sort of the same thing. Recently I’ve had this “ chicken fat” type of consistency blonde colored stuff cropping up. Is that what this looked like in the tank? When you blew it off did it break up really easy?

 

[wopadobop]

 

[Justin Ostafew]

Just feed your tankfrozen food. No need to dose really. I have a question for you as i believe i may be dealing with sort of the same thing. Recently I’ve had this “ chicken fat” type of consistency blonde colored stuff cropping up. Is that what this looked like in the tank? When you blew it off did it break up really easy?

That's not what I've got now, but I have had that in the past. At the time a fellow at the LFS and I concluded that it was Dinos, but I never scoped it to verify or determine species. At that time yes, the snotty / fatty looking stuff did break up easily when blasted, by not into fine dust. Covered everything.

 

[wopadobop]

Ill get it scoped asap. Thank you so much.

 

[sfin52]

@wopadobop over feeding the tank is not the best idea. It takes it longer to be turned into po and no. You can't measure and adjust the dosing. Bacteria breaks down the food uses no3 and po4. with all the extra food in the tank ammonia and nitrite spikes are possible. It's a lot safer to dose.

 

[wopadobop]

What’s everyone using for phosphates ?
Sea chem flourish seems okay ?

 

[sfin52]

Seachem phosphate. Just the phosphate.

 

[wopadobop]

Cool . So not flourish . Just the phosphorus. Ordered ! Thank you.

My tanks run near 4 ppb pretty naturally being bare bottom and triton. About 1 ppm nitrates . Gonna bring those up with some stump remover

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Once you get your p and n numbers to proper levels you may need to add biodiversity back into the tank.

Yup. Dr tims one and only would be a good choice imo.

 

[Justin Ostafew]

In my system I had to dose 5mil a day for a solid week before getting any results. Dino will consume loads of phosphates you may want to consider dosing 2x a day. Just my experience.

After you got the Dino situation under control, what did that 5ml / day P dosing turn into? Are you still having to dose P or did the consumption taper off?

 

[sfin52]

Still dosing just not every day a couple times a week.

 

[Justin Ostafew]

Well, it's been a while, thought I'd post an update. The quick version is that the tank looks terrible, worse than it has in a long time, and while I keep ramping up the P dosing I'm still not seeing my desired levels at the end of the day. Still trying to find the limit of what the tank will consume in a day.

Here're a few more details:

• After taking the algae turf scrubber offline and I began dosing N, nitrate quickly climbed to 25ppm, peaking at 50ppm and overshooting my target. Dosing stopped, and shortly afterward nitrate settled in at 25ppm. Still higher than desired, so I reintroduced the ATS with an improved screen (substrate). Nitrate has been holding steady at 25ppm. It's easy to bring it up by dosing, but I wanted a means to cut it down via the ATS and adjusting the photoperiod as necessary to maintain lavels where needed. The ATS is still establishing itself so it's not doing much to drop nitrate levels yet.
• I've been too lazy to measure the flow rate through the UV sterilizer as of yet, though it will happen soon. On the original circuit I'm pretty confident the flow was too high, not enough contact time with Dinos to do anything. I've since put it on its own circuit so I can slow down the water flow to what looks more appropriate.
• I started dosing 0.25ml of Aquavitro P in my 50gal system and monitoring, increasing that to 1ml daily for a while, then 2ml, then ramping that up quickly to 3ml (still gone after 24hrs), now I'm up to 4ml per day. I've noticed that as I've been getting more aggressive with P the Dinos have been enjoying it, nearly covering the sandbed in stringy mesh, and good covering over the rockwork. Now that I'm dosing P pretty heavily and reading something other than zero at the end of the day I hit the LFS and grabbed a half a few TBSP of sand from one of their display tanks, and added that to mine for a bit of biodiversity. I asked for some sludge from their LR sump, but they suggested the sand would be better.
• At first I was blowing the Dinos off the rocks etc. trying to get them into the water column, but the stringy mess would just fly around and catch on something else in the tank, not very effective. I've since been using airline to siphon as much as I can out of the tank every other day. In a day or two it's back pretty heavy again.
• I've noticed over the last few days when the main lights are off there is more green algae growing underneath the dinos, and yesterday I noticed a couple patches of what looked like Cyano. Combined with the big Dino population, this is why I say my tank is looking terrible. With that being said, the fact that I'm seeing Cyano makes me think that I'm on the way now, digging out of the vacuum of zero P and zero N that I was in.

I'm continuing with the program, and despite the tank looking TERRIBLE I'll keep at it for a while. When I first started dosing my LPS looked great, but lately it's clearly not happy. Not sure if it's the Dinos or the P dosing, but they're not expanding much at all lately. Other than that my livestock seems to be hanging on so I'll keep feeding the mess hahaha

 

[Justin Ostafew]

It's been a while, and I'm continuing to fight the good fight. I was making progress using the suggestions above (maintaining P and N, running UV), but while there was improvement the outbreak was far from cleaned up and never progressed beyond a certain point. At the same time I've been making my way through the suggested readings. The last one I'm still chewing on is twilliard's Dinoflagellates - Dinos a possible cure. I'm currently on page 171 of 228. Early on in that thread there was great promise for Metro, so I picked up some Metroplex and did a 3 day dosing regimen. For once we were on the right track, all sorts of life began popping up in the tank, things were looking promising. With the Dinos almost completely gone, in came heavy Cyano, which I would have been happy to deal with except that on top of the cyano has been returning Dinos (still Ostreo). During the Metro regimen I took the UV sterilizer offline as it didn't seem to be helping, and haven't put it back.

At this point I've got a tank with rockwork easily half covered in Cyano despite my initial efforts to regularly disturb / removing it, and on top of everything a nice brown tint due to the returning Dinos. Strings are forming on the sand and things again, not as heavy as before but still there in decent numbers.

I've got a bottle of Vibrant on the way, which I will give an extended chance to perform before going to the last resort; chlorine bleach. I'm currently spinning up the QT tank in preparation to move my fish, clam, and maybe a few of the easily captured inverts to safety while I hit the DT with a heavier (heavy in the tested range) course of bleach treatment. I'll also set up the UV sterilizer on the QT as I believe it will be more effective there given the much smaller water volume and lack of any rock or sand for the Dinos to hang onto in the tank (more likely to be in the water column). If I go to the bleach, I'm definitely going to remove the sandbed before doing so, though I'll likely do it anyway as I get into the Vibrant treatment.

Through all of this I have been keeping detailed logs of water params, dosing, observations etc. I also replaced my buddy's antique scope with an Amscope M200. My logs are way too long to post here, but if I'm successful at some point I'll come back and sum up to hopefully provide some valuable info for the next poor soul dealing with this issue. Thanks again for the guidance provided

 

[sfin52]

I read that whole post nothing worked. Have you been doing water changes. Also have you been dosing and trace elements? The bleach had serious mixed results not to mention some reported some livestock dying.

 

[Justin Ostafew]

I haven't been doing much for water changes, I think once or twice I did 10% and only because I was vacuuming the sand bed.

Yes the bleach has the unfortunate effect of killing friendlies, but after so long that's what it's coming down to. As I mentioned I am warming up the QT so the only thing that will be left in the tank at the time of bleach will be a few stray snails and crabs and the few coral frags that I have left (and are on death's door step already). After the bleach will be introduction of pods, bacteria, and maintenance of desired N and P.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Along the way, run the filter sock and blow the dinos off of things daily. Clean filter sock regularly. Run carbon to catch any toxins coming off of dying dinos.

And I beat them without nuking or restarting my tank.

Multi prong approach, IMO.

Cleaning , nutints, add diversity(competitors)

I’d restart and scrub , peroxide before bleach dosing.
I’d try
I’d also use a canister filter or reactor before socks.

 

[Justin Ostafew]

@mcarrol In one of your posts in your thread "Dinoflagellates, are you tired of battling alltogether" you mentioned some tanks that have Cyano and Dinos happily co-habting, and in those cases the system may just be beyond saving (healthy components of the eco-system have been completely suffocated). I'm currently on page 45ish out of 120ish, and wondering thought I would reach out to you on that particular subject to see if you have any further thoughts for me before I eventually get there with my reading.

Also, as a plan B I've been warming up my QT tank to receive my livestock in anticipation of a tank reset. It's a 15gal tank with a HOB filter (the type with the bio-wheel). The bio-wheel has been living in the DT while the QT was dry, so after spinning it up and introducing the already seeded bio-wheel I've been feeding the tank to build up the biological filtration. As expected I'm starting to get a bit of growth on the surfaces. I took a sample of the growth and inspected it and found what looks to be about 50% diatoms and 50% some small round objects that look kind of like tiny Dinos. I'll link a photo and a video, I'm hoping you can help me identify the small round guys as hopefully something innocent.

Thanks in advance

Here's a link to the video (sorry for the shakiness)
https://grandexposures.sharepoint.com/:v:/g/EdO3m6aIJrhEnz98BLUC-ucBlc_DOSLtBd1nHo1ewUl6Yw

 

[Justin Ostafew]

Quick update; tank still looks like butt. The long strings are greatly reduced but still lots of bubbles on the glass and in the Cyano, of which there is also a lot. 4 weeks and 4 doses of Vibrant and not any significant improvement to speak of. I was planning to do 5 but I don't see the point, and the R2R community recommended against it anyway.

So I'm down to my last crack at it. I just installed a Jebau 55w sterilizer that is seeing 200gph (measured) flow to and from the display tank. In case anyone's doing the math, that's in a 35gal DT and 15gal sump for a total system volume of 50ish gal. I refreshed the carbon in the reactor, and gave the tank a good turkey basting right after lights out. Will give it another blasting before bed.

If this works I have a theory that I would like to contribute to the main Dino thread about UV sizing against late cell organisms like Osti. We'll see. To be honest I'm not hopeful but we will see how many bubbles are left tomorrow evening.