Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods

[XxJDMcivicEK9xX]

Finally got a microscope, ID please I posted in the main Dino page and someone thought Coolia but I still think amphidinium. I can try to get better pictures if need be.

 

[leptang]

Finally got a microscope, ID please I posted in the main Dino page and someone thought Coolia but I still think amphidinium. I can try to get better pictures if need be.

Kind of looks like Prorocentrum sp

http://www.algaeid.com/identification/

 

[XxJDMcivicEK9xX]

Here’s a few extra pictures to help ID

 

[XxJDMcivicEK9xX]

Kind of looks like Prorocentrum sp

http://www.algaeid.com/identification/

Very similar but these guys move around a lot more and have the characteristics of the amphidinium as far as stuck to the sand bed, not super toxic to my snails star fish etc. not effected by UV Sterilizers (I’m running a 55w currently)

 

[dwest]

Very similar but these guys move around a lot more and have the characteristics of the amphidinium as far as stuck to the sand bed, not super toxic to my snails star fish etc. not effected by UV Sterilizers (I’m running a 55w currently)

All of these symptoms suggest amphidinium. I eventually removed my sand bed to control them. I am also dosing silicates. I waited many months to start these two things.

 

[leptang]

Here’s a few extra pictures to help ID

With these pictures im leaning more to amphidinium.

 

[reeftivo]

All of these symptoms suggest amphidinium. I eventually removed my sand bed to control them. I am also dosing silicates. I waited many months to start these two things.

I firmly believe i am going through the same thing as you with an amphidinium infestation. I've never had this before (10 years + with salt water reefing). Running dirty method right now with added pods, plankton, limited UV, carbon and manual removal. Once i confirm the strain (microscope in the mail) i may try to add silicates but for now things are slowly getting better.

what type of silicate supplement are you using?

thanks in advance

Tivo

 

[dwest]

I firmly believe i am going through the same thing as you with an amphidinium infestation. I've never had this before (10 years + with salt water reefing). Running dirty method right now with added pods, plankton, limited UV, carbon and manual removal. Once i confirm the strain (microscope in the mail) i may try to add silicates but for now things are slowly getting better.

what type of silicate supplement are you using?

thanks in advance

Tivo

I’m using this. Been dosing for about a month. I saw immediate increase in diatoms.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0042I59AM/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

[reeftivo]

thank you

 

[Jameseywayney]

I posted in the main Dino threat but haven't received a response. I believe i'm dealing with amphidinium as my snails, coral, etc. are not dieing. I've really had nothing die with this, its just been annoying and annoy some zoas and other coral. It is very long and hair like.

 

[OpenOcean33]

I posted in the main Dino threat but haven't received a response. I believe i'm dealing with amphidinium as my snails, coral, etc. are not dieing. I've really had nothing die with this, its just been annoying and annoy some zoas and other coral. It is very long and hair like.

Osreoprisis. I'm not an identifier but I'm am almost 100%, it got the little almond shape put a fat uv sterilizer on it and you should be good.

 

[Jameseywayney]

Osreoprisis. I'm not an identifier but I'm am almost 100%, it got the little almond shape put a fat uv sterilizer on it and you should be good.

Thanks, i'll look into Osreoprisis more, but based on my quick research it seems very toxic, and i've had no snails or coral die. I'll try to get a good video which will hopefully help ID better

 

[OpenOcean33]

I posted this in the other dino forum but since I had amphidinum this makes a good home too.

Here is my story with amphidinum. Keep up the good fight and keep sharing. What yall shared with me in these forums is how I won the battle.

http://atransgenicworld.blogspot.com/2018/05/dinoflagellates-in-reef-tank-what-why.html?m=1

Can i Ask, how did you dose your silicates? looking to start just not sure the number of drops per gallon.

 

[KMG]

No need to go dirty and trade one pest for another. H2O2 and UVC Will break most dino in 72h. Had Amphidinum and this method worked out fine. 14 ml 3% h2o2 /100 l x3 a day with 4 h between doses and UVC 24/7.

 

[dwest]

Can i Ask, how did you dose your silicates? looking to start just not sure the number of drops per gallon.

I used sponge excel. There were instructions on the bottle. I followed instructions, didn’t test for amounts, and had a good bloom of diatoms within a week.

 

[Pennywise the Clown]

No need to go dirty and trade one pest for another. H2O2 and UVC Will break most dino in 72h. Had Amphidinum and this method worked out fine. 14 ml 3% h2o2 /100 l x3 a day with 4 h between doses and UVC 24/7.

Amphidinium doesn't go into the water column so your UV would have been useless. Probably the other things that beat it.

 

[KMG]

Amphidinium doesn't go into the water column so your UV would have been useless. Probably the other things that beat it.

They do, but have bigger and thicker Shell. H202 breaks them as it both oxidice and turns into ozon in the UVC

 

[Neoalchemist]

So it’s been a couple of months and no dinos. I went with an experimental approach since I was getting desperate and tried almost everything and maybe a little bit of everything helped. I used garf grunge, Fiji mud, amphipods, copepods, UV sterilizer, silica dosing, all while keeping my nutrients up and the dinos still would not go away.

I got pretty frustrated so I tried a super blackout attack just to experiment. I don’t have any sps in this system so I don’t know how a blackout would affect them but all my soft corals and fish survived.

I did a three day blackout then lights on for one day, then another three day blackout. I turned the lights back on for about 5-7 days and did another three day blackout and one day lights on, followed by another three day blackout.

I think what may have happened is that the super blackout killed and slowed the reproduction of the dinos all along while also getting killing some off when i ran the Uv sterilizer. During the first three days it receded a little bit but we all know it comes back fast, so I gave my corals one day of light and then blacked out for another three days. After the first double blackout phase, the dinos were not anywhere to be found but we know they’re probably still in the system. So I hit it with another double black out phase with the one day of rest in between. Again, this is with all mud, grunge, silica, P&N, and UV sterilizer that I used. So I think the blackouts might have given enough time for all the algae/good bacteria/silica to settle in and populate my tank before the Amph dinos could start kicking back in.

This is without removing my sand bed. Also, if you try this, I recommend running a good skimmer to keep ph levels up because I know long blackouts can affect the fish/coral.

Be careful when trying this approach as I do not know how it will affect your corals/fish. I got desperate and tried something new which seemed to work out for me. Hope this may help you guys and your battles!

I used a similar approach with a few sps in the system and it worked better than anything else I tried. All I did besides raising nutrients was 3 day black out as soon as I saw dino's regardless of when the last blackout was. Only difference was that I dosed Dr. Tim's refresh ( they call it a surface cleaner) on the third day of the black out, which I do believe helped.
About 3 weeks after seeing no evidence of dinos I used a 2.5 ml dose of lanthanum chloride twice in 4 days to bring my po4 down from .15 to about .08 (no3 has been hanging around 20 to 25 ppm). BAM! Amphidimium dino's back.
I will beat them. This is the method.
Increased nutrients, po4 at .1 or slightly above, silicate dosing to promote direct competition. ( I do still like the idea of the RE-FRESH cleaning and colonizing the surfaces during the second half of a blackout,but may skip it this time).
Then multiple, strong, gut punches in the form long frequent blackouts.
My logic was to kill off or starve as many as possible and force them to incyst, then wake the dormant ones just long enough to slam them with another blackout. With each successive blackout the percentage of surviving dinos would go down and eventually they would not have enough numbers to compete.
This seemed to work better than anything else. I have been running uv constantly because the tank has/had both amph. and ostreo. but haven't seen an ostreo. In a few months.
The mistake I made was lowering po4, and remember, I used lanthanum chloride not gfo.
As far as corals go, the dinos will eventually kill them anyway so to me killing the dinos out ways the potential loss of corals especially since there will be no lasting side effects like you get when using chem solutions.

 

[taricha]

Then multiple, strong, gut punches in the form long frequent blackouts.
My logic was to kill off or starve as many as possible and force them to incyst, then wake the dormant ones just long enough to slam them with another blackout.

Thanks for the report. What's puzzling is that the utility of blackouts for dinos is to disrupt their light signals and force them into water column - where UV can attack. Just darkness can be survived for a long long time - I've had amphidinium culture in a bottle go 12 days in darkness and be fine.
I looked at your pictures in this post and it's a marginal case - the front of the cells look more like amphidinium, but the body cavities look like prorocentrum. I wonder if we mis-ID'd.
Blackouts would also create long periods where night grazers are more active - snails, pods and other tiny crustaceans that could graze on amphidinium. That's the only mechanism I can think of by which darkness could actually hurt a sand-bound amphidinium population.

 

[Neoalchemist]

Thanks for the report. What's puzzling is that the utility of blackouts for dinos is to disrupt their light signals and force them into water column - where UV can attack. Just darkness can be survived for a long long time - I've had amphidinium culture in a bottle go 12 days in darkness and be fine.
I looked at your pictures in this post and it's a marginal case - the front of the cells look more like amphidinium, but the body cavities look like prorocentrum. I wonder if we mis-ID'd.
Blackouts would also create long periods where night grazers are more active - snails, pods and other tiny crustaceans that could graze on amphidinium. That's the only mechanism I can think of by which darkness could actually hurt a sand-bound amphidinium population.

I'm going to post some new pics as soon as I get a chance because this resurgence looks a little different and appears to be smaller. I think maybe the Dr. Tims Re-fresh may have helped with triggering a move, as it actually seemed to work as advertised for me. It seemed to clean the surfaces.
It wasn't until I started the frequent often blackouts that I saw any effect.
Day 1 lights out and 2 10ml additions of h202
Day 2 start a re-fresh treatment feed tank
Day 3 dose sodium silicate and confirm high nutrients 15 to 25ppm no3, .1 to .15 po4, lights back on.
Not full 36 hours either
Then within the next day or two if I saw one speck of rust repeat.
My logic was that amphidimium being mobile could possibly be prodded into attempting to find a more favorable location.
I even thought about suspending a tray of sand under the intake of my uv then shinning a spot light on the sand during a prolonged blackout.

I also thought that the way amph process nutrients has to change if the dinos can survive for long periods of dark. So if I can trigger their chemical signals to keep switching back and forth then the colony can't achieve stability and is further weakened and possibly convinced to move to a stable place. At that point into the uv.
I'm not sure if any of this has merit but it did work very well. At the very least it bought me enough time to build up a lot of biodeversity that I hadn't seen since the beginning of the outbreak. My cheato is growing again and I have snails breeding all over the place.