Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods

bishoptf

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I've been fighting these for at least a couple months, small cell. Tried lots of things, running UV in the DT, I do not have sand, its a bare bottom. Starting to become pretty demoralizing and not sure what else to try. Right now I am starting to have cyano issues covering the rocks and no idea how to address that along with my small cell dino's. I clean things up and about a week later everything is covered, it really becomes a drag to look at the tank etc, lol.

Any suggestions on whether to address the cyano with chemiclean or other suggestions welcome. Right now I have been dosing microbacter clean which also reduces nitrate and phosphate but I try to keep things elevated, so far MB clean does not appear to be doing anything at all, although they say it can take weeks etc to see a difference. I've tried raising temps, raising nutrients, no water changes etc...so far nothing has made much of a change with anything.

:)
 

Reeferdeluxe

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I've been fighting these for at least a couple months, small cell. Tried lots of things, running UV in the DT, I do not have sand, its a bare bottom. Starting to become pretty demoralizing and not sure what else to try. Right now I am starting to have cyano issues covering the rocks and no idea how to address that along with my small cell dino's. I clean things up and about a week later everything is covered, it really becomes a drag to look at the tank etc, lol.

Any suggestions on whether to address the cyano with chemiclean or other suggestions welcome. Right now I have been dosing microbacter clean which also reduces nitrate and phosphate but I try to keep things elevated, so far MB clean does not appear to be doing anything at all, although they say it can take weeks etc to see a difference. I've tried raising temps, raising nutrients, no water changes etc...so far nothing has made much of a change with anything.

:) Have you tried hydrogen peroxide yet? Its the only thing that I could get to put a dent and finally wipe out the Dinos I had.
 

Idoc

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I've been fighting these for at least a couple months, small cell. Tried lots of things, running UV in the DT, I do not have sand, its a bare bottom. Starting to become pretty demoralizing and not sure what else to try. Right now I am starting to have cyano issues covering the rocks and no idea how to address that along with my small cell dino's. I clean things up and about a week later everything is covered, it really becomes a drag to look at the tank etc, lol.

Any suggestions on whether to address the cyano with chemiclean or other suggestions welcome. Right now I have been dosing microbacter clean which also reduces nitrate and phosphate but I try to keep things elevated, so far MB clean does not appear to be doing anything at all, although they say it can take weeks etc to see a difference. I've tried raising temps, raising nutrients, no water changes etc...so far nothing has made much of a change with anything.

:)
Look up the Elegance Corals Dino/Cyano treatment. Follow it exactly. I battled small cell dinos for about a year... this treatment worked.
 

bishoptf

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I have not tried hydrogen peroxide since I've read lots of posts that it doesnt work and then there are so many dosing concentrations, which one is safe for my fish, inverts and coral etc....I am getting to a point where I am willing to try things since it becomes old week after week with no change.

:)
 

bishoptf

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Look up the Elegance Corals Dino/Cyano treatment. Follow it exactly. I battled small cell dinos for about a year... this treatment worked.
I've looked it up that and Dr. Tims process using waste away both of them require or specify a skimmer be used during the process, I am not running a skimmer so pretty sure they would not recommend those processes without one...I was going to try to go without one if possible but something else to consider.
 

thedon986

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I've looked it up that and Dr. Tims process using waste away both of them require or specify a skimmer be used during the process, I am not running a skimmer so pretty sure they would not recommend those processes without one...I was going to try to go without one if possible but something else to consider.
Yeah I think a skimmer might be worth it in the battle. I have LC and did not see the turn toward better until I kept nutrients elevated for a month, and then followed the Dr Tim’s method. I am doing a second round of it again now and I’m heading in the right direction.
 

Reeferdeluxe

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I have not tried hydrogen peroxide since I've read lots of posts that it doesnt work and then there are so many dosing concentrations, which one is safe for my fish, inverts and coral etc....I am getting to a point where I am willing to try things since it becomes old week after week with no change.

:)
I started with 1 ml per 10 gallons
I have not tried hydrogen peroxide since I've read lots of posts that it doesnt work and then there are so many dosing concentrations, which one is safe for my fish, inverts and coral etc....I am getting to a point where I am willing to try things since it becomes old week after week with no change.

:)
I started slow with 1ml per 10 gallons and lights out for 3 days. I saw that it made an impact so after a week or so I did a 10% water change and upped the amount until I got to 2ml per gallon with a 4 day black out slowly ramped lights up still no dinos. Although I did lose snails and 3 shrimp some made it through and are doing ok. Not saying to dose what I did but start slow and see if it makes a dent.
 

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How is everyone's experience on the silica dosing method? I think that's my next track to go down. Raising nutrients (nitrate 20, phosphate 0.1), stopping water changes (going on week 4, and corals look mad), hydrogen peroxide (1 mL per 10 gallons for 1 week), and MB 7 dosing all seem to have not really made a dent. I don't want to pull my sand yet. I'm thinking of getting sponge excel and slowing working up to the 1 drop per 10 gallon dosage that's suggested, resuming water changes, and seeing if I can get a diatom bloom to suppress the dinos. I'm kind of seeing mixed results on the success of this method though; so any recent experiences would be great.
 

AbjectMaelstroM

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Like many before me, I hope I don't jinx myself, but I think I'm on my way out of the LC club.

Last few days sand has be getting lighter and turning more of a greenish yellow Hue rather than rust brown. I finally got time to scope thing today and to my surprise, after 3 months of wall to wall dinos, I saw very few. Majority of the slide is "non Dino" critters, large and small. I still see a few amphidinium, but where there were what looked like thousands, there are now probably fewer than 100 on the slide. I probed two different parts of the tank.

I'm going to wait to do a water change, but will probably start backing Si dosing down and switch from daily MB7 to twice a week.

Thoughts? Or just keep doing the same a while longer?
 

Steve Erekson

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Me again. Closing in on three weeks post-treatment and so far so good. My phos is holding decent enough in the 0.04-0.06 range with a little help from sodium phosphate dosing and some live phyto dosing as well. I'm continuing to dose silicates but again I'm doing this blindly so I don't really have a measurement of the values.

I'm starting to see some brown patches in the sand again, nothing too extreme. I checked under the microscope and both diatom and amphinidium concentrations have increased (both still rather low) however I am seeing a much larger increase in the diatom population while only a small increase in the amphinidium concentration.

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Okay it's been somewhere around one month since my initial treatment. I am declaring mission accomplished. The dino populations are fully in check and not expanding, the tank is the most beautiful it's ever been.

To recap:

1) LC Amphidinium and cyano combo pack, undetectable phos.
2) Dosed chemiclean to attack cyano, ran a short blackout for this time to try and impact dinos as well.
3) Raised phos with Neophos to target 0.04-0.08ppm, this is still ongoing.
4) Dosing silicates in small amounts, but not testing this so unsure of concentrations.
5) Feeding live phyto.

Sandbed is clean, rocks are clean, tank is happy, I am happy. Good luck dino keepers!
 

atnet360

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So I've read the entire thread start to finish, found some very good information...and trying not to get too discouraged :).

Looking for a positive ID on what I believe to be large cell Amphidinium. Got a few videos.

This one is from the sand bed. Very active, obviously dinos, and nothing else. Looks like large cell Amphidinium to me (also behaves that way too), although not sure how to distinguish large and small cell varieties without a frame of reference.



This sample was sucked from the rockwork. I see some very lethargic dinos, some diatoms, and some other stuff including that slug looking thing in the middle (would love an ID on that guy).



For this sample, I grabbed a pinch of what looks like gha off the rockwork. There's very little movement in this sample, just the worm looking thing in the middle. I see what looks like maybe dead dinos, diatoms, a pizza slice looking thing in the upper left and a lot of rectangular shaped things that didn't move at all. Any thoughts on what we're seeing here?





So, I'm dosing nitrate, phosphate and spongexcel. Haven't seen much change.

I have had some invert deaths. All (four) of my trochus snails have died over the past few weeks. I have about 8 astrea snails that seem very lethargic but are chomping away at whatever is growing on the rockwork. Also I have a Hollywood Stunner that is bleaching bad. It was very healthy just a few days ago, only thing I changed was the silica dosing...not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Any thoughts or insights would be greatly appreciated. Especially appreciate if @taricha could confirm my ID.
 

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I had meant to share my success story here, since this thread guided me to that success, but I had forgotten to hit the post reply button. (idiot!)
I am happy to report I won the battle vs LC Amphidinium using nothing more than sponge excel and a LOT OF TIME AND PATIENCE.

Here is what I had shared in my build thread a few weeks ago for anyone interested.

Want to thank again @taricha and @ScottB for the individual help along the way. Will report back in a few months to see if I won the war or just a battle.
 

ScottB

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So I've read the entire thread start to finish, found some very good information...and trying not to get too discouraged :).

Looking for a positive ID on what I believe to be large cell Amphidinium. Got a few videos.

This one is from the sand bed. Very active, obviously dinos, and nothing else. Looks like large cell Amphidinium to me (also behaves that way too), although not sure how to distinguish large and small cell varieties without a frame of reference.



This sample was sucked from the rockwork. I see some very lethargic dinos, some diatoms, and some other stuff including that slug looking thing in the middle (would love an ID on that guy).



For this sample, I grabbed a pinch of what looks like gha off the rockwork. There's very little movement in this sample, just the worm looking thing in the middle. I see what looks like maybe dead dinos, diatoms, a pizza slice looking thing in the upper left and a lot of rectangular shaped things that didn't move at all. Any thoughts on what we're seeing here?





So, I'm dosing nitrate, phosphate and spongexcel. Haven't seen much change.

I have had some invert deaths. All (four) of my trochus snails have died over the past few weeks. I have about 8 astrea snails that seem very lethargic but are chomping away at whatever is growing on the rockwork. Also I have a Hollywood Stunner that is bleaching bad. It was very healthy just a few days ago, only thing I changed was the silica dosing...not sure if that has anything to do with it.

Any thoughts or insights would be greatly appreciated. Especially appreciate if @taricha could confirm my ID.

Swim pattern, speed, shape and size all pint to LC Amphids.

Your other videos show an awesome variety of microfauna with diatoms and some cyano obvious. Nice videos.

Unfortunately the LC amphids require a lot of patience. IMO there is not a definitive curer-all for everyone. Most often just trying to promote competition with elevated nutrient and silicates. Choose your favorite method and give it lots of time while keeping an eye on how your corals are doing. Often, the cure is harsher that the amphids.
 

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I had meant to share my success story here, since this thread guided me to that success, but I had forgotten to hit the post reply button. (idiot!)
I am happy to report I won the battle vs LC Amphidinium using nothing more than sponge excel and a LOT OF TIME AND PATIENCE.

Here is what I had shared in my build thread a few weeks ago for anyone interested.

Want to thank again @taricha and @ScottB for the individual help along the way. Will report back in a few months to see if I won the war or just a battle.
Awesome news and thanks for the shout out!
 

atnet360

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Swim pattern, speed, shape and size all pint to LC Amphids.

Your other videos show an awesome variety of microfauna with diatoms and some cyano obvious. Nice videos.

Unfortunately the LC amphids require a lot of patience. IMO there is not a definitive curer-all for everyone. Most often just trying to promote competition with elevated nutrient and silicates. Choose your favorite method and give it lots of time while keeping an eye on how your corals are doing. Often, the cure is harsher that the amphids.

Thanks @ScottB. At first I spent a lot of time stirring and siphoning the sand bed. Seems like that was detrimental as I can now clearly see there is nothing but dinos in the sand, whereas up on the rockwork, there's all kinds of goodies.

I will leave the sand alone, keep my nutrients up and continue dosing silica and see how it goes...
 

AbjectMaelstroM

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I had meant to share my success story here, since this thread guided me to that success, but I had forgotten to hit the post reply button. (idiot!)
I am happy to report I won the battle vs LC Amphidinium using nothing more than sponge excel and a LOT OF TIME AND PATIENCE.

Here is what I had shared in my build thread a few weeks ago for anyone interested.

Want to thank again @taricha and @ScottB for the individual help along the way. Will report back in a few months to see if I won the war or just a battle.

Similar story here. All started in Oct, I stopped water changes except for 2-3 10% when I tried to syphon sand... Stopped when it was making things worse than better.

Dosing nutrients and Silica 4 months, then after not seeing a lot of change, added MB7 into the mix. A month later, little time to no visible dinos. I see a few here and there on the scope, but not wall-to-wall LC there used to be.

Thanks to all the participants of this thread and especially @taricha and @ScottB ! Nothing personal, but hopefully I don't have to ever post this thread gain, unless it's to help someone else.
 

atnet360

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Wow! Quick update. I came home from work today and my tank lookes like this:
20210301_191006.jpg


As a point of reference, a week ago it looked like this:
20210222_170531.jpg


I've been dosing Nitrate and Phosphate for about 5 weeks, and silicate in the form of Spongexcel for maybe 3 or 4 weeks.

Targeting 10ppm nitrate and 0.1ppm phosphate. Don't have a silicate test kit so I'm kind of winging it there, but adding maybe 2ml per day in 75 gallons total system volume.

Tank looked like trash a few days ago, so I was stunned to see how clean the sand bed is today.

Got lots of uglies growing on the rock, but I'm feeling more confident that I can start building up the clean up crew and they won't just die.

Only bummer is I lost a beautiful Hollywood Stunner to what I'm guessing was a bacterial infection. Went from totally healthy to bleached and dead in about 6 days .

Feeling cautiously optimistic. Huge thanks to everyone on this thread as I really had no idea what to do and was probably making things worse for a long time.
 

chema

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Similar story here. All started in Oct, I stopped water changes except for 2-3 10% when I tried to syphon sand... Stopped when it was making things worse than better.

Dosing nutrients and Silica 4 months, then after not seeing a lot of change, added MB7 into the mix. A month later, little time to no visible dinos. I see a few here and there on the scope, but not wall-to-wall LC there used to be.

Thanks to all the participants of this thread and especially @taricha and @ScottB ! Nothing personal, but hopefully I don't have to ever post this thread gain, unless it's to help someone else.
It seems that increasing nutrients and adding silicate and MB7 did the trick. Congratulations!
A lot of of people use MB7, do you all think that it is better than other bacterial formulates like Fritzyme or Special Blend?
 

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Similar story here. All started in Oct, I stopped water changes except for 2-3 10% when I tried to syphon sand... Stopped when it was making things worse than better.

Dosing nutrients and Silica 4 months, then after not seeing a lot of change, added MB7 into the mix. A month later, little time to no visible dinos. I see a few here and there on the scope, but not wall-to-wall LC there used to be.

Thanks to all the participants of this thread and especially @taricha and @ScottB ! Nothing personal, but hopefully I don't have to ever post this thread gain, unless it's to help someone else.
Fine! Don't come back then!
:)
 

ScottB

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Thanks @ScottB. At first I spent a lot of time stirring and siphoning the sand bed. Seems like that was detrimental as I can now clearly see there is nothing but dinos in the sand, whereas up on the rockwork, there's all kinds of goodies.

I will leave the sand alone, keep my nutrients up and continue dosing silica and see how it goes...
If you haven't done so already, you might try adding Microbacter 7 to the mix.

How goes the fight nowadays?
 
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