Hey all…I’m currently battling these guys myself. I didn’t read the entire thread so forgive me if this has been asked…what about removing all the infected sand and running bare bottom for some time? Could this deny them a place to settle?
Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods
- Thread starter taricha
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Seems logical...I will limit their use while carrying out the dino treatment. Thanks for the follow up!
I beat dinos. Here is what happened and what I did.
This was in a rather small 10 Gallon. I believe what triggered them was a fast drop in phosphate from using GFO. Lesson learned never using GFO again.
I had mostly small cell amphidium they were all over my sand bed and in some of the rock. It was a rather new tank 4 month and i was thinking maybe I could just wait it out but they never went away.
I added pods and that didn't do anything. I started to raise phosphate as my nitrates we're always rather high 10-20ppm.
Once I got my phosphates and nitrates up to .10 PO4 and 10-20 NO3 and waited about a week or so nothing happened.
I decided to go ahead sand try UV I got a lil 8W UV and i was blowing up all the dinos that I could see from the rocks and the sand to try and get them into the water column and through the UV. The dinos in the rock never came back after this. The sand though was still caked with dinos.
Decided to go ahead and try out silicate dosing. Was able to dose to .50 ppm with expunge excel and we'll there were diatoms everywhere all over the sand rock and everywhere. I let this ride for about 2 weeks maintaining the amount of silica. Was checking water through the microscope and no dinos only diatoms and tons of other algae. Yay! My sand still looked pretty ugly though so at this point I went ahead and did a 40% water change vacuuming up all the sand. Three days passed and no dinos. I had a lot of algea i mean a lot of algea everywhere on the whole back wall and on the glass. I went ahead and tripled my CC. Some trochus a strawberry conch, astreas and some hermit crabs. The algea was all gone in a couple of days. Poor dudes were starving i bet. After that a whole month later. No dinos. I just upgraded tank from the 10 to a 20g peninsula and still haven't seen anything yet.
The picture is of the tank after the dinos. Unfortunately I didn't take any picture while they were there. They were ugly made me not want to take pictures.
This was in a rather small 10 Gallon. I believe what triggered them was a fast drop in phosphate from using GFO. Lesson learned never using GFO again.
I had mostly small cell amphidium they were all over my sand bed and in some of the rock. It was a rather new tank 4 month and i was thinking maybe I could just wait it out but they never went away.
I added pods and that didn't do anything. I started to raise phosphate as my nitrates we're always rather high 10-20ppm.
Once I got my phosphates and nitrates up to .10 PO4 and 10-20 NO3 and waited about a week or so nothing happened.
I decided to go ahead sand try UV I got a lil 8W UV and i was blowing up all the dinos that I could see from the rocks and the sand to try and get them into the water column and through the UV. The dinos in the rock never came back after this. The sand though was still caked with dinos.
Decided to go ahead and try out silicate dosing. Was able to dose to .50 ppm with expunge excel and we'll there were diatoms everywhere all over the sand rock and everywhere. I let this ride for about 2 weeks maintaining the amount of silica. Was checking water through the microscope and no dinos only diatoms and tons of other algae. Yay! My sand still looked pretty ugly though so at this point I went ahead and did a 40% water change vacuuming up all the sand. Three days passed and no dinos. I had a lot of algea i mean a lot of algea everywhere on the whole back wall and on the glass. I went ahead and tripled my CC. Some trochus a strawberry conch, astreas and some hermit crabs. The algea was all gone in a couple of days. Poor dudes were starving i bet. After that a whole month later. No dinos. I just upgraded tank from the 10 to a 20g peninsula and still haven't seen anything yet.
The picture is of the tank after the dinos. Unfortunately I didn't take any picture while they were there. They were ugly made me not want to take pictures.
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Just to get some clarity on this as I'm now battling away and wanting to get as much of the right info and guidance as possible.
I run a roller filter. Should we be removing these filtrations (socks and rollers) when fighting dinos/dosing phyto and copepods etc?
What would get rid of the gunk that is the dinos if not for those? Just the skimmer?
When I'm blowing off the rocks etc a bunch of it gets lifted into the water column and out via the roller so just wanting to confirm as I want to increase my chances of success here.
(Pics of mine linked from my other thread for reference).
Hi All,
Hoping you may be able to assist with an ID.
Finally got myself a microscope after battling this for a while I'm tired of guessing/assuming and wanting to get real answers so I can fight it properly.
Is there a thread with pictures for this (i've done a couple of searches but don't think I'm putting in the right words/phrase to find).
Not sure why it's not letting me embed - note, everything was moving initially but as time went by the larger oval and smaller cells stopped moving and just that worm thing was there lol.
what algae / bacteria is this?
youtube.com
- Thread Starter
- #1,745
OP
good questions and sound logic.
exporting masses of brown dinos is priority. copepods that reproduce in the tank are benthic anyway and shouldn't be hit too hard by the roller.
I'm not 100% sure what it is that phyto is expected to do (phyto I grew didn't help in my system). If it's meant to compete for nutrients, it might need to remain in the water for some time. If it's meant to feed pods, then just turning off the filtration for an hour or so might let enough settle to support pod growth.
Was just something that was suggested to me in my ID thread. I'm not 100% sure of the reasoning behind it unfortunately, but hey... if there's something else that'll potentially help I'm all for it, but if I'm wasting my time with it (as you had no success) then perhaps I skip that one and stick to the pods.
I have a 400 gallon system and my SI was at .056. I was dosing 20 drops a day based on brightwell instructions over the last week. I was reading another person was dosing 22 drops in a 70 gallon tank. Seems like I need to increase the drops. How many would drops of SI would you do and how fast would you increase them? My nitrate is around 15.
- Thread Starter
- #1,748
OP
I should clarify. I had no success with live phyto with toxic dinos. It grew a bunch of pods, that later died in the toxic dino mucus, and the dinos grew a bunch more after.
phyto with large cell amphidinium is probably more likely to be helpful than with other dino types.
- Thread Starter
- #1,749
OP
I'd no longer think of Si as something to dose to the level of NO3-N. Just get Si present and constantly available at a level that diatoms can use. For me, if my SiO2 was above 0.1-0.2ppm then diatoms had enough to grow. When I raised it higher ~1ppm SiO2, they didn't grow faster.
a few tenths to 1ppm SiO2 is a fine target, imo.
Thanks for the clarity, perhaps I'll add it back onto the list. Hoping to try and get to the LFS tonight so I can get started on the process...
Have noticed once lights are off (or just before), if I clean the sand/blow off the rockwork I'm not really seeing them come back on the sand in particular until the lights are back on.
Currently running blues/purples/UV only with the Hydra 32HD. Lighting is steady across the day with 1hr ramp up/down. Should I be lowing intensity etc on any of these or just leave it as it is for now and focus on doing the other stuff ?
Also I should ask.. with looking at things under the microscope.
Last time I grabbed a sample of the algae/bacteria that was growing. Is this necessary or should I just be getting a water sample ?
Last time I grabbed a sample of the algae/bacteria that was growing. Is this necessary or should I just be getting a water sample ?
- Thread Starter
- #1,752
What do people recommend to dose/test Silicates?
My LFS didn't seem to have anything and seemed surprised that I wanted something like that. I explained I'm looking to try and get a diatom bloom to counter the dinos.
They also didn't have any live copepods or phyto so I've had to order some online that I should hopefully see early next week.
I also got some Dr Tim's Waste Away to use once the dinos start/have disappeared.
My LFS didn't seem to have anything and seemed surprised that I wanted something like that. I explained I'm looking to try and get a diatom bloom to counter the dinos.
They also didn't have any live copepods or phyto so I've had to order some online that I should hopefully see early next week.
I also got some Dr Tim's Waste Away to use once the dinos start/have disappeared.
I used silicates to get rid of dinos. It worked amazingly but I I'd mine before doing any kind of treatment. Silicates are good for any kind of dinos that stick to the sand like Large and Small cell amphidium. If you want to fight them the easy way and not just throw the kitchen sink at them I would 100% recommend identifying them so u don't go in blind and end up making it worse.
Thanks, ID picture is quoted further up on post #1744.
Looks like large cell amphidinium to me (could be wrong but noone has suggested otherwise so far?)
I think they are prorocentrum
Taking a second look and seeing other posts from other people ID I'm thinking ur probably right. I really didn't want to be forking out for dang UV....
For sure. I had 2 UV’s going when I was trying to kill dinos. One jebao that I tossed when I was done (about a year) and my expensive aqua UV that sits in the garage collecting dust now.
Couple of questions: I have the low range HI705 Hanna Silicate Checker. Do I need to multiply the number the Hanna gives me x the .467 to get the SiO2? Or do I just use the number the Hanna checker gives me?
How long might it take for the diatoms to out consume the Dino’s?
- Thread Starter
- #1,760
OP
The checker reads in SiO2 already.
Gradually over weeks when nutrient goodies are available to grow new cells, the diatoms should do better And slowly increase in population.
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