Amphidinium Dinoflagellates in a new tank

[serez]

Hi,
Dino have been blooming out of proportion since couple of weeks ago. My corals were already having a hard time in my 2 months old tank. Now they’re struggling. Especially the hammer coral. Bird nests have strings attached to them... The only one that doesn’t seem to care is the torch euphyllia.
I received my microscope today and got a positive ID - amphidinium. I’ll attach an image below.
Parameters:
Alk - 9.5 (I had a alk swing last week due to using wrong product to raise Ca, hence why my hammer has been having a tough time already before Dino arrived. I let the alk drop back down naturally and during this time Dino bloomed. Is this a contributing factor? My ph dropped 0.2)
salinity - 1.025
Nitrate - 5 (I dosed flourish nitrogen 2 days ago to get to this number. It bottomed out before and that’s why I got Dino I think along with various other reasons)
Phosphate - 0.2 (I added phosguard last night, I think 0.2 is a little high, should I continue phosguard??)
Calcium - 410
Mag - 1340
Ph - 8.1
What I’m doing now:
keep nitrate at 5, try to reduce phosphate to below 0.1, stabilize alkalinity at 9.5, running carbon, phosguard, stopped reef energy, reef roids, phytoplankton...

What else can I do? Every time I blow them off my coral they just come right back or get even more widespread. Now even my leather coral is covered and won’t open... ugh
Please can anyone give some sound advice ):

 

[serez]

Theres a little bit of green hair algae looking things growing out of my pump. Good sign??? Should I wait or is there anything else I can do to help the battle

 

[ggNoRe]

Hello,

I have been battling Dinos for about a month now. Recently I feel like I have started having success and turning the tide. This is what worked for me. Dosing nitrates AND phosphates. I dose daily and try to keep nitrates between 5-10 and phosphates between .05 - .1. Also heavily dosing Microbacter 7. I have been dosing 6 caps a day in approximately 170G water volume system. Not cleaning the glass, I just let competitive film algae grow. Syphon as much dino out as possible by syphoning the sand and using a toothbrush to clean the rocks back into a filter sock and then into the sump.

Doing the above mentioned made a drastic change in just one weeks time.

 

[paul01609]

What ever you do it won’t happen over night. What work for one might not work for another
i used silicate and raised po4 and nitrate

 

[serez]

i used silicate and raised po4 and nitrate

My question is, should I keep running phosguard? My phosphate is over 0.2. I see people try to keep it around 0.1 when fighting Dino

 

[paul01609]

What u testing with hanna ultra low phos?

 

[paul01609]

If it’s really that hight what’s your nitrate

 

[serez]

What u testing with hanna ultra low phos?

I’m using salifert for phos. I had v low nitrate when I first noticed Dino problem. So I dosed nitrate to 5 after last waterchange 2 days ago

 

[paul01609]

Wants to be Ratio I believe 16 to 1,if you loosing coral do a five day blackout

 

[serez]

Updates:
I made a misdiagnosis. Unbelievable clumsiness lol... i got a microscope and still make the mistake. So the type I have is ostreopsis. However this doesn’t really change my game plan.
So far:
Only 3 days since dosing nitrate, my rocks have turned deep green. There is no visible bubbly strings of Dino on the top of the rocks anymore. This has to be a good sign and Possibly the green algae are taking over (I hope).
My hammer coral is extending the first time after being shriveled up for almost 2 weeks.
Sand bed is still covered near the flow pump. Can’t say it has receded or not but I don’t think it’s getting worse at least.
Brown patches are growing on the glass. Around them are thousands of pods. I’m leaving them be. I believe I used to scrape the glass too often. Some days a few times a day! This probably prohibited pods reproduction and bio diversity in my new tank. I scraped a little bit of it off yesterday and found a lot of interesting stuff
According to some replies in a separate post I made for ID, there are coralline algae, some non-nuisance flagellates (the tiny yellow cells) and the beginning of some ulva and green algae.
I had loads of green hair algae after the nitrogen cycle and I was annoyed by them. Now that I’ve met Dinos, I really miss them! They were super easy to get rid of (with vibrant) and my tank inhabitants loved to eat them. I hope green algae growth will solve my Dino issue. Meanwhile the ph dropped to about 8.0. It used to be 8.3
Not gonna start worrying about it unless it’s under 7.8
Please let me know your thoughts?
thank you

 

[serez]

Pictures: immediately after water change 3 days ago.

3 days since nitrate dosing, removed skimmer:

My Kenya tree isn’t happy AT ALL

All the polyps are covered in Dino );
I feel sorry for it... but I have faith it can pull through. I tried blowing it with turkey baster before but it made it worse as Dino will just get more widespread
I’m not looking to do a blackout unless things get more out of hand.

 

[serez]

forgot to mention;
I also turned the temperature up to 28C
Corals seem happy, fish seem happy, I read this will help kill off dinos. So we shall see.
I’m still running phosguard. It removes silicates as well so hopefully green algae will take over rather than brown diatom. Although diatoms aren’t dying off completely (saw them under microscope) I want to focus on biodiversity from now on.

 

[serez]

I stopped using reed energy ab+
suspect it’s what caused Dino
Dosing phytoplankton once every 2 days
Hooked up easysps as well but only dosing 0.2ml a day as the system need to get used to it first so don’t think this contributes to the Dino battle

 

[serez]

More updates:
I turned on the flash after lights out
To my surprise, what I thought was brown patches on my glass are green! Green film algae! They’re what I saw under the microscope. The tiny yellowish green cells.

If they are indeed green film algae cells, then it’s apparent in this image that they can keep dinoflagellates in check.
What a relief!! I think this is a great sign. Also found many fish kisses on the glass haha how cute. I’m glad my algae blenny has something not toxic to eat.

A spirorbid worm under the microscope surrounded by (film??) algae cells?? Sample: Scraped off the glass.

Fish mouth kisses on the glass
As of the remaining Dino, here are some pictures - mainly in this corner of the sand bed, and thinly covered on the rocks.

 

[serez]

Removed phosguard today, because I don’t want silicates to bottom out. I don’t have a test so just to be safe I took the media out. Phosphate is at around 0.1-0.15
I doubt reducing phosphate is on the top of my concerns to help defeat dino

 

[serez]

Lowering temperature back down to 25 as raising it to 28 didn’t help. I watched a YouTube video today and found out from someone who had Ostreopsis that raising temperature make them bloom MORE...

 

[serez]

Update:
I continued to dose phytoplankton. My back glass is now covered in green film algae. I had to scrape the front glass so I can see inside the tank. But here’s the only patch of Dino left on the sand bed

however, the Dino that got detached from the sand bed seemed to latch onto the side wall next to the overflow.
But it looks like there’s some green algae underneath it also

I haven’t blown anything off at all since I did the last water change 8 days ago.
the only thing I did was try and remove some floating bits of Dino sludge and strings that are growing on corals with a syringe + a long tube.
It’s not extremely effective, but at least I could avoid a water change.
Lastly, there are some growth of Cyanobacteria. I hope this won’t become my next problem...

 

[serez]

Update:
My cleaner shrimp was in bad shape today. Its antennas were short and covered in algae, it’s shell was dirty and one of its front leg was broken. It got super stressed and even more dirty when I scraped the glass today, and molted during the day which never happened before. I think it molted due to stress.
its day 9 since water change and I think it might be the limit for the tank. I had water ready for a 50% water change next week - I was trying to wait for dinos to die off for as long as possible since they love water changes, but I decided I had to do it now.
I scrapped the wall covered in Dino while siphoning them out, and i siphoned the last bit off the sand along with the gravel attached to them.
I blew off the rocks with a turkey baster
I sucked the water almost dry in my sump as well.
Basically I tried to siphon as much Dino out as possible
I cleaned the power head and let it dry
After new water was added, there were a lot of die offs floating on the surface. I tried to siphon the surface but it was kind of impossible. I tried with a syringe, it was just too much die offs. So I decided to put a tunze skimmer in the tank near the overflow, turn the return flow down low (power head off) and skim very wet so the bits on the surface would flow into the skimmer. I also used a turkey baster to remove any more Dino visible in the tank while skimming.
lastly, I changed one of the filter sponges and carbon in my media basket. I have a 3 layered media basket. Sponge, carbon, sponge. I use the fluval fine sponge I get them large and cut them small but they’re super thick. I think this has been a great system for Dino because any bits that made it through the carbon will be trapped again by another sponge and since there isn’t any light down there they’ll just die off eventually.
I pray to god, please, don’t let these jerks come back. It’s only my 3rd month reefing, and I had to face this huge challenge! I’m ready to chill out for a while after all of this. I hope my tank will be back to normal now, and soon I can introduce more livestock

 

[serez]

Update:
3 days since the water change, Dino is not coming back strong. I’m almost relieved. Time to add corals?

 

[justinkdenny]

Hi,
Dino have been blooming out of proportion since couple of weeks ago. My corals were already having a hard time in my 2 months old tank. Now they’re struggling. Especially the hammer coral. Bird nests have strings attached to them... The only one that doesn’t seem to care is the torch euphyllia.
I received my microscope today and got a positive ID - amphidinium. I’ll attach an image below.
Parameters:
Alk - 9.5 (I had a alk swing last week due to using wrong product to raise Ca, hence why my hammer has been having a tough time already before Dino arrived. I let the alk drop back down naturally and during this time Dino bloomed. Is this a contributing factor? My ph dropped 0.2)
salinity - 1.025
Nitrate - 5 (I dosed flourish nitrogen 2 days ago to get to this number. It bottomed out before and that’s why I got Dino I think along with various other reasons)
Phosphate - 0.2 (I added phosguard last night, I think 0.2 is a little high, should I continue phosguard??)
Calcium - 410
Mag - 1340
Ph - 8.1
What I’m doing now:
keep nitrate at 5, try to reduce phosphate to below 0.1, stabilize alkalinity at 9.5, running carbon, phosguard, stopped reef energy, reef roids, phytoplankton...

What else can I do? Every time I blow them off my coral they just come right back or get even more widespread. Now even my leather coral is covered and won’t open... ugh
Please can anyone give some sound advice ):

I wouldn't stop phyto if it was me. Let you tank get dirty so other things can outcompete the dinos. Amphidium are tough ones that uv wont kill. I would also research dosing silicates. I think that helps alot with that type of dino. I have beat them twice but it was tough for me.