For example, the idea that dinoflagellates are not adept at N & P uptake is something I'd like to look at more closely, since "
[...] A. carterae is recognized as one of the microalgae species with the
most efficient mechanisms for nitrogen uptake (Lavín and Lourenço, 2005)".
I also recall that some dinoflagellates have developed specialized uptake mechanisms to assimilate N or P (I don't remember which one it was) when other organisms no longer could.
I think you are forgetting the competion at this stage is not with coral, it's with the bacteria (ie dino's vs bacteria)...and bacteria will run nutrient levels down to where nothing else can compete. (It's in the articles.)
Dino's are special tho, you aren't barking up the wrong tree! Most everything else photosynthetic generally just gives up and dies in this scenario (you can see how some of those tanks look.....nothing but cyano and dino's left). Dino's are some of the ultimate survivors IMO.
All I can say is finish the reading...all of those points are addressed. There's further reading all around the topic on my blog (more jounal links) if you go there to the dino section....but you might have to be "a little too into it" like us to go there I think. ;)
You'll have to trust me I'm not making any of this up, it comes from primary sources and all of it has been widely verified "clinically" here with us.
Now, if you're trying to wonder if the advice is perfect or whether applies to all scenarios or all dino's, the answer is no. That's why there's a thread and not just a book or article or some simple advice. (Though some folks have tried to summarize it that way.)
I don't agree that the information is as useful summarized in any of those ways because (as we acknowledge all the time very consciously) there are limits to the understanding we have and the situations to which our understanding applies.
You can see the breakdown of this in the first post....if your tank doesn't meet those criteria, you don't have a dino outbreak so far as the thread is concerned. You may have some dino's....but not an outbreak that fits the context that we fairly understand. And you don't get the treatment from the thread without going through the "entrance exam" to see if your tank even qualifies for it.
It may help make more sense of things to read through the first several pages of the thread coments to see the manner in which folks actually got help for actual tanks with actual dino outbreaks. You can see a smattering of people getting rejected as well when they did not have dino outbreaks...that might also be useful to see how it happened.
To your point (I think) ostreopsis is another one of the many edge cases that "treatments" we have don't work well on.
Read some of the material we have on them and you see there are definitely things one could try....they are triggered by the same seasonal nutrient shifts in their environment as other dino's, just differently. It's just that the things to try are a bit more extreme than most would be willing to experiment with....not just "goosing" N & P.
Anyway, there are LOTS of dino's....you can read in the thread which dino's are to be targeted in the manner the thread describes AND the symptoms the tank more or less has to have are pretty well described.
The other situations and the many other types of dino's
don't fit the formula. As you can see in the thread, and as mentioned, amphidinium are one of the edge cases.
We've got a clue about how to deal 5 or 10 of them, tops. :)
That's also why changing the attitude of the dino in question (back to autotroph) is only half of the "treatment".
The other half is getting the reef to grow – hence the activated carbon, added nutrients, et al.....
dino's don't behave this way in a healthy reef.
I'm just not sure I'd point to bacteria decomposing their exoskeleton as the reason for nutrients being "glued to zero", since the dinoflagellates themselves may be consuming quite a lot and are also known to be capable of luxury uptake which makes this even worse.
Arguably that's part of the plan, though I don't recall any research specifically suggesting it. Like I said the idea for the dino's is to change their attitude back to autotrophism......maybe "luxury uptake" is what's happening during "treatment".
This would be a a good theoretical discussion in the dino thread, BTW, which I would encourage. It's interesting, but a bit throwaway to go deep here on a cyano thread for one tank.
If you'd like to (here or there), please be more specific about the dino's you're referring to re:luxury uptake and please share a pointer to any article(s) you have that describe luxury uptake in this context.
I'd also wonder if you have any article(s) you may be basing a calculation for the amount of N & P required to break down one dino theca. Also curious if you have any resource that suggest how many dino cells are generated during a heavy bloom? Last, if you have a resource that suggests how much n & p might be "lost" to luxury uptake to one dino cell?
It was a generaization about the dino's in the thread and a comparison with other pest algae we deal with. Reading the rest of the thread resources would help.....the info on my thread was designed to be read altogether, not taken in pieces like this.
...which I kinda say on the thread too.
Your link is interesting, but the reported results are not purely how you've summarized them with amphidinium being excellent at uptake...which this article doesn't actually come out and say – it's actually a citation of another article. Reported results in this article were actually uneven and depended on the culture medium in some interesting ways.
Is it weird that they are culturing a HAB-algae in the context of a food production operation and not once mentioning toxins but instead talking about other "valuable assets" dino's might produce?? Very imaginative, but...how is it not even on their radar?
Also very imaginative thinking in the article about brine remediation....like plants aren't 60-70% water when the leave the system. All that water has to be made up with
more scarce freshwater to return the brine to seawater levels...can't use seawater to dilute something down to seawater. ;)
Or to make it simpler: Just put biodegradable cellulose into a tank. A C:N:P ratio of C:0:0 should simulate thecae close enough, or might even work better. We know that carbon dosing affects N & P, but I don't think that shows the whole picture. Hobby-grade test kits have very bad detection limits, so dinoflagellates will be able to take up dissolved nutrients long before the tests show anything. In other words: The uptake of the dinoflagellates themselves might play a major role here as well. I don't think narrowing it down to bacteria trying to break down thecae is the solution, especially when we observe the same phenomenon of "locked" nutrients with athecate dinoflagellates.
