DINO ID Please

[C4Rez]

I’ve been battling Dinos for a little over 2 months. Tank is only 6-7 months old. Taking it slow with daily dosing of Phyto & Microbacter 7 (& sometimes Clean version). I figured it was either LCA or SCA. Anyone got an idea?

If maybe SCA, I can finally implement a UV. What cha’ll think? Thanks.

 

[dwest]

Amphidinium. I don’t know if large or small cell. @taricha will know.

Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods

This thread is a spin-off from the @mcarroll very successful Dino thread The purpose is to discuss methods for removal and fighting against a particular strain of dinoflagellate - Large Cell Amphidinium. It seems to make up about a third of the cases of dinos. The reason this strain gets its...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[taricha]

I figured it was either LCA or SCA. Anyone got an idea?

y'know what's awesome about this pic? The diatom running across the middle is a great scale bar.
The pigmented part of the center of the diatom (probably cylindrotheca) is around 20-30 microns, which tells you these amphidinium are <10 microns. Small-cell amphidinium.
(you can also tell by the ratio of the dino "beak" to the body.)

 

[C4Rez]

y'know what's awesome about this pic? The diatom running across the middle is a great scale bar.
The pigmented part of the center of the diatom (probably cylindrotheca) is around 20-30 microns, which tells you these amphidinium are <10 microns. Small-cell amphidinium.
(you can also tell by the ratio of the dino "beak" to the body.)

I did not even take that into account! Got some trained eyes there @taricha .
Thank y’all for the input! Narrows down interventions for SCA. =)

 

[brandon429]

how many gallons is the tank

40 and below we beat dinos in 48 hours about 90% of the time using a fully different means. gallonage/sized based is its restriction, the outcomes are always sharp though. if you have a medium to small reef there's no need to use large tank methods/rarely work on smaller systems. large tanks can't use this system effectively and will continue to be on the chemistry-only approach/results are found in the stickies after pictures work threads for that mode. at least it gives large tankers a chance...without it they'd have no recourse.

but medium to small tanks are wasting time entertaining dinos for longer than 48 hours, most owners simply don't know there are more effective ways to win that are logged with much stronger after pics. large tank owners make the rules and they flow top down is why -large tank owners work within their gallonage/access restrictions to make the rules, nanos simply aren't the same beast.

there is a way to clean your tank that dinos can't beat. no purchases, no measurements, no chems, a cleaning system with stuff you already have at home we have hundreds of outcome pages logged already. ID and type of organism plays no role in the approach, only action plays the role/gets us the pages of fix pics.

 

[brandon429]

I see you're in 145 gallons/large tank

in that case, hope its a bare bottom/no sand reef

the right way to win is to still manually remove all the dinos first, making the tank dino free via common siphon and water changes/lift out and clean any accessible rocks/ and you run the chemistry methods from the clean condition not the invaded one. you can still do differently than the masses that way your large tank doesn't go from dinos to 5 months of GHA, due to keeping all original mass in place and redistributing it as dead mass all throughout the tank.

I would for sure apply UV after the tank was topically cleaned, begin from the clean condition or you'll trande off dinos/gha/and cyano like you see it occurring in the stickied dinos threads up top. the #1 thing the masses do wrong is start hopes from the invaded condition, refusing to begin in the totally clean condition. that's backwards from the right way even for large tank remediation. we should be applying nutrient adjustment and pod application to totally clean tanks and using them as growback prevention, not removers/redistributors of waste. it's not true that water changes cause dinos when the water exported is used as siphon to take away all visible dinos mats, in that means the water changes are crucial to actually sustaining the fix

adding the bagged pods so available nowadays is really handy, look at them swarming in a nano reef we just cleaned out from dinos: DannoOMG



you can clean your tank then add these, then do all the chemistry nitrate and phosphate adjustments you like.

algaebarn has nice packs

 

[C4Rez]

Thanks @brandon429 for the feedback! Unfortunately not a bare bottom. I’ll definitely consider your advice.

 

[brandon429]

a uv filter would help so much after cleaning to reduce circulating mass

 

[C4Rez]

@brandon429 @taricha @dwest It's about 2-3 weeks since I plumped in a 25W AquaUV (figured I'll just upgrade parts to the 57W later if its not enough). So far, SCA Dinos are not visible to the naked eye. Very happy. I hope this continues for as long as it can before the next hurdle lol.

So for those interested. I have a WB145.5 (100g DT, ~30g sump). I plumbed the AquaUV straight from the return (in the sump) and into the DT. Vectra M2 @ 35% (rate possibly 400-600gph). During the first week, every 3-4 days I'd still siphon the top of the sandbed through a micron sock into the sump so Dinos would get into the water column and then through the UV before returning to the DT.