I’m trying to figure out what I’m dealing with in my tank and could use some help with identification.
I recommend posting here for the most wholistic treatment that was put together by and excellent team of coconspirators here on R2R – not by an single person. Almost all of your questions (even ones you don't have yet) are answered in the first post:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/dinoflagellates-–-are-you-tired-of-battling-altogether.293318/
If you haven't already read page one as well as the linked journal articles there, do that as well. (reading the whole thread is not necessary)
The tank is about 6 months old.
Has it already gone through The Uglies? How was it and did you try to do anything about it? (What did you do?)
Thanks for the reply. Does this type of dino cause immediate harm that need to be dealt with quickly? Is silicate dosing a faster/more aggressive approach?
The question is how are your pods and cleanup crew? If they are OK then no toxins.
No toxins and you can worry about this more like a green algae bloom. Your tank isn't going to end up a giant dead zone....you just have a lot of freindly dino's. Maybe more than you'd like, but it's a stretch to call it a problem compared to a normal dino bloom where nothing by cyano and dino's survive.
If you do have signs of toxins, then you should be running a 1/4 portion of activated carbon changed out weekly instead of monthly.
Current parameters are roughly:
NO3: 7.7 ppm
PO4: 0.09 ppm
These are not parameters of a typical toxic dino bloom, so again how are your tanks signs of toxicity?
I picked up a microscope and sampled the film directly from the sand. I’m seeing quite a few golden brown oval cells that are actively moving. I attached a video of them under the microscope.
I'm curious how representative this slide is if you take a few more samples.
Do you see nothing but dino's or do some slides show more lifeforms? I would hope to find a variety of things, almost no matter what that variety is.
Also interested in what has worked best for people dealing with this type. I already run UV, although I understand it may not help much if this is large cell Amphidinium. I’m curious about silicate dosing, encouraging diatoms, reducing sandbed cleaning, or anything else that has worked long term.
There is not a cut and dried method for these. Lucky you!
Silicate dosing, like most other attempted treatments, seems to have proved very hit or miss.....which is not a sign of a good solution. 50/50 odds are similar odds to random guessing at a solution or doing nothing at all. H2O2, blackouts, bleach,
Fill In The Blank products, etc all seem to get about 50/50 odds when you look at enough examples.
If it's really true that they ALL burrow into the substrate at night, I don't see why *someone* hasn't had some success by siphoning out the whole sandbed at night. Maybe nobody has tried at night?
Sand bed replacement typically does practically nothing though.....so I'm not so sure about the "all go into the sandbed" theory.
I think we're missing something....perhaps only adults have this behavior and the babies (swarmers) are still waterborn....I'm not sure though.
Another thing I don't think I've seen someone try is taking good nutrient levels like yours and purposefully lowering them to threshold levels.....nutrient changes like this are one of the common signals for a bloom to change form and to end. But there are other signals, such as salinity and temperature that are often "mixed in" and that complicates things.
In my opinion manual removal and water changes are definitely beneficial. People are always afraid of the introduced trace elements that will support dinoflagellate growth but without those trace elements competing organisms won't have a chance establishing either.
Overall agreed. The trace element theory is very old (and bunk) though. By spiking water changes with spec levels of N and P we prevented those "relapse" symptoms you're referring to.....definitely seemed related to P (and N) being bottomed out more than other factors.
I added about 5 lbs of live rock in the sump at the beginning and have been adding corals constantly.
In the sump is not great placement if you're expecting that rock to seed the display tank somehow. Displace some dead display rock withe the live rock and put the dead in the sump or better yet put it up for sale.
One thing I suspect is overclean the sand. I siphon the detritus quite aggressively during the weekly water change. Maybe that threw off the bacteria balance.
No. If anything removing dino's is what you were doing...and it should be good to do that even more.
Consider siphoning into a 25 micron (or smaller if possible) filter sock or equivalent and then adding the water back to the tank. This will allow you do do almost unlimited siphoning for cleaning purposes.
What's the best way to raise only phosphate? I've been draining out the froze food liquid, maybe pour those into the tank as well?
LOL, no...can't believe all the things they have people worrying about these days. Sheesh!
Use a phosphate product like Seachem Flourish Phosphate. In general I'd target ≥ 0.10 ppm for phosphates....though you're already close to that, aren't you?
Looks like AF life source is the way to go if I want to try the bateria product route? Do you know how long it would take to see an improvement? Right now it's still limited to the sand but I don't want it to grow out of control before I switch to silicate
If you have plenty of funds and time to put into experiments, then maybe. IMO there is no "competition" between bacteria and dino's where "bacteria win". That's a narrative cut from whole cloth that folks apply to all kinds of pests to no avail.
Honestly it's not causing any issues right now, they are limited to the sand. I'm more concerned because of what I read about Dino. I don't want to only start treatment when it gets out of control. Would dino's improve on their own?
Don't freak yourself out. Read the thread I posted at least enough to see which groups of dino's DO CAUSE HAVOK...so you can realize you don't have them and stop freaking yourself out. :)
"My" method with uvc and blackout doesnt harm anything else so you should have a low threshold to do that.
I will give you a parital retraction of the bunk label I mentioned in relation to blackouts elsewhere.....in a case like this (
no stress, no damage, no indication of a real problem) a blackout should be fine as nothing is already in a state of stress or decline. Should be pretty harmless to try, I agree.
