Dinoflagellate Problem? Could Ulva lactuca be the Answer?

[Cory]

That looks to be 100% cyanobacteria. Chemiclean will kill it.

 

[ShadowR55]

That looks to be 100% cyanobacteria. Chemiclean will kill it.

Just did the hydrogen peroxide test and it floated up with bubbles so it is Cyano, but I don’t want to dose chemiclean in my tank, I’m just dosing coral snow and microbacter 7, hopefully it’s gone in a few weeks.

 

[Cory]

Unfortunately the ulva hasnt done anything to the dinos by growth alone. The ulva has increased in size a lot. I havent tried drying it yet as i want to get too much that it need to be thrown out.

 

[becon776]

WOW. this thread is awesome. got a jrw build going... doing triton. set up 12/25 with rubbermaid cycle dryrock

algae barn chaeto - melted
2nd ship algae barn chaeto - melting.

nuisance algae prevalent int fuge under h380.
algae barn themselves suggested thus decided to check it out. all values zero. fush are in. alk and Ca are spot on.

 

[Ryan Souza]

Funny thing, I followed the dirty method of putting nutrients into the tank and battled Dino’s for about a year. I’ve noticed surges of ulva in my reactor which out competes everything including the chaeto. I really have no idea how it got into my tank as I used dry pukani, but I will tell you around the surge of the ulva, i can do water changes weekly again, and the Small amount of Dino’s that return are burnt off within a day or two.

 

[AlgaeBarn]

It shouldn't have arrived in pieces . Its going to be difficult to culture . Im in the middle of the same scenario . I used to have lots growing in one of my sump's 25 years ago . It only grows from the base point .
Ive had a bunch of pieces floating around in my tank for 3 days. I did have one larger piece that had a base point which I epoxied to a small piece of rubble to keep it stationary. Did you add to sump or just just DT ? I haven't been able to harvest any local ,its all broken up into small pieces after 20 days of heavy east winds.I live in South Florida and am presently looking for a local source of larger amount's than what the Algae internet retailers are selling and should be at way lower costs , it is easier to harvest on the gulf side of Florida . Ill let you know .
Obviously I haven't eradicated my problem yet , but theirs enough evidence online to still convince me that this makes sense .
keep us up to date

FYI, our new reactors keep it in smaller pieces. They still grow very well, but we are tuning our reactors to keep the sheets in bigger chunks.

We are more than willing to sponsor this thread since you guys are doing most of the work. Please message me and we can send you bulk.

 

[AlgaeBarn]

So today marks the day. Finally received my ulva from algae barn. It was all broke up and little war in jar. Was supposed to be here Thursday but finally delivered today. I temp acclimated. Placed in fuge. Turned off skimmer. Fuge lights come on around 9-10 so let’s see what happens. Wish me luck fellow hobbyist

Message me your order number and we will ship out some big sheets to you

 

[AlgaeBarn]

Can't believe I just found this thread. We should have some time in the next couple months to follow the extraction procedure (I'm a chemical engineer) as listed in the articles. We are just going to need some guinea pigs :-D

 

[becon776]

nice

 

[taricha]

awesome to see this being tried. Here's another paper I mentioned in an earlier thread that talked about a few different macroalgae vs ostreopsis dinos.

other ideas: Macroalgae Chemical Warfare. The seaweed Dictyota dichotoma has been found to emit chemicals that suppress dinos and force ostreopsis live cells to retreat entirely into cyst stage over the course of 20 days. The seaweed is itself considered a pest, and it may not be sensible to introduce it to chase out amphidinium which may not be very toxic at all.

the paper that I linked mentions Ulva as well.
excerpt from abstract:
"In this study we investigated under experimental conditions the interactions between O. cf. ovata and three of the most common macroalgae in this area: Dictyota dichotoma (brown alga), Rhodymenia pseudopalmata (red alga) and Ulva rigida (green alga). Three different experiments were set up: O. cf. ovata was grown (i) together with fresh macroalgal tissues, (ii) in media in which macroalgae were previously cultured, and (iii) in media with the addition of dry macroalgal powder at different concentrations. The results indicated that all the investigated seaweeds exerted negative effects toward the benthic dinoflagellate O. cf. ovata. D. dichotoma inhibited the growth of O. cf. ovata in all tested experimental conditions; U. rigida had inhibitory effect both in form of fresh thalli and dry powder but not as growth medium filtrate, suggesting that either Ulva does not release any allelopathic compound in the medium in absence of O. cf. ovata or the alleged released allelochemicals are rapidly degradable...."

 

[taricha]

Just one more comment....

Dinoflagellets:

Diatom algae:

Actually, these could all be dino!
The first pair of pics 100% it's dinos - the long bubbly strings are pretty definitive of ostreopsis.

But the second pair of pics could be dinos too. Amphidinium presents exactly like this, and without a microscope or at least a coffee filter test it's a total coin toss.

 

[jazzdude87]

Can't believe I just found this thread. We should have some time in the next couple months to follow the extraction procedure (I'm a chemical engineer) as listed in the articles. We are just going to need some guinea pigs :-D

Thread resurrection. I've been battling microscopically diagnosed ostreopsis and prorocentrum what the heck no success so far (three day blackout, UV sterilizers, increased nutrient dosing to get nitrate and phosphate consistently detectable, addition of beneficial bacteria and TONS of pods as well as phytoplankton from Algaebarn...). @AlgaeBarn , anything ever come of the attempts at extracting chemicals from ulva? I've got ulva in my tiny refugium and I'm thinking of moving some to the display tank over larger patches of dinos this evening to try something new. And if you still need a guinea pig...

 

[Cory]

Fwiw my dinos are gone and ive been regularly feeding my tangs ulva i grow seperately. Weather dinos died from that or keeping the tank cleaner im not sure. Now it looks like cyano has taken its place.

 

[chicago]

dino or diatoms.. on nothing see below.. thougthts.. just hit my tank with reeflux to get rid of some GHA... and few days later.. its brown and stringly like.. and longer that it was.. at first I thought it was the algea dying off. it brushes off pretty easy.. some pics..

 

[chicago]

a few more close ups..

 

[Cory]

Looks like amphidium dinos. Actually not sure which kind but its dinos.

 

[chicago]

another pic after the water has evaporated.. from the slide

 

[Scrubber_steve]

Can't believe I just found this thread. We should have some time in the next couple months to follow the extraction procedure (I'm a chemical engineer) as listed in the articles. We are just going to need some guinea pigs :-D

Have you had any feedback from your end concerning the ulva - dino relationship?

 

[AlgaeBarn]

Have you had any feedback from your end concerning the ulva - dino relationship?

We just hired an operations manager to help take things off my plate and give me more time for these kinds of projects. I'll likely need to pickup a rotovap as many of the papers talk about solvent extractions. Should have that equipment in a little more than 2 months.

 

[HolySmoke]

Tank crashed this winter due to a bad heater and stray voltage. I got the chemistry back to rock solid and started stocking again when I did something stupid and knew I was gonna regret it.

I bought some caluerpa from a LFS instead of ordering from algaebarn and within 2 days had full blown dinos all over my tank. I have been fighting it for about 5 days now. I dont have a microscope but it is osterosis for sure. First step I did was buy a cheap 24w green machine from petsmart. I have been blowing off as much of the rocks as possible before the lights go out.

Yesterday my 4oz of ulva came from algaebarn. I threw it in the sump of my icecap36xl. I have a very powerful pink growlight over my fuge and I accidentally fried it the first night. Some of it is completely transparent. That being said today I am noticing a lot of the Dinos are turning white. I'm wondering if me nuking half of the sea lettuce caused it to release chemicals the dinos didnt like. I raised up my growlight as high as I can and I'm gonna cover a bunch of the diodes with electrical tape.

It is way too early to say for sure but this ulva is looking very promising. I am going to attach more pictures to this post as I take them.

Didnt take skimmer or RoxCarbon offline because I was waiting for it to grow a little bit.
The one picture of black overflow shows the dinos turning from brown to white.