Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[taricha]

I had Ostreopsis and they loved it when I dosed MB7. Bloom went from bad to worse fast.

This is what I was referring to when I said some bacteria helps suppress dinos, and some helps fuel it. And we have yet to see a reliable way to know what bacterial source is sure to give you "good" bacteria.

I thought about this statement more and I'm curious if you could be more specific?

I didn't mean anything other than what you referred to when you addressed the gloves and poking around in the tank.
I can't prove or even elucidate the connection, but I see dinos and cyano associate together too much to be comfortable with persistent or recurring cyano in a tank that's had a history of dinos.
That said, popular treatments for killing cyano (chemiclean etc) seem even more strongly associated with dinos than cyano itself is!

I've not looked, but have people been successful with diatoms driven by silicate dosing to outcompete dinos?

For those who have dinos that don't move into water and aren't reachable by UV (Large cell amphidinium), silica fueled diatom competition may be a helpful tool.
It's speculative (worked for an aquaculture facility, and maybe in a couple of tanks?) and may be a dead end, so those interested I recommend follow along on this other thread.
For every other kind of dinos, there are enough mechanisms to control them that I can't see the point in suggesting Silica (yet).

You could always take the route that I went with the coralife 6x, its 18w but it decimated Dinos in my 90 gal, didn't even put it in the display, right off my return manifold and in a day or two it was all gone. Again I did a few things prior such as raising my N and P and keeping it high, changing my socks everyday after blowing it off all the time. Removing GFO, and I stopped doing any water changes. I also lowered my light schedule by an hour or two.

Your report is interesting because even with high quality Coralife UV, some have not had success at this wattage per gallon. I'm guessing ostreopsis dinos? They seem the most UV susceptible.
Also I bolded the extra things you did that are not usually headlines in this thread, but important ways to increase the effectiveness of a nutrient + UV approach.

Is that this is can get rid of

This looks very likely to be dinos, and stringiness suggests probably susceptible to UV.

Being overly optimistic I decided to throw some cheato back in the sump and fire up the lights. Bad move. Within one week, the o. dino’s erupted in the sump and I had to throw away the cheato, vacuum out the sump, and leave the lights off (in the sump). The UV remains in the DT and the dino’s are staying out of there.

FYI, shaking chaeto vigorously in freshwater will destroy Ostreopsis cells in seconds. live and cysts too.Fresh water isn't 100% versus all dinos (prorocentrum survives somehow), but it is 100% vs ostreopsis.

3. I then realized I could not detect any PO4/NO3. 5x my feeding, dosed aminos, dropped a ridiculous amount of frozen cubes of mysis in, still nothing. Dinos exploded in growth (I guess all the NO3/PO4 was feeding dinos).

I've cultured up dinos in beakers and super nano tanks. nothing made them bloom harder than amino acids.

It's hard to say "what went wrong" since it was so much theory and hope....it's very possible it just doesn't work, or doesn't work like we think.

It was worth a shot, regardless! And if you have the capacity to keep testing, maybe you'll still figure something out.

Yep, hence the other thread I started for Amphidinium and Silica experimentation. I'd hate people to get confused between this Si stuff only tried in a couple of tanks, and the main thread points that have been tried by many.

... but besides doing all that any other disturbances could cause a rebloom? Where does it stop?

Good questions, and frustration is understandable. However let me ask this.
how do the numbers compare to the original bloom? significantly less?
If so, what's to say this is not the minority of cells that encysted at the end of the last bloom and are re-emerging in greatly reduced numbers. After all - you let them just "burn themselves out" last time and that sort of condition is likely to trigger encystment like at the end of a growing season.
I get that it looks and feels like a step backwards, but I don't see any reason to jump to that conclusion.

My theory was that the NoPox addition is taking nutrients out before the dinos can consume them. Less food + DinoX seems to have worked for me.

This may be very specific to how my system runs (not really sure what makes it do that)

I don't begrudge anyone their success, but since it's 180degrees opposite from what most experience, it's hard to generalize or recommend this.

I’m at a loss as to why the Dino’s keep coming back. I thought my higher levels would not bring on there return. It’s not the thick snotty mess that I had but I can see the difference in color, golden brown for diatoms then darker brown in the Dino concentrated areas. If I keep the Si up around 3ppm I have diatoms, when it drops below 1 ppm I get a mix. Still no algae or cyano.

As I said in the other thread, it looks to me like this is ~10:1 diatoms to dinos. So if you had more grazers to match the diatom growth, your sand would be 90% less brown. Maybe this is still an unacceptably large amount of brown, but maybe some of those grazers would munch a few dinos too.
I wonder if your sand sifter fish is keeping down the micrograzer inverts that could reproduce and scale up to the increased diatom growth. I mean conch snails are awesome - mine love eating diatoms off the sand - but they can't really scale up their appetite to a totally new level to match the diatom growth.

 

[taricha]

Yesterday at the end of day both tanks looked pretty free of dinos. End of today outbreak in both tanks. I didn’t do anything to either tank. What could have set them off?

...Can I culture diatoms from freshwater to add life to my tank?

Dinos cycle to and away from sand surface on a daily schedule making it look better/worse, or you mean something else?

FW diatoms I seriously doubt would be transferrable to SW tank.

 

[Beardo]

55w Jabao overkill for 170 litre?
Struggling to find what wattage is best and what flow rate, is it worth putting that info in the front page @mcarroll @reeferfoxx

You can use a smaller unit, 25 watts would be sufficient, but if you have the 55 watt then use it. I have a 57 watt unit on a 50g tank with no issues.

 

[Jolanta]

Was that 1800L per hour?

Yes

 

[mcarroll]

Yep, hence the other thread I started for Amphidinium and Silica experimentation.

Gonna find a spot for that on the main page...prolly under/near the Amphidinium ID search link.

they can't really scale up their appetite to a totally new level to match the diatom growth.

I think overwhelming predators is a big part of the whole bloom strategy....and diatoms are possibly the best/fastest at blooming.

Look at how hermit and snail populations boom and bust to about the same rhythm though – and they generally love diatoms.

Hermits aren't trustworthy, so I try to rely on Cerith snails.

Ceriths will go everywhere in the tank (and even out of the tank sometimes!) and they stay small enough to not starve under normal tank conditions AND reproduce in most tanks, so they scale with algae growth to a degree. Of course their scaling has limits – the tank keeper is the only CUC member that will keep up with a powerful algae bloom.

 

[kinetic]

Before and after, February 9, 2018 -> April 4, 2018

I'm hoping I can sustain this with NoPoX. The only worry now is trying to feed the tank and not cause more dinos to grow back.

 

[Bret Brinkmann]

Yes, that's the idea. My theory was that the NoPox addition is taking nutrients out before the dinos can consume them. Less food + DinoX seems to have worked for me.

This may be very specific to how my system runs (not really sure what makes it do that). It's already pretty low, with no dosing of a carbon source which is why I probably got dinos in the first place. Increasing n/p never worked for me, and made it worse. Using Nopox to strip nutrients out has almost completely removed all dinos for a couple weeks now.

My dinos got worse when I started dosing too. But they also stopped looking stringy and bubbly too. Eventually they started going into the water column at night instead of sitting on everything around the clock. It took about two to three weeks before they suddenly slowed down, and significantly. My GHA also slowed down too at that time. It was at that point in which I reached some other micronutrient limitation. Having the bloom temporarily get worse is part of the strategy here.

That said, your results from the combined effects of dinoX and NoPoX are very interesting. Maybe start a thread and see what results others get? The dinos should have been able to get nutrients from bacteria and other algae but many dinoX inhibits this behavior? Would love to learn more.

55w Jabao overkill for 170 litre?
Struggling to find what wattage is best and what flow rate, is it worth putting that info in the front page @mcarroll @reeferfoxx

UV info is definitely worth putting on the main page. We answer these questions a lot so it would be very useful to people. But you can't oversize a UV, but it will add more heat to the water. Go with manufacturer's recommended tank size and flow rates. But aim for your tank size to be more in the middle of their size recommendations and flow to be on the lower side.

 

[taricha]

Hermits aren't trustworthy, so I try to rely on Cerith snails.
Of course their scaling has limits – the tank keeper is the only CUC member that will keep up with a powerful algae bloom.

All true. Hopefully the human clean up crew understands the consequences of the time gap between the rate of a algal bloom population, and the rate at which snails can scale up population.
Maybe there ought to be a thread: "Herbivores That Don't Suck"
It's not necessarily a dino-specific need, but it does come up in here a decent amount.
The group of "CUC that people buy" and the group "herbivores that don't suck" don't really overlap that well.

 

[kecked]

This was worse than the usual day night cycle by about double. The rocks were once again clean and now are again covered. Uv should do,the in tonight. Ps no toxin found in carbon extract. Ran carbon for 30 days and collected over two pounds. Nothing of interest showed even with IR and hplc. Found a bunch of small molecules but nothing heavy. All under 10-20 carbons. Well a few other s but not the target. I removed proteins first. Lots of that.

 

[mcarroll]

I’m at a loss as to why the Dino’s keep coming back. I thought my higher levels would not bring on there return. It’s not the thick snotty mess that I had but I can see the difference in color, golden brown for diatoms then darker brown in the Dino concentrated areas. If I keep the Si up around 3ppm I have diatoms, when it drops below 1 ppm I get a mix. Still no algae or cyano.

Perhaps, as with dino's, there's a difference between "diatom growth" and what would be considered a bloom?

The normal, everyday growth curve vs a boom.

Perhaps a low level concentration of diatom byproducts (i.e. your tank) isn't enough to have a suppressive effect, but a real boom would raise the concentration to an effective level?

BTW, I'm imagining the chocolate diatom soup that was pictured in one of the posts a while back on this thread.....trying to recall, was that one of yours @reeferfoxx?

 

[reeferfoxx]

Perhaps, as with dino's, there's a difference between "diatom growth" and what would be considered a bloom?

The normal, everyday growth curve vs a boom.

Perhaps a low level concentration of diatom byproducts (i.e. your tank) isn't enough to have a suppressive effect, but a real boom would raise the concentration to an effective level?

BTW, I'm imagining the chocolate diatom soup that was pictured in one of the posts a while back on this thread.....trying to recall, was that one of yours @reeferfoxx?

Nope, I don't recall that one. Wish I had a diatom bloom right about now lol

Good questions, and frustration is understandable. However let me ask this.
how do the numbers compare to the original bloom? significantly less?
If so, what's to say this is not the minority of cells that encysted at the end of the last bloom and are re-emerging in greatly reduced numbers. After all - you let them just "burn themselves out" last time and that sort of condition is likely to trigger encystment like at the end of a growing season.
I get that it looks and feels like a step backwards, but I don't see any reason to jump to that conclusion.

Great question. I'll try to get some tests going.
First round of dinos was similar. I want to say this is slightly slower growth and more focused to a low light area.
The only thing that worries me about this bloom versus the last is the event when I saw dead copepods floating around the tank.
Not being discriminant(cyano/dino), I've been disturbing the patches before lights out. UV still running.

 

[mcarroll]

Nope, I don't recall that one.

Can't recall who posted it then, but the pic is back there in the thread somewhere...and looks like a tank full of chocolate soup!

 

[tonymacc]

UV info is definitely worth putting on the main page. We answer these questions a lot so it would be very useful to people. But you can't oversize a UV, but it will add more heat to the water. Go with manufacturer's recommended tank size and flow rates. But aim for your tank size to be more in the middle of their size recommendations and flow to be on the lower side.

Lfs reckons 5w for my tank, so this is where this gets confusing, just want to make sure i get the right one, thats why I asked, the flow rate was the important one, so I will go with 180 L per hour flow and 35w, does that sound right? Although Jolanta had success with 55w.

 

[Jolanta]

Lfs reckons 5w for my tank, so this is where this gets confusing, just want to make sure i get the right one, thats why I asked, the flow rate was the important one, so I will go with 180 L per hour flow and 35w, does that sound right? Although Jolanta had success with 55w.

I think 180l/h is too slow and it will heat your water a lot

 

[tonymacc]

I think 180l/h is too slow and it will heat your water a lot

Ah, thought yours was 180 l/h? Was it gal ?

 

[taricha]

Perhaps, as with dino's, there's a difference between "diatom growth" and what would be considered a bloom?

The normal, everyday growth curve vs a boom.

Perhaps a low level concentration of diatom byproducts (i.e. your tank) isn't enough to have a suppressive effect, but a real boom would raise the concentration to an effective level?

BTW, I'm imagining the chocolate diatom soup that was pictured in one of the posts a while back on this thread.....trying to recall, was that one of yours @reeferfoxx?

Yeah, in the paper where they used diatoms to suppress dinos in the shrimp farm they did test bags and grew them to levels that were "optically dense"

For better or worse, we'd have to add more than just Si to get that response.

 

[Nirethell]

This is what I was referring to when I said some bacteria helps suppress dinos, and some helps fuel it. And we have yet to see a reliable way to know what bacterial source is sure to give you "good" bacteria.


I didn't mean anything other than what you referred to when you addressed the gloves and poking around in the tank.
I can't prove or even elucidate the connection, but I see dinos and cyano associate together too much to be comfortable with persistent or recurring cyano in a tank that's had a history of dinos.
That said, popular treatments for killing cyano (chemiclean etc) seem even more strongly associated with dinos than cyano itself is!


For those who have dinos that don't move into water and aren't reachable by UV (Large cell amphidinium), silica fueled diatom competition may be a helpful tool.
It's speculative (worked for an aquaculture facility, and maybe in a couple of tanks?) and may be a dead end, so those interested I recommend follow along on this other thread.
For every other kind of dinos, there are enough mechanisms to control them that I can't see the point in suggesting Silica (yet).


Your report is interesting because even with high quality Coralife UV, some have not had success at this wattage per gallon. I'm guessing ostreopsis dinos? They seem the most UV susceptible.
Also I bolded the extra things you did that are not usually headlines in this thread, but important ways to increase the effectiveness of a nutrient + UV approach.


This looks very likely to be dinos, and stringiness suggests probably susceptible to UV.


FYI, shaking chaeto vigorously in freshwater will destroy Ostreopsis cells in seconds. live and cysts too.Fresh water isn't 100% versus all dinos (prorocentrum survives somehow), but it is 100% vs ostreopsis.


I've cultured up dinos in beakers and super nano tanks. nothing made them bloom harder than amino acids.


Yep, hence the other thread I started for Amphidinium and Silica experimentation. I'd hate people to get confused between this Si stuff only tried in a couple of tanks, and the main thread points that have been tried by many.


Good questions, and frustration is understandable. However let me ask this.
how do the numbers compare to the original bloom? significantly less?
If so, what's to say this is not the minority of cells that encysted at the end of the last bloom and are re-emerging in greatly reduced numbers. After all - you let them just "burn themselves out" last time and that sort of condition is likely to trigger encystment like at the end of a growing season.
I get that it looks and feels like a step backwards, but I don't see any reason to jump to that conclusion.


I don't begrudge anyone their success, but since it's 180degrees opposite from what most experience, it's hard to generalize or recommend this.


As I said in the other thread, it looks to me like this is ~10:1 diatoms to dinos. So if you had more grazers to match the diatom growth, your sand would be 90% less brown. Maybe this is still an unacceptably large amount of brown, but maybe some of those grazers would munch a few dinos too.
I wonder if your sand sifter fish is keeping down the micrograzer inverts that could reproduce and scale up to the increased diatom growth. I mean conch snails are awesome - mine love eating diatoms off the sand - but they can't really scale up their appetite to a totally new level to match the diatom growth.

Thank you. It's been almost a week and no signs of Dino's normally I wouldn't get so excited but I cannot find a single brown spec anywhere so The approach I had must have done it in for now. Heres to hoping it doesn't come back.

I did want to mention this forum was a invaluable resource, After viewing what many other people did I realized that it wasn't only one thing that was going to get me out of this it was going to be a combination of things that ultimately bring my tank back to the clarity that we all enjoy. Therefor I hit it at all angles and after reading so many people had success with the uv, I broke down and bought one. I honestly believe that with uv's contact time and flow is absolutely key. I have mine turned down to about 200ish gph.. I believe they recommend 200-300 so I went with the low end. Also the coralife's flow wraps around the inside of the unit increasing contact time, it has to be enough to kill the dinos in the water column. I believe that people are not having success with this strain mainly because of this fact. Some of the cheaper higher wattage units do not have a long contact time therefore you need to slow your flow down immensely. If you slow it down too much then its not doing any good as the dinos can just out compete the sterilizer. This is why I think some of the higher end models might have more success (you get what you pay for honestly)

Protip *for those that do not have flow monitoring, I used a preexisting pump that I had prior knowledge of the flow to approximate the flow coming out of this unit. I have a Maxi-jet 1200 laying around, and since I was hard plumbing I needed to figure out my flow going through the manifold to the sterilizer. Seeing the output of the maxi-jet with is a max of 295 gph I was able to match, then slow down my flow to achieve close to 200 gph.. Those of you that have flow monitoring have it a tad easier and are probably more accurate, but this worked for me.

 

[tonymacc]

I been looking at this
http://www.marineaquatics.co.uk/shop/tmc-vecton-uv-sterilisers-200-300-400-600.html

Flowrate for the 300 is max 960l/h but doesn't state a minimum.

 

[Nirethell]

I been looking at this
http://www.marineaquatics.co.uk/shop/tmc-vecton-uv-sterilisers-200-300-400-600.html

Flowrate for the 300 is max 960l/h but doesn't state a minimum.

Again in my post I am only worried about the contact time within the uv, the one you chose equates to roughly 250 gph max, in order to get the contact time since it doesnt wrap like the corallife uv's do, you will need to drastically lower the flow rate going through the uv for it to be effective, Or you could get a higher wattage uv like alot of people on here have been doing. the choice is yours just know if the flow rate is too low even though it may be killing the dinos, they may just out compete it and grow anyways. Just some things to keep in mind thats all.

 

[tonymacc]

Again in my post I am only worried about the contact time within the uv, the one you chose equates to roughly 250 gph max, in order to get the contact time since it doesnt wrap like the corallife uv's do, you will need to drastically lower the flow rate going through the uv for it to be effective, Or you could get a higher wattage uv like alot of people on here have been doing. the choice is yours just know if the flow rate is too low even though it may be killing the dinos, they may just out compete it and grow anyways. Just some things to keep in mind thats all.

I just need bear in mind that you refer to us gals which is 3.8l whereas ours over here is 4.5l. I have sourced a variable pump which will give me max 1000l/h and min of approx. 400l/h, but think I will go for the next model up, the Vecton 400 and a pump with max 1350l/h, min approx. 600l/h.
Whats are your thoughts on this?