Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[taricha]

Bad news! Dino’s are back! They have infested the branch’s of a pocillipora that almost died when my tank went south in January. This coral was almost a foot across but suffered RTN from all the swings in my tank when I was fighting dinos. The plan was to frag off the tips and restart it. Today I noticed the telltale signs off bubbles and some mucus strings. I had amphidinium before but some of these are different. What are they? UV maybe?
Tank is currently NO3 15ppm, PO4 .40 ppm, silicate is at 1 ppm but dosed to increase. The tank is using up silicate at a pretty fast rate with a good population of diatoms.
In the last week the only thing I have added is silicate. Edit, I did run GFO for a few to try and bring PO4 down, it was at .60 ppm but took it back off line day before yesterday. Could that be the cause?
This is turning into a never ending war!

You have Large Cell Amphidinium, and some Small Cell Amphidinium. The small cell guys go into the water a little bit, and are somewhat affected by UV. You can tell they are better swimmers. Reports of amphidinium toxins seem to come more from the small cell types. So UV may be worthwhile.
recently dead coral skeleton is prime real estate, in my tank currently it gets thoroughly colonized by diatoms. I imagine all manner of nutrients can be found there.
So to recap from a few different posts, you had elevated P & N, added silica grew some diatoms, then the tank consumption slowed, silica and N & P stayed elevated, dinos halted and basically disappeared, diatom growth slowed.
You added Trace elements and some GFO, now you are growing everything: I think I even saw some moina in that video. That's a first.) your tank nutrient consumption is way up, dinos reappear in force (in susceptible areas). It sounds like you created and then removed a trace element limitation.
If this explanation is correct: under current conditions everything will continue to grow, until whatever limitation or a new one is re-established, and the bloom is halted. In the mean time, since most of your bloom is Large Cell Amphidinium, only manual removal (siphoning) will keep their numbers in check.
If you want to try saving the infested coral and can remove it, I'll send you a PM. I think it could go downhill quickly if any of those dinos are toxic.

Remind me why is vibrant a bad option? Does it not outcompete the Dino’s? What kind of bacteria is it tha is so strong it kills everything? Anybody ever look to see?

Ps my chemicleaned tank has dinos back in less than 24 hours. Might get my control tank back after all.

Anybody know what chemiclean is made of? Erythromycin cetyl chloride. Never mind.

Oh, yeah. let me reassure you - you will have plenty of dinos still around after a chemi-clean treatment. lol.
Vibrant being a bacteria source that we know is somewhat harmful to dinos would be a great tool, if it didn't remove all the competitor algae we're trying to establish to replace dinos.
jason2459 has a sick microscope and posted some videos of vibrant on algae - I need to dig them up again - he said it showed in addition to bacteria, something instantly damaging algae cells - though that might just have been osmotic shock of such a concentrated dose under the scope.

 

[taricha]

@kecked here's Jason's post
And here's a whole thread where they test vibrant exhaustively to see what's in it, Mostly I think they decide it's bacteria plus carbon source.

 

[Bebow]

You have Large Cell Amphidinium, and some Small Cell Amphidinium. The small cell guys go into the water a little bit, and are somewhat affected by UV. You can tell they are better swimmers. Reports of amphidinium toxins seem to come more from the small cell types. So UV may be worthwhile.
recently dead coral skeleton is prime real estate, in my tank currently it gets thoroughly colonized by diatoms. I imagine all manner of nutrients can be found there.
So to recap from a few different posts, you had elevated P & N, added silica grew some diatoms, then the tank consumption slowed, silica and N & P stayed elevated, dinos halted and basically disappeared, diatom growth slowed.
You added Trace elements and some GFO, now you are growing everything: I think I even saw some moina in that video. That's a first.) your tank nutrient consumption is way up, dinos reappear in force (in susceptible areas). It sounds like you created and then removed a trace element limitation.
If this explanation is correct: under current conditions everything will continue to grow, until whatever limitation or a new one is re-established, and the bloom is halted. In the mean time, since most of your bloom is Large Cell Amphidinium, only manual removal (siphoning) will keep their numbers in check.
If you want to try saving the infested coral and can remove it, I'll send you a PM. I think it could go downhill quickly if any of those dinos are toxic..

My plan was to frag the tips and trash the rest, guess my timeline just got accelerated! Didn’t think I would get a rebloom with elevated nutrients...wrong! Also thought the large numbers of diatoms would give me some protection....wrong! I’ve created a monster!

 

[JAMSOURY]

On a positive note on Dino’s, had a little bit of aiptasia, I would see one or two here and there. I’m thinking the Dino toxins killed them lol

 

[mcarroll]

On a positive note on Dino’s, had a little bit of aiptasia, I would see one or two here and there. I’m thinking the Dino toxins killed them lol

Wow! I wonder if any other detritus-gathering "pests" like vermitid snails have the same problem?

 

[tonymacc]

Bad news! Dino’s are back! They have infested the branch’s of a pocillipora that almost died when my tank went south in January. This coral was almost a foot across but suffered RTN from all the swings in my tank when I was fighting dinos. The plan was to frag off the tips and restart it. Today I noticed the telltale signs off bubbles and some mucus strings. I had amphidinium before but some of these are different. What are they? UV maybe?
Tank is currently NO3 15ppm, PO4 .40 ppm, silicate is at 1 ppm but dosed to increase. The tank is using up silicate at a pretty fast rate with a good population of diatoms.
In the last week the only thing I have added is silicate. Edit, I did run GFO for a few to try and bring PO4 down, it was at .60 ppm but took it back off line day before yesterday. Could that be the cause?
This is turning into a never ending war!

Gfo is what restarted mine the 2nd time, its a definite no no.

 

[kecked]

Once you knock out the Dino’s this time try using lanthenium instead of gfo. I’m interested to see if the iron in the gfo is the is the issue. Did the gfo take your P down before the Dino’s came or is it still elevated. This is really important to an 3xperiment I’m thinging of doing. You essential just did it for me.

If you P is still elevated you confirmed my thought that iron enhances growth. Next do you see less toxic effects in the tank this time from the Dino’s?

 

[Samina]

Wow! I wonder if any other detritus-gathering "pests" like vermitid snails have the same problem?

Hmmm now that you mention it, I did have a crazy outbreak of Vermatids all over my rocks and ever since the outbreak of dinos since the beginning of the year, I don’t see as many mucus strings all over my tank. Anecdotal? Maybe. But now that I think about it, the difference is definitely significant.

 

[Bebow]

Once you knock out the Dino’s this time try using lanthenium instead of gfo. I’m interested to see if the iron in the gfo is the is the issue. Did the gfo take your P down before the Dino’s came or is it still elevated. This is really important to an 3xperiment I’m thinging of doing. You essential just did it for me.

If you P is still elevated you confirmed my thought that iron enhances growth. Next do you see less toxic effects in the tank this time from the Dino’s?

I’m thinking iron may the accelerator also. Thinking I was in the clear I had dosed Fe to accelerate macro growth my refuigim hoping to use up some of the No3 that was above 25ppm. When I had planted tanks Fe was always a limiting factor in plant growth. That along with GFO probably caused it. The bloom seems to be local to the coral skeleton and not in the sand. Diatoms rule there. I see no adverse effects... yet.

 

[Bebow]

Hmmm now that you mention it, I did have a crazy outbreak of Vermatids all over my rocks and ever since the outbreak of dinos since the beginning of the year, I don’t see as many mucus strings all over my tank. Anecdotal? Maybe. But now that I think about it, the difference is definitely significant.

 

[Bebow]

GFO did decrease P from .6 high to .4 when I discontinued using it.

 

[Bebow]

Wow! I wonder if any other detritus-gathering "pests" like vermitid snails have the same problem?

Would be a nice benefit if the vermitids all died! Heck of a way to control them! I made a huge dent in mine last week before this dino bloom, guess I should have waited....

 

[mcarroll]

;Hilarious

 

[marcustan]

Hello,
Been battling dinos on and off for 7 months. Took a while to read the thread. Good tips.

What products are recommended to raise P and NO3? I have access to Continuum Aquatic Grow (NO3) and P (PO4).

Cheers

 

[kecked]

I us3 trisodium phosphate from Home Depot. I use calcium nitrate but that’s not as common as sodium or potassium nitrate.

 

[lesbrers]

Just popping in here to given an update. Been following along for awhile and good to see many success stories. My tank is better, but still can't seem to completely shake the dinos. In the beginning I ID'd my dino as Amphidinium. I raised the nutrients and have had consistently elevated N + P numbers for about 4 months now. N about 30 and P about 0.15 right now. I am growing hair algae and film algae in the tank so it seems like I am raising biodiversity, however every day I still get a fine rust colored layering of dino on the sand. I estimate it's about 25% of what it was compared to it's peak, but still visible. I manually siphon using a 10 micron filter sock on an almost daily basis, and the maintenance is getting quite tedious. If I don't siphon everything starts looking really bad again in 3-4 days. I did add some gfo about a month back because my phosphates had jumped to about 0.5 and I wanted to lower it a bit. Now I'm reading some of these most recent posts and perhaps the GFO fuels the dino? Maybe I need to take it back offline. I have been also using Prodibio and Vibrant thinking that adding more strains of bacteria would help increase biodiversity. At this point, I feel like I've sort of hit a wall and progress has completely stalled. Any thoughts about what to do going forward? Add pods and phytoplankton? UV sterilizer? 3 day blackout? Stop the GFO and other bacteria? Or just keep chugging along at it? Thanks.

 

[taricha]

If you P is still elevated you confirmed my thought that iron enhances growth. Next do you see less toxic effects in the tank this time from the Dino’s?

Unfortunately (for testing) his strain was low/no toxin in the first place.

GFO did decrease P from .6 high to .4 when I discontinued using it.

So P was definitely still elevated. Did you watch your Si before/ after GFO? It pulls that out too.

 

[lesbrers]

Hello,
Been battling dinos on and off for 7 months. Took a while to read the thread. Good tips.

What products are recommended to raise P and NO3? I have access to Continuum Aquatic Grow (NO3) and P (PO4).

Cheers

I used Spectracide stump remover (potassium nitrate) and Brightwell Aquatics NeoPhos.

 

[taricha]

;Hilarious

Dinos to get rid of vermetids, bryopsis to get rid of dinos.
So what plague are vermetids the cure for?

 

[kecked]

I had thousands of little ...snails all,over the glass. Totally wiped out. Bubble algae. Gone. Glass anenomies all gone. Aptasia? Forget anymore.

Did a scrap of my return jet and happy to report diatoms an a variety of them as well as cyano showing up finally. I keep seeing clear worm like things and orange ones. Any idea what they are? They are a good 30 times larger than the diatoms and Dino’s.