Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[Ert]

I've been dosing my tank to keep the nutrients up for roughly a month now. It dinos got better after 3 weeks and then suddenly, got worse again. My dosing pump is dosing 35m of NA3PO4 daily.

I have chaeto running in my sump and I know that its counter productive but I'm thinking the long game. Am I wrong?

 

[enb141]

I've been dosing my tank to keep the nutrients up for roughly a month now. It dinos got better after 3 weeks and then suddenly, got worse again. My dosing pump is dosing 35m of NA3PO4 daily.

I have chaeto running in my sump and I know that its counter productive but I'm thinking the long game. Am I wrong?

Have you tried turning off the lights of your sump for a few days?

Are you dosing nitrates and phosphates or just phosphates?

 

[aquarecifalhome]

can someone help me identify this?

 

[Sebae]

Hello all,

I haven't checked in on this thread in a while but I have been dino free in all 3 of my systems now for several months and thought it may help someone to post. I used the same method each time and for whatever reason it seems to have worked. In my frag tank, which is where this all began, I dosed massive amounts of heterotrophic bacteria products (microbacter 7, two little fishies bactiv8, aquavitro remeditation) while leaving the skimmer and UV off and making sure nutrients (NO3 and P) remained elevated. I then began iron dosing and got chaeto growing in my sump. I left the skimmer off for about a month to a month and a half and noticed if I turned it back on earlier, dino patches would appear.

I started up a 300 gallon and a 25 gallon while during this time and dinos quickly appeared in these systems. After beating them in the frag tank I employed the same methods and they faded away within a few weeks. I haven't seen dinos in months.

In my ~85 gallon frag system I was dosing 1/4 of a bottle of Microbacter7 per day for a week or so plus some of the other bacteria products. In my 300 gallon system I was pouring in whole bottles every few days or so.

Happy to provide any other information if anyone wants. I would use this method again if dinos popped up. When I originally identified the dinos in my frag tank with a microscope they were Ostreopsis. I don't have a confirmed ID for the other systems.

All the best

 

[taricha]

can someone help me identify this?

If I'm figuring the scale right, then these guys are small, fast moving and the only on of our problem dinos that's similar is small-cell amphidinium.
where are these samples coming from? sand? rock?

 

[aquarecifalhome]

[QUOTE = "taricha, poste: 4809675, membre: 69455"] Si je calcule correctement l'échelle, alors ces gars-là sont petits, rapides et le seul de nos problèmes de dinos qui soit similaire est l'amphidinium à petites cellules.
D'où viennent ces échantillons? le sable? rock? [/ QUOTE]

Thank you very much for your super nice answer
This sample was taken from a rock.
What treatment should I apply against this type of Dino? Currently I have raised Po4 to 0.05 and No3 to 5. Is it a good idea?
Could Vibrant help?

 

[taricha]

This sample was taken from a rock.
What treatment should I apply against this type of Dino? Currently I have raised Po4 to 0.05 and No3 to 5. Is it a good idea?
Could Vibrant help?

Going in the right direction. I'd bump higher.
Post tank pics of the rocks and brown patches?
And can you do microscope pic with some sand/ debris. I want to make sure we have the scale right.

 

[aquarecifalhome]

Again thank you very much for the help it's great! And I hope it's not too complicated to understand with Google translation.
Here are some pictures taken now. The situation is not too serious but every day I have a few more brown areas on the sand and bubbles on the living stones.
I also made a video with water taken from the sand.

 

[paal]

My 100G is two years old now. It is brown. It is ugly. I am sad. Wife is angry.

Had a short outbreak of dinos a little over a year ago. It looked really bad; super long bubbly snot strings all over the tank. I was worried, but a very high intensity every day manual removal actually took care of the problem within roughly two weeks(!) Dinos still managed to kill a few sps though. (back then I still had some green hair and turf algae; even during the dino bloom)

Tank was doing OK. (90+% dead rock, so it matured slowly) At the end of last year I bought a pax bellum algae reactor to lower my nitrates/phos. That thing is a BEAST. It actually worked too well, and I let my nutrients drop to zero. I assume this is what caused my latest dino-bloom:
I have been struggling since about January. I have removed my sand bed and I have dosed + overfed to increase nutrients. Algae reactor is offline. Flow is 2x MP40QD @ max power. (only possible after sand bed was removed)

I have done 3x three day blackouts which makes the tank look great the next week or so, and then it quickly starts turning brown again. When I work in the tank, the hairs on my arms are covered in this filth. Oh, and it STINKS!

No algae has been seen in display all year until about two-three weeks ago. I then started noticing green algae on the bottom glass when I siphoned out the brown uglies. I am very active with the siphoning (multiple times/week) and have therefore prevented the stuff to attach to and kill any sps like it did the first time. SPS don't really grow though, (except the montis)

This week I ordered a 55W Aqua Medic Helix UV (HUGE!). I spent many hours both Tuesday and Wednesday doing a super thorough clean-up, immediately followed by a new blackout-period starting Wednesday night. UV was installed yesterday (thursday) and I will bring my lights back on tomorrow.

If the UV fails I will most likely tear down the tank. I have "only" struggled for 6 months, but the dang stuff is literally stinking up the entire living room. I am surprised the wife has let it slide for this long :O
Do not think I will quit altogether though; hobby is just too fun when everything is running smoothly. Most likely just a full, “dry” restart.

Perhaps it is still too early to say for sure, but I think the UV saved my tank. (0.5W per gallon) Everything is looking GREAT, one and a half week after the 2-3 day blackout + UV installation. No signs of the dinos. Not just "sterile-great" like *immediately* after my previous blackouts, but I finally have an increasing amount of short green algae (primarily on the bottom glass) My small purple tang is soooo happy; finally back to grazing <3
All my SPS have their polyps out like never before!

Also, there are ZERO smells from the tank/cabinet. Even with the skimmer cup half full; when opening the cabinet doors, the only smell is that from the UV's 10 meter(!) rubber cable. Lovely, lovely rubber smell

I will report back after another month or so.
*happy reefer*

 

[taricha]

Again thank you very much for the help it's great! And I hope it's not too complicated to understand with Google translation.
Here are some pictures taken now. The situation is not too serious but every day I have a few more brown areas on the sand and bubbles on the living stones.
I also made a video with water taken from the sand.

This is interesting and not bad. What I see most in the video are lots of ciliates - good guys. These are predators that eat bacteria and other tiny cells like phytoplankton, some of these guys in your video are dino predators.
Ciliates in these numbers follow the bloom of something else, and will subside once the numbers of their foods decline.
There is not enough detail in video to say for sure these are small cell amphidinium.
Some of the sand pigmentation is diatoms.
Is this a new system or had any major changes recently? If so, I would say at this point, to just monitor the system, nothing I see so far looks like cause for major concern.

 

[aquarecifalhome]

Your message makes me very happy dear Taricha wholeheartedly for your opinion. I had so much Dino on my old aquarium that I'm so scared now!
My aquarium has been running for 5 months. The only thing I changed, I started to feed more with a papone method to have more microfauna. Another thing, my osmosis resin was saturated I changed it yesterday to remove the Si (silicate) Is it good if I continue to dose a little Po4 and No3 to keep 0.5 of Po4 and 5-10 of No3? At first I had ostreposis I immediately made a blackout of 5 days and added three UV (two UV 55 + 1 UV 36W)
Again thank you, here in Europe we have a lot of delay on the knowledge of the Dino and thanks to you, I learned more than all forums in French.
Greetings from Switzerland

 

[taricha]

The only thing I changed, I started to feed more with a papone method to have more microfauna... Is it good if I continue to dose a little Po4 and No3 to keep 0.5 of Po4 and 5-10 of No3?
...
Again thank you, here in Europe we have a lot of delay on the knowledge of the Dino and thanks to you, I learned more than all forums in French.

Had to look up pappone food - Forgot about that, every tank should be so lucky!
Nothing wrong with those numbers if your corals are happy, but it's ok to let P go lower.
Thanks for kind words, but we could always turn it around and ask why y'all have less dino outbreaks than we do over here

 

[Deezill]

I am going to add some pods for my next step too.

 

[taricha]

Bigger pods (amphipods, isopods) the better.
Make sure toxins are not major. Otherwise, it's pointless at best.

I am going to add some pods for my next step too.

 

[Deezill]

Bigger pods (amphipods, isopods) the better.
Make sure toxins are not major. Otherwise, it's pointless at best.

I am running heavy carbon and I am hoping to pick up some pods this week. I am glad to know I want the bigger pods.
Any suggestions other than AlgaeBarn for Pods of the bigger size?

 

[taricha]

I've seen amphipods from liveaquaria, IPSF, sustainable aquatics, Florida aqua farms.
Isopods never seen for sale.
If I wanted pods, I'd contact a reefer selling chaeto out of their fuge, and ask if it has amphipods. Most will.

I am running heavy carbon and I am hoping to pick up some pods this week. I am glad to know I want the bigger pods.
Any suggestions other than AlgaeBarn for Pods of the bigger size?

 

[fishbox]

Fighting Coolia: Been running the 36w Jabeo UV light on my 40B for a couple weeks now. Within 24hrs the rocks, glass, water column looked great and the smell went away but there was no noticeable improvement on the sand. I had major hair algae growing on the rocks which started before the dino outbreak. Last week I started to manually remove it because I'm sure it was a factor in keeping my N&P at 0 but I'm not totally removing for diversity factors. As of last night my N=5 and P=0.58 which is a definite improvement. Still no improvement in the sand but I am experiencing a huge pod population explosion which is fantastic. I'm gonna check under the microscope again to see what's there and monitor my nutrients for another week or two, but I'm thinking it might be time to add some IPSF biodiversity.

 

[mcarroll]

@fishbox I can't remember: Have you been able to get your PO4 levels to 0.10 ppm yet?

Certainly continue to manually clean up the tank, but for dino suppression dose P to get that target concentration if you haven't already. (It's not algae keeping your numbers low.)

 

[fishbox]

@fishbox I can't remember: Have you been able to get your PO4 levels to 0.10 ppm yet?

Certainly continue to manually clean up the tank, but for dino suppression dose P to get that target concentration if you haven't already. (It's not algae keeping your numbers low.)

No. My Po4 was at 0 prior to cleaning up the hair algae. After removing it all from one side of the tank it jumped to 0.003ppm. Then I cleaned up a little bit from the other side and it jumped to 0.058. I still want to remove a little bit more but leave a little as mentioned above. My sodium phosphate powder was literally delivered a few minutes ago. Do you think I should hold up on adding biodiversity until I get the Po4 stable at 0.1?

 

[mcarroll]

Doesn't sound like conventional dino's if they're complimenting a hair algae bloom. Sounds like more hair algae, so I'd say proceed as planned.