Since my dinos are gone (at least almost...I saw a couple in yesterday’s sample), I have quite a bit of cyano. I was planning on reducing phosphates somewhat ( I run 0.1-0.2 ppm by dosing), but do you believe dosing silica may be a better option?
Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
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Adding fresh GAC may help with snails.
Since this thread has provided so much information I want to give a little brain dump of my ongoing process. I'm shutting down my former 120 gallon tank that was basically taken over by dinos into a new 350 gallon tank. I am confident I could have beaten the dinos in the 120g, but I was putting all my time and effort into the new tank and once I stopped being vigilant in the old tank, the dinos did come roaring back. However they didn't hurt the fish and all the corals I really cared about were already dead so it really wasn't a big deal.
But the key thing in this process that I was to share with the thread is that the plan is not and has never been to try to keep the new tank dino-free, as I'm transferring over fish and corals without any insane dips that would kill all the Dinos. I'm just counting on the fact that by maintaining proper nutrient levels I can prevent them from blooming. And in fact before I did my first transfer of any equipment, fish or corals, I already saw Ostreopsis dinos in the new tank. I don't know if they floating through the air, came in via accidental contamination or came in via early live sand additions, but they were already there.
But here was the plan:
- Seed the tank with live sand/pods from a couple sources
- Maintain nitrates of 5-10
- Maintain phosphates of 0.03 - 0.1
- Run UV from the start
- Use a big algae turf scrubber for the main nutrient export
So after the fishless cycle started, I put in some Fiji mud. Interestingly, the cycle completed really quickly after I put the mud in. Then I ordered the works from IPSF and put that in the tank. Then after that was settled I ordered a bunch of pods from AlgaeBarn and dosed phytoplankton for about a month after that to hopefully jumpstart all the microbe life.
Then once it was time to turn on the lights and start moving over fish, I turned on the 100 watts of UV sterilizer and started moving the fish over from the dino-infested tank. And at this point I started monitoring the nutrient levels by testing nitrates and phosphates every other day. I was prepared to dose either nitrates or phosphates, but as it turned out the nitrate levels stayed pretty constant at ~10ppm, but I did have to dose phosphates. Right now I'm dosing about 1.5ml of seachem phosphorus per day to maintain constant levels.
But I'm not concerned about over-shooting nutrients, which is why I think the big ATS is so helpful. It is a means of nutrient export that Dinos just can't live in (as far as my experience tells me in the old tank --- dinos are everywhere but not in the scrubber). So if I do accidentally overshoot nutrient levels and need to bring them down, I can increase the lighting intensity/period on the ATS without worrying about also helping the Dinos. In my old tank I had trouble controlling the algae and Dinos at the same time, because when I got a handle on the dinos with increased nutrient levels, the algae became a problem. And when I tried to lower the nutrient levels with Chaeto, the dinos loved overgrowing the Chaeto. It was hard to find a good balance.
But back to the new tank. It's been 4 weeks and I've transferred over 6 fish and a bunch of corals from the old tank. Including a frogspawn that was literally blanketed with dinos right before I moved it (of course I rinsed it as best I could, but I'm sure dinos were still in it and on it). In this period I've gone through a diatom bloom and now the green hair algae bloom is starting. In both cases, when I scrape the diatoms and the GHA and put it under the microscope, there is a huge diversity of microbes growing, including Dinos. However the Dinos are certainly not dominant and are outnumbered by a variety of other single celled organisms that I can't even identify. For the dinos, there are Ostreopsis dinos mainly growing within the algae on the glass and the rocks, and amphibium buzzing around the sandbed. In a sentence I hopefully wont come to regret, I have to admit the amphibium dinos are pretty dang cute under the scope, being so tiny and buzzing around with top speed. As compared to the giant and slow moving Ostreopsis. But neither are blooming, and from the macroscopic level there are no signs they are there.
None of this is breaking news, and I'm far from declaring victory. But at minimum this shows that you can move livestock and equipment from a dino infested tank to a new one and it doesn't mean the dinos will immediately bloom and destroy the tank. And as of right now the new tank certainly has a population of dinos growing but as of yet they are not blooming or causing any issues. I don't know if this is a sign of impending doom or a sign of a good ecosystem, time will tell.
I think the only counter-intuitive thing I'm doing is dosing phosphates from the start, but I did find phosphates were dropping pretty quickly as the first blooms began and I think they would have dropped to around 0 if I didn't dose. This might have been completely fine, but I'm more comfortable with the phosphate levels around ~0.05 which is what I'm maintaining right now. One other strategic thing I did was move over the herbivores first, so my first fish moves were a lawnmower blenny and kole tang. I think this is really beneficial as they both are voracious consumers of algae, returning those nutrients right back to the water column as the algae is sucking them up. I also last week added about 100 snails (though only 10-20 big ones, mostly the little tiny ones) which are doing the same thing.
So anyways, so far so good, almost completely based on all the information in this thread and the work people have done to add it here. Thank you all. One of the acros which somehow survived the months of the dino-infested tank is slowly starting to color back up in the new tank. The frogspawn couldn't look happier. Reefing is starting to become fun again, but I'm still very very cautiously optimistic.
Once I transfer the last fish out of the dino-infested tank, I'm not going to immediately tear it down, first I'm going to dump a ****-ton of silica in there and see what happens. Hopefully that will show an interesting result.
But the key thing in this process that I was to share with the thread is that the plan is not and has never been to try to keep the new tank dino-free, as I'm transferring over fish and corals without any insane dips that would kill all the Dinos. I'm just counting on the fact that by maintaining proper nutrient levels I can prevent them from blooming. And in fact before I did my first transfer of any equipment, fish or corals, I already saw Ostreopsis dinos in the new tank. I don't know if they floating through the air, came in via accidental contamination or came in via early live sand additions, but they were already there.
But here was the plan:
- Seed the tank with live sand/pods from a couple sources
- Maintain nitrates of 5-10
- Maintain phosphates of 0.03 - 0.1
- Run UV from the start
- Use a big algae turf scrubber for the main nutrient export
So after the fishless cycle started, I put in some Fiji mud. Interestingly, the cycle completed really quickly after I put the mud in. Then I ordered the works from IPSF and put that in the tank. Then after that was settled I ordered a bunch of pods from AlgaeBarn and dosed phytoplankton for about a month after that to hopefully jumpstart all the microbe life.
Then once it was time to turn on the lights and start moving over fish, I turned on the 100 watts of UV sterilizer and started moving the fish over from the dino-infested tank. And at this point I started monitoring the nutrient levels by testing nitrates and phosphates every other day. I was prepared to dose either nitrates or phosphates, but as it turned out the nitrate levels stayed pretty constant at ~10ppm, but I did have to dose phosphates. Right now I'm dosing about 1.5ml of seachem phosphorus per day to maintain constant levels.
But I'm not concerned about over-shooting nutrients, which is why I think the big ATS is so helpful. It is a means of nutrient export that Dinos just can't live in (as far as my experience tells me in the old tank --- dinos are everywhere but not in the scrubber). So if I do accidentally overshoot nutrient levels and need to bring them down, I can increase the lighting intensity/period on the ATS without worrying about also helping the Dinos. In my old tank I had trouble controlling the algae and Dinos at the same time, because when I got a handle on the dinos with increased nutrient levels, the algae became a problem. And when I tried to lower the nutrient levels with Chaeto, the dinos loved overgrowing the Chaeto. It was hard to find a good balance.
But back to the new tank. It's been 4 weeks and I've transferred over 6 fish and a bunch of corals from the old tank. Including a frogspawn that was literally blanketed with dinos right before I moved it (of course I rinsed it as best I could, but I'm sure dinos were still in it and on it). In this period I've gone through a diatom bloom and now the green hair algae bloom is starting. In both cases, when I scrape the diatoms and the GHA and put it under the microscope, there is a huge diversity of microbes growing, including Dinos. However the Dinos are certainly not dominant and are outnumbered by a variety of other single celled organisms that I can't even identify. For the dinos, there are Ostreopsis dinos mainly growing within the algae on the glass and the rocks, and amphibium buzzing around the sandbed. In a sentence I hopefully wont come to regret, I have to admit the amphibium dinos are pretty dang cute under the scope, being so tiny and buzzing around with top speed. As compared to the giant and slow moving Ostreopsis. But neither are blooming, and from the macroscopic level there are no signs they are there.
None of this is breaking news, and I'm far from declaring victory. But at minimum this shows that you can move livestock and equipment from a dino infested tank to a new one and it doesn't mean the dinos will immediately bloom and destroy the tank. And as of right now the new tank certainly has a population of dinos growing but as of yet they are not blooming or causing any issues. I don't know if this is a sign of impending doom or a sign of a good ecosystem, time will tell.
I think the only counter-intuitive thing I'm doing is dosing phosphates from the start, but I did find phosphates were dropping pretty quickly as the first blooms began and I think they would have dropped to around 0 if I didn't dose. This might have been completely fine, but I'm more comfortable with the phosphate levels around ~0.05 which is what I'm maintaining right now. One other strategic thing I did was move over the herbivores first, so my first fish moves were a lawnmower blenny and kole tang. I think this is really beneficial as they both are voracious consumers of algae, returning those nutrients right back to the water column as the algae is sucking them up. I also last week added about 100 snails (though only 10-20 big ones, mostly the little tiny ones) which are doing the same thing.
So anyways, so far so good, almost completely based on all the information in this thread and the work people have done to add it here. Thank you all. One of the acros which somehow survived the months of the dino-infested tank is slowly starting to color back up in the new tank. The frogspawn couldn't look happier. Reefing is starting to become fun again, but I'm still very very cautiously optimistic.
Once I transfer the last fish out of the dino-infested tank, I'm not going to immediately tear it down, first I'm going to dump a ****-ton of silica in there and see what happens. Hopefully that will show an interesting result.
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Ostreopsis.Can I get some help with an id on these?
The problem is modest right now, but I need to make sure to nip this in the bud.
Great documentation on your part. Knowing the path is half the battle. A healthy system will have the good and the bad present. I might have missed it but did you start the new tank with dry rock or live rock?
Big ones like Ostreopsis sp to me. You can confirm by their motion... they sort of spin around the pointed white tip.
Are any of the smaller ones buzzing around or are the motion of them all the same?
~250 pounds of pukani dry rock, soaked in lanthanum chloride for about 3-4 months to get the phosphate levels down before going into the tank. It is ironic that I went to so much effort to get the phosphate out of the rock only to end up dosing phosphate anyways, but I do have more control this way.
The only live additions at first were fiji reef mud, IPSF live sand/pods/snail/hermits and AlgaeBarn pods. I let all of that marinate in the tank while dosing phytoplankton for about a month before adding anything else. There was a big explosion of copepods and then eventually amphipods took over. When I turned the lights on and started adding fish, the tank was not quite crawling with pods, but it wasn't hard to spot them.
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Oops yep, been there, did that too. Makes sense now. The po4 absorption will continue for awhile. The fact that you went through a gha outbreak is a good sign. I think eventually the tank will stabilize to where over feeding is your only concern. Good job on the diversity additions by the way!
The GHA outbreak is only just beginning, but I've got my huge Turbo Aquatics L8 scrubber in reserve. I think it can outcompete the algae in the tank if I want it to. But as far as I'm concerned, any algae that my CUC eats is a good algae! Diatoms and GHA are great! As long as it isn't derbesia, bryopsis or dinos I'm quite happy.
Bubblebass
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Here we go again.....
A year ago I was getting some gha so I got a reactor from BRS and started carbon and gfo at the rate they recommended on their calculator. Dinos! Nitrate and PO4 were at zero. I saw more algae (dinos), so I kept changing my water and gfo. Lost a ton of corals. Anyway, after much research (thanks to this site!), I beat the dinos with UV, manual removal and Vibrant. I vowed to never use GFO again!
Fast forward to a few weeks ago - I rescaped my tank when I got new SPS and must have stirred up too much sand. I also started doing religous 2 week water changes where I was doing them every 3-4 weeks. I also removed about 25 pounds of rock. Started a cycle and watched my PO4 climb to 0.35. Nitrates up to 50. I never had any ammonia but dosed Bio-Spira just in case. Also hoped that would help my cycle come to an end. I tried to stabilize everything at the same time, thinking that would stop all the nutrient levels going crazy. I added a. ATO and started kalkwasser. My nutrient levels stayed high, though I didn't see a huge amount of algae. So here is where I blush a little......mea culpa........I started back with carbon and a half dose of GFO. Figured this would clear it up. NOPE. Levels all went down (not too much) but got the dino's back. Wayyy too many changes at one time!!!
I never stopped my UV, so I changed the bulb and figured that would take care of it. Always dosed Vibrant once a week since the first outbreak. Hasn't helped at all the last 2 weeks. Last time, it was noticeably better within a few days. All corals look happy and healthy, but I have gross stringy uglies all over rock and sand. The inverts seem OK too, so I was hoping maybe it was cyano. I ordered a microscope and did the H2O2 test....no bubbles and they stick together. Bubbly all inside the stringy brown/dark red algae. Still awaiting my scope.
Levels ARE NOT low. Never been close to zero this time around.
CA 440
ALK 8
MAG 1320
Nitrates 2.5
PO4 0.18
Until the microscope gets here, what should I get started?
The jar has about 8ml of H2O2 in it / 100ml tank water and algae.
A year ago I was getting some gha so I got a reactor from BRS and started carbon and gfo at the rate they recommended on their calculator. Dinos! Nitrate and PO4 were at zero. I saw more algae (dinos), so I kept changing my water and gfo. Lost a ton of corals. Anyway, after much research (thanks to this site!), I beat the dinos with UV, manual removal and Vibrant. I vowed to never use GFO again!
Fast forward to a few weeks ago - I rescaped my tank when I got new SPS and must have stirred up too much sand. I also started doing religous 2 week water changes where I was doing them every 3-4 weeks. I also removed about 25 pounds of rock. Started a cycle and watched my PO4 climb to 0.35. Nitrates up to 50. I never had any ammonia but dosed Bio-Spira just in case. Also hoped that would help my cycle come to an end. I tried to stabilize everything at the same time, thinking that would stop all the nutrient levels going crazy. I added a. ATO and started kalkwasser. My nutrient levels stayed high, though I didn't see a huge amount of algae. So here is where I blush a little......mea culpa........I started back with carbon and a half dose of GFO. Figured this would clear it up. NOPE. Levels all went down (not too much) but got the dino's back. Wayyy too many changes at one time!!!
I never stopped my UV, so I changed the bulb and figured that would take care of it. Always dosed Vibrant once a week since the first outbreak. Hasn't helped at all the last 2 weeks. Last time, it was noticeably better within a few days. All corals look happy and healthy, but I have gross stringy uglies all over rock and sand. The inverts seem OK too, so I was hoping maybe it was cyano. I ordered a microscope and did the H2O2 test....no bubbles and they stick together. Bubbly all inside the stringy brown/dark red algae. Still awaiting my scope.
Levels ARE NOT low. Never been close to zero this time around.
CA 440
ALK 8
MAG 1320
Nitrates 2.5
PO4 0.18
Until the microscope gets here, what should I get started?
The jar has about 8ml of H2O2 in it / 100ml tank water and algae.
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Nothing is moving. I looked for a long time. Also the bubbles on the rocks is significantly reduced, and it is all gone from the sand. I have a 50W HO Pentair. I changed the flow of my gyres, blew the rocks off, and allowed more water through the UV. Hoping I caught this early. Looks like I win cotton candy algae as my prize ...
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Vibrant thread is full of cyano as a side effect. Super expected.
Brightwell spongexcel for si and hanna low range silica tester.
After you get the hang of how your system uses silica with a few bottles of Spongexcel, you can get the florida aqua farms Si product that is bigger, more concentrated and has like 100x the Si in it for comparable price.
Downside - I had to figure out the concentration. It's not on the label, and people I talked to on the phone didn't know. [emoji38]
(1ml / L gives about +63ppm SiO2)
Check the amphidinium dino methods thread to see silica dosing approach.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/amphidinium-dinoflagellate-treatment-methods.365850/
It turns out to have been quite conservative, now I dose Silica like it's nitrate ( add 0.5 to 1ppm SiO2 per day to target level 2.00ppm) and have no noticeable sand pigmentation.
Diatoms don't bloom out of control because they are limited by other trace elements - and it's a heck of a lot easier to get herbivores to eat diatoms than cyano.
Yeah it is strange, I notice sometimes in my samples the dinos are moving around a lot and sometimes they play dead (or are dead). I wonder what causes that...
Anyways, very simple battle plan against Ostreopsis: Blow off the rocks at night to get them into the water column, kill them with UV, run carbon to soak up the toxins. What are your nitrate and phosphate levels?
Wow that is really interesting. I thought I was going to go nuts dosing silica on my test tank that is filled with Ostreopsis, but I guess my bottle of SpongeExcel will only last me about 10 days at those rates.
Why do you have to dose so much? After the diatoms use up the silica, is it not released back into the water when the CUC eats them?
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No need to go as high as I did. I was trying to see if the diatom growth changed amount or type at higher Si levels (ballpark of NSW). To see if there was any amount of Si that will cause the awful diatom blooms everyone worries about. There's not (provided other limitations are in place).
I have lots of sponges, and would love to have lots more. The Si consumption is more sponge-driven than due to diatoms.
(One day I'll get a spongivore of some sort and maybe the Si uptake and release can become more equal.)
Edit: oh, and as a tool vs ostreopsis, UV or small micron filtration will be way more direct path to get rid of the dinos. Silica wouldn't really be useful there.
Ahhh... I forgot about sponges. That would make sense.
Yeah it is just a pure experiment, I don't need to get rid of them anymore. All my efforts and equipment has been moved to my new tank. But I've got the old tank with a massive Ostreopsis bloom and want to at least try one experiment before tearing it down. I did test silica dosing in the past, but I was dosing on the order of 0.05 ppm per day, and of course nothing changed. I had no idea NSW levels were so high.
I might be completely anthropomorphizing, but just having looked at a lot of samples under the scope, it seems like Dinoflagellates love growing on chaeto, derbesia and gha, but they don't seem to do well amongst diatoms. It almost looks like the diatoms crowd them out, and to go further with the inaccurate anthropomorphizing, the diatoms look sharp and uncomfortable
.And certainly in the context of a battle with Dinos, I'm not sure why anybody would be against a diatom bloom. When my new tank had a diatom bloom it was gone in days because everybody in the CUC couldn't eat them fast enough.
Bubblebass
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Here we go again.....
I never stopped my UV, so I changed the bulb and figured that would take care of it. Always dosed Vibrant once a week since the first outbreak. Hasn't helped at all the last 2 weeks. Last time, it was noticeably better within a few days. All corals look happy and healthy, but I have gross stringy uglies all over rock and sand. The inverts seem OK too, so I was hoping maybe it was cyano. I ordered a microscope and did the H2O2 test....no bubbles and they stick together. Bubbly all inside the stringy brown/dark red algae. Still awaiting my scope.
Levels ARE NOT low. Never been close to zero this time around.
CA 440
ALK 8
MAG 1320
Nitrates 2.5
PO4 0.18
Until the microscope gets here, what should I get started?
The jar has about 8ml of H2O2 in it / 100ml tank water and algae.
EDIT - Just reading through my post....this sure doesn't sound like it should be dino's.......I just got done blowing off the rocks and there are many small tufts of gha.......now I'm even more curious and anxious to get the microscope pics.
I only have experience with the dinos I've had experience with, which is just a small subset, but based on the pictures and what I've seen in my tank, that looks much more like cyano to me. Especially that sheet in the upper left of the picture. But again I don't know all the different ways dinos can look.
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Looks more like cyano to me.
Bubblebass
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Well that's good. I'll just keep up the husbandry and add a powerhead until I get the scope.Looks more like cyano to me.
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