Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[taricha]

Yeah it is just a pure experiment, I don't need to get rid of them anymore. ....

oh, cool. In that case, go wild.

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.

Lot of truth in your impressionistic interpretation of microscope slides
To overgeneralize a little (or a lot)....In ocean, diatom blooms are common, and dino blooms more rare. All things being equal diatoms are more dominant more often. Usually something has to disfavor diatoms for dinos to become a dominant bloom.
They often compete for same resources and territory, so it's not a big leap to think in terms of them having ways to suppress the other.
Some published research backs this up. It's more chemical (allelopathy) than sharp pointy edges, but yeah they make each other uncomfortable.

algae on the other hand... ostreopsis are epiphytic on algae as their most common habitat. They are well adapted to it.

Edit: as a generalization, diatom allelopathy like in most other algae is more directed at suppressing other algae growth.
Dino toxins on the other hand are more directed up the food chain at stopping predators.
Thanks! I just realized that connection while thinking through my reply.

 

[CJBuckeyes]

On cyano, I'll mention that a few of us crazies started dosing silica in order to compete with sandbed dinos. (In my case, no dinos - just to test system response to silica)
We all expected big diatom blooms - but yet to see one in the handful of people who tried it.
Unexpected side effect is that for some of us, persistent cyano mats disappeared. Now this is only n=2 anecdotal evidence...
But my sand bed would always have small bits of cyano here and there over the past two years. But cyano receded and not a single spot in 3 months. Tank nutrient levels otherwise same as they always have been.
Just throwing that out here.

I have actually also been dosing silica for the past 10 days. I have amphidinium and prorocentrum, and initially raised nutrients and added UV. I decided to try dosing Si as well based on the amphidinium thread. I had no diatom bloom until I started dosing Fe, then it really took off. Diatoms, hair algae, and a small amount of cyano on my powerheads. Starting yesterday I stopped the Fe dosing and am going to keep NO3, PO4 and Si high as I let everything battle over whatever else is limited. Fingers crossed..

 

[danoo]

oh, cool. In that case, go wild.



Lot of truth in your impressionistic interpretation of microscope slides
To overgeneralize a little (or a lot)....In ocean, diatom blooms are common, and dino blooms more rare. All things being equal diatoms are more dominant more often. Usually something has to disfavor diatoms for dinos to become a dominant bloom.
They often compete for same resources and territory, so it's not a big leap to think in terms of them having ways to suppress the other.
Some published research backs this up. It's more chemical (allelopathy) than sharp pointy edges, but yeah they make each other uncomfortable.

algae on the other hand... ostreopsis are epiphytic on algae as their most common habitat. They are well adapted to it.

Edit: as a generalization, diatom allelopathy like in most other algae is more directed at suppressing other algae growth.
Dino toxins on the other hand are more directed up the food chain at stopping predators.
Thanks! I just realized that connection while thinking through my reply.

Very interesting. This is good to know because as I just wrote about in my previous post, I've basically done everything in my new setup to keep dinos from blooming. Thus far everything seems good, but I've got a lot of anxiety built up from watching dinos overrun my other tank and want to have some back up plans.

Now I'm quite emboldened with this silica experiment. I think I might buy some "sodium silicate" solution, as this Randy article seems to suggest that it is a cheap source of silica. Then I'll keep dosing the silicates to higher and higher levels and see what happens.

 

[paal]

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*

It's already been another month: I now feel confident to say that I beat dinos. (well… my UV beat it ) And just like that; reefing is fun again.


My only concern is the return of a turf algae that I eventually beat with fluconazole last year.

Still; I’d much rather have that problem than the dinos. No more chemicals of any kind unless I get truly desperate.

I got a tiny clean up crew two days ago as all my previous snails died during the dino outbreak. I also bought a tuxedo urchin. Hopefully he will eat some of that turf algae.

I don't have a before-pic. No fun taking pictures of dirty depressing tanks. In hindsight, I really wish I took some though. All I got is the below “evidence” after one of almost daily cleanups back then. (man… I should have gotten that UV sooner)

Although nothing to compare it to, I will take a picture of the tank later tonight.

 

[wangspeed]

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?

I keep dosing nitrates. It zeros out pretty quickly. My phosphate was sky high at 1. That’s right 1 ppm. After a lanthanum dose, I’m hoovering around .05. My problem started right around when I used Rowaphos (gfo) to soak up some of the phosphate.

 

[taricha]

I keep dosing nitrates. It zeros out pretty quickly. My problem started right around when I used Rowaphos (gfo) to soak up some of the phosphate.

My tank eats NO3 too, gotta dose +1ppm per day (in addition to food) to keep it from going to zero.
GFO is so strongly correlated to Dinos. It takes away things dinos can get by with very little of - but that dino competitors need, chokes out the competition, and adds a small amount of Iron that dinos love.

I have actually also been dosing silica for the past 10 days. I have amphidinium and prorocentrum, and initially raised nutrients and added UV. I decided to try dosing Si as well based on the amphidinium thread. I had no diatom bloom until I started dosing Fe, then it really took off. Diatoms, hair algae, and a small amount of cyano on my powerheads. Starting yesterday I stopped the Fe dosing and am going to keep NO3, PO4 and Si high as I let everything battle over whatever else is limited. Fingers crossed..

The evidence for the role of Fe limitation in tanks keeps accumulating. Thanks for report.

Now I'm quite emboldened with this silica experiment. I think I might buy some "sodium silicate" solution, as this Randy article seems to suggest that it is a cheap source of silica. Then I'll keep dosing the silicates to higher and higher levels and see what happens.

Hope you find one that gives you some way of calculating how much is in it.
No reason I've seen to go much above NSW levels. Sea water has plenty, and I have yet to see a difference in a target SiO2 level of 0.5ppm or 2.0ppm. (below half a ppm, some sponges are open less often) It's cool to re-read that article after getting a feel for Silica dynamics in my system. My observations line up pretty much with Randy's.

All I got is the below “evidence” after one of almost daily cleanups back then. (man… I should have gotten that UV sooner)

This is a great post, but I can't make my finger click the "like" button on that horrifying algae eating your arm.
need a Do Not Want button for that one.

 

[paal]

Dino free.

In the acro closeup you can clearly see the strange looking bubbly tips that have just regenerated after the dino-incident. This was one of many acros I thought would die (I did actually loose quite a few though - and if it wasn't for the constant manual cleanup I think pretty much all of them would be gone today)

I don't really like the bare bottom look, but waiting another month before adding any just to be 100.00% sure.
...give this system about a year, and it will finally feel like a proper reef tank

low res mobile pics:

 

[taricha]

Dino free.

In the acro closeup you can clearly see the strange looking bubbly tips that have just regenerated after the dino-incident.

That's interesting. When in the dino process (what phase of outbreak) did those bubbly tips show up?
Were they inflated coral tissue, or slimy bubbles on the tips?

 

[platax88]

Double post. Sorry

 

[platax88]

I can’t get ph4 up. I’ve been dosing neonitro for no3 and flourish phosphorus for ph4. Ive managed to get no3 to 5ppm but I only registered .02 of ph4 once during the first dose when nitrates where also undetectable. Now I can’t get any phosphate reading and I’m hesitant to dose too much. Is it that now no3 is driving ph4 down? Or maybe there’s a carbon issue? What do you guys suggest?

 

[danoo]

I can’t get ph4 up. I’ve been dosing neonitro for no3 and flourish phosphorus for ph4. Ive managed to get no3 to 5ppm but I only registered .02 of ph4 once during the first dose when nitrates where also undetectable. Now I can’t get any phosphate reading and I’m hesitant to dose too much. Is it that now no3 is driving ph4 down? Or maybe there’s a carbon issue? What do you guys suggest?

What size tank do you have and how much phosphate are you dosing? I had to dose fairly obscene amounts of phosphates to get the levels above 0 when I was in the thick of my Dino battle. But at least in my experience, after phosphate starts to register, the maintenance dose becomes much less. I was dosing 0.5 ppm worth of phosphate per day to get it to start to register.

This post on page 86 explains the reason why tank consumes so many phosphates while in a Dino bloom. Here is my post about dosing so much back on page 89.

 

[paal]

That's interesting. When in the dino process (what phase of outbreak) did those bubbly tips show up?
Were they inflated coral tissue, or slimy bubbles on the tips?

"Bubbles" occurred when coral re-grew after UV treatment.
Whole coral looked bad, but those tips were completely dead: The dinos typically attached to the tips only since I siphoned them out before they managed to cover the entire corals.

I have spent soooo many hours siphoning this horrible stuff the last 6 months.

 

[Lowefx]

Adding fresh GAC may help with snails.

GAC?

 

[taricha]

"Bubbles" occurred when coral re-grew after UV treatment.
Whole coral looked bad, but those tips were completely dead: The dinos typically attached to the tips only since I siphoned them out before they managed to cover the entire corals.

I have spent soooo many hours siphoning this horrible stuff the last 6 months.

Coral tissue in direct contact with toxic dinos dies pretty fast. You did well to siphon aggressively.
The tissue dies faster than just nutrient depletion, light shading, or forcing polyps closed would do. We presume it's strong toxin effect.
The abnormal regrowth you are reporting sounds like toxins may have had lingering effects where the dinos attached. Interesting.

GAC?

Granulated activated carbon

 

[Lowefx]

That what i thought. Yes, i use BRS GAC. The higher end stuff

 

[platax88]

What size tank do you have and how much phosphate are you dosing? I had to dose fairly obscene amounts of phosphates to get the levels above 0 when I was in the thick of my Dino battle. But at least in my experience, after phosphate starts to register, the maintenance dose becomes much less. I was dosing 0.5 ppm worth of phosphate per day to get it to start to register.

This post on page 86 explains the reason why tank consumes so many phosphates while in a Dino bloom. Here is my post about dosing so much back on page 89.

Thank you this really helped!
It’s an 80 gal tank and I’ve been dosing 4ml to register .06 per the calculator. What I will do is try a full dose that would get me to .1 immediately and test. Do you think there is any danger to sps in such a sudden increase of ph4. I was trying to raise it by .03 per day but obviously I’m not seeing any progress this way.

 

[dwest]

Thank you this really helped!
It’s an 80 gal tank and I’ve been dosing 4ml to register .06 per the calculator. What I will do is try a full dose that would get me to .1 immediately and test. Do you think there is any danger to sps in such a sudden increase of ph4. I was trying to raise it by .03 per day but obviously I’m not seeing any progress this way.

I dose 5 ml per day of the the fluorish P to keep phosphates in the 0.1-0.2 ppm range for my 180. Been doing that for several months. I would keeping adding a little more each day till you get there. It took me 2-3 weeks of slowly increasing until I found the right amount.

 

[platax88]

O

I dose 5 ml per day of the the fluorish P to keep phosphates in the 0.1-0.2 ppm range for my 180. Been doing that for several months. I would keeping adding a little more each day till you get there. It took me 2-3 weeks of slowly increasing until I found the right amount.

ok I dosed 18ml and I now have a reading of .14. I’ll see how that holds by testing tomorrow. Hopefully this sudden hike in ph4 won’t stress out my sps.

 

[shred5]

Well I jinxed myself...
I got dino's.
I had posted a while back that I had not had them in like 20 years except once with dead rock that was leaching phosphate, I removed the dead rock and replaced with live rock and they disappeared.

Well I do not know the exact time line with this new tank because I have had too much to do and have not done much with it, not much time basically.

I set it up a maybe the end of January. I let it sit with just saltwater and rock for months and just added several different bacteria brands to it and, some food and carbon source during this time. No light during this period and I was in no rush. I turned the light on for a month maybe more and then added a few fish and a little later some coral frags. After maybe a month the corals looked very light so I tested the water and there was no tint at all to the test kits for phosphate and nitrate. Not surprising since the tank sat so long with just bacteria and then latter a few fish. I started adding phosphate and nitrate to the water and as I did dinos started popping up. As I increased the dosage they got worse. I stopped dosing for a bit because I went on vacation and they slowed their growth. I added some live rock, started dosing some Dr Tims bacteria and copepods etc to the tank. Dino's are still there but here is the kicker the live rock has none while the dead rock does. The live rock has been in there at least a month too... This dead rock is not releasing phosphates either so that is not like the issue before..

I still think this has to do something with dead rock and why there are so many issues with dinos in the hobby. Only issues have been with tanks with dead rock for me.

I am not concerned because I have only a few frags and I can move them to my other tanks plus I have had not much time for the tank.

It just weird it popped up as I added nutrients, it is also weird that live rock has zero dinos on it and just the dead rock does.
I think the real issue is I can not get nutrients up because the dinos just grow faster and consume it. I can not grow coral with zero nutrients.

My plan is move the corals to a different tank. I will go to reduce photo-period to slow dinos so I can increase nutrients. I will add a fuge with algae once I get the nutrients up, this has always worked before. If this fails it is all live rock.

Well they are almost gone since last post if not completely gone.
I stopped dosing phosphate but still a little nitrate. I basically stopped due to time and having too much going on.

Well anyway like I stated before the live rock I added never had dinos on it after adding it. The dinos covered the dead rock, glass, and sand bed but the whole time I never had any on the live rock I added later.

My tank was set up with three rock islands. I set two small pieces of live rock on one island, the pieces of live rock were 1/2 the size of a softball each so not very big.
Anyway something interesting started happening after a while, the island I set the live rock on started loosing dino especially close to the live rock. After while that island lost almost all dinos, they just starting letting loose. The other two islands started loosing dinos at spot closest to the island with the live rock and spread over the whole islands. I know it is anecdotal but I am sure the live rock added has to do with the loss of dinos.

I basically had not time for this tank since setting it up since I am building a aquaculture set up in my basement. It has fish in but the few coral I moved into a basement tank.

Defiantly has to do with biodiversity. But like I said earlier this rock was not leaching phosphate and I added lots of bacteria prior to tuning lights on. The tank had its lights off for a long time too. The lights were on for a good long time and the dinos did not pop up till dosing phosphate and nitrate to get my levels up. I hope once phosphates start rising it does not come back. I do not think so because I see a green film on the glass now. I am also going to add a fuge with algae in it to help out as I add coral.. I did not test phosphate but I bet it is very low. I did check nitrate and it was close to 5 ppm now.

I run polyfilters in this tank and have a skimmer. I also use matrix.

I wonder if live sponges would consume dinos in the water column and help out. I am propagating a few photosynthetic type of sponges.

 

[Dj City]

I've been reading this looooooooooooong thread for 3 days now and Im only on page 58. I will continue reading but the is an awful lot of info in this thread!

I have been dealing with what I think stee dinos for the past 4 years. My microscope should be here in a few days and then hopefully I will know exactly what I'm dealing with (with some help from you guys)

For the longest time, I thought it was diatoms. Then I thought it was cyano.
Now I truly think it is dinos.

This stuff has no bubbles, i'ts not stringy.
It pretty much disappears at night with lights out and comes out during the day with the lights on.
If it's touched, it disappears but comes back within 45 minutes.
It does not seem to kill snails or crabs.
It does not seem to cover corals and is primarily on the sand bed. Not that much on the rockwork.

It seems invincible!

My phosphates are zero according to icp test. Nitrates are good.
I have thrown everything except the bathroom sink at this. (Yup, I already threw the kitchen sink)
I have added Rox8 carbon reactor, GFO, Bio Pellets, UV sterilizer, blackouts, changed / upgraded lighting, Chaeto in refugium, algae reactor, Seachem Matrix, sand sifting star, stirring sandbed, leaving sandbed alone, more flow, a lot more flow, CUC, Triton Method and probably more that I can't think of right now.

At the moment...
GFO (offline)
UV (offline)
Carbon (offline)
Matrix (offline)
Bio Pellets (offline)
Algae reactor (offline)

I will update when I get my microscope and answer any questions I can answer because I REALLY need HELP with this!

Im soooooooo tired of this loooooong fight.