I see.. I thought you'd have done only to syphon the sand. And what levels did you take your nutrients to?
Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
- Thread starter mcarroll
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I never had any Dinos on the sand all luckily, not sure if that was due to high flow or my goby constantly sifting.
My nitrate was over 5 and my phosphate never went below 0.2, Phosphate is higher than most recommend but it was stable at o.2 so I just left it.
One week later from my previous update and I'm learning more about Dinos and becoming a little less cautiously optimistic.
As the tank is going through the GHA stage, the Ostreopsis dinos are taking full advantage and growing on the GHA. It isn't what I'd call a full bloom but there are more dinos than I'm comfortable with. Small areas of the sandbed have small strings of Dinos growing, but again not quite a bloom. Nutrients have remained stable for this whole period, nitrates between 7.5-10, and phosphates (which I'm dosing) between 0.05 and 0.1. So sadly it appears just having elevated nutrient levels on their own doesn't fully deter the dinos.
I've tweaked a few things to hopefully help the situation: In my filter sock area I added felt filter socks to catch the dinos that go over the overflow. I also slowed the flow through the UV down from 300 gph to 150 gph and I changed out the carbon.
But the biggest change is I'm going to start dosing silica. I got my Sodium Silicate in the mail that I was going to use as a test on my old tank, but I'm now repurposing it on the new tank (though I did dose it for a few days on the old tank and neither the shrimp nor corals had any ill effect so I assume it is safe). I'm going to start dosing 2ml of the 40% Sodium Silicate solution per day (which should be equivalent of 0.5 PPM of silica), and I'm going to plan to ramp this up to 4-8ml. When the Diatoms were the dominant form of algae the Dinos were less prevalent than they are now that GHA is the dominant form of algae. Hopefully I can turn back the clock by dosing silica. We'll see what happens. Sodium Silicate is pretty cheap so if this works there is no reason I can't dose this forever.
As the tank is going through the GHA stage, the Ostreopsis dinos are taking full advantage and growing on the GHA. It isn't what I'd call a full bloom but there are more dinos than I'm comfortable with. Small areas of the sandbed have small strings of Dinos growing, but again not quite a bloom. Nutrients have remained stable for this whole period, nitrates between 7.5-10, and phosphates (which I'm dosing) between 0.05 and 0.1. So sadly it appears just having elevated nutrient levels on their own doesn't fully deter the dinos.
I've tweaked a few things to hopefully help the situation: In my filter sock area I added felt filter socks to catch the dinos that go over the overflow. I also slowed the flow through the UV down from 300 gph to 150 gph and I changed out the carbon.
But the biggest change is I'm going to start dosing silica. I got my Sodium Silicate in the mail that I was going to use as a test on my old tank, but I'm now repurposing it on the new tank (though I did dose it for a few days on the old tank and neither the shrimp nor corals had any ill effect so I assume it is safe). I'm going to start dosing 2ml of the 40% Sodium Silicate solution per day (which should be equivalent of 0.5 PPM of silica), and I'm going to plan to ramp this up to 4-8ml. When the Diatoms were the dominant form of algae the Dinos were less prevalent than they are now that GHA is the dominant form of algae. Hopefully I can turn back the clock by dosing silica. We'll see what happens. Sodium Silicate is pretty cheap so if this works there is no reason I can't dose this forever.
Sounds like you are doing good things. I’m surprised the UV hasn’t helped more. You runnng from DT back to DT?
I'm not trying to eradicate them, only to prevent them from blooming. There are more of them now than there were last week, and I'd like to reverse that trend.
Nope, I run the UV through a 2nd return pipe from the sump. I'm aware DT-->DT would be better but that really is something I'd like to avoid. In theory if I understand how the dinos work I shouldn't need to rely on UV to kill them, but I'm learning more every day.
We'll see how the silica dosing goes. I know for a fact that in this exact tank when diatoms were growing everywhere, the dinos were under control.
eraserhead187
Active Member
Thanks. I've just got a 32 gallon, so can't go too crazy. Have thought about getting a sea hare temporarily once I am confident I can bring my nutrient levels back down safely without causing any problems.
janos
Active Member
Hi to all would like to ask some help with ID.Hard to do good pics from those bugs with cell phone.Try to put my cellphone on the top of the Microscope but my hand is shaky than i try to do some video that maybe better.Any of you with more experience please ID some of those monsters.Thank you
I made an account to thank everyone for contributing to this thread, which has been tremendously helpful in battling dinos. I started noticing them in my tank right after Memorial Day. They looked like just a fine gold-colored dusting, and like many others I assumed I had diatoms. So I reattached my phosban reactor and started running GFO. Over the next several weeks things just started to get worse. By July 4th, my entire sand bed was brown and it had started to creep up my glass. There were no air bubbles or stringy matts. In fact, they seemed to blow away pretty easily with a turkey baster, so I still wasn't completely sure they were dinos. That's when I found this thread and decided to get a microscope.
Well, when I looked in the scope, I saw thousands of dinos swimming about in just a single drop of water that I harvested near the sand bed. Again, there were no stringy glops to siphon with a pipette, so I really only was able to get a couple of grains of sand and some water, but a drop of that was completely full of dinos -- mostly what looked like coolia to me. So my next step was to take off the phosban reactor and get a UV sterilizer. I decided to go with a small 8-watt unit because I planned to use the weak pump I was using with the reactor. I have a 60 gallon tank, and am pushing 60gph through the 8-watt UV. I hooked all of this up on Thursday night, agitated my sand bed to get as much of the dinos into the water column as possible, blew all my rocks aggressively with the turkey baster, and then cut the lights and wrapped the tank until this morning. So it wasn't a complete 72-hour blackout -- more like 60 hours.
Still, the results are amazing. Almost all of the dinos are gone. There is just one small patch on the sand bed that is a very faint golden color. I took some samples from different parts of the bed -- near the glass, near the rocks, near some euphyllia where it had really built up, and from the golden patch that remained. I also took a couple of samples from my rocks. The rocks and most of the sand bed samples were completely free of dinos. The sample from near the glass had two what looked like amphidinium, and the sample from the golden patch had quite a few more than two, but nowhere near the thousands of coolia I had seen a week ago.
So I'm not prepared to say that I've won the battle. But I can say that I'm incredibly encouraged by the results. In less than three days I seem to have wiped out the free swimming dinos. But I expect the amphidinium to start getting a stronger foothold. If you've read this far, maybe you can give me some advice. The samples that I took today contained very few dinos, but also much less biodiversity from my other samples from last week. I suspect that's due to a combination of slow flow through an 8-watt UV killing a lot of stuff and perhaps also because some of that life was feeding on the dinos and with much fewer dinos there is much less diversity in the samples. In any case, I want to try to remedy that. I will be dosing phyto and adding pods from AlgaeBarn soon, and if the golden patch of amphidinium continues to grow am considering siphoning out about an inch or so from the top of my sand bed and replacing it with about 15 pounds of live sand from a retailer, which will hopefully increase my biodiversity. The question is -- should I remove the UV while I do this? Or am I just inviting additional dino problems?
Well, when I looked in the scope, I saw thousands of dinos swimming about in just a single drop of water that I harvested near the sand bed. Again, there were no stringy glops to siphon with a pipette, so I really only was able to get a couple of grains of sand and some water, but a drop of that was completely full of dinos -- mostly what looked like coolia to me. So my next step was to take off the phosban reactor and get a UV sterilizer. I decided to go with a small 8-watt unit because I planned to use the weak pump I was using with the reactor. I have a 60 gallon tank, and am pushing 60gph through the 8-watt UV. I hooked all of this up on Thursday night, agitated my sand bed to get as much of the dinos into the water column as possible, blew all my rocks aggressively with the turkey baster, and then cut the lights and wrapped the tank until this morning. So it wasn't a complete 72-hour blackout -- more like 60 hours.
Still, the results are amazing. Almost all of the dinos are gone. There is just one small patch on the sand bed that is a very faint golden color. I took some samples from different parts of the bed -- near the glass, near the rocks, near some euphyllia where it had really built up, and from the golden patch that remained. I also took a couple of samples from my rocks. The rocks and most of the sand bed samples were completely free of dinos. The sample from near the glass had two what looked like amphidinium, and the sample from the golden patch had quite a few more than two, but nowhere near the thousands of coolia I had seen a week ago.
So I'm not prepared to say that I've won the battle. But I can say that I'm incredibly encouraged by the results. In less than three days I seem to have wiped out the free swimming dinos. But I expect the amphidinium to start getting a stronger foothold. If you've read this far, maybe you can give me some advice. The samples that I took today contained very few dinos, but also much less biodiversity from my other samples from last week. I suspect that's due to a combination of slow flow through an 8-watt UV killing a lot of stuff and perhaps also because some of that life was feeding on the dinos and with much fewer dinos there is much less diversity in the samples. In any case, I want to try to remedy that. I will be dosing phyto and adding pods from AlgaeBarn soon, and if the golden patch of amphidinium continues to grow am considering siphoning out about an inch or so from the top of my sand bed and replacing it with about 15 pounds of live sand from a retailer, which will hopefully increase my biodiversity. The question is -- should I remove the UV while I do this? Or am I just inviting additional dino problems?
Look the whole nutrient thing doesn't really work. They rebound
Using n+p which was championed on here by the awol thread owner does little long term.
UV can work but usually not affective with all strains long term.
I've had five tanks that's gone through all aquarium phases and fads. I've either restarted or new. Each have been run different. Algae reactors, fuges, bio pellets, dosing...
I'd estimate by now 24 blooms, 9 or so strains.
The hobby is cursed. I put it down to people coining it on frags. Distribution has gone global like a zero cure infectious disease.
Using n+p which was championed on here by the awol thread owner does little long term.
UV can work but usually not affective with all strains long term.
I've had five tanks that's gone through all aquarium phases and fads. I've either restarted or new. Each have been run different. Algae reactors, fuges, bio pellets, dosing...
I'd estimate by now 24 blooms, 9 or so strains.
The hobby is cursed. I put it down to people coining it on frags. Distribution has gone global like a zero cure infectious disease.
janos
Active Member
Thank you Paullawr as far as i see could not find any cure,try javex,30% is gone,try H2O2 another 30% is gone,Dino X 30% is gone now it is 8 month to fight with them but nothing is working.Thanks for your replay
Well you have Amphidinium dinos, and none of those things are effective against them. Try this thread.
What problems are the Amphidinium dinos causing you?
I would keep the uv going (you may need a larger one...) I also have read multiple times that blackouts will likely not work for other than short term. Other than keeping nutrients at levels suggested here, I believe siphoning and ultimately removing most of my sandbed helped the most in my amphidium battle. Also, go back and see some of @taricha posts on likely better alternatives to the pods you are thinking about purchasing. Also, I know it’s very long, but going back and reading much of this thread is a good thing. Good luck and welcome!
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