Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[Burrito]

Hardest part about this so far, besides the nasty red garbage everywhere is not cleaning my glass. I hate looking at the haziness from the algae. At least I can clearly see where my snails have been

Edit: and watching once thriving Coral go downhill. My birdsnest and pocilliapora are taking this the worst.

 

[SteveO83]

What is GAC? And also how does one confirm if there is no way to get ahold of a microscope?

 

[Burrito]

So instead of hoping and praying that feeding heavy and taking some filtration offline. I have brightwell phosphate and nitrate ready to dose. What should I be aiming for in terms of levels?

My phosphate is usually around .04 and nitrate undetected due to my fuge. I don’t want to take the fuge offline unless absolutely needed.

phos instructions say 1ml of solution will raise phosphate ~1.2ppm per gallon. my tank has just about 100g after displacement and sump added. I'm thinking of adding 50ml to give me about .6ppm increase and bring me to just over 1ppm

do I need to keep dosing, should I check every night and adjust accordingly?

for nitrate, 1ml brings nitrate up 5ppm per gallon. what should I do here? I know I have nitrate since I've always had a decent amount of brown fuzz growing on the overflow and return spouts but I can't detect any with my redsea kit?

appreciate some advice, thanks

 

[saltwaterpicaso]

If amphidiniam dinoflagellates are suspended in the water column will a UV sterilizer kill it

 

[sensei]

Im going to try not to be vague here. You have a unique situation in correlation to your dinos. High bioload and an organism that likes nitrates.

It could be possible your answer is in increased po4 only. Before we do that though, lets get some nitrate tests going.

If you can, stop dosing carbon and keep the ats going. Feed normally but lets test nitrates morning and night every other day for 7 days. Thats 4 days of testing in a 7 day period. That will give you accurate enough information on nitrate levels and how the tank handles it. Then we can go from there.

Thank you for your answer reeferfoxx,

I have a coupe of comments before I start:

1.- I am not sure why, but my tank has always had very low phosphates no matter what I feed and I have always had high nitrate to phosphate ratio. I feed 3 sheets of nori , plus around 3-4 cubes of frozen per day. I never feed coral, just the fish. Before I started carbon dosing I had two ATS installed hoping that they would lower NO3 but algae never grew well in there and NO3 have always been high. A friend told me that tank seemed to be phosphate limited and that may be the reason why ATS was not growing. I changed fish food and I was able to higher PO4 to 0.04-0.05 and NO3 was 30ppm but ATS still did not grew well either . I have a Unicorn tang that is 5 years old and he is 12" big. I also have a Blond NASO and a Dejardini Sailfing tang that are almost same size, plus many more big fishes. It is a 470g dt..

What I am trying to tell you is that I already tried having only the ATS and it did not lower my NO3 and that is why I added carbon dosing. In addition, it may not be a good idea to have an ATS if I dose carbon because they both compete and since I already know that ATS will not lower NO3 in my tank, that is why I suggested to take the ATS offline and just keep the carbon dosing as a nutrient export method. I am a little afraid that if I stop carbon NO3 will fly to the sky quickly; in the other hand, I can lower the carbon dose to get the 10ppm of No3 but I will not be able to higher my PO4 unless I dose PO4 directly.

I am a little afraid to do changes because in a tank my size if things go south it would be difficult for me to take control.

2.- NO3 testing: I use Salifert and after 5ppm it jumps to 10ppm and for higher ranges it is very difficult to distinguish between colors since they are so similar, so readings will not be accurate.
I am not sure if you know more accurate method to test?

I felt I needed to make these comments so you can give me the best expert advice.

please tell me what you think.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to help

best regards

 

[Pennywise the Clown]

I've been fighting dinos now for about 3 weeks. At first I managed to get the upper hand by overfeeding to raise nitrates and phosphates and I started to get some nice green algae growing on the overflow and back of my display.
But then my nutrient levels bottomed out again an the green algae turned orange/brown and dinos started to return.
I probably made the mistake of scraping the brown stuff off ( to try and encourage the green algae to return) and also blew off my sand bed.
The next day my entire display was covered in orange/brown. Corals, rocks, sand, everything.
In the morning the display is pretty clear, by the evening it is a disaster.
I have purchased some Seachem nitrous and phosphorus and my levels are now 10 and 0.15 respectively.
I also fit a 10 micron filter sock at night.

 

[saltwaterpicaso]

I have since added 2 diamond gobies to my 120 and my tank is clean I know its still there but they keep It suspended and the uv I believe is killing it

 

[pharazon]

I grabbed some strands off my Flipper Cleaner this morning to check under the scope. They seem to like it there, and the strands stay there even after dark so I don’t think they’re leaving to go for a midnight swim. This made me think perhaps it is not just ostreopsis, or are there some ostreopsis that are not freeswimming? That would suck, as UV isn’t likely to help then I’m guessing.

Scope shows (I think) a lot of algae cells with ostreopsis mixed in.

Thoughts?

 

[Ert]

Could some help ID please. It’s the day in with nitrates ariund 10ppm and phosphates at roughly 0.2ppm. The tank has a strange odor as well from it. I siphon some out everyday with a sock. When I rinse the sock, you def smell it and seems to dissolve and change the color of the water a bit.

 

[Odysi]

Hey guys was looking for help on ID for what type of dinos this is.

 

[Odysi]

Sorry not the best pic but here is a another these look alil different

 

[Pennywise the Clown]

So I've siphoned out as much as I possibly could. My sand is nice and white again.
Phosphates are at 0.1 and nitrates are 10 thanks to dosing Seachem. Let's see if I can grow some green stuff.
Also have a cheap microscope arriving today which will definitely make things a bit clearer.

 

[Burrito]

my UV arrives today, from what i read here i should pull from the display and put back to the display. is this correct? should i continue to blow the dinos off the rocks and what not, try and siphon what i can off the sand to "help"?

also, does it matter if a UV is vertical or horizontal? i have the 55w jeabo coming

 

[Pennywise the Clown]

3 hours after siphoning my sand bed and rocks, dinos are already starting to form again.
How can I get green algae to grow when the dinos come back so quickly?
One thing of interest though, my Coral Beauty and Algae Blenny are happy to pick away at the brown film that is growing on my glass and my Chalk Goby has been filtering the sand, all showing no ill effects. I hope I can assume that whatever these dinos are, they are not toxic.

 

[dwest]

Hardest part about this so far, besides the nasty red garbage everywhere is not cleaning my glass. I hate looking at the haziness from the algae. At least I can clearly see where my snails have been

Edit: and watching once thriving Coral go downhill. My birdsnest and pocilliapora are taking this the worst.

Dinos suck. If you run GAC it may help with toxins.

 

[dwest]

What is GAC? And also how does one confirm if there is no way to get ahold of a microscope?

granular activated carbon. Like Rox 0.8 you can get from brs. Page 1 of this thread can help you get a $12 microscope or other ways to help check for dinos. Microscope is best IMO.

 

[Scottybgood]

Sorry not the best pic but here is a another these look alil different

Those appear to be Ostreopsis, your OTHER pic look like prorocentrum (but will wait for other expert id'ers to chime in)

 

[dwest]

So instead of hoping and praying that feeding heavy and taking some filtration offline. I have brightwell phosphate and nitrate ready to dose. What should I be aiming for in terms of levels?

My phosphate is usually around .04 and nitrate undetected due to my fuge. I don’t want to take the fuge offline unless absolutely needed.

phos instructions say 1ml of solution will raise phosphate ~1.2ppm per gallon. my tank has just about 100g after displacement and sump added. I'm thinking of adding 50ml to give me about .6ppm increase and bring me to just over 1ppm

do I need to keep dosing, should I check every night and adjust accordingly?

for nitrate, 1ml brings nitrate up 5ppm per gallon. what should I do here? I know I have nitrate since I've always had a decent amount of brown fuzz growing on the overflow and return spouts but I can't detect any with my redsea kit?

appreciate some advice, thanks

You want about 10 ppm nitrates and 0.1 ppm phosphates. I would dose and check daily and maybe even more often at first.

 

[dwest]

Yes, but amphidinium is very difficult to get in water column IME.

 

[dwest]

I grabbed some strands off my Flipper Cleaner this morning to check under the scope. They seem to like it there, and the strands stay there even after dark so I don’t think they’re leaving to go for a midnight swim. This made me think perhaps it is not just ostreopsis, or are there some ostreopsis that are not freeswimming? That would suck, as UV isn’t likely to help then I’m guessing.

Scope shows (I think) a lot of algae cells with ostreopsis mixed in.

Thoughts?

I believe you have a good shot with properly designed and set up uv with ostreopsis