Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[Neoalchemist]

Getting signs of green cyano and as stated thinking about pulling the sand. Should i wait and see if the cyano gets an upper hand or just pull the sandbed?

I had just decided a while back (in the middle of the fight, to remove all dinos(amphidinium and 3 other species) from the sand bed regardless of how much sand went with them and if I eventually got to bare bottom then so be it. Got down to a little less than half of what I started with. I tried to avoid removing the diatoms and now the only sand left has a thin coat of diatoms and no amphidinium going on 2 months. At one point I cleaned and introduced a jar full of sand back in but had a resurgence immediately after so sucked most of that back out.
I harbor a faint ghost of suspicion regarding sand, sand bed depths, and or sand bed composition and grain size. Seems to me a lot of us are starting systems with the same 1-2" sand beds with the same materials.

 

[Neoalchemist]

Had not been id’d.

They do not seem to enter the water column like my last dino outbreak. Lights go off, they are in the same locations, they even spread slower. I can watch their encroachment down my rockwork on a daily basis. Havent had to clean my front glass at all.

Is your uv bulb in good shape, clean and not too old ect. If so maybe force them into the water with a cleaning and blackout.

 

[Ernie C]

Had not been id’d.

They do not seem to enter the water column like my last dino outbreak. Lights go off, they are in the same locations, they even spread slower. I can watch their encroachment down my rockwork on a daily basis. Havent had to clean my front glass at all.

Those look like ostreopsis. I had those and got them under control with combination of reduced light schedule, no wave maker just return pump, nightly siphoning through filter sock cause without the wave makers they don’t go all over, three doses of dinox, and lastly oversized UV.

 

[taricha]

Dang, I had a ton of Dino attach to that filter pad in matter of 2hrs. like turned it brown and my sps they were growing on like crazy they didnt grow back on them after blowing them off. It seems they all went on the pad. I just took it off and washed them all down the drain with scalding hot water and put it back in clean. Maybe I can eliminate them this way

I know the filter floss blowing in the flow in front of a power head sounds dumb, but you'll be amazed what percent of dinos attach to the filter and not elsewhere in tank (then pull and rinse filter).

You'll at least be able to keep the stringy dino cells off your corals and down near invisible levels until you can shift things out of their favor or the bloom largely exhausts its resources.
Best part, you're exporting near 100% pure dinos.

Ok so i even read this thread again.

My dinos did finally return,
But...
I have not let my n or p hit zero since i got rid of them.
I have not carbon dosed
I was not using gfo
(I was before first time i got rid of them had a doser malfunction and ended up with 6ppm po4) stopped after it got to .1
Has never tested lower than .03.
UV has no effect

You did nothing wrong. A lot of reports of re-blooms in the past few weeks. Anecdotal, but it feels like a spring bloom happening in our tanks like in the wild. I know it's spring in my tank: multiple species laying eggs unexpectedly and small blooms of a couple of different algal classes.
So if somehow the tank has "spring-like conditions" then old dino cysts from previous bouts would emerge now. A small re-bloom shouldn't be considered failure.

can you shoot video and a couple more pics. Looks ostreopsis, but want to be sure.

 

[taricha]

Those look like ostreopsis. I had those and got them under control with combination of reduced light schedule, no wave maker just return pump, nightly siphoning through filter sock cause without the wave makers they don’t go all over...

There are some ostreopsis outbreaks that do that. In response to zero flow they leave the rock en masse (sometimes forming a brown cloud) and go to surface. Not all ostis do, but it's totally worth a try to anyone with a lot of ostreopsis cells.

 

[Gareth elliott]

You'll at least be able to keep the stringy dino cells off your corals and down near invisible levels until you can shift things out of their favor or the bloom largely exhausts its resources.
Best part, you're exporting near 100% pure dinos.




You did nothing wrong. A lot of reports of re-blooms in the past few weeks. Anecdotal, but it feels like a spring bloom happening in our tanks like in the wild. I know it's spring in my tank: multiple species laying eggs unexpectedly and small blooms of a couple of different algal classes.
So if somehow the tank has "spring-like conditions" then old dino cysts from previous bouts would emerge now. A small re-bloom shouldn't be considered failure.

can you shoot video and a couple more pics. Looks ostreopsis, but want to be sure.

Will post video shortly.

Microscope works with windows, i of course use an iphone, a mac, and using this lap top is killing me [emoji23]

 

[Gareth elliott]

Ok some photos still working on getting a video off google drive onto my phone [emoji23]

Random worm thing with dinos.

Played with saturation a bit for this and the next one.

just having fun piece of bubble algae skin covered in coralline.

 

[Gareth elliott]

Video of the worm the dinos didnt want to move :/

Also since there are diatoms present and i have sodium silicate on hand making up a water glass solution.

Using seneye ph reading to make sure i dont overdose.

 

[mfollen]

I don’t know if anyone read my last post on different Dr Tims bacteria to improve biodiversity and competition for ostreopsis...

But between that and the UV... worked wonders. Highly recommmend doing some reading on the role of bacteria and not just nutrients

 

[Ernie C]

Video of the worm the dinos didnt want to move :/

Also since there are diatoms present and i have sodium silicate on hand making up a water glass solution.

Using seneye ph reading to make sure i dont overdose.

Ostreopsis I’m pretty sure.

 

[Mhart032]

How I best dinos after a 4 month battle. First let me say how I got them, to big of water changes in a newer setup, how I removed them was pretty simple, Removed the carbon and gfo and poring the skimmer cup back into the tank every 3 days till they were gone. No water changes and no blackouts. I tried everything under the sun nothing worked, blackouts would work for 3 or 4 days, then they would come back.. now I will say, after the dinos I got cyano from the water quality, I waited 3 weeks after they were gone then did a water change and used chemiclean to rid the cyano, it took 2 doses. But it worked.

 

[m0jjen]

I had just decided a while back (in the middle of the fight, to remove all dinos(amphidinium and 3 other species) from the sand bed regardless of how much sand went with them and if I eventually got to bare bottom then so be it. Got down to a little less than half of what I started with. I tried to avoid removing the diatoms and now the only sand left has a thin coat of diatoms and no amphidinium going on 2 months. At one point I cleaned and introduced a jar full of sand back in but had a resurgence immediately after so sucked most of that back out.
I harbor a faint ghost of suspicion regarding sand, sand bed depths, and or sand bed composition and grain size. Seems to me a lot of us are starting systems with the same 1-2" sand beds with the same materials.

There are things making me hesitant to remove the sand at the moment. For the last few days cyano has been coming along more and more (not enough to get a hold but its growing). That along with the fact that im starting to get green film algae which is replacing brown algae, hairalgae and whatnot on the glas. So things might be on its way to recovery in my opition. I really hate bare bottoms even if its a huge benefit when running a SPS tank.

Im currently conducting an experiment, nothing to serious. Just a bucket of dino infested water put under different conditions every 48 hours. First part is dino in clean new water. They are actually growing in it. Next experiment will be UVC in the container (wont really say much when you have 39w UV on a 5 gallon bucket but ill sure as hell will enjoy frying them)

 

[m0jjen]

Test #2 UVC for 3 hours. 100x turnover in the UVC



Dino got DISINTEGRATED by the UVC. Cant find a single living cell. some cells without membrain. So i guess UVC will actually kill mine. Reapplying the UVC and gonna start bastering everything in sight twice daily. Next experiment, blackout

 

[saltyhog]

Your last two posts brought a smile to my face! I feel the same way about these devils.

 

[taricha]

some reports of re-blooms in the past few weeks. Anecdotal, but it feels like a spring bloom happening in our tanks like in the wild. I know it's spring in my tank: multiple species laying eggs unexpectedly and small blooms of a couple of different algal classes.
So if somehow the tank has "spring-like conditions" then old dino cysts from previous bouts might re-emerge

Wanted to see if this was more than just my sense. So I looked at this thread activity over past months. suuuper unscientific. Many reasons for seasonal trends that have more to do with people than protists, but it's interesting anyway.

It looks like the months Aug-Nov have the least activity and Jan-Mar have the most thread activity. Is that a seasonal cycle in our tanks? Or is that a seasonal cycle of hobbyist activity and posting? Or is just a blip caused by a few frequent posters? hmmm.....

 

[Gareth elliott]

Wanted to see if this was more than just my sense. So I looked at this thread activity over past months. suuuper unscientific. Many reasons for seasonal trends that have more to do with people than protists, but it's interesting anyway.

It looks like the months Aug-Nov have the least activity and Jan-Mar have the most thread activity. Is that a seasonal cycle in our tanks? Or is that a seasonal cycle of hobbyist activity and posting? Or is just a blip caused by a few frequent posters? hmmm.....

There are some studies involving algae being carried in water droplets hundreds of miles from their source given many tropical areas have monsoon seasons? But that would 100% speculation and inductive reasoning [emoji23]. If your statement was algae and freshwater tanks.... that would be hobbyist born, ive definitely put off some water changes when using EI dosing when it was winter [emoji23].

 

[OpenOcean33]

Wanted to see if this was more than just my sense. So I looked at this thread activity over past months. suuuper unscientific. Many reasons for seasonal trends that have more to do with people than protists, but it's interesting anyway.

It looks like the months Aug-Nov have the least activity and Jan-Mar have the most thread activity. Is that a seasonal cycle in our tanks? Or is that a seasonal cycle of hobbyist activity and posting? Or is just a blip caused by a few frequent posters? hmmm.....

This is interesting, maybe more hobbiest in the winter cause of the weather I did read an article on this. Here in fl natural dino blooms happen in summer warmer months not winter. Maybe people are turning on Those house heaters lol ! Defenitly interesting trend.

 

[ScottB]

Sadly, I get to join the club no one wants to be in. My own darn fault; I tripled the system size with a new 80G tank and 40G sump tied into my old 30G breeder, but did not increase the bioload enough. Only 2 tangs, two lawnmowers and 2 wrasses. Then I was away for most of the last 4 weeks and my nutrients went 0. (the feeding instructions I left were for the old, smaller system). No sand, no skim, no GFO. The refugium alone was enough to strip it clean.

I've read a couple hundred posts on this thread; so getting a good sense of my next steps.

Step 1: Identify your enemy. My snotty sample looks/behaves like Ostreopsis @ 100X. Almond shape, most seemingly tethered to an anchor point as they float/swim. Dissolves into the water column at night. Tried to link a .MOV video but it wouldn't take.

Step 2: Dose PO4 and NO3 to .1 and 10 respectively. (have Loudwolf sodium nitrate; waiting on Seachem Flourish phosphorus to arrive)

Step 3: Set up low flow/high contact UV sterilizer sized for my 150G frag system.

@mcarroll @taricha you folks have done a great service to this community. Do the above steps still represent the best known process to regain control?

 

[Gareth elliott]

So listened to to low flow, idea, now why i did this when i am not at home i have no idea. Keep checking my seneye ammonia making sure i didnt kill anything in the process of this. I do have the skimmer running and my return does cause surface agitation but still should have waited for the sake of my own nerves [emoji23]

 

[taricha]

I've read a couple hundred posts on this thread; so getting a good sense of my next steps.

Step 1: Identify your enemy. My snotty sample looks/behaves like Ostreopsis @ 100X. Almond shape, most seemingly tethered to an anchor point as they float/swim. Dissolves into the water column at night. Tried to link a .MOV video but it wouldn't take.

Step 2: Dose PO4 and NO3 to .1 and 10 respectively. (have Loudwolf sodium nitrate; waiting on Seachem Flourish phosphorus to arrive)

Step 3: Set up low flow/high contact UV sterilizer sized for my 150G frag system.

Almost certainly correct on the ID (you can throw video up on youtube if you want).
Don't elevate NO3 while P is too low, it's stressful for corals and they handle that poorly.
For ostreopsis, you pretty much have it. Others can get trickier.
Run GAC for toxins, as ostreopsis is frequently toxic. Be sure to keep dinos off corals - coral colonies die quickly if dinos attach directly. If you need something faster while waiting for UV, see this post #6801 on filter floss hanging in the flow.