Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
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Which UV is that? I’m going to eventually try ditching my Jebao and trying setup in the cabinet but right now everything is fine so just waiting a bit to recover some $$$
It's an Aqua UV 57 watt. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003WRN48I/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
@Neil57 I can't see the post you quoted. Can you re-post your video. I commented on your pictures but forgot to quote you. What I see on the pictures are ostreopsis which are very susceptable to UV. A video would be good though to make sure there aren't other species.
Woo hoo! Just did my nightly parameter checks and my Alkalinity is doing this.
May not mean anything but every time my dinos flare up my alkalinity climbs as demand goes to nothing. Increased my alk dosing a little and we'll see where it is tomorrow. Maybe placebo effect but It looks like PE is much better on my Pink Lemonade and WD!
May not mean anything but every time my dinos flare up my alkalinity climbs as demand goes to nothing. Increased my alk dosing a little and we'll see where it is tomorrow. Maybe placebo effect but It looks like PE is much better on my Pink Lemonade and WD!
Alexreefer
Coral, Coral, Coral!!!
I have been fighting what I thought was diatoms for 5 months until my teacher was able to id my dinos as amphidimium? Is that how you spell it? I know uv does nothing against this. What can I do to get rid of these dinos? Was not able to get pics from the microscope. I have some pics of stringy dinos floating in the water after scrubbing the rocks I can post. Any help is appreciated.
I don't see anything but ostreopsis but let's get some more expert eyes on it. @taricha , @reeferfoxx
We have a thread dedicated solely for this species. https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/amphidinium-dinoflagellate-treatment-methods.365850/
Check it out but the principles are keeping nutrients up, dosing silicates, manual removal when you can, increasing biodiversity and one of the latest is putting a piece of chaeto from your sump on the worst patches and weighing it down with a small rock. If you have pictures of your microscopic ID post them on here too!
Check it out but the principles are keeping nutrients up, dosing silicates, manual removal when you can, increasing biodiversity and one of the latest is putting a piece of chaeto from your sump on the worst patches and weighing it down with a small rock. If you have pictures of your microscopic ID post them on here too!
Agree. Good news likely! I think think the sps PE means something here.Woo hoo! Just did my nightly parameter checks and my Alkalinity is doing this.
May not mean anything but every time my dinos flare up my alkalinity climbs as demand goes to nothing. Increased my alk dosing a little and we'll see where it is tomorrow. Maybe placebo effect but It looks like PE is much better on my Pink Lemonade and WD!
So you replaced the jebao 55 watt with the aqua uv 57 watt right? Do you do anything to maintain your sand?
I haven't done much. I was stirring the sandbed late in the lighting period to try to induce the prorocentrum to go water borne but haven't done that for a while. I did vacuum my sand yesterday while doing my first water change in a few weeks. The sand doesn't look bad at all. There is no mat or anything I can blow off to sample, just a little brown dusting in places. The only way I can sample it is to scoop a tsp of the top layer and blast it with my pipette till the water is cloudy and put a drop of that on a slide. When I did that yesterday I saw mainly diatoms with 1-3 prorocentrum per field at 250x.
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Circling back to this test to distinguish dinos from diatoms. I think it'll work. I need some help confirming.
So here's the details if anyone wants to confirm that it works on pest dinos (I've only done it on symbiotic dinos).
Dino Freeze-Thaw Test
A) Sample a clump of pure dinos - cyano will be a false positive (works even better if dinos are in freshwater, but will be ok in tank water)
B) completely freeze and then fully thaw the sample. Note the water got a little orangey from the dino pigment.
C) place near a fluorescent blacklight - not an LED - and it ought to glow red.
D) if you filter out the cells and debris through filter paper or tight paper towels the orange pigment may be clearer
E) & F) and the red fluorescence will be brighter without the debris scattering the light.
Compare to doing the same test on Diatoms
A) Diatoms from my aquarium glass
B) scraped off glass and collected in beaker
C) microscope image appears to confirm diatoms
D) Concentrated a bunch of cells down and froze then thawed them
E) Filtered cells to the bottom, the clear liquid is just slightly yellow
F) and gives no fluorescent red response at all to the fluorescent blacklight.
Does anyone with an armored dinoflagellate like ostreopsis or prorocentrum have a nice mass of brown dino they could sample for an experiment and a blacklight bulb (fluorescent, not LED)?
So here's the details if anyone wants to confirm that it works on pest dinos (I've only done it on symbiotic dinos).
Dino Freeze-Thaw Test
A) Sample a clump of pure dinos - cyano will be a false positive (works even better if dinos are in freshwater, but will be ok in tank water)
B) completely freeze and then fully thaw the sample. Note the water got a little orangey from the dino pigment.
C) place near a fluorescent blacklight - not an LED - and it ought to glow red.
D) if you filter out the cells and debris through filter paper or tight paper towels the orange pigment may be clearer
E) & F) and the red fluorescence will be brighter without the debris scattering the light.
Compare to doing the same test on Diatoms
A) Diatoms from my aquarium glass
B) scraped off glass and collected in beaker
C) microscope image appears to confirm diatoms
D) Concentrated a bunch of cells down and froze then thawed them
E) Filtered cells to the bottom, the clear liquid is just slightly yellow
F) and gives no fluorescent red response at all to the fluorescent blacklight.
Ernie C
Well-Known Member
So I regularly see micro bubbles clinging to my rocks here and there and so just took a swab of the rocks with a q-tip and bam other type of Dino and maybe one ostreopsis. It’s minor and doesn’t seem to be affecting the tank negatively. I think the UV is keeping them at bay and all the corals are doing ok and growing. But is it safe to say they will always remain in our systems once introduced? I have some corals that I will eventually need to frag and trade/sell/give away. How can I do this with a clear conscience knowing I have dinos? Maybe I’ll just have to trade/sell or give freebies to you all on this thread. I’ll be like: “You’ve got dinos? You get a frag, you get a frag, you get a frag!”
What is the skinny thing next to the Dino? Diatom?
What is the skinny thing next to the Dino? Diatom?
Ernie C
Well-Known Member
Circling back to this test to distinguish dinos from diatoms. I think it'll work. I need some help confirming.
So here's the details if anyone wants to confirm that it works on pest dinos (I've only done it on symbiotic dinos).
Dino Freeze-Thaw Test
A) Sample a clump of pure dinos - cyano will be a false positive (works even better if dinos are in freshwater, but will be ok in tank water)
B) completely freeze and then fully thaw the sample. Note the water got a little orangey from the dino pigment.
C) place near a fluorescent blacklight - not an LED - and it ought to glow red.
D) if you filter out the cells and debris through filter paper or tight paper towels the orange pigment may be clearer
E) & F) and the red fluorescence will be brighter without the debris scattering the light.
Compare to doing the same test on Diatoms
A) Diatoms from my aquarium glass
B) scraped off glass and collected in beaker
C) microscope image appears to confirm diatoms
D) Concentrated a bunch of cells down and froze then thawed them
E) Filtered cells to the bottom, the clear liquid is just slightly yellow
F) and gives no fluorescent red response at all to the fluorescent blacklight.
While I had these on my microscope I used a little black light on them and they do glow although I could t get a good focus in the dark. Check it out.
So I regularly see micro bubbles clinging to my rocks here and there and so just took a swab of the rocks with a q-tip and bam other type of Dino and maybe one ostreopsis. It’s minor and doesn’t seem to be affecting the tank negatively. I think the UV is keeping them at bay and all the corals are doing ok and growing. But is it safe to say they will always remain in our systems once introduced? I have some corals that I will eventually need to frag and trade/sell/give away. How can I do this with a clear conscience knowing I have dinos? Maybe I’ll just have to trade/sell or give freebies to you all on this thread. I’ll be like: “You’ve got dinos? You get a frag, you get a frag, you get a frag!”
What is the skinny thing next to the Dino? Diatom?
Interested to hear peoples take on fragging stuff. Personally I think they've always been in my tank....for years but who knows.
The skinny thing is a diatom, same species that's dominant in my tank. I don't think that's ostreopsis, maybe prorocentrum?
Neoalchemist
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Whoa, super cool. And I believe all if not most tanks have dinos. The conditions just weren't right for a bloom. And if a tank is dino free how long will it likely stay that way with years of stocking corals fish and cleanup crews.While I had these on my microscope I used a little black light on them and they do glow although I could t get a good focus in the dark. Check it out.
It's like saying there's no dinos in the ocean because there's no red tide right now.
Here's a picture of the diatoms from my tank.
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I think we’ll find that bacterial interventions will be powerful, and helpful if done right. I don’t feel like it’s needed for types that go into the water, but stubborn sandbed only kinds (Amphidinium) are hard to target otherwise.
Thanks for report.
I haven’t finished but I’ve gone halfway through the video. There’s lots in it worth taking a close look at. Realize that the vodka / peroxide are being used entirely as a gas / brake mechanism to speed up and slow down the bacterial action.
One bacterial blend is meant to eat the crud, and remineralize it into inorganic nutrients N and P. Another blend is meant to consume the nutrients from the water(?)
Lots to go through. I’d like to see it taken apart and run by the folks around here that understand the bacterial activity deeply. See if all the theory is sound and we can take a look behind the curtain a little bit and analyze it further than bacterial magic in bottles.
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