I think so.
Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
- Thread starter mcarroll
- Start date
- Tagged users None
Often, we have more than one species it seems. You might have knocked out your coolia with UV, but still have amphidinium in the sand for example. I removed my sand about a year ago. I think it will help.
I'm still running GAC but only changing it every 10-12 days now. Haven't seen any sign of toxicity and only amphidinium on the sand. I don't know what's in Dr Tim's Waste Away other than bacteria but every dip in PO4 was the day after dosing with it. Interestingly it seems to have much less effect on NO3 which have remained pretty stable at 3-5.
So, I scooped a tablespoon of dirty sand and put it in about 3cc of tank water and blew on it for several minutes with a pipette and made 3 different slides. These two dinos (amphidinium I presume) were all that I could find.
I also found a small patch of cyano and made 5 slides from it. I've always found dinos on the cyano when I couldn't find them any where else. Only thing other than the cyano was these two different kinds of diatoms. ;Happy
A big thank you to @mcarroll and @taricha oper this wonderful post.
I had been full of dino for a year, which in addition to their brown patina, they created agglomerates of dino and gel on the rocks, tubes and rear glass ....
lps died, sps still .... tried change, removal, uv, skim, light, refugium with algae ... nothing even the chaetomopha suffered !!!!! but I kept foolishly trying to keep no3 and po4 at 0!!!!!
Then I found this post, I immediately started massive doses of NO3 and PO4, without first observing the ID of the dino under the microscope. (what dino did you think?)
Time only one week, dino disappeared! in their place immediately a lot of diatoms and after a while the green cyanobacteria increased a lot.
Yesterday I found my old toy microscope that I was given as a present in 1985! well I don't see the wonderful images that you put in the picture, but something you see, I didn't see any dino, something that could seem dino, it was immobile and equal to 1% of the biomass, while I saw a very high number of small transparent snakes that they fidgeted! (What are????)
now I have to fight cyan greens and diatoms, but without unbalancing the system! Tips?
for 2 days I activated lamp and UV, yesterday I put skimmer at maximum power, and dosed a bit of h2o2, morning is dosed bacteria and I leave skim and UV off half a day ....
do you recommend anything else?
Thanks again,
sorry English, but I write from Italy
Gildo
I had been full of dino for a year, which in addition to their brown patina, they created agglomerates of dino and gel on the rocks, tubes and rear glass ....
lps died, sps still .... tried change, removal, uv, skim, light, refugium with algae ... nothing even the chaetomopha suffered !!!!! but I kept foolishly trying to keep no3 and po4 at 0!!!!!
Then I found this post, I immediately started massive doses of NO3 and PO4, without first observing the ID of the dino under the microscope. (what dino did you think?)
Time only one week, dino disappeared! in their place immediately a lot of diatoms and after a while the green cyanobacteria increased a lot.
Yesterday I found my old toy microscope that I was given as a present in 1985! well I don't see the wonderful images that you put in the picture, but something you see, I didn't see any dino, something that could seem dino, it was immobile and equal to 1% of the biomass, while I saw a very high number of small transparent snakes that they fidgeted! (What are????)
now I have to fight cyan greens and diatoms, but without unbalancing the system! Tips?
for 2 days I activated lamp and UV, yesterday I put skimmer at maximum power, and dosed a bit of h2o2, morning is dosed bacteria and I leave skim and UV off half a day ....
do you recommend anything else?
Thanks again,
sorry English, but I write from Italy
Gildo
- Joined
- May 22, 2016
- Messages
- 6,545
- Reaction score
- 10,101
Thanks so much for these observations. It helps out a lot. Coincidentally, I'm currently doing beaker tests on Waste-Away to see if I can quantify what it does chemically when it "breaks down waste".
If you put a few mL of W.A into 1 L of water (I did 4mL / 1L) and do a PO4 test on the water, you'll find that W.A. is dense in PO4 and actually ADDs measurable PO4 to the system.
The flip side, as you noted is that it apparently consumes or causes PO4 to be consumed. I hadn't observed that in my tests.
I can't give definitive answer, but it seems as though the media in the bottles having high PO4 means waste away needs a lot of it. Upon addition to a tank, it could be consuming what's available. It could also be causing a mini-bloom in the water - increase of bacteria in water, and these bacteria take in PO4.
a few days later, the waste away or other bacteria may be dying and re-release most of the PO4 that didn't get exported.
you could level out the doses as you suggested. Dr. Tims also has a slow release version...
Waste-Away Time Release Gel - Large
Automatically and Continuously Released Waste-Away Bacteria! Dr. Tim's Waste Away Gel is specially designed to break down fish waste in the hard to reach areas of your reef tank. Waste-Away is a 100% natural bacterial additive that helps dissolve sludge and hidden wastes. Using Waste-Away will...
www.bulkreefsupply.com
Actually, the moving one looks like a cryptomonas-type thing. I get those in my sand occasionally. And the other one may not be a dino either. Looks essentially dino free!
Thanks so much for these observations. It helps out a lot. Coincidentally, I'm currently doing beaker tests on Waste-Away to see if I can quantify what it does chemically when it "breaks down waste".
If you put a few mL of W.A into 1 L of water (I did 4mL / 1L) and do a PO4 test on the water, you'll find that W.A. is dense in PO4 and actually ADDs measurable PO4 to the system.
The flip side, as you noted is that it apparently consumes or causes PO4 to be consumed. I hadn't observed that in my tests.
I can't give definitive answer, but it seems as though the media in the bottles having high PO4 means waste away needs a lot of it. Upon addition to a tank, it could be consuming what's available. It could also be causing a mini-bloom in the water - increase of bacteria in water, and these bacteria take in PO4.
a few days later, the waste away or other bacteria may be dying and re-release most of the PO4 that didn't get exported.
you could level out the doses as you suggested. Dr. Tims also has a slow release version...
Waste-Away Time Release Gel - Large
Automatically and Continuously Released Waste-Away Bacteria! Dr. Tim's Waste Away Gel is specially designed to break down fish waste in the hard to reach areas of your reef tank. Waste-Away is a 100% natural bacterial additive that helps dissolve sludge and hidden wastes. Using Waste-Away will...
Actually, the moving one looks like a cryptomonas-type thing. I get those in my sand occasionally. And the other one may not be a dino either. Looks essentially dino free!
That makes perfect sense. My skimmer production goes way up for 24 hours or so after dosing and the smell changes...very unique for skimate . It sounds like I'm not completely exporting the PO4 consuming bacteria. I may have to empty my skimmer cup daily for a while.
I suspected as much! I only see diatoms on the slides other than those cryptomonas. In the past I only had a single diatom species but now I see at least 3 or 4 different ones.
Very jealous that you kept your sand...
It was a long struggle my friend. I might have been happier removing it but with several sand sleeping fish that I didn't want to rehome I felt like I had to take this route.
I cant get the thought out of my head that most dry fish foods add metals like copper as a nutrient. I read a thread from 2007 that someone got rid of dinos with cuprisorb copper remover.
Anyone have dinos that doesnt feed dry food ever?
Anyone have dinos that doesnt feed dry food ever?
- Joined
- May 22, 2016
- Messages
- 6,545
- Reaction score
- 10,101
some evidence that dinos require more metals than most other classes of photosynthetic organism.
Not sure if cuprisorb could drop metals enough to limit them, but it's not crazy and I don't recall it being experimented with.
Not sure if cuprisorb could drop metals enough to limit them, but it's not crazy and I don't recall it being experimented with.
inthesea
Active Member
No, I blacked out for 3 days and turned off the skimmer. Looks like it's gone for now.
- Joined
- May 22, 2016
- Messages
- 6,545
- Reaction score
- 10,101
Nori is so packed with vitamins and trace elements.
Once had a guy who was so convinced his nori caused his dinos that he sent me his dried nori sheets to check under the microscope for dino cells.
Of course they were clean, but feeding them strongly encouraged his dinos.
MadTownFess
Active Member
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2018
- Messages
- 169
- Reaction score
- 174
At my wits end. Tank is 11 months old, been battling dino for the last 8 months. Tank parameters are stable and grow Coraline like crazy. I had both Ostro and Amphidinum. Started the tank off with dry reef saver rock. Made the rookie mistake of starting off with GFO from day one. This obviously led to 0 phosphate,hence the dino. I started off increasing my phosphate to .05. It has been this way now for 6 months. Nitrate has always been 5-10 ppm. After that didn't do much as I was trying to be patient, Didnt work, so I got a UV sterilizer. This did a pretty good job of killing Ostro,keeping them to a minimum. I turned off the skimmer. Did 5 gallon water changes (45 gallon system) to suck out all the dinos in the sand bed. After a few months of this, still kept coming back. I read the dosing Silca can help overcome Amph, so did that for a few weeks until I saw a diatom bloom. Diatoms came and went, still dino. I finally starting getting some green turf algae on my rockwork, so thought this was a good sign and that maybe it would out compete it. I stopped doing water changes. as I heard this could fuel them. Trying to be patient and see how things play out, this went on for a few months, still dino. Doing even more research, I thought for sure my problem was now was lack of biodiversity. So 2 months ago, I did a 3 day blackout, and ordered 16,000 copepods from AlgaeBarn. After the blackout, I added the pods, and started dosing phytoplankon daily (10 mL), Added another 16,000 pods. So its now been two months since adding the pods, dosing phyto daily...my phosphate is now up to .1. The dinos are still there. So for three weeks I siphoned the sand bed daily into a 5 micron sock, and putting the water back in the tank. That too, didn't seem to help. So I tried daily dosing of H202, for two weeks, same result. So I did another 3 day blackout dosing H202, same result....just took a sample of green turf algae, and the dinos are still in it. Nothing gets completely rid of them. I can keep them in check with these methods, but they never go away completely. I am out of ideas. Depressed.
Sorry. I understand your pain. Dealt with dinos for almost a year.
I agree with everything you did up to the blackout. I still think you can beat these. Keep nutrients elevated, keep UV running. I personally removed my sand to get rid of amphidinium. Others have had success with dosing silicates. You had the green algae going, so you were almost there. Get the green going for a while and you’ll eventually win this war.
Good luck!
Agree with @dwest! The other thing that I did that seemed to push me over the edge to success was to add bacterial cultures I did mainly Dr. Tim's Waste Away but also used some Microbacter7. I can't find any evidence of dinos at this time.
Don't give up, it definitely isn't a battle won over night!
Don't give up, it definitely isn't a battle won over night!
Similar threads
New Posts
-
Adding water to tank, then salt?- Latest: Reefkeepers Archive
-
-
-
