Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[ScottB]

I am thoroughly confused now. I started a tank and let the cycle for 2 months before turning on the lights. Added some Chemipure to reduce the risk of algae and dosing microbarcter7. Now I have a dino outbreak due to my tank being too clean. So I will be removing the Chemi-pure and upping my coral feeding since it is a coral only take to help raise the n and p. However, if I do this, won't green hair algae grow instead. If I treat that by removing n and p won't dino return and cause a vicious cycle between the two?

Having algae outbreaks in the first 12 months should be expected and not considered a failure at all IMO. It is just what immature biomes do.

Fish only tanks are easy. Coral only tanks are potentially possible, but I would suggest are very difficult to keep. You are fighting against 160 million years of reef life evolution.

 

[Potatohead]

Just wanted to jump in here and state that this thread has been the best thing that has ever happened to my tank - And I mean that sincerely. Since reading a few months ago my tank has taken a huge turn for the better. A big thanks to everyone involved with helping rid this nemesis from our tanks!

 

[ScottB]

Well,
I am hoping I am not jinxing myself. For the last two months I had been battling Dino’s in my 65g Red Sea E series aquarium. I had lost 3 corals and the others were looking stressed. The fish were fine. The two anemones were fine. But every day all of my rocks and sand would be covered in them along with some of the corals. At night it would disappear
I figured I had several options:
1. “Organic”: go dirty, no water changes, no skimming, carbon only.
2. “nuclear” using Dino X
3. Scorched earth: starting over.
I decided to try the organic approach first figuring I cloud always try the other two as a last resort. I stopped the skimmer and just kept up with the carbon. Didn’t see much of a change. I was getting frustrated and was wondering about doing a blackout. I was willing to lose the corals and anemones but my family grew attached to the fish. Could not lose these.
After several weeks still not much improvement. While reading a thread someone posted info about GARF. I remembering buying their garf grunge years ago when I had been in the hobby. The thread was about increasing biodiversity to combat Dino’s. I figure it would not hurt. So I ordered some garf grunge for the tank. I put in 5lbs of grunge. Then, about a week later garf sent another 5lbs by accident. So I ended up with 10lbs of garf grunge plus.

I was not to impressed by the grunge. It smelled and clouded up the tank but I was getting desperate to avoid chemicals or a complete do over. The silt settled out after a few hours and no one looked worse for wear. I figured the money I spent on the grunge would be a drop in the bucket to my other options. Within days things were looking better. Now it’s been two weeks and I am having a hard time finding any evidence of Dino’s.
The corals look better now and things are going well. I can’t say for sure garf made a difference but nothing else happened until I added that into the tank. Increasing pho4 and nitrates didn’t do anything. The thread I read discussed biodiversity and competing organisms. It also mentioned how 15-20 years ago when harvested/wild live rock was available Dino’s were pretty much unheard of. The theory was live rock provided greater biodiversity to out compete Dino’s.
i know correlation does not equal causation but wanted to share my experience. I will update again if anything changes.
Gerry

Thanks for sharing this. It intuitively makes sense.

 

[ScottB]

Thanks DraggingTail. I think that makes sense. I usually do 30g so 20-30% pending on total actual water volume once a month unless I have issues or my levels start to elevate then I will slip another one or two in a month. Doing smaller ones every couple weeks hopefully will help keep things from getting out of control w/o dropping my nutrients too low. For years I was a nitrate 0, phosphate 0 person and I had never had Dinno before now so I'm a little skeptical of the nutrient bottoming out people at as far as being the main reason. I lean more towards you don't have enough biodiversity b/c your tank is new or you did something silly like too much chemiclean or other chemical

Any thoughts on why the UV doesn't seem to be helping? or my plan to add bacteria, phyto and pods? What about running UV while doing that? I'm a little concerned that running UV and dosing bacteria and phyto at the same time will be counter productive.

That picture above is certainly ostreopsis which generally responds well to nutrient and effective UV treatments. Is the UV running to/from the display or down in the sump? Do the former, not the latter. Is the bulb less than a year old?

 

[edolan]

Hoping to get some help with id. I am pretty sure the first is large cell amphidinium and I think the
second is coolia although not seeing the strong grooves described. My outbreak has been confined to the sand bed.

I am dosing nitrate (currently at 4ppm) and phosphate (keep increasing dose to try to get it off 0). Coral looks very happy right now I assume from the increase in nutrients. The dinos in the sand bed have also increased into thick mats but I have not touched them in a couple of weeks. Starting to see cyano growth on top of dino mat (is that a good thing?). Thanks

 

[Greenstarfish03]

Well,
I am hoping I am not jinxing myself. For the last two months I had been battling Dino’s in my 65g Red Sea E series aquarium. I had lost 3 corals and the others were looking stressed. The fish were fine. The two anemones were fine. But every day all of my rocks and sand would be covered in them along with some of the corals. At night it would disappear
I figured I had several options:
1. “Organic”: go dirty, no water changes, no skimming, carbon only.
2. “nuclear” using Dino X
3. Scorched earth: starting over.
I decided to try the organic approach first figuring I cloud always try the other two as a last resort. I stopped the skimmer and just kept up with the carbon. Didn’t see much of a change. I was getting frustrated and was wondering about doing a blackout. I was willing to lose the corals and anemones but my family grew attached to the fish. Could not lose these.
After several weeks still not much improvement. While reading a thread someone posted info about GARF. I remembering buying their garf grunge years ago when I had been in the hobby. The thread was about increasing biodiversity to combat Dino’s. I figure it would not hurt. So I ordered some garf grunge for the tank. I put in 5lbs of grunge. Then, about a week later garf sent another 5lbs by accident. So I ended up with 10lbs of garf grunge plus.

I was not to impressed by the grunge. It smelled and clouded up the tank but I was getting desperate to avoid chemicals or a complete do over. The silt settled out after a few hours and no one looked worse for wear. I figured the money I spent on the grunge would be a drop in the bucket to my other options. Within days things were looking better. Now it’s been two weeks and I am having a hard time finding any evidence of Dino’s.
The corals look better now and things are going well. I can’t say for sure garf made a difference but nothing else happened until I added that into the tank. Increasing pho4 and nitrates didn’t do anything. The thread I read discussed biodiversity and competing organisms. It also mentioned how 15-20 years ago when harvested/wild live rock was available Dino’s were pretty much unheard of. The theory was live rock provided greater biodiversity to out compete Dino’s.
i know correlation does not equal causation but wanted to share my experience. I will update again if anything changes.
Gerry

Thanks for the input @gmdcdvm. I think what yous aid makes perfect sense. I have had this rock in my tank for ~15 years and it was all live when its started and I have never had a dino problem until now. I think I got lazy and broke one of my own rules. To much chemiclean b/c I had a little cyano and I think I killed too much bacteria allowing Dinos to take hold. So that is why I lean towards improving biodiversity. I guess to me how it the million dollar question. I just received a refugium starter pack from aquarium depot. I've had a refugium for ever but I figured this would help give my biodiversity a kick start. I'm just not sure its enough. My plan is dose microbacter7 to add bacteria, add more cheato just because, some rock ruble from aquarium depot which should have bacteria in it, and dose some phytoplankton and add more pods. I'm hoping this gets my ecosystem back in balance. I had looked at GARF grunge back in the day but never ordered any. If this doesn't work maybe I will order a bag of that and drop it in my sump. It really can't hurt my sump anyway you look at it. I just don't want to waste money or junk up my display.

My dinos are annoying but they stay mostly on the sand and they disappear at night like you suggested. It doesn't seem to get worse but it hasn't gotten any better yet and it doesn't affect my corals at all. I assume my bioload is enough to keep it from going totally wild but not enough to knock it out.

These are my assumptions w/o ever having dealt w/ this below. I laid off water changes for about 2 months but I think I'm going tos tart them again soon b/c its driving me crazy and I personally don't think it matters once you have an out break as long as your not totally wiping out your nutrients.

 

[Greenstarfish03]

Someone else should chime in but I don’t think you have ostreopsis. If it is in fact Ostreopsis I would double up on UV sterilizer.

Well I'm not buying two Even the turbotwist is fairly expensive. I have tried two different powerheads so I'm not sure if I'm doing it wrong or what. I may need to test the flow but I'm probably around 300 give or take and the manually said this UV should be ran at 290 to kill the worst offenders. I am guessing those based on head loss and the pump spec.

 

[Greenstarfish03]

Just an update. I would say I've been just about 99% dino free. The only place they seem to barely show up is on the PVC pipe that runs to/from my UV sterilizer. We will see if I am jinxing things as I just did my first water change in at least a month yesterday and removed a large amount of hair algae (with applying peroxide). I've let my Alk creep up to about 8.0dKH from 6-7dKH as well and have tried to open a window from time to time now that it's a little warmer out. I seriously wonder how much elevated CO2 contributes to dino infestations, especially with newer tanks with dry rock. I don't measure pH currently so I have little to offer other than observation.

Something definitely turned the corner with my outbreak several weeks ago and I'm not entirely sure what it was but likely a mix of everything I was doing.

It can't be that much warmer yet in Minnesota See I'm having the same issue since I've skipped water changes I'm starting to get some hair algae which is annoying. What things did you try and at what point did things turn around?

 

[Greenstarfish03]

That picture above is certainly ostreopsis which generally responds well to nutrient and effective UV treatments. Is the UV running to/from the display or down in the sump? Do the former, not the latter. Is the bulb less than a year old?

@ScottB I think in one of the pics above you can see the UV. I plumbed it so I can temporarily hang it on my display. My plan is to get rid of it when the Dino is gone. The UV is 36W and its brand new I bought it especially for these Dinos I expected at night for them to head into the water column and die but that doesn't seem to be happening. I wish I could test that. Like send some water in w/ Dinos in it and see how many come out the other side. Seems like that would be hard though.

 

[Greenstarfish03]

That picture above is certainly ostreopsis which generally responds well to nutrient and effective UV treatments. Is the UV running to/from the display or down in the sump? Do the former, not the latter. Is the bulb less than a year old?

Thanks. @ScottB I had several others also diagnose this as Osteopsis in the main forum so I fell pretty good about that. I am frustrated though b/c I thought the UV would take care of them.

 

[Greenstarfish03]

That picture above is certainly ostreopsis which generally responds well to nutrient and effective UV treatments. Is the UV running to/from the display or down in the sump? Do the former, not the latter. Is the bulb less than a year old?

Another pic of my uv setup.

 

[drawman]

It can't be that much warmer yet in Minnesota See I'm having the same issue since I've skipped water changes I'm starting to get some hair algae which is annoying. What things did you try and at what point did things turn around?

You're telling me but at least my apartment windows aren't frozen shut lol. I will say when I look at the big picture dosing NO3/PO4 together didn't seem to work all that well initially for my ostreopsis and if anything seemed to fuel them more. It also resulted in a massive hair algae outbreak that ended up covering all of my rock. I didn't care much as I figured hair algae would be better than dinos but I was having both. I wouldn't doubt if I had lyngbya or something else as well.

I have been running UV for a few months and like I said only recently did things change. I switched from running UV while at work instead of at night (keep in mind it was still turned on before the tank lights turned on and running 24/7 would be best). I cleaned my UV pump intake every day for a couple of weeks because it would quickly get covered in incoming dinos. I would try to do this before the UV came on. I also tried to scrape the back glass and brush off surfaces right before the UV was turned on. My ostreopsis definitely needed to be nudged into the water column. During this time I also wasn't doing water changes, let my Alk creep up to about 8dKH, my skimmer was on, I dosed just a little NO3 but not PO4, and did one single dose of Vibrant while leaving the UV off for 24 hrs.

I think my true takeaways would be manually keep dinos suspended, keep UV intake clean, and hopefully try to keep fresh air in the tank whenever possible. Once dinos are gone nutrients are so much easier to keep stable IMO.

As for the hair algae that's easy because I have a barebottom tank with minimal rock. I removed the rock, pulled off as much hair algae as possible, poured a little peroxide over what I could remove, rinsed the rock, and put it back in the tank. I will do this several times as needed. I was a little nervous this may give dinos a foothold again so I waited some time to make sure they haven't come back. So far so good but I hate declaring final victoy.

@ScottB I think in one of the pics above you can see the UV. I plumbed it so I can temporarily hang it on my display. My plan is to get rid of it when the Dino is gone. The UV is 36W and its brand new I bought it especially for these Dinos I expected at night for them to head into the water column and die but that doesn't seem to be happening. I wish I could test that. Like send some water in w/ Dinos in it and see how many come out the other side. Seems like that would be hard though.

Do like I did an scrape them off the glass/bottom and turkey baste or brush them off with a tooth brush then hit them with the UV.

Thanks. @ScottB I had several others also diagnose this as Osteopsis in the main forum so I fell pretty good about that. I am frustrated though b/c I thought the UV would take care of them.

It took me a lot longer than I thought. If you run 24/7, keep your UV pump intake clean, and brush them off every day or a couple times a day I would hope you'll get better results.

 

[madweazl]

Any idea what I'm looking at here?

 

[Qasimja]

been running UV going on 5 weeks the dinos came back a tiny bit 2 weeks ago when i stopped stirring the sand bed but they burned off now i have none left now im afraid to take the uv off my tank or do any water changes lol

 

[ScottB]

Any idea what I'm looking at here?

Very nice picture; makes it easy to ID: Ostreopsis.

Perhaps you can list out how you plan to treat it and we can critique. None of the dinos are easy to treat, but I consider Ostreopsis to be more "simple" to treat.

 

[DTz]

been running UV going on 5 weeks the dinos came back a tiny bit 2 weeks ago when i stopped stirring the sand bed but they burned off now i have none left now im afraid to take the uv off my tank or do any water changes lol

im running a uv too with pump running from my main display into uv and out to sump. is that the right way to do it?

 

[madweazl]

Very nice picture; makes it easy to ID: Ostreopsis.

Perhaps you can list out how you plan to treat it and we can critique. None of the dinos are easy to treat, but I consider Ostreopsis to be more "simple" to treat.

I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do at the moment. I did a three day blackout last week that knocked it back temporarily and I have a UV sterilizer arriving soon (today or tomorrow I believe). I haven't done much actual research yet (wasn't sure what I was dealing with). Most of the acroporas are dead now so it doesn't much matter.

 

[ScottB]

im running a uv too with pump running from my main display into uv and out to sump. is that the right way to do it?

I would not advise doing it this way simply because if your return pump fails, clogs, or is turned off you will flood your sump. Don't ask me how I know this. I am trying to forget.

 

[ScottB]

I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to do at the moment. I did a three day blackout last week that knocked it back temporarily and I have a UV sterilizer arriving soon (today or tomorrow I believe). I haven't done much actual research yet (wasn't sure what I was dealing with). Most of the acroporas are dead now so it doesn't much matter.

Ah. Sorry about the losses. They likely starved as the dinos consume everything. Here is the "conventional" method arrived at over the last 436 pages:

a) UV. 1 watt per 3 gallons. Run as slow as possible ~ 300 gph
b) Assuming you have no nitrates or phosphates (likely) you will need to start dosing both. NeoNitro and NeoPhos are premixed, easy, expensive. Many good DIY solutions too. NO3 > 10ppm; PO4 > .1ppm
c) Remove all GFO, reduce refugium hours to minimum, skim dry. In short, dirty up the tank.
d) Run GAC (activated carbon). Ostreos produce toxins you want to remove.
e) Manual removal of dinos. At a minimum you want to disturb them; get them into the water column.
f) A simple trick for manual removal: clamp a bunch of filter floss in location they likely to live. Generally high flow & high light areas. Rinse each night.

It can take a few weeks. A little cyano is common but not a problem. Ultimately you should be getting some algae to grow/compete.

 

[ScottB]

Hoping to get some help with id. I am pretty sure the first is large cell amphidinium and I think the
second is coolia although not seeing the strong grooves described. My outbreak has been confined to the sand bed.

I am dosing nitrate (currently at 4ppm) and phosphate (keep increasing dose to try to get it off 0). Coral looks very happy right now I assume from the increase in nutrients. The dinos in the sand bed have also increased into thick mats but I have not touched them in a couple of weeks. Starting to see cyano growth on top of dino mat (is that a good thing?). Thanks

Yes to large cell Amphids. The second, Coolia would be my guess, but just that. Can you describe any movement you saw in the alleged coolia?