Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
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mcarroll
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Given the lack of ability to test for it, was this deduced by adding/removing GFO or something, or how did you know?
I truly haven't seen anything about Fe and dino's in the literature (which is why I think I may have skipped over this point when you brought it up in the past) so this angle is legitimately interesting....not playing Red Team here.
sfin52
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Metro may be a starting point to put the Dino on the run until you get the po4 and no3 up.
Randy Holmes-Farley
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Given the lack of ability to test for it, was this deduced by adding/removing GFO or something, or how did you know?
I truly haven't seen anything about Fe and dino's in the literature (which is why I think I may have skipped over this point when you brought it up in the past) so this angle is legitimately interesting....not playing Red Team here.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.4319/lo.1978.23.3.0534/full
Iron in Maine coastal waters; seasonal variation and its apparent correlation with a dinoflagellate bloom
During 1975, 12 km south of Boothbay Harbor, soluble iron concentrations in the first 20 m of water were three times greater in October and November than in August and September, while particulate iron concentrations only increased transiently before the fall bloom. Nutrient enrichment experiments and chlorophyll a : cytochrome f1 ratios indicated that low iron concentrations limited phytoplankton populations. In August 1976, 1–4 km from Monhegan Island, increased iron concentrations from land runoff preceded a dinoflagellate bloom.
This thread is more about natural means for removing dinos from our systems rather than using medication. Lots of people have seen success from these measures so that's what I'm going for, at least.
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mcarroll
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So, among any other effects and side-effects of raising N and P levels (all of which are important) it's conceivable that the healthy blooms we are initiating might actually "restore" Fe to its limiting state if it's been "transiently raised" by some mechanism like feeding, GFO "contamination", etc. This is definitely something to keep in mind.
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mcarroll
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Decomposition of dino-detritus (one of the main things we're facilitating) happens really fast in the presence of N and P, so help isn't really required for this. In fact, if there was a way to compute the amount of dino-detritus in the system I'd be willing to bet that we could add the stoichiometric amounts of N and P needed to break them down all in one shot and the system would be fine. The only reason to take time in bringing up N and P levels is so you don't overshoot by too much.....just a general precaution. As far as I know there have never been ill effects noticed from any addition of N or P.....just algae growth, which is the whole idea.
However, Metro been tested like that quite a bit and I've seen quite a few of the attempts....100% result in dino's coming back. And although side-effects are not very apparent, I doubt they are non-existent. So all-around this is a poor choice of situations in which to deploy antibiotics....or any crazy chemistry at all.
The approach you're describing is a good one though.Raising nutrients is sometimes all it takes, with a difference noted in as little as 24 hours in some cases, so everyone should try just that first.
Implied with that strategy is removal of all artificial or extra means of nutrient reduction from the system: carbon dosing (vodka, pellets, etc), GFO, bacterial additives, et al. Even taking macro algae and other sources of N and P competition offline in some cases can help.
But in plenty of cases on this thread folks have combined the core plan of fixing the nutrient balance with other tools like diatom and/or UV filtration, sand bed cleaning, etc. The list of other things you can do is long and comprehensive.....so again, just no need for antibiotics or anything like that even if you want or need to help the process along.
m0jjen
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Implied with that strategy is removal of all artificial or extra means of nutrient reduction from the system: carbon dosing (vodka, pellets, etc), GFO, bacterial additives, et al. Even taking macro algae and other sources of N and P competition offline in some cases can help.
I only have a small fuge to maintain some pods (and very limited nutrient reduction). I know many people get their fuges overrunned by dino. Mine on the other hand stayed healthy. Might be because i started it shortly before i began dosing po4 and no3
Im a tad curious now tho. I have very limited / no dino left. Would it be okay to dose live phytoplankton at this point, would be a shame if it went bad and i didnt get to use it :[
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mcarroll
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DOn't think it'd hurt unless it's a humongous quantity.....if it grows, you'll take a hit on your N and P levels, so just be on the lookout. More than likely it will not survive and will die, be eaten up, etc and contribute a bit to N and P.
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Some people got a dino bloom that had been stalled - to resurge by simply adding an Fe supplement.Given the lack of ability to test for it, was this deduced by adding/removing GFO or something, or how did you know?
I truly haven't seen anything about Fe and dino's in the literature (which is why I think I may have skipped over this point when you brought it up in the past) so this angle is legitimately interesting....not playing Red Team here.
It worked in my tank (briefly), dino population stalled at the same time macroalgae began to show signs consistent with low Fe, then later I pulled out stalled ostreopsis dino population out of tank into beakers and tested Control, adding Fe, and adding VitB12.
The +Fe populations increased above the B12/control ones, - oddly the VitB12 test increased bubble production - higher photosynthesis rates? - though that might have been from some of the fillers in the B12 pill.
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Vitamin B-12 has cobalt in it. Could be the cobalt is also a limiting factor in some situations, but more likely, you had a species that required extrnal vitamin B-12, which is established in the scientific literature:
http://www.pnas.org/content/107/48/20756.full
Most harmful algal bloom species are vitamin B1 and B12 auxotrophs
Results
Qualitative Vitamin B1, B7, and B12 Requirements.
The results of the qualitative experiments are summarized in Table 1. All species examined except for Symbiodinium sp. SJNU were auxotrophs for vitamin B12, including 18 species (29 strains) of dinophyceae, two species (three strains) of “brown tide” pelagophyceae, two species of raphidophyceae, two species of bacillariophyceae (three strains), and one species each of cryptophyceae and prymnesiophyceae. The two strains of the dinoflagellate S. microadriaticum displayed differing results regarding vitamin B12 requirements. S. microadriaticum strain CCMP827 (origin unknown) required B12, but the strain CCMP829 isolated from Australia did not (Table 1).
m0jjen
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Been lurking with the microscope today and im really intrigued by these small cells thats really really active. Excuse the bad image. Old school microscope from the 90's but it gets the job done. In the picture i have a cyano cluster and some dino cells. The dinocells barely move if at all. They are not active. Anyhow. You see 100s of small dots, they are activly attacking both cyano, dino, worms, and whatever is in there. What can they be? They are really fast and litterly swarms things.
If you look at the large oval it has a bunch going to town on it. Ideas?
Im really stoaked to get a new scope now. up to 800x digital will be ***** fun to watch stuff in
If you look at the large oval it has a bunch going to town on it. Ideas?
Im really stoaked to get a new scope now. up to 800x digital will be ***** fun to watch stuff in
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@m0jjen any chance we can get a video? movement would really help. Or adjust lighting to show some internal structure of the dino cells? From outline, it looks deeply grooved, could be a weird one.
@Randy Holmes-Farley - yep. B12 requirement shows up in a bunch of Algae - your citation was what I had run across before trying the beaker tests. Was chasing a theory that there was some shenanigans going on with maybe Cobalt coming in as the trace element, cyanobacteria turning it into cyanocobalamin (Vit B12) and dinos using the B12 as it is a requirement of theirs. (So Fe and Co/B12 both looked like good candidates.)
Maybe it happens in some cases. Kinda difficult to demonstrate though. Hence the side by side beaker tests of Control, Added Fe, Added B12. Seems Fe did best (grew most ostreopsis Dinos), but B12 produced more bubbles, so B12 seemed to help some aspect of what was going on. Both those outperformed control beakers.
Anyway, ID-ing what exact trace element is limiting in a certain case was a hard problem, and not much payoff, since in different systems there seem to be different limiting factors.
...and the way to induce the limitation would be pretty similar regardless.
It's what this thread is advocating.
(unless, Randy you've got some chemistry kung-fu secret you could share to quickly drain Iron, Co or other trace metals down to zero out of a reef system, that'd be fun)
@Randy Holmes-Farley - yep. B12 requirement shows up in a bunch of Algae - your citation was what I had run across before trying the beaker tests. Was chasing a theory that there was some shenanigans going on with maybe Cobalt coming in as the trace element, cyanobacteria turning it into cyanocobalamin (Vit B12) and dinos using the B12 as it is a requirement of theirs. (So Fe and Co/B12 both looked like good candidates.)
Maybe it happens in some cases. Kinda difficult to demonstrate though. Hence the side by side beaker tests of Control, Added Fe, Added B12. Seems Fe did best (grew most ostreopsis Dinos), but B12 produced more bubbles, so B12 seemed to help some aspect of what was going on. Both those outperformed control beakers.
Anyway, ID-ing what exact trace element is limiting in a certain case was a hard problem, and not much payoff, since in different systems there seem to be different limiting factors.
...and the way to induce the limitation would be pretty similar regardless.
It's what this thread is advocating.
(unless, Randy you've got some chemistry kung-fu secret you could share to quickly drain Iron, Co or other trace metals down to zero out of a reef system, that'd be fun)
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mcarroll
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Very interesting!
They also note that most algae species, generally speaking, need B vitamins, so this is not unique to dinoflagellates, or HAB-forming species. Which is a cool fact in itself. From reading I suspect that this need would be found in any dino that can eat....which seems to be most/all of them.
Notably Symbiodinium had almost no need for extrnal B's.
Dino's resort to bacterivory for phosphate also obviously meets their need for B vitamins too. (Bacteria generate B vitamins – one reason why yogurt is good for us!)
Bacterivory probably meets their needs for all other nutrients too...at least within the scope of bacteria's somewhat superior ability to find and harvest nutrients...since it's an overall survival strategy under these conditions.
And since most algae, including macro algae, are known to have bacterial associates in or on them, I can see why this would be "tolerated" and even obviously encouraged by so many algae now – they're farming bacteria!
It seems like hard-core application of some Poly-Filter might conceivably achieve this end chemically.
It would be an interesting, but expensive experiment......@taricha are you still experimenting? If volumes to treat were small, a big Poly-Filter pad would cover at least one test I'd think. Possibly worthwhile given the expense...might even find a few folks to chip in on some Poly-Filter for you.
Seems like the core plan of nutrient remediation – which hopefully causes many healthy microbial and algal blooms in the tank – takes care of this implicitly though, for those who're just looking for a way out.
Another off the cuff method some people utilize is changing salt brands. Anyone whose had dinos knows a water change = dino fuel. It's something in the salt they like, possibly just basic trace minerals, or sometimes, specific ratios/quantities of said trace minerals.. It's speculation, but some people have changed salt brands and had great success.
Mine still never came back. I have just recently changed salts -- but that's not what got rid of them for me.
Mine still never came back. I have just recently changed salts -- but that's not what got rid of them for me.
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mcarroll
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There are or have been lots of people doing water changes on this thread who've had no issue with this though....I suspect that most/all relapses for any reason can be traced to a lack of N and P remediation (and the downstream effects of this) in the first place. As long as the causes of the bloom remain, it'll be very likely to keep on blooming.
It would be interesting to have a case to look into for more details of someone who cured dino's by switching salts.....without necessarily doubting that there's some potential impact from the salt, I'd bet on finding other causes for the cure.
It would be interesting to have a case to look into for more details of someone who cured dino's by switching salts.....without necessarily doubting that there's some potential impact from the salt, I'd bet on finding other causes for the cure.
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