Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
- Thread starter mcarroll
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Not enough detail to make a diagnosis or even be sure they're dinos, unfortunately. Try playing around with the lighting levels if it's adjustable on your scope. Usually that will help you get clearer pictures. At least 250X but 400X would be better.
If that was taken at 400x, I don't think those are dinos. Try to do a video if you can....movement also helps in identifying them.
I believe these are ostreopis. Can I get a second opinion?
I have a UV on order now. Ozone+H2O2 over the last week hasn't really done much to curtail them.
Yes sir, those are ostreopsis.
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thanks. If it's a dino, it's small cell amphidinium. But I'm not convinced it's a dino. I can't make out any detail, and I can't see any other organisms (diatom, cyano, algae etc) to nail down size comparison.
Flux Capacitor
Well-Known Member
There is defiantly cyano showing up in the tank, along with what I thought was hair algae but it is a rusty brown reddish color with some bubbles. This is what led me to believe it could be dinos, it isn’t really snotty looking though. I’ll take some photos tomorrow with the lights on, and I’ll take a few other videos at a lower power to see if we can nail it down. Thanks for the help!
OpenOcean33
Well-Known Member
Ok guys, So i have a positive ID of ostreopsis. My nutrients were nondetectable with a mix of cyano, dino, and green hair algae growing. I have now raised my nutrient levels by dosing neonitrate and phosphate. I am now at Phos- 0.06 and Nitrate 6ppm. Also i have been dosing microbacter7 once a week per intruction on the bottle. I found out yesterday my UV sterilizer light was dead and going to replace it today. An good suggestions for a UV sterlizer for an AIO 70 gallon? I dont really have to many plumming options since i dont have a sump. Also moving forward the cyano is covering all my rocks should that balance it self out i dont want to do water changes yet because dinos are still visable where do you go from here?
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I'd replace UV, continue with dosing and suck out any cyano mats that are too big or ugly for me to stand. (I'm pretty conservative on cyano mats since the harm from cyano is only that it looks bad.)
OpenOcean33
Well-Known Member
Ok yes I'm trying to do a steady up trend to 10ppm nitrate and .1 phosphate. I think it's to the point where the cyano is suffocating some zoa colonies. Or just really irritating them.
As @saltyhog said, a properly sized, fed and placed UV will wrap them up pretty good. They are very active swimmers at night.
a) size: 1 watt per 3 gallons total system
b) flow: VERY slow. Turn the tank every 3 hours max.
c) placement: You are going to hate this, but hang the UV on the display. To/From the display. It is only temporary; just live with it for a couple weeks then put away.
OpenOcean33
Well-Known Member
Ok guys checking in here. I have been dosing bright wells neo nitrate and phos. I have my phos up to .08 and nitrate up to 5 dosed again today to get up to 8ppm. I also have my UV sterilizer up and running for about 2 days now(23 watts green killing machine) for my 70-gallon tank. However, the cyano seemed to be receding a bit but the dinos are developing more near the top of the tank. Any suggestions?
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I’ve had the dinos that only grow on the sand bed for about two years.
After 2 years of fighting dinos, I got rid of my dinoflagellates in 2 hours. I removed all the sand from my tank... all $150 worth of sand, and viola. No more dinos.. also no more sand, but I’m focusing on reestablishing the correct parameters and slowly introducing new live sand.
For anyone with dinos exclusively on the sand.. no sand is better than sand covered in brown snot. It’s worth it to toss the sand.
After 2 years of fighting dinos, I got rid of my dinoflagellates in 2 hours. I removed all the sand from my tank... all $150 worth of sand, and viola. No more dinos.. also no more sand, but I’m focusing on reestablishing the correct parameters and slowly introducing new live sand.
For anyone with dinos exclusively on the sand.. no sand is better than sand covered in brown snot. It’s worth it to toss the sand.
Your UV unit is borderline in size for your size tank. What is the flow through the UV? I can't find it anywhere in that unit's specs.
OpenOcean33
Well-Known Member
125
I have been battling large cell Amphidinium for several months and they finally seem to be receding. The dinos were limited to the sand and showed as a brown dusting on the surface, with spordic aparition of the bubble snotty forms in some surfaces (glass, powerheads, never in the rocks). I thought I will post here a list of measures I took in case they are helpful to others.
Setup:
The system is a reefer 350 with aprox 85g of total water volume after equipment, rock and sand water displacement estimates. It runs at 78F. Mechanical filters include 2 100 micron filter socks and a ReefOcto protein skimmer (dry skimmate). I also run a mini reactor with carbon 24/7 that gets changed every 4 weeks. AWC are done daily with an exchanged volume 1.2 gal overnight and were never stopped. Two part dosing is done using ESV 2-part.
Interventions:
1. Cleanup crew: Trochus snails (they reproduce like rabbits), a couple of red legged hermits, two conchs, one tuxedo and one pincushion urchin. Previously I had Mexican Turbos and Cerith snalis but they seemed to die once in the system.
2. Dosed Vibrant per instructions. Used this for several weeks to combat a concomitant infestation of hair algae all over the rocks. It worked great for the algae but once finished with the treatment, there was a very mild cyano infestation all in the system. Under the microscope you could see cyano and what was described to be inactive and active Amphidinium. I let the cyano ride, making sure there was proper flow and aeration of the system.
3. Lights spectrum to 85% blue and 15% white (reefled90). Don't know if this had an effect or not.
4. Increased NO3 and PO4. Let the NO3 be around 5ppm and the PO4 hovered around 0.05ppm. Initially, I dosed both, while increasing my feeding schedule and variety (nori, Hikari pellets on a feeder and a variety of frozen food cubes - one cube daily). Dosing was stopped after levels could be maintained with feedings.
5. Increased temperature to 82F. This did not do anything.
6. Installed a refugium with chaeto algae. Did not vacuum the detritus in the refugium chamber.
7. Let the filter socks (100 micron) get dirty to the point they where overflowing before I changed them around once every 9 days.
8. Stopped vacuuming the sand.
9. Added Copepods (algae barn, reef nutrition and self raised) intermittently (I have a fat and happy mandarin).
10. Added live brine shrimp approximately every one to two weeks. The culture allowed me to add them for 3 days in a row every time.
11. Added Amphipods. They initially and briefly disturbed the coral (I added them to the DT before I had the refugium). Now they bother me, as I have to pull them out of the filter socks every time I change them.
12. Added a Green Killing Machine UV light (45w in a 91 total volume system with a 73g DT). This was a "lets-see-what-happens" measure just to see if it would do anything given that the type of dinos in my system where not susceptible to UV.
Final comments:
Overall the dino problem I had was at most moderate with ugly sand and the inability to keep certain inverts. Once the change happened it occurred gradually over a period of weeks, to the point that it is really difficult to determine if any of these individual measures had an effect on its own on the dino population. My assumption is that there was a combination of factors that finally did it. I did not see a changes in the color of the sand until I started the UV light, added copepods regularly and fed brine shrimp regularly, but that doesn't mean that other interventions did not influence the outcome. My apologies for the long post. I hope this helps someone with the same problem I had. I some points I thought (and was advised) to start over, but I guess I am to stubborn trying to solve a problem.
Setup:
The system is a reefer 350 with aprox 85g of total water volume after equipment, rock and sand water displacement estimates. It runs at 78F. Mechanical filters include 2 100 micron filter socks and a ReefOcto protein skimmer (dry skimmate). I also run a mini reactor with carbon 24/7 that gets changed every 4 weeks. AWC are done daily with an exchanged volume 1.2 gal overnight and were never stopped. Two part dosing is done using ESV 2-part.
Interventions:
1. Cleanup crew: Trochus snails (they reproduce like rabbits), a couple of red legged hermits, two conchs, one tuxedo and one pincushion urchin. Previously I had Mexican Turbos and Cerith snalis but they seemed to die once in the system.
2. Dosed Vibrant per instructions. Used this for several weeks to combat a concomitant infestation of hair algae all over the rocks. It worked great for the algae but once finished with the treatment, there was a very mild cyano infestation all in the system. Under the microscope you could see cyano and what was described to be inactive and active Amphidinium. I let the cyano ride, making sure there was proper flow and aeration of the system.
3. Lights spectrum to 85% blue and 15% white (reefled90). Don't know if this had an effect or not.
4. Increased NO3 and PO4. Let the NO3 be around 5ppm and the PO4 hovered around 0.05ppm. Initially, I dosed both, while increasing my feeding schedule and variety (nori, Hikari pellets on a feeder and a variety of frozen food cubes - one cube daily). Dosing was stopped after levels could be maintained with feedings.
5. Increased temperature to 82F. This did not do anything.
6. Installed a refugium with chaeto algae. Did not vacuum the detritus in the refugium chamber.
7. Let the filter socks (100 micron) get dirty to the point they where overflowing before I changed them around once every 9 days.
8. Stopped vacuuming the sand.
9. Added Copepods (algae barn, reef nutrition and self raised) intermittently (I have a fat and happy mandarin).
10. Added live brine shrimp approximately every one to two weeks. The culture allowed me to add them for 3 days in a row every time.
11. Added Amphipods. They initially and briefly disturbed the coral (I added them to the DT before I had the refugium). Now they bother me, as I have to pull them out of the filter socks every time I change them.
12. Added a Green Killing Machine UV light (45w in a 91 total volume system with a 73g DT). This was a "lets-see-what-happens" measure just to see if it would do anything given that the type of dinos in my system where not susceptible to UV.
Final comments:
Overall the dino problem I had was at most moderate with ugly sand and the inability to keep certain inverts. Once the change happened it occurred gradually over a period of weeks, to the point that it is really difficult to determine if any of these individual measures had an effect on its own on the dino population. My assumption is that there was a combination of factors that finally did it. I did not see a changes in the color of the sand until I started the UV light, added copepods regularly and fed brine shrimp regularly, but that doesn't mean that other interventions did not influence the outcome. My apologies for the long post. I hope this helps someone with the same problem I had. I some points I thought (and was advised) to start over, but I guess I am to stubborn trying to solve a problem.
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