Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[Neuratox]

Yeah I don’t want to buy another test kit. So maybe just do like 15 drops a day or something? It’s not gonna harm anything?

I think that all really depends on a lot of factors. 1) are you doing water changes (shouldn't be doing this much if you're battling dinos anyway), 2) how long you're dosing, 3) How much is being consumed by the diatoms. I totally get not wanting to buy yet another test kit, however, I know I took a risk by only eyeballing it and going off of other's previous dosages. I don't personally know of any issues associated with silicates other than diatoms. I would say if you're going to do this without a test kit, its a "do at your own risk" sorta thing, but should be fairly safe. If anyone reading this is a marine biochemist please correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[ScottB]

I think that all really depends on a lot of factors. 1) are you doing water changes (shouldn't be doing this much if you're battling dinos anyway), 2) how long you're dosing, 3) How much is being consumed by the diatoms. I totally get not wanting to buy yet another test kit, however, I know I took a risk by only eyeballing it and going off of other's previous dosages. I don't personally know of any issues associated with silicates other than diatoms. I would say if you're going to do this without a test kit, its a "do at your own risk" sorta thing, but should be fairly safe. If anyone reading this is a marine biochemist please correct me if I'm wrong.

@Baronen silicates are fairly benign. Ironic we spend hundreds on RODI filters to remove them, but whatever.

One thing worth noting though. IIRC, dosing silicates will mess up your PO4 Hanna measures. They will test FAR higher, depending of course on how much you are dosing.

 

[Salo001]

Hello! I am trying to figure out what kind of dinos I have. I thought they were large cell amphidium but looking closely they seem so tiny so I am thinking maybe small cell. They mostly stay in the sand but i am thinking maybe they just haven't migrated to other places yet. Would anyone be able to assist?

 

[taricha]

One thing worth noting though. IIRC, dosing silicates will mess up your PO4 Hanna measures. They will test FAR higher, depending of course on how much you are dosing.

This turns out to be overblown. You have to have Si off the charts, by which
I mean above the range of the hanna LR Si meter (2.0ppm SiO2) before it adds any measurable result on the PO4 test.
see here
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/high-silica-interference-with-po4-measurement.777022/

 

[taricha]

I thought they were large cell amphidium but looking closely they seem so tiny so I am thinking maybe small cell.

agreed. small cell. smaller, faster, and more asymmetric than the large cell types.

 

[Salo001]

agreed. small cell. smaller, faster, and more asymmetric than the large cell types.

Thank you! Guess I will go ahead and get a UV

 

[The Opinionated Reefer]

For those that reckon they beat dinos with uv alone, was it a fast or slow turn over through the uv, i have heard claims of both being correct?

 

[ScottB]

For those that reckon they beat dinos with uv alone, was it a fast or slow turn over through the uv, i have heard claims of both being correct?

Unless the unit is dramatically over-sized, slow flow is necessary. They need a fair amount of contact time with the UV to be damaged by it.

 

[The Opinionated Reefer]

Unless the unit is dramatically over-sized, slow flow is necessary. They need a fair amount of contact time with the UV to be damaged by it.

It seems like a lot of the youtube guys like ReefBum and Coral Euphoria just install a massive UV and be done with it. Even BRS shows reefer 170s with massive Pentair 55w UV's strapped to the sides of them... mad.

 

[The Opinionated Reefer]

My 100G is two years old now. It is brown. It is ugly. I am sad. Wife is angry.

Had a short outbreak of dinos a little over a year ago. It looked really bad; super long bubbly snot strings all over the tank. I was worried, but a very high intensity every day manual removal actually took care of the problem within roughly two weeks(!) Dinos still managed to kill a few sps though. (back then I still had some green hair and turf algae; even during the dino bloom)

Tank was doing OK. (90+% dead rock, so it matured slowly) At the end of last year I bought a pax bellum algae reactor to lower my nitrates/phos. That thing is a BEAST. It actually worked too well, and I let my nutrients drop to zero. I assume this is what caused my latest dino-bloom:
I have been struggling since about January. I have removed my sand bed and I have dosed + overfed to increase nutrients. Algae reactor is offline. Flow is 2x MP40QD @ max power. (only possible after sand bed was removed)

I have done 3x three day blackouts which makes the tank look great the next week or so, and then it quickly starts turning brown again. When I work in the tank, the hairs on my arms are covered in this filth. Oh, and it STINKS!

No algae has been seen in display all year until about two-three weeks ago. I then started noticing green algae on the bottom glass when I siphoned out the brown uglies. I am very active with the siphoning (multiple times/week) and have therefore prevented the stuff to attach to and kill any sps like it did the first time. SPS don't really grow though, (except the montis)

This week I ordered a 55W Aqua Medic Helix UV (HUGE!). I spent many hours both Tuesday and Wednesday doing a super thorough clean-up, immediately followed by a new blackout-period starting Wednesday night. UV was installed yesterday (thursday) and I will bring my lights back on tomorrow.

If the UV fails I will most likely tear down the tank. I have "only" struggled for 6 months, but the dang stuff is literally stinking up the entire living room. I am surprised the wife has let it slide for this long :O
Do not think I will quit altogether though; hobby is just too fun when everything is running smoothly. Most likely just a full, “dry” restart.

How was the UV installed on the return line so all water goes through it?

 

[ZombieEngineer]

@taricha need id. Taken at 250x magnification.

Taken at 1000x magnification

 

[taricha]

@taricha need id. Taken at 250x magnification.

prorocentrum dinos and some spirulina cyano.

 

[doubleshot00]

It seems like a lot of the youtube guys like ReefBum and Coral Euphoria just install a massive UV and be done with it. Even BRS shows reefer 170s with massive Pentair 55w UV's strapped to the sides of them... mad.

My pet peeve with this is we don't all have a ton of room around our tank to install something like this. I may be able to install a 57 watt. TOPS.



I just noticed last night that I have bubbles on my sand and the sand is a bit brown. I test diligently (2-3x a week) and have only had my Phos at .02 once for like 2 days. I guess that's all it takes. I do have a UV plumbed in but its only a 15 watt for a 90 gal system. Does keep the water clean.

I just ordered a microscope so we will see what I have. The most frustrating hobby I've ever been in.

 

[bishoptf]

So long time dino surfer...still battling ostreo and just looking for what else I could try. Actually the tank is in pretty good shape, I do have some GHA on one rock that I can't seem to get rid of but the rock is pretty clean and the dino's have been what I thought on the retreat, I did some h202 massive dosing for parasites and things were kind of ugly, followed with a 2 day blackout followed with ambient lighting only and you guessed it tank looked really good during all that, turned the lights back on and they have come back but not near as bad, I have floss up high in the tank and thats pretty much the only place they gather and takes a few days to build up but they still do, but the rest of the tank is pretty clean. I still have a 25w green killing machine running, but since they do build up I assume I still have lots of them in the water column, I do know that my UV bulb is working since it raises my tank temp when it is on. I have not been doing any water changes for a long time, I do dose All 4 reef and sometimes wonder if that doesn't help since it has traces in it but thats about all right now.

Here is a pic from today of the floss, and this was probably 3 days of build up:

so again its not terrible but I assume if they were under control the floss would stay clean for a week or so. Not sure what else to try at this point, I feel like I am close but just can't get over the hump @ScottB @taricha I know you are tired of me and trust me I am too but just looking for any other things that I can try. I was thinking of doing another ambient, maybe alternate days of light on/off etc. Like I said the rock work is clean clean clean just up high on the floss, the tank looks really good otherwise but with them gathering on the floss I can see that they are still dominant..

 

[ZombieEngineer]

So long time dino surfer...still battling ostreo and just looking for what else I could try. Actually the tank is in pretty good shape, I do have some GHA on one rock that I can't seem to get rid of but the rock is pretty clean and the dino's have been what I thought on the retreat, I did some h202 massive dosing for parasites and things were kind of ugly, followed with a 2 day blackout followed with ambient lighting only and you guessed it tank looked really good during all that, turned the lights back on and they have come back but not near as bad, I have floss up high in the tank and thats pretty much the only place they gather and takes a few days to build up but they still do, but the rest of the tank is pretty clean. I still have a 25w green killing machine running, but since they do build up I assume I still have lots of them in the water column, I do know that my UV bulb is working since it raises my tank temp when it is on. I have not been doing any water changes for a long time, I do dose All 4 reef and sometimes wonder if that doesn't help since it has traces in it but thats about all right now.

Here is a pic from today of the floss, and this was probably 3 days of build up:

so again its not terrible but I assume if they were under control the floss would stay clean for a week or so. Not sure what else to try at this point, I feel like I am close but just can't get over the hump @ScottB @taricha I know you are tired of me and trust me I am too but just looking for any other things that I can try. I was thinking of doing another ambient, maybe alternate days of light on/off etc. Like I said the rock work is clean clean clean just up high on the floss, the tank looks really good otherwise but with them gathering on the floss I can see that they are still dominant..

You didn't say what size tank you have, but the green killing machine has really poor contact time. It's honestly only good for like a 30 gallon tank for dinos.

You want at least 1 watt per 3 gallons at close to the minimum recommended flow for a more substantial one like the aqua UV or the Jebao.

 

[bishoptf]

You didn't say what size tank you have, but the green killing machine has really poor contact time. It's honestly only good for like a 30 gallon tank for dinos.

You want at least 1 watt per 3 gallons at close to the minimum recommended flow for a more substantial one like the aqua UV or the Jebao.

Yeah sorry I have a 29G tank with a 20g long sump, sump is about 3/4 full my guess with rock work and such I have about 35-40g, probably closer to 35g, and its a bare bottom tank. This isn't the small GKM but the big one, says 25w and based on the numbers will only do about 100g through it per hour so its pretty low flow, but it hasn't done the trick for sure. I was thinking of maybe getting another 10-15w low end UVC light and throw that in my sump to maybe increase the contact time, but just grasping right now. If I knew that throwing a bigger uv would do it for sure then I would do it but 25w GKM is dang near 1w per gallon, lol.

 

[ZombieEngineer]

Yeah sorry I have a 29G tank with a 20g long sump, sump is about 3/4 full my guess with rock work and such I have about 35-40g, probably closer to 35g, and its a bare bottom tank.

It might work for that. Still might not have enough contact time. If nothing else works, it might be worth getting like a 18W jebao or turbo twist with a very slow pump like a sicce nano.

Before doing that though, make sure you have your phosphates in check. They should be above 0.05 with 0.1 being a good target. That seems to be the trigger everytime I have got a flare of dinos. Ostreopsis was eradicated from my tank in about a month with a combination of phosphate dosing and UV. Now fighting procentrum since I slacked on testing and let them bottom out to 0 again.

 

[taricha]

Here is a pic from today of the floss, and this was probably 3 days of build up:

so again its not terrible but I assume if they were under control the floss would stay clean for a week or so.

This is an area where you can do a tweak for some improvement.

The dinos will attach during lights-on period throughout the morning. Some numbers of them leave the floss and go back into the water in mid-afternoon. So if you rinse the floss out daily at say 3pm (or noon), you'll end up removing a larger percentage of the water-going cells than if you clean it every 3 days.

 

[bishoptf]

This is an area where you can do a tweak for some improvement.

The dinos will attach during lights-on period throughout the morning. Some numbers of them leave the floss and go back into the water in mid-afternoon. So if you rinse the floss out daily at say 3pm (or noon), you'll end up removing a larger percentage of the water-going cells than if you clean it every 3 days.

Thanks for that clarification I will start rising 2-3pm daily. I have looked at getting a larger or different UV but you would think a 25w GKM would be big enough. Was looking at the Aqua Violet but its only 15w, so in regards to a better UV I am just not sure what to do, hate to spend more money and still continue to have the issue.

The other thing that I have noticed that is odd with my tank is that I have nitrates 12-13ppm but my phosphates always want to go back to 0 which I just think is odd, not sure what is soaking up all the phosphate. I have some halimedia and some gha but I think if I could figure out what is sinking my po4 then that would help, I can dose it and keep it elevated but if I stop it always goes back to zero which is just odd imho.

 

[Aqua Man]

The other thing that I have noticed that is odd with my tank is that I have nitrates 12-13ppm but my phosphates always want to go back to 0 which I just think is odd, not sure what is soaking up all the phosphate.

If your tank is new, most of that PO4 is getting bound to rocks and sand. The rest gets used up quickly by all the life in the tank.