Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[sfin52]

Blowing off the rocks Daily is recommended. Uv works at night when the Dino go into the water colum. Also a diatom filter could also be used.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Julian Sprung once said that a crack in a rock is a refugium.

Hahaha. He also puts mud in his tank.


The difficult I see however is most aren't doing that stuff. And don't test to see how big the UV is nor is the UV size and flow documented in treatment methods.

I do def agree ther is substantial dieoff of micro organisms yet I rearely see reccomndstions to increase those.
Most folks eventually just shotgun blast microfauna and get new rock or reseed with some live.
(No offense) but that's the mo.
And if the shotgun blast is the cure , why not start with that.
Why even look?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Btw @reeferfoxx , in the giant cyano cause and imbalance thread debate , I pointed at you tank a few times.

Pretty much ended the arguments Every time.
You did everything and more on what they reccomened on the pro balance side and it still didn't work.
Thus my questions here.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Hahaha. He also puts mud in his tank.


The difficult I see however is most aren't doing that stuff. And don't test to see how big the UV is nor is the UV size and flow documented in treatment methods.

I do def agree ther is substantial dieoff of micro organisms yet I rearely see reccomndstions to increase those.
Most folks eventually just shotgun blast microfauna and get new rock or reseed with some live.
(No offense) but that's the mo.
And if the shotgun blast is the cure , why not start with that.
Why even look?

We always suggest adding live rock as a competitor source. I would have added mud but my AIO tank doesn't really have a spot for it and constantly turning over the sandbed would have filtered most of it out. It is always a good option. To be specific though was that fiji mud and grunge or miracle mud? The latter could potentially fill in a deficiency for dinos that were on their way out.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

We always suggest adding live rock as a competitor source. I would have added mud but my AIO tank doesn't really have a spot for it and constantly turning over the sandbed would have filtered most of it out. It is always a good option. To be specific though was that fiji mud and grunge or miracle mud? The latter could potentially fill in a deficiency for dinos that were on their way out.

Right . So why suggest and now make it a societal trend to need a microscope to know what the bug is?

I just put my finger in the can and s swirl it around in the water.
When I did the qt cycle I just squished it into the sand. It was cloudy for a day or two.
Folks hate that. Lol


When the cure will be , kill as many as you can, and replace the them with a bunch of other bugs.

By societal , I refer to, google lux meter led reeftank.
Two years ago there was NOTHING. Now it's everywhere on all forums including fresh planted tank.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Btw @reeferfoxx , in the giant cyano cause and imbalance thread debate , I pointed at you tank a few times.

I know! I've been trying to come up with a witty reponse to that thread. It's a little intimidating.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Right . So why suggest and now make it a societal trend to need a microscope to know what the bug is?

I just put my finger in the can and s swirl it around in the water.
When I did the qt cycle I just squished it into the sand. It was cloudy for a day or two.
Folks hate that. Lol


When the cure will be , kill as many as you can, and replace the them with a bunch of other bugs.

By societal , I refer to, google lux meter led reeftank.
Two years ago there was NOTHING. Now it's everywhere on all forums including fresh planted tank.

If the person that just ID there new algae growth as dinos, 10 out of 10 times it started with a nutrient deprived environment. But also consider, some folks are reluctant to purchase a $50 - $200 UV sterilizer. So often times we help people that only rely on nutrients(me for example). However, I'm running a 9 watt UV that would normally be under rated for this type of outbreak. Again, nutrient saturation isn't always the best route. Live rock is typically more available than mud.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I know! I've been trying to come up with a witty reponse to that thread. It's a little intimidating.

Omg. Head to head with a scientists. Bloody fascinating stuff I've learned there.
But the rug got pulled on them so many times. Lasse is a bit more nature side. But, it did become a discussion on how will you ever be able to know what's in your tank. No two cyanos are the same but get treated the same successfully.

My point kinda is to make it easier to keep a tank with less gear and basic understanding of how to influence the habitat in a more generalized way.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

If the person that just ID there new algae growth as dinos, 10 out of 10 times it started with a nutrient deprived environment. But also consider, some folks are reluctant to purchase a $50 - $200 UV sterilizer. So often times we help people that only rely on nutrients(me for example). However, I'm running a 9 watt UV that would normally be under rated for this type of outbreak. Again, nutrient saturation isn't always the best route. Live rock is typically more available than mud.

Very true and considerate of you.

I don't agree it's always nutrient driven. Look at Danas thread. A narrow band of light made that pop.
A carbon source will too with egg crate or vibrant overdose. Changing salt mix will also do it.
And look at my razor blade tragedy , I think rose are a dino or BJD lol. (Three folks flaked on the microscope)

Also Fiji mud is $18 a can and most won't use the whole thing.

 

[rtparty]

I will add that my pod population has been incredible the entire time. One of my main goals when setting up this tank was to make sure I had pods and lots of them. I ran the tank with no pod eaters for months on purpose. My fairy wrasse picks at the rocks every now and then but isn't a major pod eater from I can witness. I recently added a scooter blenny to help fight some white planaria flatworms. With this I knew it would effect my pod population so on Black Friday I loaded up on Algae Barn's sale. 2 bags of 5280 pods and 2 things of phytoplankton that came with it. It's been less than a week so I can't comment on my pod population for sure or if phyto is doing anything.

There is a local reefer near me that some on here may know. The guy is an absolute genius on keeping tanks but I've never cared for his totally natural approach to everything. (I don't want macros in my display tank and don't care for softies in any way.) His tanks are gorgeous in their own right, not to mention always healthy, but I tended to brush off most things since I didn't want a tank like his. I am now seriously taking everything he's taught me over the years to heart. All that was a back story to why I am feeding phyto now. For as long as I can remember, he's fed his tanks phyto that he grows himself. If you go to his home, he usually gives you a liter plus of phyto for free.

So if we follow the material presented in this thread, most of us with dinos have a "sterile" tank with little diversity. I can only assume that adding all the different pods and feeding phyto will make my tank more diverse and full of life.

BTW, where does one find Fiji Mud? I doubt my LFS will have it. Utah LFS have gone seriously down hill and there are only a few left at this point. Not sure when you lived here Salty but the good old days of LFS galore are gone. Most my shopping has to be done online. But I digress.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

If the person that just ID there new algae growth as dinos, 10 out of

I will add that my pod population has been incredible the entire time. One of my main goals when setting up this tank was to make sure I had pods and lots of them. I ran the tank with no pod eaters for months on purpose. My fairy wrasse picks at the rocks every now and then but isn't a major pod eater from I can witness. I recently added a scooter blenny to help fight some white planaria flatworms. With this I knew it would effect my pod population so on Black Friday I loaded up on Algae Barn's sale. 2 bags of 5280 pods and 2 things of phytoplankton that came with it. It's been less than a week so I can't comment on my pod population for sure or if phyto is doing anything.

There is a local reefer near me that some on here may know. The guy is an absolute genius on keeping tanks but I've never cared for his totally natural approach to everything. (I don't want macros in my display tank and don't care for softies in any way.) His tanks are gorgeous in their own right, not to mention always healthy, but I tended to brush off most things since I didn't want a tank like his. I am now seriously taking everything he's taught me over the years to heart. All that was a back story to why I am feeding phyto now. For as long as I can remember, he's fed his tanks phyto that he grows himself. If you go to his home, he usually gives you a liter plus of phyto for free.

So if we follow the material presented in this thread, most of us with dinos have a "sterile" tank with little diversity. I can only assume that adding all the different pods and feeding phyto will make my tank more diverse and full of life.

BTW, where does one find Fiji Mud? I doubt my LFS will have it. Utah LFS have gone seriously down hill and there are only a few left at this point. Not sure when you lived here Salty but the good old days of LFS galore are gone. Most my shopping has to be done online. But I digress.

Sadly I wansnt Reefing back then. (Really I hoped I could have started when I was five)
The micro fauna and biodiversity a lot of are talking about is the microscopic stuff.
If you're on a sumped
Tank some of your granola buddies rock will be fine , if you qt , 72days in a bucket of old tank water for the Icks n such.

BRs has some Walt smith mud , im not sure it's the small can.

 

[Beardo]

However , UV is like saying led. Or fruit.

How big is the UV dose ?
How low is the flow thorough for "contact time"?
Are you using a turkey Baster during treatment to make sure they are floating in the water colum ?
Or just adding UV to the system in hopes it works?

So UV may not actually be the best choice to oxidize the wc and the system , and a more general treatment may be more advisable to remove biomass of an organisim Scochteate oxidiser, ozone , peroxide , bleach etc.

A canister with heavy floss or micron filteres is also advised , but constant cleaning of the unit is needed and you must make sure the tank or stirred up to make sure stuff gets to the canister.
I'd also add that UV actually puts the elements like silicate/ nutints back into the system so a gfo actually should be run if silicates are high. A canister completey removes them from the system Esp if gfo or boxer is used in it.
If the can has UV. Bonus.

So again, those I just listed are also a cure /treatment for cyano and diatoms and actually , ick.

Just from my personal experience and reading results from others:

UV sizing in the 0.4 - 0.5 watt per gallon range with slow flow. I had a smaller unit, 57 watt on a 240g then later a 270g tank without success. Once I upgraded to a 114 watt unit Ostreopsis, Coolia and Prorocentrum were controlled within a week. I can't give exact flow numbers but plumbed the 114 watt unit to my return which is a Vectra L1 at 50% - 60%
I also blasted rocks with a powerhead every night at lights out to help get them in the water column.
I had also tried peroxide at a rate of 3 ml/10 gallons twice a day, metro, elevated pH, vibrant, bacteria dosing, lights out and Dino-X with limited but not lasting success (I did have success against amphidinium with Dino-X in my 50g but not my 270, but at the expense of some inverts and corals.
Never tried bleach, ozone or utilizing a canister filter with floss but did try floss in my filter socks for a short time.
Nutrients alone didn't do it for me. I initially saw positive results but then dinos exploded and livestock suffered.
I'm not saying UV is the magic bullet but a tool that helped me.

I still have amphidinium and am utilizing nutrients and competition to try to defeat. The good thing is toxicity is low and corals are doing well. If i could find a source for a direct predator, such as Oxyrrhis Marina, I would try adding. Barring that I will use the shotgun approach and add live rock, garf grunge or similar.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Just from my personal experience and reading results from others:

UV sizing in the 0.4 - 0.5 watt per gallon range with slow flow. I had a smaller unit, 57 watt on a 240g then later a 270g tank without success. Once I upgraded to a 114 watt unit Ostreopsis, Coolia and Prorocentrum were controlled within a week. I can't give exact flow numbers but plumbed the 114 watt unit to my return which is a Vectra L1 at 50% - 60%
I also blasted rocks with a powerhead every night at lights out to help get them in the water column.
I had also tried peroxide at a rate of 3 ml/10 gallons twice a day, metro, elevated pH, vibrant, bacteria dosing, lights out and Dino-X with limited but not lasting success (I did have success against amphidinium with Dino-X in my 50g but not my 270, but at the expense of some inverts and corals.
Never tried bleach, ozone or utilizing a canister filter with floss but did try floss in my filter socks for a short time.
Nutrients alone didn't do it for me. I initially saw positive results but then dinos exploded and livestock suffered.
I'm not saying UV is the magic bullet but a tool that helped me.

I still have amphidinium and am utilizing nutrients and competition to try to defeat. The good thing is toxicity is low and corals are doing well. If i could find a source for a direct predator, such as Oxyrrhis Marina, I would try adding. Barring that I will use the shotgun approach and add live rock, garf grunge or similar.

Thank you. Great info.

Definitely and means of biomass removal is highly recommended.

One note , I have seen Dino's spurred by VIbrant overdose and the use of organic carbon sources. Apperanly some will also be spurred by other inorganic sources as well.
IMO, this can be rock too as far as I've researched.

Yea, I'm not going to dose bleach either . **shudder***

 

[reeferfoxx]

Look at Danas thread. A narrow band of light made that pop.

Danas thread was more circumstantial and I thought since he had a scope image, it wasn't dinos?

Also take into consideration that adding mud with bio diversity will have a short life span without nutrients and they too can also be a food source. In the grand scheme of things, yes we can add mud to the suggested list on top of po4, no3, UV, live rock etc. ;Greedy

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Danas thread was more circumstantial and I thought since he had a scope image, it wasn't dinos?

Also take into consideration that adding mud with bio diversity will have a short life span without nutrients and they too can also be a food source. In the grand scheme of things, yes we can add mud to the suggested list on top of po4, no3, UV, live rock etc. ;Greedy

Yea , he's got he best minds in the country Iding the critter. Lol.

But it was the light that spurred the bloom.
He never did say what the NM range was.

And I am saying you need to do all the above. Food, diversity, cleaning , ph , etc etc.
thus the general approach rather than looking for a specific and specific target , as that doesn't seem to really work, evidenced by the recent treatment protocols.
Ie , Even knowing the exact species the treatments are exactly the same.
Thus my question.

Danas looking for the causality as well. Once he knows the species , he a will then know or be able to find Out why it happened , not how to kill it. I belive that's his goal there.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Yea , he's got he best minds in the country Iding the critter. Lol.

But it was the light that spurred the bloom.
He never did say what the NM range was.

And I am saying you need to do all the above. Food, diversity, cleaning , ph , etc etc.
thus the general approach rather than looking for a specific and specific target , as that doesn't seem to really work, evidenced by the recent treatment protocols.
Ie , Even knowing the exact species the treatments are exactly the same.
Thus my question.

Danas looking for the causality as well. Once he knows the species , he a will then know or be able to find Out why it happened , not how to kill it. I belive that's his goal there.

Keep in mind, along the lines and Matt would agree, coral are just as good at nutrient uptake as some macro algae. As long as co2 is a limiting factor, a tank full of coral can out compete the good competitors. Danas tank was impacted with 20 something sps frags prior to his issues. Was it not?

 

[Jose Mayo]

Has anyone heard, or read, about the fungus Dinomyces arenysensis?

It appears to be a very effective parasite of various species of Dinoflagellates, which infects and kills them, including the lining together with them.

Dinomyces arenysensis gen. et sp. nov. (Rhizophydiales, Dinomycetaceae fam. nov.), a Chytrid Infecting Marine Dinoflagellates

I do not think it's available for remediation in aquariums, but one day it might be.

Best regards

 

[mcarroll]

mcarroll and @reeferfoxx
So can you explain to me your thoughts on the need to to precisely ID the dino or diatom ect strain in over all systemic treatment.
I'm coming in with an open mind here , but I will warn I'm quite skeptical.

Have you had a chance to read through at least the majority of the first post? Could you be more specific about what you're skeptical about?

It's a pretty specific process for a pretty specific kind of tank – not something that's recommended "for everyone". No mentions of diatoms here, for example.

And the process has been validated experimentally and across hundreds (I think by now...not counting) of actual cases.

A volume of actual scientific literature supports what we're doing and why we're doing it. The skeptic in you should love a science-based thread like this.

Although we've learned some amazing things from the research along the way, there's nothing all that mysterious about the process IMO.

If you're curious, the effort kinda started here. After seeing results on that thread get worse (and worse and worse), I started posting. Not long after that first post was this one where I mentioned the first related research article I found.

 

[Jose Mayo]

My apologies if I somehow walked away from the purpose of the topic.
From now on I just watch.
Thank you all

 

[tenurepro]

Right . So why suggest and now make it a societal trend to need a microscope to know what the bug is?

I’ll jump in on that one. ‘Know thy enemy’ is not just good advice, it helps us make informed decisions about treatment. From a fish health perspective, knowing that your fish has ick, bacterial infection, flukes or HLLE is obviously important, as the treatment for each will differ. In the context of brownish reddish things that are taking over the sand bed, then knowing dino vs diatom vs cyano is useful. I learned this the hard way... after 2 treatments of chemiclean to cure my cyano problem, I finally looked at my sand bed under the scope and realized that I don’t have a cyano problem but a dino problem.

Now, here is another more important reason why ID’ing things is very useful... it allows us to develop useful and transferable knowledge about what works and what doesn’t work. That is why Science papers must mention species by scientific name btw...

Ok here is the analogy.
Species a, b and c look different under the scope but give us the same symptoms; brown stuff on sandbed.
Spc A can be eliminated by peroxide
Spc b is easily eaten by a starfish
spc c responds to a specific antibiotic

If the community never uses the microscope to ID, then that can generate a lot of confusion in terms of treatment. One reefer will report that antibiotics worked (on his/her spc c)... another reefer will try antibiotics for his brown sand but it will not work (because they have spc a or b)... sounds familiar? But if the community is good at identifying things, then we can start developing useful knowledge about which types of treatments work for which type of species...
so going forward, I think it is super important to not just say what treatment worked (or didn’t work) in your tank, you have to also say WHAT it worked on... otherwise, we have no hope in learning how to effectively deal with the microorganisms that bloom in our tank.