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oh, cool. In that case, go wild.Yeah it is just a pure experiment, I don't need to get rid of them anymore. ....
I might be completely anthropomorphizing, but just having looked at a lot of samples under the scope, it seems like Dinoflagellates love growing on chaeto, derbesia and gha, but they don't seem to do well amongst diatoms. It almost looks like the diatoms crowd them out, and to go further with the inaccurate anthropomorphizing, the diatoms look sharp and uncomfortable .
And certainly in the context of a battle with Dinos, I'm not sure why anybody would be against a diatom bloom. When my new tank had a diatom bloom it was gone in days because everybody in the CUC couldn't eat them fast enough.
Lot of truth in your impressionistic interpretation of microscope slides
To overgeneralize a little (or a lot)....In ocean, diatom blooms are common, and dino blooms more rare. All things being equal diatoms are more dominant more often. Usually something has to disfavor diatoms for dinos to become a dominant bloom.
They often compete for same resources and territory, so it's not a big leap to think in terms of them having ways to suppress the other.
Some published research backs this up. It's more chemical (allelopathy) than sharp pointy edges, but yeah they make each other uncomfortable.
algae on the other hand... ostreopsis are epiphytic on algae as their most common habitat. They are well adapted to it.
Edit: as a generalization, diatom allelopathy like in most other algae is more directed at suppressing other algae growth.
Dino toxins on the other hand are more directed up the food chain at stopping predators.
Thanks! I just realized that connection while thinking through my reply.
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