Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

seasand23

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I'm on month 2 of my tank. Everybody keeps telling me I'm dealing with the uglies. I get it but I still want to identify which type of dinos I'm dealing with assuming it is dino. Also, is the other pic of wedges shaped algae a diatom? I do have a UV light pulling/returning water from the sump.

PSX_20200110_223958.jpg 20200110_221639.jpg
 

ScottB

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Yeah these have a more almond shape to them and what was in the sand (amphidinium) was more oval shaped. New stuff is spreading really fast as well, rock is totally covered today. I tried to syphon it out with a filter sock but the dinos just go right through it, need smaller micron socks. Its also in my sump now too so its moving into the water colum for sure. Im no expert, starting to become one though, but to me it looks like ostreopsis is what I am dealing with now. Placing an order with BRS for filter socks tonight, waiting on my UV but I should have gotten a higher watt unit I think. Ordered a 9w in tank UV so hopefully it will help at least. The smell is really bad as well right now, way worst then amphidinium. What I dont get is how dinos bloomed again. I have green hair algae growth, green and some brown film algae, corlline growth, macro algae is doing good in the fuge, dosing the crap out of bacteria, adding small pieces of healthy live rock, feeding heavy, feeding the tank live phytoplankton, no Reef Roids for months, no3 is over 10ppm and po4 is over 0.15ppm. Was it from dosing Bionic alk and doing a 10g water change, added trace elements?

It will help but 25 watts is the recommended size for dino on a 75G. Not unusual for one dino to replace another in fact very common. But what the heck your nutrients in the right spot it is disappointing for sure.

As to exporting dinos, I got a tip here to hang a bunch of filter floss in high flow/light areas for the dino to attach to. I used spare suction cups and zip ties to put them on the glass. By the end of the day they are completely coated. Rinse them and replace.

And yes, ostreopsis do have a distinct smell that I learned to hate. Run a bunch of carbon to remove dino toxin and it may help with the smell.
 

taricha

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This is the dino that was in the sand, pretty sure it was amphidinium.
correct.

DesertReefT4r said:
This is whats in the tank now, acts different forming string snot which is different than before when dinos only stayed on the sand. Still amphidinium or is this ostreopsis?
correct again. ostreopsis.
 

eraserhead187

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I'm on month 2 of my tank. Everybody keeps telling me I'm dealing with the uglies. I get it but I still want to identify which type of dinos I'm dealing with assuming it is dino. Also, is the other pic of wedges shaped algae a diatom? I do have a UV light pulling/returning water from the sump.

PSX_20200110_223958.jpg 20200110_221639.jpg
Can't tell much from the first pic, but the second pic does look like diatoms. I think they usually have that angular shape.
 

taricha

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I get it but I still want to identify which type of dinos I'm dealing with assuming it is dino. Also, is the other pic of wedges shaped algae a diatom?
first pic probably is dinos, and you are correct that the wedges are diatoms.
The advice to not care too much early in a tank - just call it the uglies and let it go is a good philosophy. Communities shift a lot in the first few months of a tank.
 

eraserhead187

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first pic probably is dinos, and you are correct that the wedges are diatoms.
The advice to not care too much early in a tank - just call it the uglies and let it go is a good philosophy. Communities shift a lot in the first few months of a tank.
Agreed, I am on month two of my second tank and it's nasty as well. Thin hair algae, diatoms, cyano, film algae, all ugly and all part of it. The most I am doing about it is blowing some of the crap off the rocks and stirring the sand a bit.
 

xaflatoonx

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Can I please please please get some help.
is this ostreopsis?

I am already running aaqua uv 57w on my 280g system.
dosing h2o2.
dosing bacteria as well.
madding pods today too.

got the lighting to just blue leds for 6 hours at 40 percent.

Got the Nitrates now between 5-10.
PO4 is 1.0

What else can I do? C3F9F94A-084B-40AD-9CE0-20B14CCFDC2F.jpeg 5CF77ABA-2EFC-4BA9-8223-83DDAD6523AC.jpeg
 

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eraserhead187

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Can I please please please get some help.
is this ostreopsis?

I am already running aaqua uv 57w on my 280g system.
dosing h2o2.
dosing bacteria as well.
madding pods today too.

got the lighting to just blue leds for 6 hours at 40 percent.

Got the Nitrates now between 5-10.
PO4 is 1.0

What else can I do? C3F9F94A-084B-40AD-9CE0-20B14CCFDC2F.jpeg 5CF77ABA-2EFC-4BA9-8223-83DDAD6523AC.jpeg
I'm not entirely convinced. O. Ovata has a kind of point at one end of the cell. And in my experience, they are only motile in darkness. I've only maybe seen them twitch when exposed to light. Maybe it'd just the lighting of the microscope but I don't see the pointy side. It may be some other species of ostreopsis, or a different genus entirely. Definitely dinos though. With ostreopsis, luckily they do enter the water column in darkness so UV is effective. Just need to make sure the flow rate through the UV is as slow as you can manage to make sure there is enough exposure to sufficiently damage them.
 

xaflatoonx

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Thanks eraserhead - i have the UV going really slow -
but i just feel like its going to take a long while before that does anything...

Is H2O2 making it any better? should i even continue?
 

eraserhead187

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Thanks eraserhead - i have the UV going really slow -
but i just feel like its going to take a long while before that does anything...

Is H2O2 making it any better? should i even continue?
I did the peroxide for a while and I felt like it helped in my situation, which was ovata. They are a tough one to crack but it can be done. Is your UV relatively new? The bulbs don't last as long as I would like. However if what you have is a benthic species, and they don't enter the water column, the UV won't do any good. I also battled amphidinium, and I hooked my UV up to a slow pump and a small gravel vacuum and sucked it up into that, and had the effluent go into a filter sock. That actually did work pretty well along with blackouts.
 

DesertReefT4r

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correct.


correct again. ostreopsis.
Thank you for confirming. So should I be blowing it off the rock and coral to get the dino into the water colum or am I just making it spread? I added the 9w UV sterilizer into the display today, hope that helps. I know I should have gotten a higher watt sterilizer for my size tank.
 

Eclyps19

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Yeah looks like it, almond shaped. Brown snotty stringy patches all over the tank? I see what may be small cell amphidinium too.

Yeah, I had it bad in a different tank. This is in my 110 gallon and it’s not too terrible yet, but wanted to get ahead of it before I had a full-on outbreak. I don’t really care what it is, as long as it goes into the water column at night so I can zap the crud out of it with my 57 watt UV!
 

Eclyps19

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So I just plumbed my UV. It's a 57w Aqua UltraViolet. My total tank volume is 139 gallons. It's plumbed using 3/4" vinyl tubing, with a Sicce Syncra 2.0 pumping water out at the base of my overflow chamber (after activated carbon and sock filters), through a ball valve, through the UV, and then out to my return chamber to be pumped back up into the DT.

I don't have a great way to measure the actual flow, so this morning I filled a 1 gallon milk jug and timed it. It took 26 seconds to fill, which (if my math is correct) comes to about 138 gallons per hour. I know that slow is good, but maybe that's too slow? I opened the ball valve all the way and turned my pump up to max and it's now filling my jug in 15 seconds, which should be 240 gallons per hour. That's not *quite* 2x my tank volume per hour, but pretty close.

I know that the preferred method for tackling dinos is to pull directly from the DT, but is this reasonable for now?
 

DesertReefT4r

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Yeah, I had it bad in a different tank. This is in my 110 gallon and it’s not too terrible yet, but wanted to get ahead of it before I had a full-on outbreak. I don’t really care what it is, as long as it goes into the water column at night so I can zap the crud out of it with my 57 watt UV!
Amphidinium does not go into the water at night and its much harder to deal with. UV will help a lot but its best to have the pump directly in the display so it pull water directly from the display and into the UV.
 

Eclyps19

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Amphidinium does not go into the water at night and its much harder to deal with. UV will help a lot but its best to have the pump directly in the display so it pull water directly from the display and into the UV.

From what I understand, the small cell amphidinium does go into the water column. Based on what I've seen in my scope, I would agree that these are small cell, since they are about a quarter of the size of the larger ostreopsis. Is that not accurate?
 

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