Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

Cro55bonez

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Take a pic under white lights, tell us your PO4 and NO3 numbers and age of tank so we can figure this out.
78C19B69-9D51-4BF6-9FDB-37FDF3E70433.jpeg
not sure if this is any better it’s best I can come up with with this phone. NO3 is 0 and PO4 is also 0.
 

drawman

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78C19B69-9D51-4BF6-9FDB-37FDF3E70433.jpeg
not sure if this is any better it’s best I can come up with with this phone. NO3 is 0 and PO4 is also 0.
Still kind of hard to say but almost looks more like cyano to me. Does it form snotty looking strings?
 

ScottB

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From the appearance and your description seems to be cyano.
+1 on cyano, but without a microscope it is an educated guess.

I will give you a link to a test you can do without a microscope below:

If it turns out to be cyano, I would just stir it up and siphon it out. If you choose to go at it chemically (which I discourage) via Chemiclean, you are dramatically improving your odds of a dino bloom IMO.
 

DesertReefT4r

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I was under the impression that small cell amphidinium migrated to the water column at night & were great swimmers?
Not sure on the smalk cell form. The amphidinium I had stayed in the sand and moved deeper into it at night never free swimming in the water. If small cell move into the water then UV is your best method of attack.
 

Qasimja

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my dinos seem to be dying off! i havent really done anything different just been stirring the sand bed , and changing my filter socks out more often. They cover my sand bed less and less everyday but i checked my nitrate and phosphate today nitrate was between 0-5 it was a little darker then 0 but not as dark as 5 my phosphates were 0.05 i want to start raising them slowly to get rid of this dinos for good any recommendations? also what numbers should i shoot for?
 

Cro55bonez

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+1 on cyano, but without a microscope it is an educated guess.

I will give you a link to a test you can do without a microscope below:

If it turns out to be cyano, I would just stir it up and siphon it out. If you choose to go at it chemically (which I discourage) via Chemiclean, you are dramatically improving your odds of a dino bloom IMO.
Thank you. What other methods are tried and true? And what may be the cause of its never ending return?
 

ScottB

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my dinos seem to be dying off! i havent really done anything different just been stirring the sand bed , and changing my filter socks out more often. They cover my sand bed less and less everyday but i checked my nitrate and phosphate today nitrate was between 0-5 it was a little darker then 0 but not as dark as 5 my phosphates were 0.05 i want to start raising them slowly to get rid of this dinos for good any recommendations? also what numbers should i shoot for?

You can dose nitrates and phosphates. Seachem flourish is a good premix. NeoNitro also. Or mix your own (Loudwolf sodium nitrate, trisodium phosphate)

The more natural way is adding more fish & fish waste. And or reducing whatever nutrient export tools you use now. You will often see a bit of cyano replace your dinos for a while. My cyano never got too bad because my flow is pretty outrageous.

Numbers? for me around .1 PO4 and 10-15 nitrates seem to keep everybody happy.
 

ScottB

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Thank you. What other methods are tried and true? And what may be the cause of its never ending return?

Very good question. I have too much experience with dinos, but cyano in my systems has always been a brief phase that occurs while my nutrient levels are shifting around. They like light, and prefer a spot where detritus settles. I just siphon them out and try to keep my rocks/sand clear of detritus. And I keep A LOT of flow going.
 

drawman

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Update on my ostreopsis dinos. UV has been helping and I've had my skimmer shut off for a couple of weeks. Tank is getting a little dirty and I have a big GHA takeover which I need to tackle so the skimmer will be going back on soon. Dinos are definitely still there but I would say they are in stasis and more manageable.

Oddly enough I will say my ostreopsis dinos appear to be a little different. They do not completely go into the water column at night. I know a few others have noticed this also. All my tested samples have been ostreopsis only.
 

Cro55bonez

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Very good question. I have too much experience with dinos, but cyano in my systems has always been a brief phase that occurs while my nutrient levels are shifting around. They like light, and prefer a spot where detritus settles. I just siphon them out and try to keep my rocks/sand clear of detritus. And I keep A LOT of flow going.
I have 2 Jebao SW15's on full power Wave mode. My tank is 82g. I felt like thats quite a bit of flow. I'm really lost, because its all forming at the front and thats where the most flow in theory would be because its open water.

I appreciate your feedback and expertise.
 

ScottB

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Just looking back through some of your posts I see a couple things you could gradually implement to change the balance of power in your system. But a couple of questions first:

a) nutrients are still 0?
b) You had a velvet outbreak. How many fish do you have in the system now?
c) What corals do you have?
d) Your system is... 6 months old? Did you start with live or dead rock?
e) What nutrient removal tools are you using? (skimmer, refugium, GFO, socks,etc)
f) do you have algae growing on the rock or glass?
g) what color is the gunk on the sand and is it easy to disturb / remove it?

I think an understanding of these factors will help us craft a gentle way to change the balance enough to slowly move you out of this ugly phase.

One other thing out of curiosity: so Bahrain is at the same latitude as the Red Sea. I know the Persian Gulf is warmer, but is there much in the way of coral reefs offshore there?
 

Gildo

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Question about the UV speech: we have always focused on the W x Gallon speech, but never on the type of lamp present in the system.

I have seen that there are several types: 4-pin PL, classic T5 and 4-pin T5 on one side. With the same number of W can anyone say which are the most preformers for our purpose?

maybe that's why someone has good results and someone else doesn't, with the same ID as Dino, and the same W / g of UVC lamps!!!!
 

ScottB

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Question about the UV speech: we have always focused on the W x Gallon speech, but never on the type of lamp present in the system.

I have seen that there are several types: 4-pin PL, classic T5 and 4-pin T5 on one side. With the same number of W can anyone say which are the most preformers for our purpose?

maybe that's why someone has good results and someone else doesn't, with the same ID as Dino, and the same W / g of UVC lamps!!!!

Fine question. I don't have any technical expertise on that to contribute.

I can tell you that whatever bulb is in the Aqua UV will work on ostreopsis.
 

Gildo

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Question about the UV speech: we have always focused on the W x Gallon speech, but never on the type of lamp present in the system.

I have seen that there are several types: 4-pin PL, classic T5 and 4-pin T5 on one side. With the same number of W can anyone say which are the most preformers for our purpose?

maybe that's why someone has good results and someone else doesn't, with the same ID as Dino, and the same W / g of UVC lamps!!!!
Fine question. I don't have any technical expertise on that to contribute.

I can tell you that whatever bulb is in the Aqua UV will work on ostreopsis.
is precisely because of the ostreopsis that this doubt came to me! reading the various pages, every time id ostreopsis is confirmed, but the user does not notice improvement with UV.

I'm among these people, UV has done little! and every day I check with a microscope, and I'm always and only ostreopsis! yet I have a 36W UV lamp (new and changed bulb after 3 months with new philips bulb) on a tank of only 250 liters sump included, and flow of 800 liters / h dt to dt! here well oversized! for example, my lamp is a 4-pin PL.
in my fight to ostreopsis UV 5% and the rest of the actions do 95% (low skimmer, dose N and P eccc)
 

ScottB

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is precisely because of the ostreopsis that this doubt came to me! reading the various pages, every time id ostreopsis is confirmed, but the user does not notice improvement with UV.

I'm among these people, UV has done little! and every day I check with a microscope, and I'm always and only ostreopsis! yet I have a 36W UV lamp (new and changed bulb after 3 months with new philips bulb) on a tank of only 250 liters sump included, and flow of 800 liters / h dt to dt! here well oversized! for example, my lamp is a 4-pin PL.
in my fight to ostreopsis UV 5% and the rest of the actions do 95% (low skimmer, dose N and P eccc)

I should clarify something. (I am not disputing the validity of your question at all though.)

Right now, to my naked eyes I no longer have ostreopsis. However, if I took a scraping right now and put it under the scope I would find ostreopsis. I know because I have done it a few times when the tank looks clear of dinos. I keep the UV running and the nutrients around .12 and 15. For me, it has been about management of dinos, not eradication.
 

Eclyps19

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I added a 57 watt AquaticUV to my 140 total water volume tank. I pumped water from just outside the overflow compartment, through the UV, and back out to the return compartment of my sump. The first 2 days were excellent, my dinos cleared up super well. The next several days, though, they started showing up full-force all over the sand. The odd thing was that they didn’t seem to go away during lights out anymore, they just persisted on the sand. That made me think that perhaps something else was blooming after I knocked back the dinos, but after looking at them in a scope, I’ve confirmed that they are all ostreo (previously I had small cell amphids mixed in as well, but those have all but vanished).

I’m now in the process of re-plumbing the UV to pull from and put back into the DT directly (at least until my dinos clear up), but I was wondering if anyone has seen something similar or can think of anything that I might not be doing properly. Flow is roughly 240gph, lights are on about 10h per day. I just wasn’t expecting them to come back 5x worse after adding a UV.
 

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