Reef and Dive
Valuable Member
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Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
- Thread starter mcarroll
- Start date
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So that would include not phyto dosing or even feeding nori also?
Reef and Dive
Valuable Member
Sorry I misanderstood you. That first quote you were not actually suggesting iron dosing. I’ll delete to avoid confusion…
But phyto have not helped most people who dosed.
Mattyreefs
Active Member
Moving my update to this thread because it might be helpful to others and get more visibility here. If you're interested in my original thread, can find it here. This is probably going to belong so I can sum everything up for people not wanting to read through the whole thread. tldr at the end on what I think worked and didn't work...and I'll never know.
Long story short, I've been fighting Prorocentrum dinos for a few months and I'm finally feeling really good about where things are and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, though I still expect this to go on for a while. I've done a terrible job documenting with photos but I'm going to include what I can for reference.
I started with a major gha outbreak that I think was caused simply by too small of a cuc. Every inch of rock was covered and honestly I let it go on for a few weeks because I didn't even realize it was a problem and thought it looked kind of cool. I added a whole bunch of cuc (mainly trochus and nerite snails). Within maybe a week, they had completely wiped out every inch of algae and that's when I made what I think now was a big mistake. The sand that was crystal clear throughout the gha outbreak. Once it was cleared up, it turned brown with a thick snotty mat seemingly over night and I rushed to dose chemiclean. Knowing what I know now about cyano and dinos, I'm very confident that I did have cyano but I should have taken my time and let things balance before I took the quick route. After two doses of chemiclean and about a week, dinos began to take over every single inch of sand. I don't have a full tank shot but imagine this on every inch of sand and much thicker in a lot of places.
I started with a complete 3 day blackout. I wrapped the tank in plastic and didn't even use overhead lighting in the room. I turned on ambient light very briefly to feed and that was it. I also added UV and started to run it 24/7 at that time. At the end of the 3 days, the tank had never been more clear.
At that time I also started dosing MB7 and Waste Away daily. Things were looking good for a few days until the dinos came back full force and within 3-4 weeks the tank looked like this again. I did turn the UV off for ~6 hours everyday after dosing.
Around this time I started dosing SpongExcel. And that's the time things really started to turn around for me. Progress was slow so I bought a silicate checker and realized I needed to be dosing double what I was and since the last 2 weeks, I've seen a huge improvement and I finally think I found the method that's going to work long term for me. Also in that time, with some input from @taricha I have stopped dosing MB7 and Waste Away with the idea that I might have just been adding excess dead organic material for dinos to feed on. I honestly don't know if this has made any difference but it has not gone the other way so I'm going to continue just dosing silicate for now. I have considered trying a live product like PNS ProBio if things go downhill again.
One big difference between my fight and what I read a lot is I never had my nutrients bottom out. During my gha outbreak, nitrate was always 5-10ppm and phosphate was mostly around .04-.08. Then right before dino out break, nitrate did go down to 3-5ppm. And from the time I've turned my lights back on until now, nitrate has always been around 10-15ppm and phosphate at .1-.2. I've dosed NeoPhos and NeoNitro a couple times but that's really just as a buffer to keep my nutrients in that range not because I was struggling to keep them up.
TLDR; So what do I think worked and didn't work...
-I am absolutely sure that raising temperature, alk, and ph did not have any positive impact for me.
-Blackout and UV are questionable. While the blackout definitely worked as a quick fix, I was quickly back to square one. Maybe if I had started dosing silicate at that point, it would have progressed quicker. UV is also hard to say. From what I understand, Prorocentrum does go into the water column at night but does need some coaxing which is what I intended to do with the blackout. In the beginning of this battle, my sand would clear up every single night and then get nasty during the day. The longer I got into this fight, the less and less it cleared up and now it actually doesn't get any clearer at night at all. So it's hard to even say if the dinos left are going into the water to be impacted by the UV. Disclaimer, I'm only using a 9 watt Auqa Shield UV Sterilizer Desktop and the tank is an IM 25. Maybe I needed something bigger/better.
-I have to assume that MB7 and Waste Away did work in the beginning to slow the spread down but I don't know to what extent and at what point I could have stopped. My nutrients have been extremely stable throughout this whole ordeal and part of me thinks the consistent dosing helped but I have no idea and don't even know enough about the products to say if that's even possible.
-SpongExcel/silicate dosing absolutely appears to be the hero in my case. My sand is still brown and to the untrained eye probably looks awful but having gone through this process, I can tell it's making a huge improvement. CUC is finally cleaning the substrate again. There is literally no snot to be seen. There are absolutely dinos remaining but they are far outnumbered by diatoms, and for a brief period cyano came back.
Time and balance. I think any one dealing with dinos by now knows there is no quick fix. You will not get rid of it in 5 days and it's most likely going to take months. Do everything you can to keep balanced nitrates and phoshates and ride it out.
Some other notes...
-I am not doing any water changes but I have been using a very small siphon to skim the sand. I siphon into a 50m sock and return the water. I think this was helping for a while but I'm thinking I will stop for a while and see what happens. The sand still gets brown pretty quickly after so I'm wondering if I am hurting the competition more than the dinos. I was also using a turkey baster/coral feeder to suck all of the excess snot multiple times a day during the peak. I was returning that water to the tank also. I think siphoning the biggest chunks WITHOUT disturbing the sand made a big difference in slowing spread. I'm at a point now where I can not even siphon snot without sucking up more sand. It's even very difficult to get a sample for microscope because there's been so much improvement overall.
-I tried some different things with chaeto. First I tried running it in the back chamber with a fuge light and it honestly just go covered in dinos and melted. Then I was putting a big clump on different spots in the sand directly on the dinos, you can see that in one of the pics above. This actually was a really good way to export dinos but I don't know if it helped at all because it was a serious magnet for the stuff. I was rinsing it every night and putting it into another tank until the morning when I put it back into the DT. I eventually just tossed it.
-At the peak, I was replaced gac every 3 days and floss every day. I'm now replacing both much less frequently, every few days for floss and every week or two for carbon. I have not lost a single fish or invert during this entire time. I lost one goni frag after the blackout but other corals have actually been thriving. Acans and zoas especially.
This is what the brown spots on the sand look like now. It's much more...powdery? and snails are sucking it clean.
This is a full tank shot after 12 hours of full lighting. Like I said, still looks pretty bad but if you knew what it looked like before, you'd think it was a thing of beauty.
Long story short, I've been fighting Prorocentrum dinos for a few months and I'm finally feeling really good about where things are and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, though I still expect this to go on for a while. I've done a terrible job documenting with photos but I'm going to include what I can for reference.
I started with a major gha outbreak that I think was caused simply by too small of a cuc. Every inch of rock was covered and honestly I let it go on for a few weeks because I didn't even realize it was a problem and thought it looked kind of cool. I added a whole bunch of cuc (mainly trochus and nerite snails). Within maybe a week, they had completely wiped out every inch of algae and that's when I made what I think now was a big mistake. The sand that was crystal clear throughout the gha outbreak. Once it was cleared up, it turned brown with a thick snotty mat seemingly over night and I rushed to dose chemiclean. Knowing what I know now about cyano and dinos, I'm very confident that I did have cyano but I should have taken my time and let things balance before I took the quick route. After two doses of chemiclean and about a week, dinos began to take over every single inch of sand. I don't have a full tank shot but imagine this on every inch of sand and much thicker in a lot of places.
I started with a complete 3 day blackout. I wrapped the tank in plastic and didn't even use overhead lighting in the room. I turned on ambient light very briefly to feed and that was it. I also added UV and started to run it 24/7 at that time. At the end of the 3 days, the tank had never been more clear.
At that time I also started dosing MB7 and Waste Away daily. Things were looking good for a few days until the dinos came back full force and within 3-4 weeks the tank looked like this again. I did turn the UV off for ~6 hours everyday after dosing.
Around this time I started dosing SpongExcel. And that's the time things really started to turn around for me. Progress was slow so I bought a silicate checker and realized I needed to be dosing double what I was and since the last 2 weeks, I've seen a huge improvement and I finally think I found the method that's going to work long term for me. Also in that time, with some input from @taricha I have stopped dosing MB7 and Waste Away with the idea that I might have just been adding excess dead organic material for dinos to feed on. I honestly don't know if this has made any difference but it has not gone the other way so I'm going to continue just dosing silicate for now. I have considered trying a live product like PNS ProBio if things go downhill again.
One big difference between my fight and what I read a lot is I never had my nutrients bottom out. During my gha outbreak, nitrate was always 5-10ppm and phosphate was mostly around .04-.08. Then right before dino out break, nitrate did go down to 3-5ppm. And from the time I've turned my lights back on until now, nitrate has always been around 10-15ppm and phosphate at .1-.2. I've dosed NeoPhos and NeoNitro a couple times but that's really just as a buffer to keep my nutrients in that range not because I was struggling to keep them up.
TLDR; So what do I think worked and didn't work...
-I am absolutely sure that raising temperature, alk, and ph did not have any positive impact for me.
-Blackout and UV are questionable. While the blackout definitely worked as a quick fix, I was quickly back to square one. Maybe if I had started dosing silicate at that point, it would have progressed quicker. UV is also hard to say. From what I understand, Prorocentrum does go into the water column at night but does need some coaxing which is what I intended to do with the blackout. In the beginning of this battle, my sand would clear up every single night and then get nasty during the day. The longer I got into this fight, the less and less it cleared up and now it actually doesn't get any clearer at night at all. So it's hard to even say if the dinos left are going into the water to be impacted by the UV. Disclaimer, I'm only using a 9 watt Auqa Shield UV Sterilizer Desktop and the tank is an IM 25. Maybe I needed something bigger/better.
-I have to assume that MB7 and Waste Away did work in the beginning to slow the spread down but I don't know to what extent and at what point I could have stopped. My nutrients have been extremely stable throughout this whole ordeal and part of me thinks the consistent dosing helped but I have no idea and don't even know enough about the products to say if that's even possible.
-SpongExcel/silicate dosing absolutely appears to be the hero in my case. My sand is still brown and to the untrained eye probably looks awful but having gone through this process, I can tell it's making a huge improvement. CUC is finally cleaning the substrate again. There is literally no snot to be seen. There are absolutely dinos remaining but they are far outnumbered by diatoms, and for a brief period cyano came back.
Time and balance. I think any one dealing with dinos by now knows there is no quick fix. You will not get rid of it in 5 days and it's most likely going to take months. Do everything you can to keep balanced nitrates and phoshates and ride it out.
Some other notes...
-I am not doing any water changes but I have been using a very small siphon to skim the sand. I siphon into a 50m sock and return the water. I think this was helping for a while but I'm thinking I will stop for a while and see what happens. The sand still gets brown pretty quickly after so I'm wondering if I am hurting the competition more than the dinos. I was also using a turkey baster/coral feeder to suck all of the excess snot multiple times a day during the peak. I was returning that water to the tank also. I think siphoning the biggest chunks WITHOUT disturbing the sand made a big difference in slowing spread. I'm at a point now where I can not even siphon snot without sucking up more sand. It's even very difficult to get a sample for microscope because there's been so much improvement overall.
-I tried some different things with chaeto. First I tried running it in the back chamber with a fuge light and it honestly just go covered in dinos and melted. Then I was putting a big clump on different spots in the sand directly on the dinos, you can see that in one of the pics above. This actually was a really good way to export dinos but I don't know if it helped at all because it was a serious magnet for the stuff. I was rinsing it every night and putting it into another tank until the morning when I put it back into the DT. I eventually just tossed it.
-At the peak, I was replaced gac every 3 days and floss every day. I'm now replacing both much less frequently, every few days for floss and every week or two for carbon. I have not lost a single fish or invert during this entire time. I lost one goni frag after the blackout but other corals have actually been thriving. Acans and zoas especially.
This is what the brown spots on the sand look like now. It's much more...powdery? and snails are sucking it clean.
This is a full tank shot after 12 hours of full lighting. Like I said, still looks pretty bad but if you knew what it looked like before, you'd think it was a thing of beauty.
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ggNoRe
Well-Known Member
Good run down mattyreefs I find that very helpful. Something random I noticed with my dino battle is I think chaetogro makes dinos bloom. I would put that on the list with feeding corals aminos of things you definitely don't want to do if you have dinos.
Just looked at your build thread, boy oh boy you’ve had a crappy start to the hobby. I see no mention of Cheato grow though. Chin up
ggNoRe
Well-Known Member
Lol indeed. I'm good though. Part of me enjoys the challenge. I made sure I was financially, emotionally, and had timewise ready before diving in. Had a 30G saltwater system in the past so I was fully aware how difficult this hobby can be. I've learned a lot over the past 5 months and feel like it will be just that much sweeter when I finally see success.Just looked at your build thread, boy oh boy you’ve had a crappy start to the hobby. I see no mention of Cheato grow though. Chin up
I just added the Chaetogro tidbit as I see Iron and it's effects on dinos being discussed in this thread. I'm pretty sure Chaetogro has Iron as well.
Onthefly
Community Member
I'm dealing with Dinos AND Bryopsis.....should the priority be....correct the Dino situation first, then the Bryopsis?
Cause of the Dinos was bottoming out both No3 and PO4....So, I removed the excessive waste management (ATS, Bioreactor) and added UV and Carbon. UV killed off the Ostreopsis pretty quick from the rocks, but now I have Amphidinium (large and small) on the sand. Bryopsis (and Ulva) came in on Trochus snails.
Corals look great now with Ostreopsis gone.....
So, I'm "gun shy" to start killing off the Bryopsis and add another variable while Dinos are still present? I can manually trim and siphon the Bryopsis while dealing with the Dinos.
TIA
Cause of the Dinos was bottoming out both No3 and PO4....So, I removed the excessive waste management (ATS, Bioreactor) and added UV and Carbon. UV killed off the Ostreopsis pretty quick from the rocks, but now I have Amphidinium (large and small) on the sand. Bryopsis (and Ulva) came in on Trochus snails.
Corals look great now with Ostreopsis gone.....
So, I'm "gun shy" to start killing off the Bryopsis and add another variable while Dinos are still present? I can manually trim and siphon the Bryopsis while dealing with the Dinos.
TIA
It is a good question. I have different opinions depending on the combo of algae type versus dino type.
In the case of amphid/bryopsis I would opt for bryopsis first. LC Amphids can take a long time to resolve. Bryopsis is 2-3 weeks and done.
It won't hurt to start dosing some silicates to get your diatom population back to a competitive level while you hit the bryopsis with fluconazole.
If you keep SPS corals, do take some time within the main bryopsis thread to understand the risks inherent with fluconazole. While it is a highly effective treatment, there is a small risk of SPS wipeout. I've seen it with my own eyes.
Onthefly
Community Member
Thanks Scott! I do have some montis, birds nests, and one lone acro frag....so I really appreciate your input! I have read through quite a bit of the Dino Thread and Bryopsis thread...I'm more interested in your personal experience, because with anything, there's always the outlier. Was the wipe out an STN thing? With so many saying "no effect on SPS", I always wonder if its a combination of things, and do I have the deadly combo in my system....therefore, it leads me back to the original question...would it be safer to "manage" the algae, until Dinos are done?
First, if you can manually and thoroughly remove bryopsis then do so. If it has spread too much... well you will have to treat at some point. Nothing (reef safe anyway) eats it. No choice IMO.
Because I am friends with my LFS and do some work for some of his "special" clients (I am retired, this is "fun" work) I get to see a lot of tanks. He has dosed fluconazole a hundred times. He called me when it blew up on one tank so I could test everything and try to deduce what happened within 48 hours of dosing. There were no obvious answers. All my tests and even the Triton ICP all showed nominal measures. This was RTN not STN. Hard and fast. All death.
I talked with the client like this: you had bryopsis. It will completely overrun your tank. You had no real choice (unlike those with GHA with hundreds of alternatives) but to dose. We've done this a hundred times but know that some rare instances are going to end badly and yours did. Run GAC and water changes and off you go.
Why it happened here and not with others? None of us know yet. I have my pet theories but they are no more proofed than other theories. Clearly, some tanks DO NOT like being treated with a fungicide. Which? I dunno.
LC Amphids are a visual nuisance. They don't kill corals. You can come back to them and with patience. Bryopsis (IMO) is existential because it cannot be "managed" like most pests can be.
Reef and Dive
Valuable Member
To me: bryopsis first thn dinos.
Reasons: the algae is simple to battle, has the problem of keeping nutrients low while battling dinos and experimentally I’ve had one case when solving bryopsis with fluconazole automatically solved dinos, dont ask me why…
Biff0rz
Valuable Member
@Reef and Dive ok so second dose of fluco is going, added on 7/27. Most of the gha is dying off, there's still little fresh stuff but near the surface of the rocks. The rocks aren't completely clean of it. Now, the dinos are taking off like woah. The whole tank is snot brown... I blew off everything tonight and it's currently being collected by the roller mat. When do I start the blackout period to kill the dino off? How long should I go dark? I have fish, inverts, and two living soft corals at this point (mushrooms and zoas). I was thinking a minimum of a week. Should I go longer? It's pretty bad..
Reef and Dive
Valuable Member
T
About going dark, I do not consider safe more than 72 hours, and the blackout is a good idea at this moment…
That’s near victory, great to hear the news.
About going dark, I do not consider safe more than 72 hours, and the blackout is a good idea at this moment…
DeniableArc
Well-Known Member
Hi, I used fluconazole for the first time two years ago for bryopsis with great success and again 18 months later as I imported some on a plug and the second time it killed 80% of my coral. Now here’s what happened, my wife was sick a few years back and had a rare lung disease and she had to take fluconazole for 12 months. So the first time I dosed was with fluconazole left over straight from the chemist. This dose was perfect no losses done it’s job perfect the second time I ordered bryopsis buster and lost nearly everything. Coincidence or not I will never now and hopefully I never see that evil evil little plant called bryopsis!
Hmmm. I need a refresh on which species you have. For ostreos, 3 days is plenty. They will go swimming to look for a better place with light.
For LC Amphids, a lights-out does not accomplish much if anything. They will stay in the sand and go into cyst mode if the lights out period is long enough.
Biff0rz
Valuable Member
I have both Ostreos and LC Amphi but my guess is I have more Ostreos. I have a 90w UV. So I was thinking lights out for 72 hours, then what do I do for LC.A?
your previous replies:
Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
Neither those ocasional dinos would… I don’t like to say this but: trust me, I’m quite used to those microscopic views and interpretations around dinos… I don't know what that means. My dinos have been worse than this. This isn't the firs sighting or battle. But I still can't interpret what...
www.reef2reef.com
Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
Things still aren't better or even tracking towards better. All sps are dead. Softies are fine. Fish are fine. Lots of gha, lots of dead-ish/dino gha. This sucks. Hope is running out. This was blown off yesterday. All of these rocks were scrubbed with a tooth brush and blown off 2 days ago...
www.reef2reef.com
Right. Now I remember. I am shocked that 90watt Promax hasn't killed off the ostreopsis. Very puzzling. A blackout will help get them moving into the water and 72 hours should be enough.I have both Ostreos and LC Amphi but my guess is I have more Ostreos. I have a 90w UV. So I was thinking lights out for 72 hours, then what do I do for LC.A?
your previous replies:
Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
Neither those ocasional dinos would… I don’t like to say this but: trust me, I’m quite used to those microscopic views and interpretations around dinos… I don't know what that means. My dinos have been worse than this. This isn't the firs sighting or battle. But I still can't interpret what...
Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?
Things still aren't better or even tracking towards better. All sps are dead. Softies are fine. Fish are fine. Lots of gha, lots of dead-ish/dino gha. This sucks. Hope is running out. This was blown off yesterday. All of these rocks were scrubbed with a tooth brush and blown off 2 days ago...
LC Amphids are a whole 'nother story. But I don't think of them as being as noxious as ostreopsis. Nor all that toxic. The standard protocol there is to feed silicates to feed competitive diatoms. Avoid major disturbances of the sandbed. Oh, and tons of patience. Any of that new advice? I know you've been at this a while.
Reef and Dive
Valuable Member
Unfortunately no.
A well done blackout means covering the tank from all light, you don’t have to feed the fish, they do well for 3 days.
Keep a good oxigenation and lights out of the cover. No lights on the fuge either.
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