Dinoflagellates and NO3 and PO4. Why do I have to worry now?

[Paullawr]

I prefer not to worry period.
It’s much easier.
Worrying about stuff usually makes it worse. My therapist thinks so anyway.

As far as when and where why they occur , ime as a Reef medic here observing this, they happen in all kinds of tanks , all kinds of nutrient levels, all kinds of light and all kinds of salt.

One thing of note from those observations is, food. Specifically, coral foods and I’ll throw in bacterial additives, Esp ones with potent organic carbon sources.

And you sir is why your my favourite on here.

 

[Paullawr]

I don’t think so... look at Europe, they have been running their tanks like this for a long time. ULNS is still HUGE there.

People here have been driving nutrients down, low low here for a long time also. How long have people been using DSB’s, gfo, oversized skimmers, this and that, etc? Much longer then the explosion of dinos that has reared in the last few years, especially the last year.

A good poll would be, what lighting were you using when you experienced dinos?

MH
T5
LED
Other

I'm in Europe...

 

[Paullawr]

LEDs could have a baring but this is the least likely.

Carbon dosing or sources of, bacteria excess or sources of are more likely a connection.

 

[Paullawr]

What I'd like to k ow is if someone has had dinos with the use of a chiller keeping temp rock solid.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

The N and P detectable/elevated so far is the only proven safe method. What is needed is some scientific evaluation as to why.

I think Randy already laid that out , and it’s the current common consensus.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

What I'd like to k ow is if someone has had dinos with the use of a chiller keeping temp rock solid.

I for one , have not observed this.

 

[Paullawr]

I for one , have not observed this.

No neither has the community who have been involved in a fair few hundred instances.

I raised this with @mcarrol previously as every bloom I've experienced over four aquariums has always within 24hours been subject to unexpected ambient temperature rises.

 

[John3]

My outbreak coincided with a food change. I had always fed my fish frozen mysis but I was trying to get the fish to eat pellet food. That way if I was away for a few days I could set up a auto feeder. I don’t believe I over fed them but something in the food my system was not used to.

One of my worst experience with this tank so far and from what I read it could have been a lot worse. Hydrogen peroxide over a 3 week span and sucking the strands off with a turkey baster finally cleared it up.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

No neither has the community who have been involved in a fair few hundred instances.

I raised this with @mcarrol previously as every bloom I've experienced over four aquariums has always within 24hours been subject to unexpected ambient temperature rises.

A fair?

Those are just my observations From the last 3 years.

My temps here currently are swinging 76-81.5. Daily. Does that in the summer too. Dunno.

 

[Skynyrd Fish]

I got ride of mine. I battled on and off for five years. I tried Black outs, H2O2, Vodka, replaced my sand with new Fiji pink sand, and weekly water changes. I read the article about the NO3 to PO4 ratio. It made sense to me. I stopped water changes. I backed my skimmer all the way down (euroreef 180). I got rid of the GFO, and carbon. I also stopped cleaning all my glass. I wanted green algae to grow. Dino's started going away almost instantly. I also put some cheato in my sump and put a red LED bulb on it. The thing I think was the best, and made a big difference was adding a large air stone with fresher air (intake by the basement window by the ceiling) than the skimmer was drawing, Directly to the display. This may be why some people say H2O2 works for them. It adds oxygen to the water. I have since had the air stone removed four months ago, but will be putting it back in my sump, as my tank looked cleaner with it, as well as my PH was higher. I am back to a bi-weekly 10% water change.

In my experience I have observed this:

Old days never heard of dino's, water was not stripped of NO3 or PO4 like gfo can do. I started in 91'

I am a believer in a natural NO3/PO4 ratio. I don't know what that number is naturally (16:1?), or in my tank as my test kits don't show that low. I will be sending an ATI test kit in soon.

The best tanks I've ever seen in person have had a sump with macro algae growing. I know there are killer tanks without I've never seen one in person. Make an ideal area for crap to grow instead of your display.

My tank does better when the PH is Higher than 8.0. The rocks and water look cleaner. Add an extra air stone or fresh air supply for your skimmer. Or a CO2 scrubber. If you need raise PH.

All this being said, it has only been 10 months since I turned the tank around, its been running sixteen years. I will be adding SPS and a few more fish shortly. After quarantine. The first six years was SPS dominate. I removed all corals due to major renovations and drywall dust, then 3 babies ate up my time. Currently FOWLR. So take my rant with a grain of salt so to speak.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

And that’s your entitled opinion Randy. I never stated nitrate or phosphate did reduce numbers, just conjecture, throwing it out there.
However any paper that suggests otherwise should at least be considered.
Not all hypothesis or trialed tests prove accurate.

I don't understand your reaction. The paper seems to show exactly what reefers think they already know about dinos. That elevating nutrients can, in some cases, result in less growth of the dinos. It doesn't make any claims about why, or even supply any mechanistic hypotheses.

All hypothesis are opinions. I'm just saying that I think we can be smarter than to say we know nothing so everything is possible.

IMO, the possibility that a little nitrate and phosphate in the water directly deters the growth of dinos has some degree of possibility, but it is not consistent with known responses of organisms to nutrients.

 

[reefwiser]

L.E.D. Lighting? May sound crazy, but guys have been running ULNS systems for years, carbon dosing, adding this, adding that and not getting dinos. Most running T5 or Metal Halide lighting. You never used to hear about dinos, cyano sure, but never dinos. Now that L.E.D's are the rage its like you can't go an hour without a new thread popping up about dinos. Not sure if it has any real correlation or not but we are studying it now to see. Just a thought since no one ever brings up lighting

I have seen Dino’s with MH in fact I had them this summer. [emoji3]

 

[Paullawr]

No it's not consistent with known responses of organisms in what would normally be ideal conditions to thrive.

Yes I agree that the paper does not go in to any further detail. There could be as many external factlors at play as there are in both the natural environment and ornamental. I'd like to think there was at least some control carried out.

Regardless I just thought I'd mention it as the thread was up for discussion.

 

[Paullawr]

I have seen Dino’s with MH in fact I had them this summer. [emoji3]

Its worth a test by @UWC even if it rules it out once and for all. I started with T8 tubes, cannot recall having dinoflagellates back then, but they probably weren't strong enough to grow them

 

[UWC]

I have seen Dino’s with MH in fact I had them this summer. [emoji3]

What bulbs and ballast?

 

[taricha]

Perhaps because most folks haven't had the ready capability to really drive N and P excessively low until fairly recent years.

The hypothesis (well, the one that I prefer anyway) is that some organism (such as algae) that needs reasonable levels of N and P outcompetes the dinos for something (maybe just space, maybe a trace element, especially since water changes seem to also make the issue worse). N and/or P get too low, this competitor ceases to thrive, and the competition with dinos begins to swing toward dinos.

This is the biggest likely effect, (I beleive other effects also occur, but are secondary) and this is the one that has the most evidence. It's got ockham's razor on it's side....

That would also help explain the absence of other type of algae. For me my tank is clean otherwise!

...and the explanation has an easily observable corroboration. The inverse-correlation between algae and dinos shows up in so many accounts...

I've had dino multiple times. Both times it came from trying to hit zero phosphates and nitrates through GFO and vodka dosing. I've since then stopped trying to reach those numbers and almost all my issues went away. Corals are growing better, dinos are almost gone. I'm starting to become a believer that hitting ultra low nutrient levels is doing reefers more harm than good

....so many accounts, over and over again.

Has such a thing ever been demonstrated for any organism? I just can't see any plausible mechanism that some extra nitrate and phosphate (not attaining toxic levels), by itself, causes an organism to stop growing.

It doesn't. Paper I saw mentioned standard lab culture for growing ostreopsis is a 1/5 diluted Guillard's F/2 growth media, which is still like 0.6 ppm Phosphate!
So it absolutely is not the case that Dinos hate P and N.

L.E.D. Lighting? May sound crazy, but guys have been running ULNS systems for years, carbon dosing, adding this, adding that and not getting dinos. Most running T5 or Metal Halide lighting. You never used to hear about dinos, cyano sure, but never dinos. Now that L.E.D's are the rage its like you can't go an hour without a new thread popping up about dinos. Not sure if it has any real correlation or not but we are studying it now to see. Just a thought since no one ever brings up lighting

This thread is enlightening: Spectrum and Dinoflagellates
I believe there is a connection in some form: MH, and T5s tend to be more of a smear of the spectrum, and not very tunable, LEDs are so customizable, that there are parts of the spectrum that can be neglected almost entirely.
And so many of the LED mixes would be customized - intentionally or coincidentally to suppress "nuisance" green algae. You can see where this is going.
We're a long way from convincing evidence, but I think it's a contributing factor.
Just not as big as N & P.
The other element we have to be careful about in these arguments is correlation of the form "You never used to hear about dinos before..." We sucked at IDing dinos until recently. People just had algae some was red, green, and some was slimy nasty brown.
That argument would have us conclude that Microscopes definitively cause dinos

 

[Paullawr]

This is the biggest likely effect, (I beleive other effects also occur, but are secondary) and this is the one that has the most evidence. It's got ockham's razor on it's side....


...and the explanation has an easily observable corroboration. The inverse-correlation between algae and dinos shows up in so many accounts...



....so many accounts, over and over again.


It doesn't. Paper I saw mentioned standard lab culture for growing ostreopsis is a 1/5 diluted Guillard's F/2 growth media, which is still like 0.6 ppm Phosphate!
So it absolutely is not the case that Dinos hate P and N.


This thread is enlightening: Spectrum and Dinoflagellates
I believe there is a connection in some form: MH, and T5s tend to be more of a smear of the spectrum, and not very tunable, LEDs are so customizable, that there are parts of the spectrum that can be neglected almost entirely.
And so many of the LED mixes would be customized - intentionally or coincidentally to suppress "nuisance" green algae. You can see where this is going.
We're a long way from convincing evidence, but I think it's a contributing factor.
Just not as big as N & P.
The other element we have to be careful about in these arguments is correlation of the form "You never used to hear about dinos before..." We sucked at IDing dinos until recently. People just had algae some was red, green, and some was slimy nasty brown.
That argument would have us conclude that Microscopes definitively cause dinos

Well there you go. I'm wrong as usual and stand corrected.

 

[reefwiser]

20k MH I have also had it with 65k bulbs.

 

[Ashish Patel]

Shortly after setting up my tank Keith documented his tank crash with dinos (which I am forever grateful for). Started with all dry rock I sourced and add 40LB of LR from fellow hobbyist covered in sponges and seeded the dry rock. Purchased a 36Watt UV sterilizer, and added Cheato/refugium. With all this defense I still got Dinos after about 6 months from tank being setup. few things i noticed:

1. They started showing up when I left the blinds open "shining natural sunlight to the back of the reef" for 5 days.
2. Few days after they appeared my Phosphates dropped to 0. They where growing behind on most of the rockwork.
3. Paniced, I blasted them off with a coral feeder, increased circulation to the return pump, refugium, and UV filter. This helped as they did not reappear as fast as I was anticipating.
4. I started overfeeding and let the tank run dirty for 6 weeks (no waterchanges, no gravel stirring, etc). Nutrients would come back to detectable the same time dinos would not be detectable.
5. Dinos don't need much to outcompete the tank creatures for nutrients, So increasing phosphates and nitrates I would not recommend. Just some light with minimal nutrients will have them growing at record speeds and whos to say they won't consume the extra nutrients anyways (since their good at taking 0.03phosphates to 0 in a day or so)!
6. I let the tank develop a film of algae on the rockwork (not on purpose). I was not going to add any snails until I had enough food source in the tank for them. Who knows maybe too many snails early on could have just eaten competing algaes, allowing dinos to thrive, and then the snails would succumb to the dinos poison, adding more nutrients to the water and causing a cycle thats beneficial to the dinos.
7. I have found catching the problem early and the UV filter prevented them from doing any damage to the reef or inverts.
8. I had them show up last week and only place they come back to is my seaswirl return pump head. I left them alone for a few days to see what they would do and they are slowly shrinking away.

I hope this helps someone, Happy DINO fighting

 

[Paullawr]

I don't know if they have always been in the marine hobby, but they are now and in abundance.

Aiptasia, flatworm, sea spiders, nudibranch, briopsis simply are out of their league with this stuff.

Its part of the hobby now.