Dinoflagellates caused by an abundance of untestable organic nutrients in our tanks.

[Chris Villalobos]

So what types of foods do we believe corals consume in our tanks? I think we can agree that it small particles of dissolved organic matter mostly in the form of fish waste. In fact the coral’s Zooxanthellae are Dinoflagellates with the ability to live inside corals.

So what happens when we have an overabundance of coral foods like amino acids in our tanks? We can get outbreaks of Dinoflagellates.

So here is my hypothesis that I hope other reefers will test themselves. Since we have gotten so efficient at removing NO3 and PO4 from our tanks and we don’t have any easy way to test for organic nutrients we feed our tanks as if they perfectly reduce fish waste into NO3 and PO4. What we can’t see is that in our zeal to feed our tanks to try to keep up with our awesome inorganic nutrient export we are overloading the nitrogen cycle in leaving lots of organic nutrients in the water column. Dinoflagellates love this organic pollution and bloom because we have overloaded our systems.

So the key to beating Dinoflagellates is reducing our feedings but also reducing the efficiency of our NO3 and PO4 exports. Or we need to find a way of making the nitrogen cycle itself more efficient.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Define organic nutrients.

Most of what we are seeing in dino problems is the starvation of the biofilter. Particularly Po4 limitation.
This appears to allow other organisms like dino that can access. Phosphate bybother means to thrive and outcompete the nitrifying bacteria for both no3 and Po4 thereby shutting Down the biofilter and allowing the dino to actually do the ammoina processing in the tank.

 

[Turtlesteve]

I'll add my notes to the discussion. I am still fighting them, and I will say with certainty the only factor that's made a difference to me (in the display tank) is the presence of a suitable growth surface. Increasing NO3/PO4 aka the "dirty" method has not helped, but did seem to perk the corals up a bit. I'm also running a big UV sterilizer but it hasn't helped - they don't go into the water column at night. Water changes had no effect positive or negative.

I finally have the upper hand after adding some extra snails (to keep the rocks really clean) and vacuuming out 99% of my sand. I only get growth on sand and on rocks that are "dirty" with detritus/algae. They will not grow on glass or clean rocks. I need to vacuum again because I still have a trace of sand in some places (1/16" to 1/8") and these spots grow a thick brown mat every day. I dislike the bare bottom look but it's better than dino's.

Most interestingly, I have a ~20 gallon tank set up right now that was freshly cycled - but has no fish and was not being used yet (it has a few "test" SPS frags in it). It was initially bare bottom but as a test, I transferred some of the contaminated sand and water from my display into this tank. For about two days there was a huge dinoflagellate bloom coating everything, but it disappeared overnight and has not returned. There is no competing algae to speak of as this tank was freshly cycled. So I'm thoroughly baffled, but there is absolutely some critical parameter here that we are missing. The only source for rock, sand, etc. in this tank was the affected display tank.

Steve

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I'll add my notes to the discussion. I am still fighting them, and I will say with certainty the only factor that's made a difference to me (in the display tank) is the presence of a suitable growth surface. Increasing NO3/PO4 aka the "dirty" method has not helped, but did seem to perk the corals up a bit. I'm also running a big UV sterilizer but it hasn't helped - they don't go into the water column at night. Water changes had no effect positive or negative.

I finally have the upper hand after adding some extra snails (to keep the rocks really clean) and vacuuming out 99% of my sand. I only get growth on sand and on rocks that are "dirty" with detritus/algae. They will not grow on glass or clean rocks. I need to vacuum again because I still have a trace of sand in some places (1/16" to 1/8") and these spots grow a thick brown mat every day. I dislike the bare bottom look but it's better than dino's.

Most interestingly, I have a ~20 gallon tank set up right now that was freshly cycled - but has no fish and was not being used yet (it has a few "test" SPS frags in it). It was initially bare bottom but as a test, I transferred some of the contaminated sand and water from my display into this tank. For about two days there was a huge dinoflagellate bloom coating everything, but it disappeared overnight and has not returned. There is no competing algae to speak of as this tank was freshly cycled. So I'm thoroughly baffled, but there is absolutely some critical parameter here that we are missing. The only source for rock, sand, etc. in this tank was the affected display tank.

Steve

What lights do you have on each tank?

 

[Chris Villalobos]

Define organic nutrients.

Most of what we are seeing in dino problems is the starvation of the biofilter. Particularly Po4 limitation.
This appears to allow other organisms like dino that can access. Phosphate bybother means to thrive and outcompete the nitrifying bacteria for both no3 and Po4 thereby shutting Down the biofilter and allowing the dino to actually do the ammoina processing in the tank.

PON and DON

It may be necessary for the nitrogen cycle to have testable NO3 and PO4, but I think if it was just as simple as raising PO4 we wouldn't have a pinned 400+ page discussion about Dinos. There is definitely something else going on. What people are not showing are their feeding habits and how that affects the organic compounds in the tank that have to go through the complex process of decomposition and remineralization.

I have personal experience of a Dino outbreak just because I started dosing amino acids. I do think we could be starving our systems when we strip away PO4 but I can also see overloading the system by having a bio-load that is too large. We don't get green algae because we have taken out all the inorganic nutrients so we get bacteria blooms.

 

[Turtlesteve]

What lights do you have on each tank?

Mars aqua LED on the 20 gallon, SBreef LED on the display. No appreciable difference except that the SBreef's have better coverage at 400 nm that is lacking in the Mars Aqua.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

PON and DON

It may be necessary for the nitrogen cycle to have testable NO3 and PO4, but I think if it was just as simple as raising PO4 we wouldn't have a pinned 400+ page discussion about Dinos. There is definitely something else going on. What people are not showing are their feeding habits and how that affects the organic compounds in the tank that have to go through the complex process of decomposition and remineralization.

I have personal experience of a Dino outbreak just because I started dosing amino acids. I do think we could be starving our systems when we strip away PO4 but I can also see overloading the system by having a bio-load that is too large. We don't get green algae because we have taken out all the inorganic nutrients so we get bacteria blooms.

Pon and don?

Yes , Amino acids can def contribute to cyano an Dinos.

There a serval types of dinos as well.
Some that prefer the low nutrient inhibition and few that don’t seem to care.
The gentleman who started that dino thread and I as well as another RS member spoke at great length about it particularly about species feeding preferences.
One very large thing we don’t do now as commonly is also true bio diversity. Besides pulling any trace of organic Po4 and and other nutrient out of rock , it’s also more commonly mined rather than live or collected on shore in Indonesia. So there is no other life in and on the rock. (Like cystic diatoms and other animals)

 

[Chris Villalobos]

PON = Particulate Organic Nitrogen
DON = Dissolved Organic Nitrogen

Amino Acids would be considered part of DON

We need to be willing to look at these organic nutrients in our systems. For example, I have read of some people trying to increase their NO3 and PO4 by just adding more fish food. Well if they are suffering from Dinos that is just going to ramp up main problem in the first place. Nutrients that are stuck in PON and DON will increase because the tank's nitrogen cycle just can't break them down fast enough. The aquarist may raise NO3 and PO4 by adding fish food but their system will be out of balance.

Take a look at my tank's organic Nitrogen. My tested NO3 was at 0.25PPM so that is all the Nitrogen I could see. But the N-DOC is showing at least 6PPM "worth" of NO3 in organic and other forms of Nitrogen. The other forms are PON and DON and Dinos love this stuff.

 

[Chris Villalobos]

FYI The estimated NO3 number from the N-DOC test is just converting the total N into NO3. I subtract the tested NO3 and the rest is organic.

Total Nitrogen x 4.43 = NO3

 

[Chris Villalobos]

I'll add my notes to the discussion. I am still fighting them, and I will say with certainty the only factor that's made a difference to me (in the display tank) is the presence of a suitable growth surface. Increasing NO3/PO4 aka the "dirty" method has not helped, but did seem to perk the corals up a bit. I'm also running a big UV sterilizer but it hasn't helped - they don't go into the water column at night. Water changes had no effect positive or negative.

I finally have the upper hand after adding some extra snails (to keep the rocks really clean) and vacuuming out 99% of my sand. I only get growth on sand and on rocks that are "dirty" with detritus/algae. They will not grow on glass or clean rocks. I need to vacuum again because I still have a trace of sand in some places (1/16" to 1/8") and these spots grow a thick brown mat every day. I dislike the bare bottom look but it's better than dino's.

Most interestingly, I have a ~20 gallon tank set up right now that was freshly cycled - but has no fish and was not being used yet (it has a few "test" SPS frags in it). It was initially bare bottom but as a test, I transferred some of the contaminated sand and water from my display into this tank. For about two days there was a huge dinoflagellate bloom coating everything, but it disappeared overnight and has not returned. There is no competing algae to speak of as this tank was freshly cycled. So I'm thoroughly baffled, but there is absolutely some critical parameter here that we are missing. The only source for rock, sand, etc. in this tank was the affected display tank.

Steve

Steve,

How much are you feeding your tank?
How many gallons of water are in your tank?
Have you added any beneficial bacteria like Waste Away?
Are you dosing NO3 and PO4 and do you know for a fact that the Nitrogen you are dosing is just NO3 and not a mix of other forms of Nitrogen?

 

[Turtlesteve]

Steve,

How much are you feeding your tank?
How many gallons of water are in your tank?
Have you added any beneficial bacteria like Waste Away?
Are you dosing NO3 and PO4 and do you know for a fact that the Nitrogen you are dosing is just NO3 and not a mix of other forms of Nitrogen?

I have an auto-feeder that feeds a very small amount of dry food (formula 1 pellets) each day - probably a couple hundred milligrams. This is kind of a backup system so the fish get something if I forget to feed or I'm out of town for a day. I also feed frozen mysis shrimp, probably about 0.5 grams a day, and every week or so I'll throw in a small bit of seaweed for the yellow tang.

System is 100 gallons

No, I have not added any bacteria products.

When the outbreak started I was running fairly low nutrients - don't know exactly how low. I raised NO3 and PO4 by dosing pure KNO3 and NaH2PO4. NO3 peaked at around 25 ppm and it has stayed high without any intervention. It's floating around 20-25 ppm at present. PO4 peaked at 0.6 ppm but it was running about 0.1 ppm at last check. It tends to drop on its own if I don't continue to dose it. I did feed more initially - same foods but probably 2x quantity - but I dropped back to a normal feeding schedule after a few weeks.

 

[Chris Villalobos]

I have an auto-feeder that feeds a very small amount of dry food (formula 1 pellets) each day - probably a couple hundred milligrams. This is kind of a backup system so the fish get something if I forget to feed or I'm out of town for a day. I also feed frozen mysis shrimp, probably about 0.5 grams a day, and every week or so I'll throw in a small bit of seaweed for the yellow tang.

System is 100 gallons

No, I have not added any bacteria products.

When the outbreak started I was running fairly low nutrients - don't know exactly how low. I raised NO3 and PO4 by dosing pure KNO3 and NaH2PO4. NO3 peaked at around 25 ppm and it has stayed high without any intervention. It's floating around 20-25 ppm at present. PO4 peaked at 0.6 ppm but it was running about 0.1 ppm at last check. It tends to drop on its own if I don't continue to dose it. I did feed more initially - same foods but probably 2x quantity - but I dropped back to a normal feeding schedule after a few weeks.

Definitely give Waste Away a try. Bulk Reef Supply has instructions on how to use it.
Also I would advise lowering your NO3 and PO4 down to acceptable levels. The going consensus is 10PPM NO3 and 0.1PPM PO4. Dinos are resourceful and use inorganic nutrients too.

So you are saying you feed less than a 1/4 cube of mysis everyday? Usually I hear of people with tanks as big as yours feeding multiple cubes per day. One cube is approximately 3.32 grams leaving a quarter cube at 0.83 grams.

Just as a comparison.

I have a 53 gallon system with 3 Anthias 3 Chromis 1 Clown 1 Christmas Wrasse, 1 Fire Fish, and a Cleaner Shrimp. Basically 9 small fish and a small clean up crew.

I feed a quarter cube mysis (0.8 grams) per day.
Twice a day I feed 0.06 grams of dry pellets (0.12 grams per day)
This is plenty for the nine fish. Even with that small amount of food I still have 6PPM worth of Organic Nitrogen floating around the tank so no need for coral foods. {The 6PPM is made by converting Total Nitrogen into NO3 units}
I supplement my NO3 and PO4 by dosing NaNO3 and Na3PO4. (NO3 is at 3PPM and PO4 is around 0.015) I test twice a week because I have them so close to zero.

And even though I beat the Dino problem I still have Cyano issues ( At the time of the Dino outbreak I was feeding 1/4 frozen mysis, 0.25 grams pellet per day plus and coral foods like reef chili and Acro Power)

But not all tanks are equal. I don't have that much coral mass in my tank right now so the coral aren't competing for the organics as much. Once my coral grow I will probably need to feed more. I also may need to lower the amount of fish I have in my system until I have more coral mass. This is where the N-DOC test becomes really helpful.

I have just lowered my pellet feedings down to 0.06 grams per day while keeping 1/4 cube (0.8 grams) frozen. I'll keep an eye on my fish and corals to make sure I'm not starting to under feed them.

 

[Turtlesteve]

Definitely give Waste Away a try. Bulk Reef Supply has instructions on how to use it.
Also I would advise lowering your NO3 and PO4 down to acceptable levels. The going consensus is 10PPM NO3 and 0.1PPM PO4. Dinos are resourceful and use inorganic nutrients too.

So you are saying you feed less than a 1/4 cube of mysis everyday? Usually I hear of people with tanks as big as yours feeding multiple cubes per day. One cube is approximately 3.32 grams leaving a quarter cube at 0.83 grams.

I'm trying to let NO3/PO4 levels drift down on their own, since it's not helping control the dino's. Not in a big hurry as corals are happy for the most part. I did have a nice acro colony RTN but I'm not sure what cause to attribute it to. Other acro's are growing well and with good polyp extension (of course, so was that one right up until it wasn't). I've never tried waste away but will consider it.

On the frozen mysis I'll have to correct myself - it's about 1/3 cube per day, sometimes 1/2 cube. So definitely more than one gram. For some reason I was thinking the cubes were 100 grams / 60 cubes, when it's actually 200g. Now I'm using the bulk pack so the amount varies day to day. It's definitely not multiple cubes per day - that's too high in my opinion.

Steve

 

[Chris Villalobos]

I've never tried waste away but will consider it.

Seriously consider it. It won't hurt and may give you type of bacteria you need to out compete the dinos. I did most of what the BRS directions said to do except I didn't use "Refresh" and I didn't do the blackout period, I also doubled the dose. My dinos went away in two weeks.

 

[Cory]

Fwiw in my small biocube in the overflow was a pile of brown detritus that would accumulate at the bottom. When i removed this organic pile dinos dissapeared. When it piled up they came back. And again when i sucked it out they dissapeared.

In my small bare bottom with an ats, when i didnt clean the ats screen and the algae began to rot dinos grew. But when i cleaned it often dinos didnt grow.

In my 220 which is bare bottom, i had dinos and couldnt find the source. I tried lots of methods. Still nothing worked. Now just lately i found another huge pile of brown detritus which i just cleaned out. It was in my settlement chamber which i thought wasnt working. But it was! I cleaned that out. I then wiped the dinos away from tbe sumps glass and they havent returned in a few days!

I also put some in a plastic jar with an air bubbler. The dino strings disappeard within a week. I guess their food source dissapeared?

You might be right about this organics fueling them. Mine are the kind that dont swim at night.

 

[Chris Villalobos]

I also put some in a plastic jar with an air bubbler. The dino strings disappeard within a week. I guess their food source dissapeared?

Sometimes when I listen to the Dino discussion and "ultra low-nutrients" causing them I think we have gone back to believing in spontaneous generation. Dinos definitely need food. They just don't need much NO3 and PO4. Also @saltyfilmfolks said it. PO4 is especially important for nitrifying bacteria to do their job. Without PO4 we get a build up of non-NO3 nitrogen.

 

[Chris Villalobos]

Putting the N in dinoflagellates. Great article on how these pests are able to utilize multiple forms of N.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3849724/#B88

 

[MnFish1]

So what types of foods do we believe corals consume in our tanks? I think we can agree that it small particles of dissolved organic matter mostly in the form of fish waste. In fact the coral’s Zooxanthellae are Dinoflagellates with the ability to live inside corals.

My guess is most 'foods' corals consume (and thats a big generalization - given that there are so many types of coral) are bacteria, protozoa and other living things, as well as the 'food' produced' by zooxanthellae in response to light. I was under the impression that the zooxanthellae mainly use inorganic forms of N and P.

So the key to beating Dinoflagellates is reducing our feedings but also reducing the efficiency of our NO3 and PO4 exports. Or we need to find a way of making the nitrogen cycle itself more efficient.

This seems to be saying the opposite (i.e. reducing feedings will reduce extra N and P in the tank - reducing efficiency of NO3 and PO4 Exports will increase the N and P in the tank) - doing both will result in no real net change (or am I misunderstanding your point?)

What we can’t see is that in our zeal to feed our tanks to try to keep up with our awesome inorganic nutrient export we are overloading the nitrogen cycle in leaving lots of organic nutrients in the water column.

This might be true - but doesnt the protein skimmer take care of a large amount of the organic nutrients? or Carbon? How are we relating any of these things to dinoflagellates? You might very well be right - I just cant tell if you're putting out a theory for discussion - or whether you think what you're suggesting is 'fact'. Thanks for starting an interesting discussion

 

[MnFish1]

PON and DON

It may be necessary for the nitrogen cycle to have testable NO3 and PO4, but I think if it was just as simple as raising PO4 we wouldn't have a pinned 400+ page discussion about Dinos. There is definitely something else going on. What people are not showing are their feeding habits and how that affects the organic compounds in the tank that have to go through the complex process of decomposition and remineralization.

I have personal experience of a Dino outbreak just because I started dosing amino acids. I do think we could be starving our systems when we strip away PO4 but I can also see overloading the system by having a bio-load that is too large. We don't get green algae because we have taken out all the inorganic nutrients so we get bacteria blooms.

By the way I think you're right - there are likely multiple things going on - each tank has an individual microbiome, indicvidual ratios of one element to another more or less organic compounds - of probably many many types. IMHO the reason for a 400 page Dino thread is that there are multiple causes and multiple solutions. What seems to 'work' (ie. increase PO4 or decrease xxx) in one tank - completely fails in another. I have had them - I have found the best way to 'get rid of them' was to vacuum daily the areas they were in - allowing other 'stuff' to take over that particular spot. I have not had a return of them - I also made no changes to water chemistry etc. I dont do large water changes (or large anything) to fix a problem - merely add the 2-3 gallons I took out vacuuming the dinos out. I also did the vacuuming at the time they seemed most prevalent (i.e at the end of the day after being exposed to light all day)

 

[MnFish1]

We need to be willing to look at these organic nutrients in our systems. For example, I have read of some people trying to increase their NO3 and PO4 by just adding more fish food. Well if they are suffering from Dinos that is just going to ramp up main problem in the first place.

Not trying to pick on you but can you explain 'why' this would be the case? I agree we should look at organic nutrients in our systems - but. if you add 'fish food' how does that translate into ramping up the main problem. I always assumed it worked this way - and I may be mistaken - You add 'food' of any type to a tank. That food is used by fish, coral, inverts - and what they dont use is excreted as 'waste'. The same thing happens to 'particulate organics' - bacteria, algae, etc. Bacteria then act on the waste - and some of the unused particulate organic and use some of it for growth and produce more waste. In the end - adding fish food is the same as adding inorganic nitrogen - isnt it? BTW - as I said before - Im not a big fan of adjusting any of those things to control algae or dinoflagellates. I think competition with other desirable (or more desirable) fauna is the key to controlling them.