Dinoflagellates - dinos a possible cure!? Follow along and see!

[Capn Briarius]

Everything testing at zero. Not running any kind of reactor at all. Sump but no refugium. PH at 8.3.

 

[mcarroll]

Everything testing at zero.

Definitely the root of the problem. (Are calcium, alkalinity and magnesium testing at OK levels though? pH would indicate a "yes" but let us know.)

More feeding would most likley be where I'd start. Use an auto-feeder if necessary...Eheim's is probably tops.

Before you start though: Any changes you make should be small, and you should monitor the tank and test results pretty closely for a few weeks after making a change. If all is well but still not improving, then you can increase feeding a bit more.

Repeat as needed until some nutrients are consistently showing up in test results. Around 5-10 ppm NO3 and anything up to about 0.05 ppm of PO3 would be good.

An imbalance is common when you add by feeding, but not guaranteed....so you may end up with just PO4 accumulating, or just NO3. Commonly NO3 becomes scarce first since denitrification in the tank is always reducing the supply beyond growth factors, but keep your eyes open as it can be one or both.

We don't want NO3 or PO4 out of control either....so moving slowly is important.

 

[Capn Briarius]

It's a really weird situation. Long story short there are two display tanks at a marine lab. These tanks are 15 years old. They hired me to help them get the tanks in better shape, fight the "ongoing algae problem" they thought was cyano, and on my second day I was like, "Uh ... can we use one of these microscopes?" and now I look like a genius. I have some Kent products on hand, have been approved to purchase some B-Ionic. Dosed Magnesium today.

Wait it gets worse (humorous tone, I am psyched to have this job) I am supposed to have these tanks looking good by Earth Day. That is in 11 days. So, I do have a pretty much endless supply of IO boxes. I am thinking we do a total blackout for 3 days, and start using B-Ionic. Stop doing water changes ... and, what would you feed to some wrasses, seargent majors and a filefish to raise Po4?

 

[Capn Briarius]

First day they handed me some Chemi-Clean and said, "Let's use this." Not currently part of my plan.

 

[mcarroll]

What's alive in these tanks? (Details as far as you can!)

The best avenue for you to take depends heavily on that answer.

 

[Capn Briarius]

Coral wise, some mushrooms and zoas in the tank with the wrasses and seargent majors. One tank has a chocolate chip star (this tank has not been tested for dinos yet) and I forget what is in that tank, fish wise, say 3 seargeant majors. Each tank is roughly 265g, without sumps. Both tanks have rock and semi deep sb.

Here is a photo of the one I tested today for dinos. Sorry, was trying to get a pic of the dinos with the microscope, but we lost it. Will be testing the starfish tank later. It does not look as bad and might pass.

 

[Capn Briarius]

Oh yeah, currently no snails or hermits. They die too fast.

 

[Capn Briarius]

Thinking about adding some xenia after the blackout.

 

[Capn Briarius]

There is one person there with a Dr. in front of her name, and she thought dinoflagellates were "Really cool" Yeah, maybe in nature they are. Indistructable little buggers. "It's the worst thing possible in a reef tank. 2nd would be aiptasia." and she says, "Oh, we had that too! The little anemones?"

Old Tank Syndrome? I was told today that starting over from square 1 with these tanks, "Might be an option."

 

[mcarroll]

I think you have a tank that has a lot of live rock, which means a lot of denitrification.

So NO3 is probably not just zero now, but historically zero....competition to the cyano was starved out...including coraline algae. The only apparent coraline algae I see in the pic are on the drain box and they appear in the photo to be long-dead.

So I think you have an N-starved tank.

Cyano, which can use elemental N, has taken advantage of a nice competition-free* zone to bloom.

The dino's you saw are thriving off the cyano (food) and lack of competition.

Both are likely to be generating toxins due to the low-PO4 environment...toxins which may further impede growth of their competition and certainly kills their predators.

Does the same red cyano grow on the glass, or do you at least get some green growth there?

* You'd ideally like to have all that bare rock covered with coraline algae or corals.

11 Days, What To Do?
Very little time. A tank may actually go through a case of The Uglies getting out of the situation it's in. It'll be a pretty big transition.

If you're willing to sacrifice the corals, move the fish to the other tank and do a total blackout...wrap the tank in trashbags from the floor up to the top. It might work. That possibly gets you one tank to show off.

Maybe someone else will have a better idea.

Thinking about adding some xenia after the blackout.

As long as you really like Xenia that's a fine plan.....but I think I'd wait until you've gotten a little past this cyano/zero-nutrients thing first. Shortest path might be to dose NO3 and PO4 directly to register some minimal numbers in dissolved nutrients for at least a few days before adding them.

Keep us posted if you try that!

Now might be a good time to suggest this thread:

• Potassium nitrate (Spectracide stump remover) dosing steps (long thread, but good thread!)
• Post #330 of that thread has a link to a nice calculator you can use to make precise doses of KNO3.

The calc author has a great article explaining the calculator here:

• A Nitrate Dosing Calculator For Better Tank Health (And Better Coral Color!)

 

[Capn Briarius]

I'm assuming (I know, I saw that movie too) that mushrooms and zoas and a fairly light fish load, will not have a problem with a 72 hour blackout.

Also, about the glass, it is cleaned regularly, so I don't really know what grows on it.

Re: Coraline, there is some living coraline in the tank, but it is not thriving. This is one reason why I want to start dosing B-Ionic.

Re: Xenia. I do like xenia.

 

[Capn Briarius]

Of note, also at this same location, 700k gallon artificial reef. That also has problems, but for now is not part of my assigned duties.

Kinda funny at one point today, following my new boss (he has a lot to do) I was standing on the edge of this 700k system with a syringe full of, what I believed to be dinos. Couldn't help but think, if I went "oops" and squirted it in that system, then we could REALLY learn how to fight dinos. Be a university budget behind it.

 

[mcarroll]

There is one person there with a Dr. in front of her name, and she thought dinoflagellates were "Really cool" Yeah, maybe in nature they are. Indistructable little buggers. "It's the worst thing possible in a reef tank. 2nd would be aiptasia." and she says, "Oh, we had that too! The little anemones?"

That's a pretty healthy perspective, so don't go trying to change her mind!

Aiptasia are like weeds: Unwanted, but not evil. Simply in the wrong place on the planet.

Dino's, cyano, etc are simply a sign of bad management.....unless you were shooting for a tidepool or some other environment where this is perfectly normal. They aren't entirely mysterious and they do not seem to be unsolvable.

This article has some great clues about what's going on:
Bacterivory in algae: A survival strategy during nutrient limitation

It really is a matter of perspective....not a good/evil thing.

Once the tank has dissolved nutrients...PO4 in particular...the algae won't "tox out" anymore.....you have to remove manually as much of what you see in the tank as possible.

After that you can start adding CUC back in. Start with one or two snails and work your way up....I started a little too soon with my first batch of new CUC cuz I didn't know and they did not make it. Coulda been a bad batch of snails, but I think it was still toxins. Second batch of snails I added a few weeks later is still kicking today!

Having said all that....

The aiptasia might be your most unsolvable problem.

Depending on what you have planned for the tank's future, I might just take you up on that reboot option. If corals (even Xenia) are in the plan...then almost for sure.

How many aiptasia are there though? I don't see any in the photo. If I have assumed wrong and you really only have a small number.....that can be dealt with by hand.

Another Big Idea For 11 Days
Dose the tank with NO3 and PO4.....clear the tank of as much toxic algae as you can....scrub and siphon it out with gusto! Skim wet. With all this and age....edible algae (still mostly cyano and dinos) will eventually dominate the toxic ones.

Add more fish at this point....two specifically. A bristletooth tank. One (or more, potentially....beautiful schooling fish in a large enough tank) Klein's Butterflyfish.

These guys will systematically remove cyaon/et al and aitpasia from the tank, respectively.

The Klein's is also capable of removing all other kinds of polyps if he's allowed to get hungry after the nice, soft aiptasia are gone, so be advised of that.

But the tank will be tidy!

And if you're good on the feeding, the Klein's might leave alone your corals. I've known quite a few people to keep them happy in coral tanks...I think they are one of the least-risk Butterflyfish to your corals, but not zero-risk.

This would also be a good follow-up read to that:
Why so many fish problems

 

[Capn Briarius]

Please define CUC.

I see no aiptasia. Hopefully, that problem was previously solved. I would like to, at some point, have a RBTA in this tank. Old, stable tank sounds good for that, if I can get things under control.

 

[mcarroll]

Sorry....Clean Up Crew. Snails, crabs, et al.

 

[mcarroll]

Anemones are phosphate pigs.

You have a nice-sized tank for the endeavour! I've seen (and sold) RBTA's that were almost 24" in diameter at maximum spread. (Still tennis ball size when they shrunk down. LOL.)

 

[taricha]

That's terrifying/hilarious about syringe of dinos
If it is ostreopsis...
3 things I can think of that will make it look great in 11 days.
1 - metronidazole - won't eradicate, but will generally get rid of 90% and force others into cyst state for a few weeks. Mine showed big effect by 8-9 days.
2 - hang filter floss in front of strong powerhead. Let it wave like a flag. ostreopsis will colonize the filter super heavily during daylight. Rinse out in fresh water once or twice a day.
3 - UV at night/early morning.
4 - lights out like you said.
Can combine some of these, but UV probably hurts metro and I think metro may not work on cells as well in dark.

 

[Capn Briarius]

Clean up crew is dead. I have scarlet hermits waiting for post blackout. Plan on, as you said, slowly adding snails.

Since my employer is a university, buying anything expensive requires a lot of paperwork. I think we have something like 5k scarlet hermits we just added to the 700k system to fight cyano. Seems like it is petty cash, under $50 ... or tens of thousands of dollars.

 

[Capn Briarius]

That metro sounds interesting. Will look into it. Buying a UV is likely not in the cards.

 

[Capn Briarius]

The little green boogers are actually mushrooms. They are looking a lot better already.

Hard to quote on my ipad.

"That's terrifying/hilarious about syringe of dinos."

I'm not sure my boss understood exactly how dangerous it was. I had the thing turned upwards, with my other hand underneath it just in case, cradling it like a baby. Second day, introduces dinos to the 700k system. Would not be a good start.