Dinoflagellates - What I learned over the years to deal with it

Reef and Dive

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Let me introduce myself, my name is Paulo Scaldaferri, a Brazilian reefer who have been dealing with dinos as a special area of interest: I had it on my own tanks many times before and sometimes for months.

This led me to an avid interest of study of those alveolates, including reading many scientific articles and the famous R2R topic (“are you tired of battling dinos altogether”) with hundreds of pages, among others. I often chime in to help people whenever I can. Here in Brazil other reefers often send me samples of their “dinos” for microscopic analysis (and no, I do now work with this - I’m a doctor).

Over the years, this gave me a reasonable idea of the nature of the bad dinoflagellates.

I’m aware dino blooms occur in nature in situations of eutrophication. Many articles show this. I’m also aware that a high N-P stoichiometric relation is pretty consistent with dinoflagellates replication in many articles. Because of this I usually advise against the so-called good ratios while battling dinos because they replicate much faster than other microrganisms in this case, and this worsens the problem.

Other things have been shown to accelerate their growth in articles and for this reason I don’t ever advise it, like iron dosing. Allelopathy by diatoms inhibits their growth, so while battling dinos is not the best time to be so 0 RODI crazy. Silica dosing eventually helps to reduce some dinos.

That said, there is a great questioning of some of those scientific concepts among us reefers: very frequently, repeated experiences have shown that zero nutrients longterm actually leads to dinos, specially on new tanks. I believe the main reason for that, and what differs from studies in nature from tanks, is that we have been starting out tanks too sterile these days.

This just shifts the chances of survival for the few microrganisms that happen to do well in this conditions (I don’t mean that they prefer). Once they start thriving it gets hard for other organisms to thrive because of their toxins like ovatoxin and mascarenotoxin (they can also kill pretators such as hermits and even copepods).

These days I think it is really not that hard to deal with dinos once we use a microscope and detect their genus.

Ostreopsidaceae (Ostreopsis sp, Coolia sp) are pretty toxic and they were a big trouble in the past. Although they are classified as benthic species, they like pretty well to occupy the water column and these days are very easily controlled by a good UV (1 w/3 gal or 1 w/10L) with flow slow enough for parasites (being faster to solve when UV is used on the display and not on the sump).

Other genus are harder to deal but far from impossible, like Amphidinium (large and small cell), Prorocentrum, Gymnodinium etc.

Over time it got me some confidence to deal with them so I even “created the conditions” and “solved it in days” in my own display just to demonstrate it on video: it is in my YT channel as a video to show Cruz Arias - Elegant Corals for people in Brazil.

I’m not saying at all that Cruz protocol is perfect, but it shows pretty well some of the best methods to deal with dinos: saprophitic bacteria dosing together with carbon (not carbon alone once dinos take advantage); and mechanical removal by micro-bubbling, and frequent rock blasting for dinos and detritus.

Even a huge UV is not enough for these dinoflagellates.

A blackout reduces most dinos for some days but is rarelly a longterm solution.

Peroxide dosing and medications alone do not solve it, and sometimes are too harsh for corals. Often cyano also appears to say hello, azythromicin deals with cyano but worsens dinos. On the other hand, I have to admit that, when a lot of green algae come together with dinos, dosing fluconazole pretty frequently helps to start to solve both.

Phyto and copepod dosing looks initially like a good idea, but it has been tried many times, and even in high amounts usually do not solve the problem (and phyto species have not shown the same alellophatic effects as diatoms).

Temperature raising, sorry, but it is just another myth, it only shifts the entire tank balance for a while and is near ever a solution.

Raising the pH longterm is usually a good thing since most dinos thrive with 7.8 to 8. There are species that like higher pH (like Alexandrium catenella) but I never found this guy on a tank microscopic analysis.

All that said, taking longterm care of this shifts helps a lot to control dinos.
But is very important to do some observations that usually people who fail do not take into consideration: from many many microscopic analyses that I’ve done I have never found a sample where I did not find at least one dino. From the microscopic point of view they are nearly ubiquitous. So many people just get crazy about small dinos patches and actually harm the tank and corals a lot more trying to solve it. It is impossible, IMHO, to totally avoid dinos entrance into the tank by any means.

Often people also misidentify something as a dinoflagellate problem: brown things with bubbles are very frequently other things. Sometimes very strong lights often make corals expel simbionts that look a lot like dinos (the are in fact dinoflagellates, but Symbiodinium that develop flagella while leaving the corals). These specific ones are not the bad dinos and no, they do not transform themselves into other dino species.

I hope this explanation helps people with this casual problem that is far from impossible to solve.
 

Max93

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Thanks for sharing! Good read too.

I’m currently battling dinos but I don’t have any corals in my tank at this time (1 year cycle). All I have is my tang gang and a few other fish.
Do you think I should tackle my problem with chemicals, such as using Dino X?
 

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Let me introduce myself, my name is Paulo Scaldaferri, a Brazilian reefer who have been dealing with dinos as a special area of interest: I had it on my own tanks many times before and sometimes for months.

This led me to an avid interest of study of those alveolates, including reading many scientific articles and the famous R2R topic (“are you tired of battling dinos altogether”) with hundreds of pages, among others. I often chime in to help people whenever I can. Here in Brazil other reefers often send me samples of their “dinos” for microscopic analysis (and no, I do now work with this - I’m a doctor).

Over the years, this gave me a reasonable idea of the nature of the bad dinoflagellates.

I’m aware dino blooms occur in nature in situations of eutrophication. Many articles show this. I’m also aware that a high N-P stoichiometric relation is pretty consistent with dinoflagellates replication in many articles. Because of this I usually advise against the so-called good ratios while battling dinos because they replicate much faster than other microrganisms in this case, and this worsens the problem.

Other things have been shown to accelerate their growth in articles and for this reason I don’t ever advise it, like iron dosing. Allelopathy by diatoms inhibits their growth, so while battling dinos is not the best time to be so 0 RODI crazy. Silica dosing eventually helps to reduce some dinos.

That said, there is a great questioning of some of those scientific concepts among us reefers: very frequently, repeated experiences have shown that zero nutrients longterm actually leads to dinos, specially on new tanks. I believe the main reason for that, and what differs from studies in nature from tanks, is that we have been starting out tanks too sterile these days.

This just shifts the chances of survival for the few microrganisms that happen to do well in this conditions (I don’t mean that they prefer). Once they start thriving it gets hard for other organisms to thrive because of their toxins like ovatoxin and mascarenotoxin (they can also kill pretators such as hermits and even copepods).

These days I think it is really not that hard to deal with dinos once we use a microscope and detect their genus.

Ostreopsidaceae (Ostreopsis sp, Coolia sp) are pretty toxic and they were a big trouble in the past. Although they are classified as benthic species, they like pretty well to occupy the water column and these days are very easily controlled by a good UV (1 w/3 gal or 1 w/10L) with flow slow enough for parasites (being faster to solve when UV is used on the display and not on the sump).

Other genus are harder to deal but far from impossible, like Amphidinium (large and small cell), Prorocentrum, Gymnodinium etc.

Over time it got me some confidence to deal with them so I even “created the conditions” and “solved it in days” in my own display just to demonstrate it on video: it is in my YT channel as a video to show Cruz Arias - Elegant Corals for people in Brazil.

I’m not saying at all that Cruz protocol is perfect, but it shows pretty well some of the best methods to deal with dinos: saprophitic bacteria dosing together with carbon (not carbon alone once dinos take advantage); and mechanical removal by micro-bubbling, and frequent rock blasting for dinos and detritus.

Even a huge UV is not enough for these dinoflagellates.

A blackout reduces most dinos for some days but is rarelly a longterm solution.

Peroxide dosing and medications alone do not solve it, and sometimes are too harsh for corals. Often cyano also appears to say hello, azythromicin deals with cyano but worsens dinos. On the other hand, I have to admit that, when a lot of green algae come together with dinos, dosing fluconazole pretty frequently helps to start to solve both.

Phyto and copepod dosing looks initially like a good idea, but it has been tried many times, and even in high amounts usually do not solve the problem (and phyto species have not shown the same alellophatic effects as diatoms).

Temperature raising, sorry, but it is just another myth, it only shifts the entire tank balance for a while and is near ever a solution.

Raising the pH longterm is usually a good thing since most dinos thrive with 7.8 to 8. There are species that like higher pH (like Alexandrium catenella) but I never found this guy on a tank microscopic analysis.

All that said, taking longterm care of this shifts helps a lot to control dinos.
But is very important to do some observations that usually people who fail do not take into consideration: from many many microscopic analyses that I’ve done I have never found a sample where I did not find at least one dino. From the microscopic point of view they are nearly ubiquitous. So many people just get crazy about small dinos patches and actually harm the tank and corals a lot more trying to solve it. It is impossible, IMHO, to totally avoid dinos entrance into the tank by any means.

Often people also misidentify something as a dinoflagellate problem: brown things with bubbles are very frequently other things. Sometimes very strong lights often make corals expel simbionts that look a lot like dinos (the are in fact dinoflagellates, but Symbiodinium that develop flagella while leaving the corals). These specific ones are not the bad dinos and no, they do not transform themselves into other dino species.

I hope this explanation helps people with this casual problem that is far from impossible to solve.
Thank you for sharing. I've seen your posts on dinos around here quite often, and I don't recall disagreeing with any of your advice. :)

I am familiar with the Cruz method, but haven't felt comfortable recommending it. I feel that a typical dino ridden biome is already in a fragile condition for this level of disruption. Perhaps if I had practiced it a few times myself, I would feel differently.

How would you address my concern? What tank situation (or dino species) is ideally suited? When would you NOT advise using the Cruz method?

I keep a bunch of those crazy colored, overpriced acropora, so my general attitude is "less is more" when it comes to shaking up the biome.

Scattered thoughout those 11,000 posts are some decent methods for dealing with most captive dinos, but sometimes they still don't work. It is funny, someone posted just the other night "is there a single document somewhere out there that puts the methods in one place so I don't have to read hundreds of conflicting posts?"

I spent about 7 hours typing one up yesterday. Once I get it into shape, I will pass it around to a few folks for comment/correction, likely starting with @taricha .
 
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Thanks for sharing! Good read too.

I’m currently battling dinos but I don’t have any corals in my tank at this time (1 year cycle). All I have is my tang gang and a few other fish.
Do you think I should tackle my problem with chemicals, such as using Dino X?

I would not put it as my first choices.
 

Singspot

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Let me introduce myself, my name is Paulo Scaldaferri, a Brazilian reefer who have been dealing with dinos as a special area of interest: I had it on my own tanks many times before and sometimes for months.

This led me to an avid interest of study of those alveolates, including reading many scientific articles and the famous R2R topic (“are you tired of battling dinos altogether”) with hundreds of pages, among others. I often chime in to help people whenever I can. Here in Brazil other reefers often send me samples of their “dinos” for microscopic analysis (and no, I do now work with this - I’m a doctor).

Over the years, this gave me a reasonable idea of the nature of the bad dinoflagellates.

I’m aware dino blooms occur in nature in situations of eutrophication. Many articles show this. I’m also aware that a high N-P stoichiometric relation is pretty consistent with dinoflagellates replication in many articles. Because of this I usually advise against the so-called good ratios while battling dinos because they replicate much faster than other microrganisms in this case, and this worsens the problem.

Other things have been shown to accelerate their growth in articles and for this reason I don’t ever advise it, like iron dosing. Allelopathy by diatoms inhibits their growth, so while battling dinos is not the best time to be so 0 RODI crazy. Silica dosing eventually helps to reduce some dinos.

That said, there is a great questioning of some of those scientific concepts among us reefers: very frequently, repeated experiences have shown that zero nutrients longterm actually leads to dinos, specially on new tanks. I believe the main reason for that, and what differs from studies in nature from tanks, is that we have been starting out tanks too sterile these days.

This just shifts the chances of survival for the few microrganisms that happen to do well in this conditions (I don’t mean that they prefer). Once they start thriving it gets hard for other organisms to thrive because of their toxins like ovatoxin and mascarenotoxin (they can also kill pretators such as hermits and even copepods).

These days I think it is really not that hard to deal with dinos once we use a microscope and detect their genus.

Ostreopsidaceae (Ostreopsis sp, Coolia sp) are pretty toxic and they were a big trouble in the past. Although they are classified as benthic species, they like pretty well to occupy the water column and these days are very easily controlled by a good UV (1 w/3 gal or 1 w/10L) with flow slow enough for parasites (being faster to solve when UV is used on the display and not on the sump).

Other genus are harder to deal but far from impossible, like Amphidinium (large and small cell), Prorocentrum, Gymnodinium etc.

Over time it got me some confidence to deal with them so I even “created the conditions” and “solved it in days” in my own display just to demonstrate it on video: it is in my YT channel as a video to show Cruz Arias - Elegant Corals for people in Brazil.

I’m not saying at all that Cruz protocol is perfect, but it shows pretty well some of the best methods to deal with dinos: saprophitic bacteria dosing together with carbon (not carbon alone once dinos take advantage); and mechanical removal by micro-bubbling, and frequent rock blasting for dinos and detritus.

Even a huge UV is not enough for these dinoflagellates.

A blackout reduces most dinos for some days but is rarelly a longterm solution.

Peroxide dosing and medications alone do not solve it, and sometimes are too harsh for corals. Often cyano also appears to say hello, azythromicin deals with cyano but worsens dinos. On the other hand, I have to admit that, when a lot of green algae come together with dinos, dosing fluconazole pretty frequently helps to start to solve both.

Phyto and copepod dosing looks initially like a good idea, but it has been tried many times, and even in high amounts usually do not solve the problem (and phyto species have not shown the same alellophatic effects as diatoms).

Temperature raising, sorry, but it is just another myth, it only shifts the entire tank balance for a while and is near ever a solution.

Raising the pH longterm is usually a good thing since most dinos thrive with 7.8 to 8. There are species that like higher pH (like Alexandrium catenella) but I never found this guy on a tank microscopic analysis.

All that said, taking longterm care of this shifts helps a lot to control dinos.
But is very important to do some observations that usually people who fail do not take into consideration: from many many microscopic analyses that I’ve done I have never found a sample where I did not find at least one dino. From the microscopic point of view they are nearly ubiquitous. So many people just get crazy about small dinos patches and actually harm the tank and corals a lot more trying to solve it. It is impossible, IMHO, to totally avoid dinos entrance into the tank by any means.

Often people also misidentify something as a dinoflagellate problem: brown things with bubbles are very frequently other things. Sometimes very strong lights often make corals expel simbionts that look a lot like dinos (the are in fact dinoflagellates, but Symbiodinium that develop flagella while leaving the corals). These specific ones are not the bad dinos and no, they do not transform themselves into other dino species.

I hope this explanation helps people with this casual problem that is far from impossible to solve.
Interesting read but I missed gathering specifically- is the dino a problem or not? Are rhere any solution for it?
 

ScottB

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Thanks for sharing! Good read too.

I’m currently battling dinos but I don’t have any corals in my tank at this time (1 year cycle). All I have is my tang gang and a few other fish.
Do you think I should tackle my problem with chemicals, such as using Dino X?
I started working on a dinoflagellate user guide this weekend, and the first part reflects my recommendation. Some of the links won't yet work. this is WIP.

As the title suggests, this is intended as a short guide of what to do when you suspect dinoflagellates are trying to overtake your system. It is an attempt to boil down the protocols discussed over 11,000 posts in this "Are you Tired" thread along with thousands of other dino threads. I did not craft this protocol, nor have I conducted proper scientific tests to produce efficacy data. This is a simple distillation of many hundreds of observations. Nothing here is 100% effective nor terribly immediate, but if followed diligently the odds are pretty good that you will reduce harm and get back to a more stable biome. There is one hobbyist I must shout out to as my mentor on this subject and that is @taricha. Whenever I have a question, I typically want his answer.

We commonly find 5 different dinoflagellates in our captive systems. If your system has any vintage to it, some blend of these are already present. Like bacteria, you can't really avoid some blend of them entirely, nor should you try. They are a very natural microorganism that typically leads a very marginal existence alongside other, more dominant competitors. These competitors include diatoms, bacterial film, film algae, coralline algae, GHA, turf, corals, pods, etc. I could dump a bucket of dinos into my system today and my reef would not miss a beat because my competitive population is too established and healthy to cede surface to dinos. The point is, dinoflagellates are not super predators, rather they are marginal scavengers that only thrive once a reefer has starved, poisoned, or otherwise weakened the natural competitors.

So let's get to it. Here is the outline for this article:

Section 1: Do I have dinoflagellates or something else?
Section
2: What type of dinoflagellate do I have and why does it matter?
Section
3: Treatment protocols common to ALL dinoflagellate species
Section 4: Treatment protocol for Ostreopsis, Prorocentrum, Small Cell Amphidinium & Coolia
Section
5: Treatment protocol for Large Cell Amphidinium
Section
6: What to expect next & Avoiding relapse
Section 7: FAQs

Section 1: Do I have dinoflagellates or something else?

I will include some images of what dinos typically can look like in the aquarium. Each of the 5 species has a slightly different look in the tank. They can also look very different and meld into any of the other competitors mentioned above. They all form some kind of mucus. Some have long strands with bubbles while others do not. The mucus could be reddish, brown, gold, or in between. They can take over rock, sand, glass, plastics. They can be confused with diatoms, cyanobacteria, bacterial film and chrysophytes to name a common few. Good news: you don't need a microscope to find out if the gunk is dinoflagellates.

The coffee filter test:
a) Syphon out a good sample of the gunk along with some tank water.
b) Place in a container with a lid and shake very hard for 30 seconds or so. The gunk should be dissolved now.
c) Pour the solution through a coffee filter into a clear glass. The water should be largely clear now.
d) Place the jar under a light source for roughly an hour.
e) If the gunk coagulates back into a glob, well, welcome to the club nobody really wants to be in.

Section 2: What type of dinoflagellate do I have and why does it matter?
We can make some educated guesses without a microscope based on appearance and location, but I strongly encourage everyone to confirm which species is/are present. It is very common to have more than one species. Some are toxic while others are just a visual nuisance. Most respond well to UV treatment while one does not. They have different competitors too.

You can buy a student microscope for under $50 that will work just fine. 400X magnification is all you need, really. My son and I use it at least twice a month for all kinds of tank related stuff. Here is a link to one I bought but there are plenty of other suitable models. You will use your camera phone to take a video through the eyepiece. Experiment with zooming in with the camera for a bit more magnification. You might consider buying a phone cradle unless you have the hands of a surgeon. If you can find one with better reviews, buy that one. I recommend making a video because the swim pattern helps to determine the species almost as much as the shape -- especially when the image quality isn't perfect. Nothing special about slide prep, just use a dropper to suck up gunk & water and drop it on the slide. You get 400X by using the 10X eyepiece and 40X barrel.

Once you have a video, you have options:
a) You can ID them yourself, thanks to the fine Dinoflagellate Identification guide put together by @taricha. Be sure to look at the videos he has linked so you can compare swim patterns.
b) You can post the video to the main "Are You Tired" thread. There are a handful of people that watch the thread regularly and are quite good at identifying dinos. In the event of a split decision, tag @taricha for confirmation.

Again, getting a proper ID on your dino(s) determines a few important things:
a) Do I need to (properly) implement UV equipment? Or is that a waste of time & serious money?
b) Do I need to do a blackout of the tank? Or not?
c) Do I need to be concerned with potentially serious toxins? Or not?
d) Should I order and dose some silicates? Or not?
 
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How would you address my concern? What tank situation (or dino species) is ideally suited? When would you NOT advise using the Cruz method?

Actually I agree with you.

This method is good, but involves a little too much change. Alk changes quite a bit from day to day. Specially for sensible acropora it can be too much.

It is a good method for non-Ostreopsidaceae (Amphis, Proro, Gymno etc). Not good for Ostreopsis and Coolia.

It solves some cases, but there are 2 possible required management of failure:

- for long term success some people require bacteria and carbon dosing long term (but a much lower volume of both)

- and I’ve seen pretty often cases when there was a mixed dinoflagellate biota, and Ostreopsis start to be the next problem, so now it is a good idea to introduce UV

Cruz suggests continuous dosing of peroxide for cases of failure but my personal observation on this is that it has been less efficient and more aggressive for corals.

Actually I demonstrated the method for 2 reasons:

1 - to show that a competition based theory is very acceptable, since just carbon and bacteria are pretty efficient suppressing dinos;

2 - to show a translated portuguese version because many non-english speakers around here requested me to do so.

Nowadays I have 2 frequent suggestions for these types of dinos (non-Ostreopsidaceae):

1 - if the problem is some patches substrate brown dust of dinos: just take care of the tank and corals and forget about it;

2 - if dinos are getting too problematic, just take the lessons of the method and it is possible to do a slower management with the same actions but lower dosage for a longer period, without reaching a real bloom. Blasting substrate patches with a turkey baster always seems like a good idea. Continuous micro-bubbling for more than 7-10 days stresses corals and fish (Cruz claims to do so for gas exchange during the bloom, but I personally believe it also helps a bit creating agglutinations of dinos that go to the mechanical filter), but it can still be done at night for some hours for a pretty long period without damage. When dinos are under good control a blackout of 72h sometimes helps to keep results much longer (I do not advise this as a first management).
 
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Interesting read but I missed gathering specifically- is the dino a problem or not? Are rhere any solution for it?
The answer to that is: the same as green algae, cyano.
Small patches are not a problem.
If they are taking control everywhere and CUC and corals are dying they are a problem for sure (on the microscope we see tons of dinos and almost no copepods, amphipods etc).

Yes for the problematic there are two groups of solutions for sure:

1 - Ostreopsidaceae: UV
very easily controlled by a good UV (1 w/3 gal or 1 w/10L) with flow slow enough for parasites (being faster to solve when UV is used on the display and not on the sump).
2 - non-Ostreopsidaceae:
The more aggressive method - Cruz Arias Elegant Corals and long term bacteria and carbon dosing

And what I more often suggest:
2 - if dinos are getting too problematic, just take the lessons of the method and it is possible to do a slower management with the same actions but lower dosage for a longer period, without reaching a real bloom. Blasting substrate patches with a turkey baster always seems like a good idea. Continuous micro-bubbling for more than 7-10 days stresses corals and fish (Cruz claims to do so for gas exchange during the bloom, but I personally believe it also helps a bit creating agglutinations of dinos that go to the mechanical filter), but it can still be done at night for some hours for a pretty long period without damage. When dinos are under good control a blackout of 72h sometimes helps to keep results much longer (I do not advise this as a first management).
 
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I started working on a dinoflagellate user guide this weekend, and the first part reflects my recommendation. Some of the links won't yet work. this is WIP.

As the title suggests, this is intended as a short guide of what to do when you suspect dinoflagellates are trying to overtake your system. It is an attempt to boil down the protocols discussed over 11,000 posts in this "Are you Tired" thread along with thousands of other dino threads. I did not craft this protocol, nor have I conducted proper scientific tests to produce efficacy data. This is a simple distillation of many hundreds of observations. Nothing here is 100% effective nor terribly immediate, but if followed diligently the odds are pretty good that you will reduce harm and get back to a more stable biome. There is one hobbyist I must shout out to as my mentor on this subject and that is @taricha. Whenever I have a question, I typically want his answer.

We commonly find 5 different dinoflagellates in our captive systems. If your system has any vintage to it, some blend of these are already present. Like bacteria, you can't really avoid some blend of them entirely, nor should you try. They are a very natural microorganism that typically leads a very marginal existence alongside other, more dominant competitors. These competitors include diatoms, bacterial film, film algae, coralline algae, GHA, turf, corals, pods, etc. I could dump a bucket of dinos into my system today and my reef would not miss a beat because my competitive population is too established and healthy to cede surface to dinos. The point is, dinoflagellates are not super predators, rather they are marginal scavengers that only thrive once a reefer has starved, poisoned, or otherwise weakened the natural competitors.

So let's get to it. Here is the outline for this article:

Section 1: Do I have dinoflagellates or something else?
Section
2: What type of dinoflagellate do I have and why does it matter?
Section
3: Treatment protocols common to ALL dinoflagellate species
Section 4: Treatment protocol for Ostreopsis, Prorocentrum, Small Cell Amphidinium & Coolia
Section
5: Treatment protocol for Large Cell Amphidinium
Section
6: What to expect next & Avoiding relapse
Section 7: FAQs

Section 1: Do I have dinoflagellates or something else?

I will include some images of what dinos typically can look like in the aquarium. Each of the 5 species has a slightly different look in the tank. They can also look very different and meld into any of the other competitors mentioned above. They all form some kind of mucus. Some have long strands with bubbles while others do not. The mucus could be reddish, brown, gold, or in between. They can take over rock, sand, glass, plastics. They can be confused with diatoms, cyanobacteria, bacterial film and chrysophytes to name a common few. Good news: you don't need a microscope to find out if the gunk is dinoflagellates.

The coffee filter test:
a) Syphon out a good sample of the gunk along with some tank water.
b) Place in a container with a lid and shake very hard for 30 seconds or so. The gunk should be dissolved now.
c) Pour the solution through a coffee filter into a clear glass. The water should be largely clear now.
d) Place the jar under a light source for roughly an hour.
e) If the gunk coagulates back into a glob, well, welcome to the club nobody really wants to be in.

Section 2: What type of dinoflagellate do I have and why does it matter?
We can make some educated guesses without a microscope based on appearance and location, but I strongly encourage everyone to confirm which species is/are present. It is very common to have more than one species. Some are toxic while others are just a visual nuisance. Most respond well to UV treatment while one does not. They have different competitors too.

You can buy a student microscope for under $50 that will work just fine. 400X magnification is all you need, really. My son and I use it at least twice a month for all kinds of tank related stuff. Here is a link to one I bought but there are plenty of other suitable models. You will use your camera phone to take a video through the eyepiece. Experiment with zooming in with the camera for a bit more magnification. You might consider buying a phone cradle unless you have the hands of a surgeon. If you can find one with better reviews, buy that one. I recommend making a video because the swim pattern helps to determine the species almost as much as the shape -- especially when the image quality isn't perfect. Nothing special about slide prep, just use a dropper to suck up gunk & water and drop it on the slide. You get 400X by using the 10X eyepiece and 40X barrel.

Once you have a video, you have options:
a) You can ID them yourself, thanks to the fine Dinoflagellate Identification guide put together by @taricha. Be sure to look at the videos he has linked so you can compare swim patterns.
b) You can post the video to the main "Are You Tired" thread. There are a handful of people that watch the thread regularly and are quite good at identifying dinos. In the event of a split decision, tag @taricha for confirmation.

Again, getting a proper ID on your dino(s) determines a few important things:
a) Do I need to (properly) implement UV equipment? Or is that a waste of time & serious money?
b) Do I need to do a blackout of the tank? Or not?
c) Do I need to be concerned with potentially serious toxins? Or not?
d) Should I order and dose some silicates? Or not?
This is just amazing!!!!

The only thing I would consider different would be the group treatments:

1 - Ostreopsidaceae (Ostreopsis and Coolia): easy answer UV

2 - all the others:
Hardcore: Cruz - plus continuous management
Less aggressive:
Cruz ideas but more “soft” and over a long period

And maybe a 3rd and 4th groups:
- dinos + green algae
- mixed dinos or shift to another dominant genus
 

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This thread is must-read for those interested in dinos.
@Reef and Dive and @ScottB both absolutely know their stuff.
(more in depth comments after I've dug a little deeper on the great work here.)
 
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This thread is must-read for those interested in dinos.
@Reef and Dive and @ScottB both absolutely know their stuff.
(more in depth comments after I've dug a little deeper on the great work here.)
Coming from one of the “Bibles” on the subject it means a lot to me! Thanks!
 
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So from what I gather from the OP is that everyone has dinos and there is nothing you can do... great! I am glad you are able to ID dinos in your microscope!
Not exactly. There is more to gather, it was just a long text to read I know. They are not always that bad, sure. And, when they are bad, there are solutions for sure as I pointed out.
 

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And maybe a 3rd and 4th groups:
- dinos + green algae

It seems this scenario is one of the hardest to solve for. I've seen it several times (on the forum, not in person) and seems to take forever to resolve. Like, a year long road. Some just rebooted the whole thing. (Which I would never advocate.

How would you go about resolving? Which do you address first? Or assault them both at the same time?
 
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It seems this scenario is one of the hardest to solve for. I've seen it several times (on the forum, not in person) and seems to take forever to resolve. Like, a year long road. Some just rebooted the whole thing. (Which I would never advocate.

How would you go about resolving? Which do you address first? Or assault them both at the same time?
First fluconazole (10mg/L), 1 week later start carbon and bacteria dosing. Not easy actually, one of the hard situations. In this specific one I believe overall in-tank nutrients are very high even when measured 0. To me looks more like the eutrophication cases from scientific studies in nature.
 

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I really like this thread but I keep seeing comments about carbon dosing and bacteria dosing. What kind of bacteria are we talking about, I agree that diversity helps but most of what I see out there are nitrifying bacteria and just not sure that is what we want. Really would like more insight and information into the carbon/bacteria dosing side of things.

Thanks :)
 
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I really like this thread but I keep seeing comments about carbon dosing and bacteria dosing. What kind of bacteria are we talking about, I agree that diversity helps but most of what I see out there are nitrifying bacteria and just not sure that is what we want. Really would like more insight and information into the carbon/bacteria dosing side of things.

Thanks :)

Carbon usage is not restricted to nitrifying bacteria.

We are talking here about saprophytic bacteria. They also take advantage of carbon dosing to multiply, so this is why I advocate carbon dosing together with this type of bacteria.

This thread I posted long ago can provide even better insight on the role of carbon:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/redfield-ratio-revisited-–-what-are-we-doing-wrong.742503/
 

Mastering the art of locking and unlocking water pathways: What type of valves do you have on your aquarium plumbing?

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