Dinoflagellates – Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether?

[George Willings]

What if you concentrate the algae growth for the competing counterpart for Dino's to the sump? That is where mine grew like a raging wild fire to combat Ostreopsis Dinoflagalletes.

 

[reeferfoxx]

What if you concentrate the algae growth for the competing counterpart for Dino's to the sump? That is where mine grew like a raging wild fire to combat Ostreopsis Dinoflagalletes.

I think the problem with that is you essentially shift dino growth to the sump. There are many similarities in the requirements for green algae and dinos. Nutrients and light.

 

[George Willings]

It doesn't shift the Dino's to the sump. It only places the algae like GHA in the sump. GHA in the sump is better than the display, and it will compete with the Dino's for nuetrients. Knowing the nutrient hogs GHA is, it will starve the Dino's. Exactly like I the situation I have dealt with. Where GHA grew like a wild fire in my rear sump. I had a grow light on it as well. Now I keep the nutrients elevated.

 

[dwest]

I haven't tried vibrant because i cannot buy it here in holland.
I have used PhycoEx. This is a predecessor of DinoX. And is in my opinion more effective and much safer fore lifestock.

Also phycoex is not allowed to be sold in holland, but I can buy from Germany.

Many of us with amphidinium are achieving some success by removing our sandbeds and keeping nutrients elevated. I have fought these since February and I believe my tank is finally coming back. I had similar losses as you.

 

[reeferfoxx]

It doesn't shift the Dino's to the sump. It only places the algae like GHA in the sump. GHA in the sump is better than the display, and it will compete with the Dino's for nuetrients. Knowing the nutrient hogs GHA is, it will starve the Dino's. Exactly like I the situation I have dealt with. Where GHA grew like a wild fire in my rear sump. I had a grow light on it as well. Now I keep the nutrients elevated.

Ok but what I'm saying is where there is light there are dinos. Often time people dont find dinos in the sump because there is nowhere to photosynthesize. That said, it allows other organisms like pods, worms, and other invertebrates to reproduce. Thats why we calls those areas refugiums. If you turn the lights in in those areas, it restricts reproduction for beneficial organisms and would in turn create an area for dinos to obtain refugium.

Although, its not a bad plan if your dinos cant obtain nutrients from hair algae. Coolia for instance can obtain its nutrients from hair algae. A lot of times coolia will grow on hair algae. The cure for that is to stop dosing nutrients, allow hair algae to starve out, and let organisms and bacteria clean up the coolia. I think the same can be said with amphidinium, which seems to restrict hair algae growth.

Now, if you had something easy like ostreopsis, UV will simply rid your tank of them.

 

[George Willings]

Ok but what I'm saying is where there is light there are dinos. Often time people dont find dinos in the sump because there is nowhere to photosynthesize. That said, it allows other organisms like pods, worms, and other invertebrates to reproduce. Thats why we calls those areas refugiums. If you turn the lights in in those areas, it restricts reproduction for beneficial organisms and would in turn create an area for dinos to obtain refugium.

Although, its not a bad plan if your dinos cant obtain nutrients from hair algae. Coolia for instance can obtain its nutrients from hair algae. A lot of times coolia will grow on hair algae. The cure for that is to stop dosing nutrients, allow hair algae to starve out, and let organisms and bacteria clean up the coolia. I think the same can be said with amphidinium, which seems to restrict hair algae growth.

Now, if you had something easy like ostreopsis, UV will simply rid your tank of them.

UV alone will not rid your tank of ostreopsis. I have tried that as well, and did nothing. That is what is dwelling in my tank, and a UV alone does nothing. You have to raise your nutrients with ostreopsis in conjunction with a UV, I also used the magnum from marineland to help.

Did not know that about coolia.

 

[reeferfoxx]

UV alone will not rid your tank of ostreopsis.

Not trying to turn this into an argument but the R2R member that enlightened us on UV and dinos only got our attention because he neglected to follow nutrient dosings and only ran UV. 48 hours later, his tank didn't show any dinos. Although, everyones experience and how badly ostreopsis is plaguing that tank varies, you can't make that a definitive statement.

 

[George Willings]

Mine was bad, which is why the UV alone did not work. The first outbreak, yeah it would have worked. The second, they laughed at it.

 

[reeferfoxx]

Mine was bad, which is why the UV alone did not work. The first outbreak, yeah it would have worked. The second, they laughed at it.

I hear you. At first I thought nutrients and UV killed off my coolia. Then GHA took off and the dinos came back with vengeance. The only reason i succeeded with them is I gave up. I built a tank to quarantine coral and fish before the rebuild and in that time, I accidentally beat coolia.

 

[George Willings]

That is a welcome surprise from an accident.

 

[Motohooligan]

Actually, after comparing those dinos to that strand of cyano in the same image, are you positive with the 10 micron measurement?

I’m reasonably sure the measurements are correct but not 100% certain. By chance do you know the average size of cyano? I may take another sample to the lab that took these pics just to see if anything has changed, these photos are about 6 months old.

A bit of background info......

Tank is only about 8 months old. DT is 230 gallon, basement sump is somewhat modular and can be from 50 to 250 gal depending on what I have online. (I can elaborate on my sump setup if anyone would like to see). Currently it’s running at about 150g. The tank was set up with with 200lbs caribsea special grade dry sand, 100lbs life rock shapes and 100lbs of live rock from LFS and the contents of a 10gal desktop nano (more on this later as I believe it was he root of this evil). Once everything was up and running the pair of damsels from the 10 and it’s sand and rock went in to start the cycle. Considering the light bioload and relatively large amount of well established live rock there really never was a real “cycle” so to speak. After a week or so I had a small diotom bloom and I figured that was that. Still no detectable nitrate so I added a small scopus tang and upped the feeding a bit. A week or so passes and still no nitrate but getting a bit of green film so I add a pair of cardinals and a small CUC. Now the nightmare begins... I get what at the time I think is another bloom of diotoms on the sand bed, but it develops bubbles and soon takes over the entire tank. After some googling and taking a sample to the lab I assume that it’s in fact dinos even though I can’t find a dead ringer for a match. I start with what I read in this or a similar thread, fight dirty! I ditch the skimmer, add fish,add corals, feed with reckless abandon, ditch water changes etc... this goes on for several months. At times I feel like I may be winning the war but the bloody brown film and bubbles come and go and are never completely suppressed then the UV that I had running died and they came back with vengeance. I’m not sure it was he UV that was keeping them at bay or just coincidence that they came back when it crapped out because I am now running 160w of UV... anyway at this point I take desperate measures and decide to take a chemical approach and hit it with dinox, bad idea, it only killed green stuff and didn’t touch the brown but stressed the livestock, everything but a cleaner shrimp survived but where not happy. Then I give Vibrent a go, it seemed to help at first but again it seems to mostly kill green not brown. All of this time keeping no3 and po4 at detectable levels was a challenge with heavy feeding and a reasonably large number of fish. Forward another month of no chemicals heavier feeding yet some fresh liverock hundreds of dollars of pods and phytoplankton and once again I think I’m winning. Have quite a bit of GHA ,never thought I would be happy to see it, a couple patches of cyano, No3 at 25ppm and managed to dose Po4 to get .1ppm but here I am today and the f@#&$*= brown film is dusting the sand and a few bubbles on here and there again!

I know this post is a bit of a rant and there are a mess of things I forgot to mention but here I am about ready to tear it down and start over.

 

[Acorral]

So I have these babies in my 200g frag tank:

Each small division is 1.1 micron so they measure around 33 x 42 microns.

I would say they are Prorocentrum, agree?

I am thinking on:

- 114w UV
- manual removal by siphon to 10 micron sock
- manual removal by taking frags out and scrubbing the bases in the sink and dipping the bases in peroxide.
- keeping sock always on with some activated carbon on it
- keeping NO3 higher than 10ppm and PO4 higher than 0.1ppm
- reduced photperiod and only blues on, whites off


Would you do anything different?

 

[reeferfoxx]

So I have these babies in my 200g frag tank:

Each small division is 1.1 micron so they measure around 33 x 42 microns.

I would say they are Prorocentrum, agree?

I am thinking on:

- 114w UV
- manual removal by siphon to 10 micron sock
- manual removal by taking frags out and scrubbing the bases in the sink and dipping the bases in peroxide.
- keeping sock always on with some activated carbon on it
- keeping NO3 higher than 10ppm and PO4 higher than 0.1ppm
- reduced photperiod and only blues on, whites off


Would you do anything different?

I agree with prorocentrum. I dont agree with adjusting photoperiod or light settings. If lighting is a factor its best to acclimate the tank to normal operation.

 

[Acorral]

T

I agree with prorocentrum. I dont agree with adjusting photoperiod or light settings. If lighting is a factor its best to acclimate the tank to normal operation.

Thanks for that... Then normal lighting schedule would be...

Do you think it is worth the effort of siphoning to filter sock vs blowing them with a powerhead many times a day?

 

[reeferfoxx]

Do you think it is worth the effort of siphoning to filter sock vs blowing them with a powerhead many times a day?

I think that would achieve two different goals. The filter socks purpose is to manual remove collected dinos vs blowing them with a powerhead would be to direct them to the over flow. Although similar, can have two different outcomes if you had UV sterilizer equipped. Pushing dinos into the overflow or UV section would help kill them and filter socks would also reduce the numbers.

 

[reeferfoxx]

I’m reasonably sure the measurements are correct but not 100% certain. By chance do you know the average size of cyano? I may take another sample to the lab that took these pics just to see if anything has changed, these photos are about 6 months old.

A bit of background info......

Tank is only about 8 months old. DT is 230 gallon, basement sump is somewhat modular and can be from 50 to 250 gal depending on what I have online. (I can elaborate on my sump setup if anyone would like to see). Currently it’s running at about 150g. The tank was set up with with 200lbs caribsea special grade dry sand, 100lbs life rock shapes and 100lbs of live rock from LFS and the contents of a 10gal desktop nano (more on this later as I believe it was he root of this evil). Once everything was up and running the pair of damsels from the 10 and it’s sand and rock went in to start the cycle. Considering the light bioload and relatively large amount of well established live rock there really never was a real “cycle” so to speak. After a week or so I had a small diotom bloom and I figured that was that. Still no detectable nitrate so I added a small scopus tang and upped the feeding a bit. A week or so passes and still no nitrate but getting a bit of green film so I add a pair of cardinals and a small CUC. Now the nightmare begins... I get what at the time I think is another bloom of diotoms on the sand bed, but it develops bubbles and soon takes over the entire tank. After some googling and taking a sample to the lab I assume that it’s in fact dinos even though I can’t find a dead ringer for a match. I start with what I read in this or a similar thread, fight dirty! I ditch the skimmer, add fish,add corals, feed with reckless abandon, ditch water changes etc... this goes on for several months. At times I feel like I may be winning the war but the bloody brown film and bubbles come and go and are never completely suppressed then the UV that I had running died and they came back with vengeance. I’m not sure it was he UV that was keeping them at bay or just coincidence that they came back when it crapped out because I am now running 160w of UV... anyway at this point I take desperate measures and decide to take a chemical approach and hit it with dinox, bad idea, it only killed green stuff and didn’t touch the brown but stressed the livestock, everything but a cleaner shrimp survived but where not happy. Then I give Vibrent a go, it seemed to help at first but again it seems to mostly kill green not brown. All of this time keeping no3 and po4 at detectable levels was a challenge with heavy feeding and a reasonably large number of fish. Forward another month of no chemicals heavier feeding yet some fresh liverock hundreds of dollars of pods and phytoplankton and once again I think I’m winning. Have quite a bit of GHA ,never thought I would be happy to see it, a couple patches of cyano, No3 at 25ppm and managed to dose Po4 to get .1ppm but here I am today and the f@#&$*= brown film is dusting the sand and a few bubbles on here and there again!

I know this post is a bit of a rant and there are a mess of things I forgot to mention but here I am about ready to tear it down and start over.

Deep breaths!

This is where taking it slower and being patient will benefit. Regardless of ID(which I believe to be coolia), if you achieved the green hair algae and it looks to be the dominant algae growing, then you are done dosing nutrients. At this point I would get alk, ca, and mag, where you want it, and let the tank incubate. Just let it be. Hook that skimmer back up and run a dry skim. Run carbon for a week and just leave the tank alone for a month. Like I said, if green hair algae is the dominant algae, follow those steps. Maybe enjoy a beer or time away from the tank. I did this and not only did I see the green hair algae sluff off my rocks but the brown went away and my corals started plumping up. It was a nice change.

 

[reeferfoxx]

@Motohooligan

This was my tank with GHA and coolia growing together. It's a before and after. Also explaining how I literally did nothing to the tank for a month except feed the fish.

When my tank got to this point,


(thats hair algae with dinos(coolia spp) growing)
I stopped dosing nutrients, alk, ca, and mag. Stopped water changes. Stopped caring. Almost ripped the tank down. After 2 weeks of not doing anything, things started looking better. So I started cleaning the tank. Still no water changes. Then after a month...



Try that. Monitor your fish. My fish started looking rough about the 25th day. If they look real bad, do a 5% change.


I built my nutrients up in 3 to 4 days.

 

[Acorral]

I think that would achieve two different goals. The filter socks purpose is to manual remove collected dinos vs blowing them with a powerhead would be to direct them to the over flow. Although similar, can have two different outcomes if you had UV sterilizer equipped. Pushing dinos into the overflow or UV section would help kill them and filter socks would also reduce the numbers.

And what about DinoX? Does that work for Prorocentrum?

 

[wgortenmulder (NL)]

I’m reasonably sure the measurements are correct but not 100% certain. By chance do you know the average size of cyano? I may take another sample to the lab that took these pics just to see if anything has changed, these photos are about 6 months old.

A bit of background info......

Tank is only about 8 months old. DT is 230 gallon, basement sump is somewhat modular and can be from 50 to 250 gal depending on what I have online. (I can elaborate on my sump setup if anyone would like to see). Currently it’s running at about 150g. The tank was set up with with 200lbs caribsea special grade dry sand, 100lbs life rock shapes and 100lbs of live rock from LFS and the contents of a 10gal desktop nano (more on this later as I believe it was he root of this evil). Once everything was up and running the pair of damsels from the 10 and it’s sand and rock went in to start the cycle. Considering the light bioload and relatively large amount of well established live rock there really never was a real “cycle” so to speak. After a week or so I had a small diotom bloom and I figured that was that. Still no detectable nitrate so I added a small scopus tang and upped the feeding a bit. A week or so passes and still no nitrate but getting a bit of green film so I add a pair of cardinals and a small CUC. Now the nightmare begins... I get what at the time I think is another bloom of diotoms on the sand bed, but it develops bubbles and soon takes over the entire tank. After some googling and taking a sample to the lab I assume that it’s in fact dinos even though I can’t find a dead ringer for a match. I start with what I read in this or a similar thread, fight dirty! I ditch the skimmer, add fish,add corals, feed with reckless abandon, ditch water changes etc... this goes on for several months. At times I feel like I may be winning the war but the bloody brown film and bubbles come and go and are never completely suppressed then the UV that I had running died and they came back with vengeance. I’m not sure it was he UV that was keeping them at bay or just coincidence that they came back when it crapped out because I am now running 160w of UV... anyway at this point I take desperate measures and decide to take a chemical approach and hit it with dinox, bad idea, it only killed green stuff and didn’t touch the brown but stressed the livestock, everything but a cleaner shrimp survived but where not happy. Then I give Vibrent a go, it seemed to help at first but again it seems to mostly kill green not brown. All of this time keeping no3 and po4 at detectable levels was a challenge with heavy feeding and a reasonably large number of fish. Forward another month of no chemicals heavier feeding yet some fresh liverock hundreds of dollars of pods and phytoplankton and once again I think I’m winning. Have quite a bit of GHA ,never thought I would be happy to see it, a couple patches of cyano, No3 at 25ppm and managed to dose Po4 to get .1ppm but here I am today and the f@#&$*= brown film is dusting the sand and a few bubbles on here and there again!

I know this post is a bit of a rant and there are a mess of things I forgot to mention but here I am about ready to tear it down and start over.

I know the feeling...

 

[Stephers]

This thread is amazing. I'm trying to get better image, but any possible id from this?