Help with Dinoflagellate ID and recommended treatment.

[CoastieFlo]

Anyone able to ID this? My best guess is this is Prorocentrum (most specimens are motionless and there are large bubbly mucus strands on nearly every surface), there are a ton of resources available however it's difficult for me to determine this species with certainty. It is choking my coral and I have already lost a torch and significant portions of my SPS species. This outbreak happened shortly after I destroyed a bryopsis outbreak with Flux RX, I suppose the bryopsis was the competition within my tank. Now bubble algae, dinos and cyano have taken over.

 

[Dan_P]

Anyone able to ID this? My best guess is this is Prorocentrum (most specimens are motionless and there are large bubbly mucus strands on nearly every surface), there are a ton of resources available however it's difficult for me to determine this species with certainty. It is choking my coral and I have already lost a torch and significant portions of my SPS species. This outbreak happened shortly after I destroyed a bryopsis outbreak with Flux RX, I suppose the bryopsis was the competition within my tank. Now bubble algae, dinos and cyano have taken over.

Looks like Prorocentrum.

Just wondering, why do yo assume the dinoflagellates are harming the coral rather than the coral are dying and the dinoflagellates and cyanobacteria are just feeding on them?

 

[CoastieFlo]

Looks like Prorocentrum.

Just wondering, why do yo assume the dinoflagellates are harming the coral rather than the coral are dying and the dinoflagellates and cyanobacteria are just feeding on them?

Thank you. I don't know, it's a possibility. Things were thriving for a while until I had a hair algae explosion about a year ago, so I added a sea hare and things were great up until 4 months ago when the sea hare starved as it ate all the hair algae and bryopsis took over. After the hare died the bryopsis remained, so I added Flux RX and once again things looked great for about a month until the dinos/cyano/bubble algae took over my rock and sand before it started smothering parts of my colonys. I've used Flux RX in the past for byopsis about 3 years ago successfully and it didn't affect anything. This is definitely my doing, my other tank I keep simple and it thrives, but this tank has been a learning curve as I've experimented to "fix" things which led to this. I guess at this point I will try and do a blackout and change filter pads daily.

 

[Dan_P]

Thank you. I don't know, it's a possibility. Things were thriving for a while until I had a hair algae explosion about a year ago, so I added a sea hare and things were great up until 4 months ago when the sea hare starved as it ate all the hair algae and bryopsis took over. After the hare died the bryopsis remained, so I added Flux RX and once again things looked great for about a month until the dinos/cyano/bubble algae took over my rock and sand before it started smothering parts of my colonys. I've used Flux RX in the past for byopsis about 3 years ago successfully and it didn't affect anything. This is definitely my doing, my other tank I keep simple and it thrives, but this tank has been a learning curve as I've experimented to "fix" things which led to this. I guess at this point I will try and do a blackout and change filter pads daily.

Good luck and thanks for the info.