brianbrennan
New Member
I used this forum a lot for help on how to deal with a few different dino outbreaks over the past year and some months after starting up my reef tank. I wanted to document some of that for myself and in case anyone else finds anything useful here.
* ~20 lbs of dry rock, 20 lbs of live sand.
* Started with an AI Prime 16HD (turned off for the first few weeks while cycling)
* Extra flow with AI Nero 3, upgraded stock pump with a Sicce Silent 1.0
* After about 9 months, upgraded light to an AI Hydra 26
* About 8 weeks into the tank being set up, I developed a dino outbreak, before any other nuisance algae. Presented itself on the sandbed, would partially break up in the water column at night (i.e. patches of dino strings would shrink considerably at night, but not disappear completely.
* 6 months in, another dino outbreak came up. This time dinoflagellate strings were popping up high and on coral that was in high flow areas. Notably it seemed to come up on corals that have less nematocysts (i.e. hammer coral was not touched, but a birdnest coral nearby was covered daily). As it got worse, other corals further down would close even without any obvious dino growth on them, especially soft corals.
* 12 months in, another dino breakout. Similar to the previous, but notably growth seemed to be considerably quicker. The outbreak came in full force within just a few days.
* I used a small toy microscope to confirm what I was seeing by taking a sample from my tank
* Once I figured out it was dino's, I had to figure out why I had them. I practiced good husbandry, at the time my tank was supporting a clownfish and was fully cycled. What I think caused the problem though was adding GFO, specifically Chemi-blue Elite.
* To be clear, what I mean by that is that while I was doing my due-diligence in terms of caring for my tank, the GFO in the Chemi-blue bag was just too large for my small 20G tank. It quickly caused the water chemistry to become far too clean.
* Removing the GFO was not enough to stop the outbreak, however. I tried adding competitive bacteria, but that didn't do the job.
* I mentioned this outbreak largely was on the sand, with patches of snotty strings that would get longer throughout the day. Some of the patches would stick around at night, but they were much smaller
* I got a UV sterilizer to through into my AIO sump (I got the 9w Green Killing Machine). I did nothing else other than keep it on for 3 days, and that was enough to eradicate my problem.
* I had spent some time trying to "dirty up" my tank. I had had some concerns that my lack of green algae even 6 months in was more due to lack of growth rather than good husbandry
* livestock at this point was a pincushion urchin, 2 hermit crabs, handful of snails (largely dwarf cerith snails), 2 clownfish, few various mixed reef coral frags, and an emerald crab.
* Water chemistry was consistent and in optimal levels, but I was worried that my regular water changes were keeping things too clean.
* I went 6 weeks without a water or filter change, constantly testing water chemistry. Things continued to be stable, with the exception of Nitrates going from around 5-10 ppm to 20-30ppm after 6 weeks
* Algae growth did accelerate. Also had a lot of growth of pineapple sponges in dark spots in the tank. Overall just more signs of a mature ecosytem.
* After 6 weeks, decided to do some maintenance and stop my "hands off" approach.
* Did a 20% water change, few days later switched the filter out.
* Also tangentially got a new powerhead and upped flow a bit.
* The combination of these things caused a new dino outbreak on the top level of my tank
* Throughout the day, long strands of dinos would grow on the upper levels of the tanks, especially in bright high flow areas.
* Softer corals started closing for parts of the day (GSP, Fireworks Clove, duncan colony) despite not having any visible dino growth direction on them.
* I thought my UV sterilizer was broken (hard to explain but while cheap the one I got is a bit of a black box, when it's on its hard to tell if its actually working as intended), so replaced that, but still no progress
* My nutrients had dropped but not by a lot, they were resting around 10-20ppm, not the sterile conditions as before.
* These dinos also appeared to be different, they didn't seem to disperse at night.
* Eventually my theory was that during my increase in nutrients, lots of new algae started to grow, bubble algae, film algae, all kinda mixed together in some parts. Dinos were part of that though, even if they weren't entirely apparent. The act of dropping nutrients by doing a water change, and changing flow caused them to disperse more around the tank and "take root".
* Once nutrients were lower, all the different types of algaes had to compete even more, and dinos are just too efficient at competing for nutrients.
* To reiterate, HIGH NUTRIENTS DOES NOT GUARANTEE NO DINOS, really the main thing to look out for is drops in nutrients, but that can be a relative drop.
* What ended up fixing this was a routine of less photo-period (changed to less ramp up/down time, removed red from the light, but did not do a full blackout), dosing Hydrogren Peroxide (1 ml per gallon of water, in my 20g tank there's 16g of water. I actually eventually got aggressive and went up to 2+ ml of peroxide, but be careful with that) and a cocktail of MicroBacter7 and WasteAway. I also manually "removed" dinos where I could by turkey basting / using a toothbrush to disperse them throughout the day.
* The tough thing was balancing replacing the filter to remove dinos and keeping the filter to promote growth of other microorganisms. What I ended up doing was replacing once a day at dusk, where I hoped the dino growth would be down, and my cocktail of bacteria could take hold in the filterfloss.
* This took several weeks, but eventually things seemed to go back to normal, and my tank seemed healthier than before
* Notably I changed flow again recently by adding a second powerhead for turbulence (dropped the power on first one and instead dispersed that power amongst two offset and opposite powerheads
* Water chemistry had nitrates around 10ppm, phosphates existing but not too high (common reported signs of dinos).
* Again though, nutrients are not a sign that you can't get dinos
* I believe in this case, the change in flow somehow stirred up some... latent dinos again. Perhaps some growth on the back wall mixed with other algae got stirred up from the new flow, and now high flow corals were growing strings again
* Same as before, even without growth on softer corals, they would close up.
* This time, I tried a totally different approach... which was to do absolutely nothing
* I had learned from the previous outbreaks that corals being closed isn't actually that big of a deal. it's somewhat stressful on them, but they can go weeks or even months being closed (at least my corals can)
* They might not look as vibrant once they open again at first, but they bounce back much quicker than expected.
* For 3 weeks, I did no water changes, didn't change the filter, didn't dose anything new, and didn't mess with the lighting
* I didn't clean any rockwork or glass, so the tank started to get more and more dirty.
* Strings were growing and reaching lengths of probbaly 8 inches (which in a small tank is very noticeable), and covering much of the rockwork
* Then, one day, it started to recede and become green. No new string growth, the existing strings started shrinking. Glass developed more of a film than a snotti-ness with bubbles. No change in water chemistry at all, nutrients remained largely the same as from the start (negibly went up, likely from 10/12ppm-15ppm).
Anyway, hopefully this helps someone who's ready to tear their hair out with these nasty little guys.
The Setup
* 20 Gallon Waterbox Cube, Mixed Reef was the goal, first time setting up a saltwater tank* ~20 lbs of dry rock, 20 lbs of live sand.
* Started with an AI Prime 16HD (turned off for the first few weeks while cycling)
* Extra flow with AI Nero 3, upgraded stock pump with a Sicce Silent 1.0
* After about 9 months, upgraded light to an AI Hydra 26
The Problem(s)
I'll get into how I solved each of these outbreaks, as my approach was different each time, largely because the outbreaks presented themselves differently.* About 8 weeks into the tank being set up, I developed a dino outbreak, before any other nuisance algae. Presented itself on the sandbed, would partially break up in the water column at night (i.e. patches of dino strings would shrink considerably at night, but not disappear completely.
* 6 months in, another dino outbreak came up. This time dinoflagellate strings were popping up high and on coral that was in high flow areas. Notably it seemed to come up on corals that have less nematocysts (i.e. hammer coral was not touched, but a birdnest coral nearby was covered daily). As it got worse, other corals further down would close even without any obvious dino growth on them, especially soft corals.
* 12 months in, another dino breakout. Similar to the previous, but notably growth seemed to be considerably quicker. The outbreak came in full force within just a few days.
How I solved each outbreak
Outbreak 1
* I spent a lot of time trying to diagnose if what I had was dino's or not. This might just be anecdotal, but from what I've been seeing, if you think it might be dino's, it probably is. Dino's seem to be the most pervasive nusiance algae/bacteria/protist out there, largely due to how basic it's structure is.* I used a small toy microscope to confirm what I was seeing by taking a sample from my tank
* Once I figured out it was dino's, I had to figure out why I had them. I practiced good husbandry, at the time my tank was supporting a clownfish and was fully cycled. What I think caused the problem though was adding GFO, specifically Chemi-blue Elite.
* To be clear, what I mean by that is that while I was doing my due-diligence in terms of caring for my tank, the GFO in the Chemi-blue bag was just too large for my small 20G tank. It quickly caused the water chemistry to become far too clean.
* Removing the GFO was not enough to stop the outbreak, however. I tried adding competitive bacteria, but that didn't do the job.
* I mentioned this outbreak largely was on the sand, with patches of snotty strings that would get longer throughout the day. Some of the patches would stick around at night, but they were much smaller
* I got a UV sterilizer to through into my AIO sump (I got the 9w Green Killing Machine). I did nothing else other than keep it on for 3 days, and that was enough to eradicate my problem.
Why UV sterilization worked here
I'm not a biologist, but from what I could tell I probably had a few different types of dinos in my tank. Some of them would disperse into the water column. The only thing that you need to know about solving a dino outbreak is that you need other stuff to outcompete it. In this case, the newly cycled tank didn't have the other organisms needed to balance out dinos growth. UV sterilization helped curtail the growth of the water-column dispersed dinos, while bacteria in my rock and sand could catch up in growth with it. Removal of GFO helped nutrients to come back up. All in all though, all that was needed was slowing down dinos, and getting other stuff growing more.Outbreak 2
* Many months go by without any problems, but about 6 months after starting up my tank, a new dino outbreak starts to form* I had spent some time trying to "dirty up" my tank. I had had some concerns that my lack of green algae even 6 months in was more due to lack of growth rather than good husbandry
* livestock at this point was a pincushion urchin, 2 hermit crabs, handful of snails (largely dwarf cerith snails), 2 clownfish, few various mixed reef coral frags, and an emerald crab.
* Water chemistry was consistent and in optimal levels, but I was worried that my regular water changes were keeping things too clean.
* I went 6 weeks without a water or filter change, constantly testing water chemistry. Things continued to be stable, with the exception of Nitrates going from around 5-10 ppm to 20-30ppm after 6 weeks
* Algae growth did accelerate. Also had a lot of growth of pineapple sponges in dark spots in the tank. Overall just more signs of a mature ecosytem.
* After 6 weeks, decided to do some maintenance and stop my "hands off" approach.
* Did a 20% water change, few days later switched the filter out.
* Also tangentially got a new powerhead and upped flow a bit.
* The combination of these things caused a new dino outbreak on the top level of my tank
* Throughout the day, long strands of dinos would grow on the upper levels of the tanks, especially in bright high flow areas.
* Softer corals started closing for parts of the day (GSP, Fireworks Clove, duncan colony) despite not having any visible dino growth direction on them.
* I thought my UV sterilizer was broken (hard to explain but while cheap the one I got is a bit of a black box, when it's on its hard to tell if its actually working as intended), so replaced that, but still no progress
* My nutrients had dropped but not by a lot, they were resting around 10-20ppm, not the sterile conditions as before.
* These dinos also appeared to be different, they didn't seem to disperse at night.
* Eventually my theory was that during my increase in nutrients, lots of new algae started to grow, bubble algae, film algae, all kinda mixed together in some parts. Dinos were part of that though, even if they weren't entirely apparent. The act of dropping nutrients by doing a water change, and changing flow caused them to disperse more around the tank and "take root".
* Once nutrients were lower, all the different types of algaes had to compete even more, and dinos are just too efficient at competing for nutrients.
* To reiterate, HIGH NUTRIENTS DOES NOT GUARANTEE NO DINOS, really the main thing to look out for is drops in nutrients, but that can be a relative drop.
* What ended up fixing this was a routine of less photo-period (changed to less ramp up/down time, removed red from the light, but did not do a full blackout), dosing Hydrogren Peroxide (1 ml per gallon of water, in my 20g tank there's 16g of water. I actually eventually got aggressive and went up to 2+ ml of peroxide, but be careful with that) and a cocktail of MicroBacter7 and WasteAway. I also manually "removed" dinos where I could by turkey basting / using a toothbrush to disperse them throughout the day.
* The tough thing was balancing replacing the filter to remove dinos and keeping the filter to promote growth of other microorganisms. What I ended up doing was replacing once a day at dusk, where I hoped the dino growth would be down, and my cocktail of bacteria could take hold in the filterfloss.
* This took several weeks, but eventually things seemed to go back to normal, and my tank seemed healthier than before
Why this approach worked
UV sterilization DIDN'T work in this case largely because these Dinos wouldn't disperse enough into the water column. If we go back to the previous approach, the only thing that can help get rid of dinos is promotion of growth of other micro-organisms. In this case, the approach of sterilizing the water wouldn't work so the only other way to go about it is adding lots of supplemental bacteria and killing dinos via peroxide dosing. This took a long time, and it also didn't seem to be working for a while. Essentially, it was two weeks of no progress, and then over 3 days dinos just disappeared.Outbreak 3
* This final outbreak I'm only just coming out of, about 13 months after starting up the tank. Livestock is largely the same, a few new corals but that's it.* Notably I changed flow again recently by adding a second powerhead for turbulence (dropped the power on first one and instead dispersed that power amongst two offset and opposite powerheads
* Water chemistry had nitrates around 10ppm, phosphates existing but not too high (common reported signs of dinos).
* Again though, nutrients are not a sign that you can't get dinos
* I believe in this case, the change in flow somehow stirred up some... latent dinos again. Perhaps some growth on the back wall mixed with other algae got stirred up from the new flow, and now high flow corals were growing strings again
* Same as before, even without growth on softer corals, they would close up.
* This time, I tried a totally different approach... which was to do absolutely nothing
* I had learned from the previous outbreaks that corals being closed isn't actually that big of a deal. it's somewhat stressful on them, but they can go weeks or even months being closed (at least my corals can)
* They might not look as vibrant once they open again at first, but they bounce back much quicker than expected.
* For 3 weeks, I did no water changes, didn't change the filter, didn't dose anything new, and didn't mess with the lighting
* I didn't clean any rockwork or glass, so the tank started to get more and more dirty.
* Strings were growing and reaching lengths of probbaly 8 inches (which in a small tank is very noticeable), and covering much of the rockwork
* Then, one day, it started to recede and become green. No new string growth, the existing strings started shrinking. Glass developed more of a film than a snotti-ness with bubbles. No change in water chemistry at all, nutrients remained largely the same as from the start (negibly went up, likely from 10/12ppm-15ppm).
Why doing nothing works
This is largely why I wanted to write this up for folks. What I've learned from dealing with 3 separate outbreaks is that I'm somewhat convinced that the best approach to dinoflagellates might be to simply do nothing. It seems like while dinos look extremely scary, and can be toxic if they die all at once, they seem to burn themselves out somewhat easily. What I mean by that is that when left to their own devices, dinos seem to outcompete themselves until they simply don't grow anymore, and they start to collapse in population. I don't have any biology to back this up, but anecdotally I think that this might be the safest approach, so long as your tank can make it through the stress of having the outbreak. In my case, I had some coral that seemed nearly dead from being so closed up, and they bounced back totally fine afterwards. If you use something like DinoX I worry that not only will the the potential toxicity of dying dinos cause problems to the rest of your tank, but also that you haven't actually solved the issue of nothing being able to compete with them.Anyway, hopefully this helps someone who's ready to tear their hair out with these nasty little guys.
