ID from the dinoflagellate experts

[DesertReefT4r]

Can anyone ID this type of dino? Fighting it for several months now and it has killed nearly all my sps. Bacterial dosing has done nothing to out compete it. I have DinoX to treat the tank just wondering what tyoe if dino this is. Came on after a salinity drop due to an ATO issue.

 

[Bret Brinkmann]

Looks like either prorocentrum or amphidinium. Does look like a lot though. Those two are hard for me to tell apart. But I can assist you in getting rid of both. I beat dinos a while back myself and have been free of them for over a year.

First check your nitrates and phosphates with a higher accuracy test kit like Hanna. Most people get dinos by bottoming out phosphates and nitrates combined with higher PAR lighting. I bet you'll find phosphates are well below 0.1 ppm. Dinos will always come back if you don't maintain at least 0.1 ppm phosphates and 5 ppm nitrates for about 3 months.

Let me know what your nutrients are at and we'll go from there.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Thanks! and yep no3 is 0.25 and po4 is 0.01. I used Hanna for po4 and Red Sea Pro for no3 testing. It has been difficult getting no3 and po4 up in my current tank. Tank is 19-20 months old and no3 had been undetectable since after the cycle was done. I even removed the chaeto from the fuge to help increase no3 and po4 but it did not help. I started dosing no3 well before the dino outbreak to help with sps color since 0 no3 is not good for color up sps. Po4 has been up and down with 0.08 at the highest and 0.01 at the lowest. I also was dosing bacteria for a while to out compete the dino and it just made no3 and po4 drop more. I am dosing DinoX right now to see if the will work. I also am going to dose no3 and po4 to increase to more acceptable levels. I am seeing a major improvement today in the dino but am loosing more sps. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated. Sorry for the long post just want to give as much info as possible. Also here is a pic of my nasty tank from a few days ago, yeah its a lot of dinos

 

[dwest]

@taricha hopefully can give us a positive ID. Judging from your sand it may be amphidinium.

In the meantime, I would run a GAC to help reduce toxins. If they are prorocentrum, UV should help prevent if large enough..

I eventually removed my sand to help eliminate amphidinium.

I agree keeping phosphates and nitrates elevated. Not a fan of dinox.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Cant run carbon right now as DinX says not to during trearment or I would be. I really need a reactor for carbon. Removing the sand has been highly considered but I dont like the bare glass bottom look.

 

[dwest]

Cant run carbon right now as DinX says not to during trearment or I would be. I really need a reactor for carbon. Removing the sand has been highly considered but I dont like the bare glass bottom look.

Certainly removing sand was something I didn’t want to do either. I’m definitely a sand fan. Plus, I would only consider that if someone confirms amphidinium.

@saltyhog rid his tank of amphidinium without removing sand.

Either way, good luck with your treatment. Once it’s done, adding GAC seems to help reduce toxins.

I’ll also throw one more thing out. When I had dinos I had a lot of sps death as well. But looking back, I may killed some or all of the corals when I accidentally pumped some kalkwasser sludge into the tank. I’m sure I had a high alkalinity spike in the tank. My dinos occurred soon after that. I’m wondering if your salinity drop caused some of the death as well. Just throwing that out.

Again, good luck!

 

[taricha]

I am seeing a major improvement today in the dino but am loosing more sps. Any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

As I think I posted in the other thread it is indeed amphidinium. These are usually not toxic, and usually not on corals. In your sand there are two different coloration patches: reddish brown near the front, and a wider covering of a more yellow-brown. Sample brown junk from both under microscope, make sure only dinos are the amphidinium we've already seen.
If you can see any dino's - brown strings/blobs attaching to the coral itself, then they are certainly the cause of coral death. Otherwise, it could be toxins in the water that GAC ought to help with, but there are other possibilities that need to be considered. See Dwest on this point here...

I’ll also throw one more thing out. When I had dinos I had a lot of sps death as well. But looking back, I may killed some or all of the corals when I accidentally pumped some kalkwasser sludge into the tank. I’m sure I had a high alkalinity spike in the tank. My dinos occurred soon after that.

additionally, corals hate it when Nitrate is driven high while Phosphate starvation is in place.
Dino-x is also often associated with coral stress/loss.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Yeah that in that pic there was some cyano coming in as well on the sand and rock. It has since cleared up. As for coral death I am pretty sure it from the dinos and the ongoing battle against them and toxins being released. The dinos has a smell to them for sure thatbis different than a healthy reef tank smell. Under the microscope I only saw the one type of dino and some cyano for sure.

 

[ScottB]

Yeah that in that pic there was some cyano coming in as well on the sand and rock. It has since cleared up. As for coral death I am pretty sure it from the dinos and the ongoing battle against them and toxins being released. The dinos has a smell to them for sure thatbis different than a healthy reef tank smell. Under the microscope I only saw the one type of dino and some cyano for sure.

Ohhhhh.. that smell. It is not strong, but certainly distinctive. I have learned to despise that smell.

That all said, I never lost any SPS to dinos (ostreopsis). They were not happy of course when the dinos stripped the nutrients out of the water. They stopped consuming ALK/Ca. Some birds nest tips suffered. The SPS were weakened of course, but no mortality.

I got lucky that in my scramble to contain dinos, I did not create/allow other hazards to develop. It would have been easy to let my ALK spike, or PO4 or NO3 to get away from me, or miss any number of life support maintenance things we all have to do. Lastly, I did not dose Dino X. None of us know what is in the bottle nor how it works. Anecdotally, it is hit / miss.

Hopefully it works for you @DesertReefT4r ! I know your pain.

 

[Idoc]

I battled amphidinium dinos for about a year. I also had a few Ostreopsis dinos living on a high rock that was closer to the lights. Things I tried:

- Raised nutrients...no3 to around 20ppm and po4 to over 0.1 ppm.
- Dosed Spongexcel silicates daily for about a month. I never saw a diatom bloom, so I'm not sure this helped.
- Added a bunch of pods to the system. This did seem to help by increasing biodiversity.
- Daily added MicroBacter7 to increase different types of nitrifying bacteria.
- Siphoned out the mats of dinos in the sand. I didn't want to lose all that sand, so I treated that sand by rinsing it in freshwater to lyse the dinos. Then also squirted in some H2O2 as well and mixed... then rinsed again and let sit until it dried out completely... then added it back to the tank by trying to scatter it around.

The dinos definitely receded with that protocol, but then I was hit with a massive amount of green cyano that covered rocks and sand. I slowly attempted to bring my no3/po4 down to 5ppm/0.05ppm over about a months time. The cyano still hit hard and then i started to see a slight increase in amphidinium in the sand on particular areas... those areas coincided with the places i reintroduced my rinsed sand! I was at a total loss...i had the idea that i would soak the rinsed sand with a nitrifying bacteria prior to reintroducing it back into the tank, but didn't actually try that.

Then I tried the Elegant Corals Dino/Cyano treatment as a last resort. I followed the directions perfectly. My amphidinium dinos were cleared out! My nutrients were zero obviously after ther treatment, so I dosed them to 5ppm/0.05ppm. But immediately after treatment (3 days), I started to see the cyano returning with a vengence as well as a large increase in the ostreopsis dinos! In fact, the ostreopsis dinos were now going elsewhere in the tank, not just on their highly lit rock! But, I'll take Ostreopsis over amphidinium dinos any day! I still see amphidinium dinos in samples, but very few. I personally don't think any dino will go away completely... we can only attempt to manage them!

2 days ago, the ostreopsis were really getting out of control on my rocks. My theory is that after the Elegant Corals treatment, there was still a lot of killed-off debri deep in my pukani rock therefore feeding the ostreopsis and cyano. I then siphoned all the ostreopsis dinos and cyano off into a 10 micron filter sock... and tried to get my siphon hose deep into the rock crevices to pull any other debri. 2 days now, only a few dino bubbles on the high rock and minimal cyano return! Im picking up a UV sterilizer today to hook up on the tank... that should manage the ostreopsis.

Attached is the Elegant Corals recipe... give it a try! Some have had to run this protocol 2-3 times for total erradication...i may run it occasionally just to keep my sytstem clean. Im a firm believer in the micro-bubble scrubbing technique now... in fact, I've still been running the micro-bubbles at night time a few days per

Sorry this was so long!! I had a lot to say.. lol.

@taricha @Cruz_Arias

I used this graph to monitor my pH vs alkinity to keep my CO2 levels under the top line of the graph to protect my livestock during the treatment.

 

[ScottB]

@Idoc thanks for sharing. You have certainly covered all the bases. I have a question which I will preface with context:

I've battled ostreopsis twice before (and am presently killing off a third, very light, infestation) with the standard protocol of raising nutrient, UV, GAC. No mortality; just work. And please don't ask how I keep getting into these situations with my frag system

First question:
I have seen the Elegance Corals method many times. Certainly looks more challenging (risky?) to manage than standard ostreo treatment. Would you agree?

Second Question:
Would you recommend this (EC) method for the treatment of any other dino species other than Amphid?

Third Question:
If you said "yes" to Q1, is there a level of reefing experience (or tool sets) that you would say is essential to managing this treatment method?

 

[Idoc]

@Idoc thanks for sharing. You have certainly covered all the bases. I have a question which I will preface with context:

I've battled ostreopsis twice before (and am presently killing off a third, very light, infestation) with the standard protocol of raising nutrient, UV, GAC. No mortality; just work. And please don't ask how I keep getting into these situations with my frag system

First question:
I have seen the Elegance Corals method many times. Certainly looks more challenging (risky?) to manage than standard ostreo treatment. Would you agree?

Second Question:
Would you recommend this (EC) method for the treatment of any other dino species other than Amphid?

Third Question:
If you said "yes" to Q1, is there a level of reefing experience (or tool sets) that you would say is essential to managing this treatment method?

Questions answered...

1. The only difficult part to the EC treatment is getting the bubbles to a very fine smoke-like consistency. The other risky part is monitoring the pH... if dropping too low, then the CO2 is elevating. If this happens, then try to bring it up by turning on the skimmer and try to use an outside source for the air source. I aerated for 48hrs before starting the treatment to start with an 8.54 pH...i think i only dropped to 8.1 or 8.2 during the process.

2. Yes... I'm even thinking of doing it occasionally for just a good cleaning occasionally... the tank and sand looks awesome after the cleaning. But, ostreopsis seems to be easily controlled with UV. I think this is probably best for amphidinium though.

3. I think there just needs to be an understanding of the pH, alkalinity, and CO2 relationship which can easily be understood with reading some threads on the EC method.

The bubble sizes are important. It must look like smoke coming out of the return. I had a hard time getting it close to this. I turned up my return pump while decreasing the nozzle size on my loc-line in order to create a back pressure in the return piping... this helped to make the bigger bubbles to shear against each other to create a smaller bubble size.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Thanks for all the info. I have seen the EC method and read it very thoroughly. But man thats does look like a hard methid to keep up with. I have tried the bacteria dosing but no vodka to feed the bacteria. Live Rock Enhance, MB7 and MB Clean have been heavily dosed to the tank over the last 1.5 months. I have been dosing MB7 to the tank since the beginning in fact. All the heavy bacteria dosing has done is make my no3 and po4 drop even more than it already was. Things are looking better the last 2 days, I will post pics.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

After 4 DinoX doses and 3 days blue led bar only, mh back on 2 days ago for 3 hours a day. Also my recently dead acros and so e of the GHA that is showing up.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Ok so now that its been a few days I feel pretty safe in saying that DinoX has worked. No signs of dinos anywhere on the sand or rock. Lighting has been back on for 3 days for only 3 hours each day. So is DinoX effective? Yes, at least with the type I have been fighting. I followed the directions to the letter. Does DinoX kill corals? Uncertain at this point. I did loose several sps but they all were struggling already. LPS, zoas and mushrooms dont seem to effected by DinoX. Going to do 1 more treatment then run some carbon, start dosing 2 part again to get cal and alk in check may switch to kalk though, do a 20% water change, slowly increasing the lighting and pray to the reefing gods that dinos dont come back. If you are fighting a nasty dino bloom consider DinoX.

 

[Bret Brinkmann]

If you don't maintain nutrient levels at 0.1 ppm phosphates and at least 1 ppm nitrates, then they most likely will return within a month.

Glad to see it worked for you though.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

P

If you don't maintain nutrient levels at 0.1 ppm phosphates and at least 1 ppm nitrates, then they most likely will return within a month.

Glad to see it worked for you though.

Thanks for the tip. I was planning to dose no3 and po4 to 10 ppm no3 and .10 ppm po4. I just need to get to the LFS.

 

[DesertReefT4r]

Update on the dino battle. 22 days of DinoX and only very minimal signs of dinos on the sand, still some under the microscope too. I would say 80% reduction at this point. I have Neo Nitro and Phos ready to go but after the dinos started dieing no3 and po4 went up to my target levels on their own! I will take it. Still no water changes, dosing bacteria a couple times a week. The tank overall is looking cleaner and cleaner. Not cleaning the glass very often, funk on power heads vanished, sand is whiter overall, several patches of gha on the rock and coraline algae is starting to take off again. I may do another 3 day black out and 2 more DinoX treatments maxing out the 15 dose limit, try to hit the last of the dinos hard. Next step if needed will be removing and h2o2 soaking the sand, maybe replace with larger grain sand.

 

[Justin Aretz]

Can one of you more qualified than I make a positive identification of this species?

 

[dwest]

Ostreopsis