Interesting observation: dinos completely wiped out

[chris_pull]

So I’ve been battling LCA dinos for close to a year. I tried raising nutrients, dosing silicates, dosing phyto, dosing AF mud stuff, adding real live rock from the ocean etc. whilst things improved, I still had brown sand and rocks.

A few days ago, for unrelated reasons, I added a poly filter to my sump. Within two days the Dinos are completely gone to the point the tank is now super bright from all the lovely gleaming white sand and pristine rock. Of course, sand in photo still looks discoloured but it’s just the photo.

This could be purely coincident but thought it worth sharing. The poly filter turns brown with some patches of red. No idea what it pulled out but I wonder if it removed some element the LCA was using.

 

[chema]

So I’ve been battling LCA dinos for close to a year. I tried raising nutrients, dosing silicates, dosing phyto, dosing AF mud stuff, adding real live rock from the ocean etc. whilst things improved, I still had brown sand and rocks.

A few days ago, for unrelated reasons, I added a poly filter to my sump. Within two days the Dinos are completely gone to the point the tank is now super bright from all the lovely gleaming white sand and pristine rock. Of course, sand in photo still looks discoloured but it’s just the photo.

This could be purely coincident but thought it worth sharing. The poly filter turns brown with some patches of red. No idea what it pulled out but I wonder if it removed some element the LCA was using.

Congratulations for such good news. What kind of poly filter did you add?

 

[chris_pull]

Congratulations for such good news. What kind of poly filter did you add?

The one made by polybio.

 

[taricha]

A few days ago, for unrelated reasons, I added a poly filter to my sump. Within two days the Dinos are completely gone to the point the tank is now super bright from all the lovely gleaming white sand and pristine rock. Of course, sand in photo still looks discoloured but it’s just the photo.

The poly filter turns brown with some patches of red.

If you take this filter and wring it out into a beaker and put the brown material under a microscope, I'm guessing you'll find many dino cells attached.
Again, guessing that you had a type that likes to go into the water. Hanging filter floss seems to catch way more dinos than you'd expect.

see here....

Tool #2: The Poor Man/Woman's UV
If a UV isn't in the budget, or is stuck on a boat in Long Beach, or you just want to go after these guys a little harder, you can affix sheets of filter floss to the sides of the tank like this. Ostreopsis really prefer this surface when placed in a high flow/light area. Wherever your dinos seem to be hanging about is the right place to affix the floss. I used suction cups, zip ties to fasten the floss. Repeated basting of infested surfaces is encouraged. Rinse the floss each evening (before the lights go down) in fresh water and replace. It is oddly satisfying.

and here....

Poor Man's UV
I wanted to (re)post this, as recently I've seen a couple of people with massive populations of dinos who are not apparently doing any real export. And this idea seems to have been lost in the depths of a few thousand posts. I originally stole it from user nvladik.
Hang some filter floss directly in front of one or two of your powerheads. Let it blow in the flow like a flag. Ostreopsis will attach to floss more than anything else in the tank. Turns out they don't care what they attach to - just looking for a good spot with tons of flow and some light, and they actually prefer rough surfaces to slime coats etc. Rinse the filter floss out daily (or a couple times a day) in tap water until it's white again. Use gloves - the toxins in question are serious business.

(above pic shows the accumulated ostreopsis from a single lights-on cycle in a tank with barely visible dinos, then wrung out into a beaker showing what's collected is 90%+ pure ostis)

This is for those with cells that go into the water - Ostreopsis especially - but it may work with others prorocentrum, coolia, etc I didn't try when I had those. This trick will allow you to easily concentrate and export almost exclusively dinos. It's also appropriate while UV is getting set up - may suffice in some cases as "poor man's uv" , or in addition to UV.

This will export a large majority of the ostreopsis daily. It is not a cure, but it is control for you, relief for your coral and other tank inhabitants, allows you to do whatever your corals need (water changes, Ca, Alk, etc), removes urgency and anxiety, and gives you flexibility for your next move. This is how I had ostreopsis for a couple of months without losing any livestock or it being able to form stringy masses in my tank. Ostis stayed almost invisible while I had filter floss. (I actually never ran UV on my main tank.)

Additional benefits:

• physical removal of the majority of dinos is an important step in advancing any other treatment plan.
• prevents stringy masses from forming on corals.
• turns brown to show you if it's working.
• can be easily wrung out into a beaker to sample what you have.
• may possibly work as a diagnostic test for whether your strain is UV targetable / is going into the water. I don't know how well types other than ostis will attach, but the stringier it is, the likelier they will attach.
• is a really easy tune-up if a small smattering of dinos re-appears.
• is very selective: removes pretty much exclusively dinos

 

[ScottB]

So I’ve been battling LCA dinos for close to a year. I tried raising nutrients, dosing silicates, dosing phyto, dosing AF mud stuff, adding real live rock from the ocean etc. whilst things improved, I still had brown sand and rocks.

A few days ago, for unrelated reasons, I added a poly filter to my sump. Within two days the Dinos are completely gone to the point the tank is now super bright from all the lovely gleaming white sand and pristine rock. Of course, sand in photo still looks discoloured but it’s just the photo.

This could be purely coincident but thought it worth sharing. The poly filter turns brown with some patches of red. No idea what it pulled out but I wonder if it removed some element the LCA was using.

You said you placed it in the sump. Was this a lit refugium section or a dark sump?

Did you get an ID on your species by chance? I am all for new discoveries, just trying to confirm causality and better understand the how/why it may have worked.

Glad they are gone though either way.

 

[Lavey29]

Cool rock scape, I like all the ledges and detached islands.

 

[chris_pull]

If you take this filter and wring it out into a beaker and put the brown material under a microscope, I'm guessing you'll find many dino cells attached.
Again, guessing that you had a type that likes to go into the water. Hanging filter floss seems to catch way more dinos than you'd expect.

see here....



and here....

I will try this but I’ve had it confirmed as large cell amphidinium which does not go into the water column.

 

[chris_pull]

You said you placed it in the sump. Was this a lit refugium section or a dark sump?

Did you get an ID on your species by chance? I am all for new discoveries, just trying to confirm causality and better understand the how/why it may have worked.

Glad they are gone though either way.

Yes they were definitely large cell amphidinium (LCA). Not best photo but videos that I shared with experts were very clearly LCA.

 

[chris_pull]

You said you placed it in the sump. Was this a lit refugium section or a dark sump?

Did you get an ID on your species by chance? I am all for new discoveries, just trying to confirm causality and better understand the how/why it may have worked.

Glad they are gone though either way.

Re placement, I don’t have any baffles in my sump: I copied reef builders and just have a auto roller filter, skimmer and return, and a few bags of biomedia. It’s kind of just submerged under the surface of the water near where water exists the skimmer and roller filter.

 

[chris_pull]

Cool rock scape, I like all the ledges and detached islands.

Thanks! It was my first attempt actually gluing rocks together to make a “NSA”. But I think now it’s too much rock, I wish I’d gone lower in height and split it into smaller sections so there’s more open sand area, but it’s great for the fish as there so many areas to hide. There’s just a lot of rock surface area that I can’t place corals on as it’s so layered.

 

[haitian_reefer]

Always love hearing people beat Dinos. I think my outbreak was the worse in history. ‍

 

[chris_pull]

Always love hearing people beat Dinos. I think my outbreak was the worse in history. ‍

I just wish I knew how haha!

 

[The Opinionated Reefer]

Maybe it absorbed something that the dinos was feeding on. Going to try this.

 

[chris_pull]

This is what the poly filter looks like today. I think it’s been in about a week or so. They say red means there was aluminium, which is normally a bit high on my ICPs, but I don’t know whether dinos utilises Al in anyway. I’ve removed it today so I’m hoping they don’t come back!

 

[The Opinionated Reefer]

Just ordered some. If it worked like that for me on dinos id have it in my tank full time.

 

[chris_pull]

Just ordered some. If it worked like that for me on dinos id have it in my tank full time.

I will stress again that this could be a complete coincidence. As I say, I’ve been in the fight a while and maybe my tank just suddenly found its groove. It could also be the Dinos were on the back foot anyway and maybe this stripped out a little bit of iron, which is said to fuel their growth, or some other element they were using, and so was the final nail in the coffin. I’d be curious to know though if it works for others!

I think the issue with the poly filter being in tank all the time is that it competes with the skimmer and will remove essential trace elements, but I could be wrong!

 

[The Opinionated Reefer]

Yeah I agree it could be a coincidence, but dinos don't just go away on their own like that. The poly filter was probably the straw that broke the camel's back with regard to the other things you were doing to fight dinos.

 

[Bucs20fan]

I think its was your multi-pronged approach and the dinos were on the ropes and your poly filter contributed to doing them in. Either way, beating those fools is wonderful in itself regardless. Your tank looks great and props to you for even slightly accidentally ending your plague!

 

[ScottB]

I think its was your multi-pronged approach and the dinos were on the ropes and your poly filter contributed to doing them in. Either way, beating those fools is wonderful in itself regardless. Your tank looks great and props to you for even slightly accidentally ending your plague!

My thinking as well -- multiprong for LSA.

 

[taricha]

I will try this but I’ve had it confirmed as large cell amphidinium which does not go into the water column.

Yes they were definitely large cell amphidinium (LCA). Not best photo but videos that I shared with experts were very clearly LCA.

Right. This is why I'm quite interested in what is collecting onto the filter. Your pic below shows quite a bit of brown, I do wonder what photosynthetic cells are attached there.

This is what the poly filter looks like today. I think it’s been in about a week or so. They say red means there was aluminium, which is normally a bit high on my ICPs, but I don’t know whether dinos utilises Al in anyway. I’ve removed it today so I’m hoping they don’t come back!

I love the pic, and have no idea what the red is, but Randy has strong objections to the Red = aluminum interpretation.

see here...
"On the polyfilter issue, before making the assertion that aluminum will not turn it red, I did two things to add to my longstanding knowledge of how such polymers work, and how color is generated in metal ions.

I took my huge copy of the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics (which I won for being an expert chemist years ago) and looked through the long list of every aluminum chemical, both organic and inorganic. There are NO forms of aluminum that are red, aside from a few cases of aluminum attached to something else that is red whether aluminum is attached to it or not.

I secondly googled a number of search terms involving aluminum and red and also found no cases where aluminum is red.

Since there is no mechanism for aluminum to be colored (unlike most transition metals that have d electrons) and there is no case apparently known to science where aluminum causes a red color, and a polyfilter is not itself red, I conclude that company is mistaken.

If the company indeed saw a red color by mixing aluminum with a polyfilter, it was from an impurity present, and not the aluminum itself."