My Dinoflagellate Experience - Prorocentrum

[ScottB]

Glad you are seeing improvement in the battle. Don't beat yourself up about the two corals; when the chemistry gets volatile it is sad but pretty unavoidable.

In my ostreopsis battle, ALK consumption collapsed entirely and I luckily caught it amidst the noise. Keeping steady nutrients was a complicating factor too.

 

[Cory]

Id lower the dose of po4 or no3 now that dinos are gone. Get back to what grew your corals before. Burnt tips usually high dkh. I feel no3/po4 dosing isnt pure enough to use long term. Might be heavy metals. Sorry not much help.

 

[JayinToronto]

Id lower the dose of po4 or no3 now that dinos are gone. Get back to what grew your corals before. Burnt tips usually high dkh. I feel no3/po4 dosing isnt pure enough to use long term. Might be heavy metals. Sorry not much help.

Thanks for the advise. I’m weary to drop my levels yet as the dinos are still alive and kicking on all my sand.

 

[Bret Brinkmann]

No3 approx 7.5 (somewhere between 5 and 10 on the salifert test kit). PO4 0.16. Both steady. Both being dosed.

Those are good levels. Not having those levels resulted in dinos. Maintaining them will keep them from coming back. You should be able to reduce phosphates to 0.10 ppm if you want without dinos coming back though.

If they are in your sand only now, then I recommend MicroBactor 7. It has helped many reefers out with dinos in the sand.

I also think the alkalinity spike hurt the corals. Are they still degrading or has the tissue loss stopped?

 

[ScottB]

You will know your coming out of it when you start seeing cyano creeping in. Algae will soon follow, so be ready to pull back on the dosing throttle once the cyano takes a good hold. I'd keep .1 to .15 and 10 to 20 until then.

Keep checking both levels too, as when the balance starts tipping (IME) one nutrient will go into surplus while the other evaporates. (Could have been a doser hiccup, but happened to me twice.) PO4 skyrocketed and NO3 fell quick when cyan kicked in.

 

[HWDylan]

Just found this thread and I am very interested. I have a similar story to yours... thought I had cyao and then boom! Everything covered in brown stuff.

I bought a scope and ID them as Prorocentrum and some Coolia.

Your story gives me some hope. Ive been trying to be as aggressive as possible with this issue. It is a fairly new tank ~9mo old and was dumb and allowed it to bottom out on NO3 and PO4 for most of that time. I have corrected that now with dosing. I am yet to see any real progress but I am in day 3 of a black out so we will see how things look tonight.

I am hoping that keeping my nutrients up will help cure this plague. I am lucky in that I have no corals in the tank yet so I can get fairly aggressive with my approach.

 

[Xavier434]

I am lucky in that I have no corals in the tank yet so I can get fairly aggressive with my approach.

I am in a similar position as you are in that I have almost no corals and the ones that I do have can be moved to another tank temporarily. One thing that I might resort to doing is a very lengthy blackout. I am talking weeks if necessary. No one seems to know how long Dinos can live without lights so this might be the best option for tanks like ours.

 

[taricha]

One thing that I might resort to doing is a very lengthy blackout. I am talking weeks if necessary. No one seems to know how long Dinos can live without lights so this might be the best option for tanks like ours.

Once ran a cultured beaker of large cell amphidinium for 2 weeks in total darkness. They lost most all pigments, but they didn't decrease in population or even slow down - just as much movement. I interpret that as fairly good evidence of surviving medium to long term on heterotrophy and not needing photoautotrophy.
There is one kind of dino that has been found to self-distruct after 8-9 days of darkness, but it's a small cell amphidinium. And there's no sign that other dinos share that trait.
Blackouts are useful for pushing dinos to leave a certain habitat, but not for killing them.

 

[HomeSlizzice]

Once ran a cultured beaker of large cell amphidinium for 2 weeks in total darkness. They lost most all pigments, but they didn't decrease in population or even slow down - just as much movement. I interpret that as fairly good evidence of surviving medium to long term on heterotrophy and not needing photoautotrophy.
There is one kind of dino that has been found to self-distruct after 8-9 days of darkness, but it's a small cell amphidinium. And there's no sign that other dinos share that trait.
Blackouts are useful for pushing dinos to leave a certain habitat, but not for killing them.

I agree with this. I don't believe it kills them either. It only makes them move and more vulnerable for the different methods used to kill them, destabilize them, and/or allow them to be removed more easily.

However, that doesn't mean they aren't effective. I think its an important part of the approaches I've used that have worked... but not the ultimate solution on their own.

 

[Xavier434]

Good to know. Thanks!

 

[ScottB]

Once ran a cultured beaker of large cell amphidinium for 2 weeks in total darkness. They lost most all pigments, but they didn't decrease in population or even slow down - just as much movement. I interpret that as fairly good evidence of surviving medium to long term on heterotrophy and not needing photoautotrophy.
There is one kind of dino that has been found to self-distruct after 8-9 days of darkness, but it's a small cell amphidinium. And there's no sign that other dinos share that trait.
Blackouts are useful for pushing dinos to leave a certain habitat, but not for killing them.

I should probably know this but I am watching football so...

a) Would a lights out keep them suspended in water column? Or do Amphids just sit tight?
b) Can UV kill these (swear words) amphidinium if we get them into the water column?

Asking for a friend. Or, I don't have them yet but assume they are coming.

No rush. Working tomorrow.

 

[taricha]

a) Would a lights out keep them suspended in water column? Or do Amphids just sit tight?
b) Can UV kill these (swear words) amphidinium if we get them into the water column?

A) not the common large cell amphidinium. They are sand-loving and do not leave sand/rock. At night they go slightly down instead of up. Every other kind does go in water to varying degrees.
B) if they went into the water yes, but they don't. However UV is generally useful against other strains of dinos (and may have beneficial indirect effects vs dinos too), so it's not a bad idea to run it anyway.

 

[Marconis]

Thanks for the advise. I’m weary to drop my levels yet as the dinos are still alive and kicking on all my sand.

Can we get an update on how its going?

 

[JayinToronto]

Well, my Dino’s were essentially eliminated all winter except for a very small patch in the sand by one of my anenomies. Then once the days started getting longer and more natural light started filling my place the problem has been slowly coming back. All winter and now my tank nutrients have been stable I never let my phosphates drop below .2 (actually couldn’t get it any lower if I tried as I’ve gotten rid of my chaeto bed). It’s not terrible right now. Isolated to the sand, but slowly spreading week after week. I remember reading somewhere about the thoughts that there is seasonality component to Dino’s in our tanks. Not sure what to do now. Probably just going to watch, however I desperately want to lower my nutrients a bit so I can start growing SPS again.

 

[JayinToronto]

So I’ve decided to just slowly start to drop my nutrient levels again, as keeping them elevated for 8 months never totally solved the problem. I just may have to accept that Dino’s are just a part of my system.
A week ago I added some Chaeto back to the sump. It grew like crazy (see pics). Over the course of 7 days my phosphates have dropped from .29 to .16. No change noted in the tank or with the Dinos. I have 2 AI prime fuge lights over my sump. Hopefully once the phosphates fall a bit more I’ll be able to start growing coral again. The pics are at one, three and seven days since adding the chaeto. I may start “harvesting” tomorrow.

 

[JayinToronto]

I’m shooting for around .1

 

[taricha]

Great Chaeto growth. I'd export it before it gets to that last picture.
The hope with elevated nutrients to grow other things and lots of it, so things other than N & P become limiting and the dinos have a harder time.
I think what you are doing now will show improvements.

 

[JayinToronto]

Update:
The Chaeto and everything else growing in the sump is definitely doing its job. My nutrients have slowly been tracking down. My phosphate on April 6 was 0.29. Today is was 0.03. I’m contemplating dosing nitrate and phosphate again, but I’m a bit reluctant to start this again as it’s just another tail to chase and I ideally want to just let my system settle in to a steady state. I’m going to start with decreasing the photoperiod in the sump and continue to observe.

The dinos on the sand are staying fairly static. Maybe increasing slights on a few patches around the tank.

Will continue to post progress updates.

 

[dwest]

Wow, you have a big tank! If I read the original post correctly, you have about a 400 gallon tank and 126 watts of UV. Also, your UV is plumbed from the sump. You referenced the big dino thread as well. After reading that thread, and others as well (and some personal experiences unfortunately), it seems that you increase your chances of wiping these suckers out if you plumbed your UV to and from your display tank. Your UV sizing seems to be on that cusp of 1 watt per every 3 gallons of water that seems to be the minimum effective size as well. Have you tried going to and from DT?

 

[bobssecrtsn]

Did you dose Microbacter 7 for your sand bed issue ? I didn’t see if you did or not..