brianbrennan
New Member
Hey guys,
I wanted to put something out there to see if it made sense to people, or if there was something I might be missing while I'm planning to deal with a dino outbreak that I have going on. Some background, I have a 20g cube about 9 months old. Things have been fairly stable over the past few months, I haven't added anything for months. About 6 weeks ago I neglected a lot of my normal maintenance, for about 4 weeks or so. Things like changing the filter, water changes, etc. Normally I do ever week or other week, but I was happy to see that my tank was able to remain stable, albeit a bit dirty, throughout me not caring for it as much. I've since tried to get back on track for taking care of things. Since my tank had high nutrients for a while (I'm not sure the exact amount, but yesterday was around ~10ppm, about a week after a water change), I've had a slew of micro-fauna pop up in the tank. Lots of pineapple sponges, tube worms, etc. None seem to be much of a problem, but I'm bringing it up to show that the issue that I had for awhile was tank water that was TOO dirty. One of the things that came from this was that some Brown Hair Algae started to grow on my back wall, and largely cover it, which I'll get back to in a second.
A few months ago, I had an outbreak of dinos, pretty soon after my tank was cycled. Eventually the thing that really helped kill the dinos was a UV sterilizer that I got running in the sump of my AIO. Within two days my dinos were gone as if they never had been there. All I had to do was do some light cleaning of where the strands were to get them into the water column / through the filter and poof they disappeared. Flash forward to about a week ago. One of the things that I recently added to the tank as I've tried to sort of correct course with my husbandry is a better powerhead. I had one that had broken, and even before it broke I kept it on very low. The new one I've gotten I've really tried to get to a level where there's good agitation of the surface, and few dead spots around my tank. Part of that is that the back wall of my display tank is getting blasted with new flow. The brown hair algae that had been growing there is getting blow around now. Jump forward a few more days, I start to see dinoflagellates pop up again. Since the original outbreak I had, I keep an eye out for them just because they're so annoying, so I recognized it immediately. A long thing string, attached to coral but (at least at the start) not directly on areas where there are nematocytes. Always on very high flow areas. Eventually over a few days there have been a few more strands pop up, and I've noticed a few strands on the back wall of my display tank actually.
I had mentioned the brown hair algae that had been growing on that back wall of my tank. Like I said, I have a pretty good eye now for dinoflagellates, so the algae on the back wall did not raise alarm bells to me. It looked distinctly different from dinos, no bubbles, no single long threads, didn't disappear at night. I have a sea urchin that likes to munch on it. But I'm wondering if that algae has served as a sort of... natural refugium for where my dinoflagellates have kept dormant. To my eye, the brown algae looks distinctly different from dinos, but now there are a few strands growing out of the normal coverage of algae, in my mind due to the new powerhead I have blasting it. I'm wondering if essentially I've spiked a new dino outbreak simply by kicking them back into the water column of my display tank. And I'm wondering if I need to clean my back wall of my tank to get the source of them (or at least if they're hiding there, the largest clump of dinos) to go through the UV sterilizer. I recently just serviced my UV sterilizer, the pump is working and it has a new bulb in it so it should be working as expected, which last time was enough to wipe the dinos out. My only theory is that the dinos in my display tank aren't getting put through it since they're simply churning around the display tank. For mechanical filtration, I have no GFO or charcoal, just some filter floss
I attached a rough sketch of what my tank looks like, what I think is the waterflow, and why this might be happening. But anyway, I just wanted a sanity check before I go and manually siphon tons of algae that this logic makes sense to people's experience.
TL;DR
* Dirty water, dinos definitely have competition but seem to be thriving despite this
* Seem to have popped up once high flow was introduced into the tank
* Are almost exclusively in high flow areas, though I've seen it grow fast enough in the past for that to change
* Does it make sense that they've been dormant in algae that's been largely undisturbed for a while, and have recently cropped up due to said algae being agitated
* Does manually cleaning as much as possible make sense so as to get them into the water column and past the UV sterilizer, so it can do its job.
I wanted to put something out there to see if it made sense to people, or if there was something I might be missing while I'm planning to deal with a dino outbreak that I have going on. Some background, I have a 20g cube about 9 months old. Things have been fairly stable over the past few months, I haven't added anything for months. About 6 weeks ago I neglected a lot of my normal maintenance, for about 4 weeks or so. Things like changing the filter, water changes, etc. Normally I do ever week or other week, but I was happy to see that my tank was able to remain stable, albeit a bit dirty, throughout me not caring for it as much. I've since tried to get back on track for taking care of things. Since my tank had high nutrients for a while (I'm not sure the exact amount, but yesterday was around ~10ppm, about a week after a water change), I've had a slew of micro-fauna pop up in the tank. Lots of pineapple sponges, tube worms, etc. None seem to be much of a problem, but I'm bringing it up to show that the issue that I had for awhile was tank water that was TOO dirty. One of the things that came from this was that some Brown Hair Algae started to grow on my back wall, and largely cover it, which I'll get back to in a second.
A few months ago, I had an outbreak of dinos, pretty soon after my tank was cycled. Eventually the thing that really helped kill the dinos was a UV sterilizer that I got running in the sump of my AIO. Within two days my dinos were gone as if they never had been there. All I had to do was do some light cleaning of where the strands were to get them into the water column / through the filter and poof they disappeared. Flash forward to about a week ago. One of the things that I recently added to the tank as I've tried to sort of correct course with my husbandry is a better powerhead. I had one that had broken, and even before it broke I kept it on very low. The new one I've gotten I've really tried to get to a level where there's good agitation of the surface, and few dead spots around my tank. Part of that is that the back wall of my display tank is getting blasted with new flow. The brown hair algae that had been growing there is getting blow around now. Jump forward a few more days, I start to see dinoflagellates pop up again. Since the original outbreak I had, I keep an eye out for them just because they're so annoying, so I recognized it immediately. A long thing string, attached to coral but (at least at the start) not directly on areas where there are nematocytes. Always on very high flow areas. Eventually over a few days there have been a few more strands pop up, and I've noticed a few strands on the back wall of my display tank actually.
I had mentioned the brown hair algae that had been growing on that back wall of my tank. Like I said, I have a pretty good eye now for dinoflagellates, so the algae on the back wall did not raise alarm bells to me. It looked distinctly different from dinos, no bubbles, no single long threads, didn't disappear at night. I have a sea urchin that likes to munch on it. But I'm wondering if that algae has served as a sort of... natural refugium for where my dinoflagellates have kept dormant. To my eye, the brown algae looks distinctly different from dinos, but now there are a few strands growing out of the normal coverage of algae, in my mind due to the new powerhead I have blasting it. I'm wondering if essentially I've spiked a new dino outbreak simply by kicking them back into the water column of my display tank. And I'm wondering if I need to clean my back wall of my tank to get the source of them (or at least if they're hiding there, the largest clump of dinos) to go through the UV sterilizer. I recently just serviced my UV sterilizer, the pump is working and it has a new bulb in it so it should be working as expected, which last time was enough to wipe the dinos out. My only theory is that the dinos in my display tank aren't getting put through it since they're simply churning around the display tank. For mechanical filtration, I have no GFO or charcoal, just some filter floss
I attached a rough sketch of what my tank looks like, what I think is the waterflow, and why this might be happening. But anyway, I just wanted a sanity check before I go and manually siphon tons of algae that this logic makes sense to people's experience.
TL;DR
* Dirty water, dinos definitely have competition but seem to be thriving despite this
* Seem to have popped up once high flow was introduced into the tank
* Are almost exclusively in high flow areas, though I've seen it grow fast enough in the past for that to change
* Does it make sense that they've been dormant in algae that's been largely undisturbed for a while, and have recently cropped up due to said algae being agitated
* Does manually cleaning as much as possible make sense so as to get them into the water column and past the UV sterilizer, so it can do its job.
