Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods

[Tjm23slo]

Regarding the chaeto blanket idea, where I cover the amphidinium patches with Chaeto. Would you cover all the substrate and place the discs with corals on the on top of the chaeto to keep it from blowing g all over?

Thinks at least my thought.i have to leave for 10 days and I’m a bit nervous. I have someone that can turn stuff off.everything else is automated.

I have 2 8”x4”x4” densetubes of Chaeto ready to be put do e tomorrow. Si will be 1 ppm when I leave. Po4 ~0.1 NO3 ~5ppm. Pellet food being fed once a day,

Any other thoughts for a 10 experiment?

Thanks
Tom

 

[taricha]

Any other thoughts for a 10 experiment?

That sounds like a great plan. good luck.

 

[Dsantamaria29]

Are these still amphidinium? They're no longer just on the sand bed but now on the glass and the rocks.

 

[taricha]

Are these still amphidinium? They're no longer just on the sand bed but now on the glass and the rocks.

[]

Yes. Amphidinium.

 

[agol77]

Hi all

Here is a photo of the dinos from my tank. I removed the sand last week, and apart from a few small patches of light brown on some of the rocks (I plan to sample them this week), things are looking okay. I haven’t tried dosing Si yet, but have increased my feeding to get nitrates and phosphates up a bit, as they are both low. There are hints of hair algae starting to appear on some rocks now, as well as some green patches on the glass. Fingers crossed it’s moving in the right direction.

On researching how to get rid of Dinos, not only did I find this very useful thread (thank you), but also stumbled across the below article. Based on these results, I plan to run my removed sand in a bucket under the hot water tap for an hour, and then try returning it to my DT. I will let you know how it goes.

https://www.researchgate.net/profil...last_water/links/565ba33208ae4988a7ba861e.pdf

Cheers.

 

[JAMSOURY]

How long did it take for you guys to see diatoms after dosing silicates

 

[Entz]

Quite a while for me, I would say a week before I checked? I saw very little on the sand (since the Dinos where in the same spots) but they did show up under the microscope. Not in large numbers though.

So I guess since im here update:

What didn't work:
- Cleaning the sand regularly. It made me feel better but they just came back.
- Diatoms. Never seemed to be able to win. My sand was way too dead I just didn't have the diversity.
- Dosing to bring phosphates up. This helped but it also caused a Cyano bloom. The Dinos just decided to move in with the Cyano :mad: and those that got disturbed were even in the algae in the glass.

What seems to of worked:
- Removing the sand. Or well 99% of it. I still have a small patch for my Goby but he keeps it disturbed enough I dont see any Dinos.
- Feeding lots
- After a bit of time without sand, I have gotten a fuge running and am letting the nutrients sort themselves out.

I also had a wicked bad bloom after removing the sand and disturbing my sump. I took a look and could still find Dinos floating around free (likely kicked up by something). After 3 weeks, due to a manufacturer snafu, I hit it with UV directly in/out of the display and the tank looks amazing now. I am not seeing them anywhere. So crossing fingers...

I still haven't decided if I am going to put sand back in or not. I may try a test spot.

(Edit: sand not sad)

 

[Tjm23slo]

Regarding the chaeto blanket idea, where I cover the amphidinium patches with Chaeto. Would you cover all the substrate and place the discs with corals on the on top of the chaeto to keep it from blowing g all over?

Thinks at least my thought.i have to leave for 10 days and I’m a bit nervous. I have someone that can turn stuff off.everything else is automated.

I have 2 8”x4”x4” dense tubes of Chaeto ready to be put down tomorrow. Si will be 1 ppm when I leave. Po4 ~0.1 NO3 ~5ppm. Pellet food being fed once a day,

Any other thoughts for a 10 experiment?

Thanks
Tom

Returned home after 10 full days. SI 0.1, PO4 0.06 and NO3 0.00. Feeding pellets once a day by auto feeder. Diatoms everywhere, green algae on the glass for the first time. Pulled out the Chaeto from the substrate bed all white where it was covered. I scraped 30% of the glass just so I could inspect. Rocks are covered in Diatoms and some green algae.

I dosed 10ML (38G water volume) of Brightwell FaStart-M to hopefully get the nitrates back up. Checked 2 hours later, still 0. Dosed 20ML more. Will check tomorrow. Snails are eagerly eating the diatoms on the glass. Dosed SpongExcel to bring it back up to 0.2. Also fed frozen food heavy today. UV is running 7 hours at night. It didn't run for 8-10 days which may have helped with my diatom bloom.

I have not yet done a microscope test yet to see what is there. Just relishing in an ugly tank for now. Chaeto in the reactor which ran with 12 hour lighting, didn't grow much, so the diatoms must be eating up the phosphate and nitrate.

Hoping this is progress.
Tom

 

[Tjm23slo]

Ok after 50mls of FaStart-M I still have 0 nitrates. Could this be from the Diatoms and Algae or am I finding a new issue? I just added 5 ML of flourish Nitrogrem to see if I can lift my nitrates.

Am I fighting myself by trying to elevate the nitrates or is this needed for more bio diversity?

I am attaching 3 images. The second one is the muck on the rocks. The other 2 (1 and 3) is this odd organism that under Blue light looks like dino brown but has fine hairs and the stuff it lives on is like coralline algae but
White. When you photograph it with flash the brown disappears. The last photo is a close up of the odd organism.

 

[Ento-Reefer]

I have been slowly trying to get through this thread for the past couple of days, but decided to go ahead and post about my battle. My first dino bloom was back in March and it was mixed. I had both Osteo and large cell Amphidinium. I opted to remove as much of my sand bed as I could and I stopped water changes for 6 weeks. I added a large UV to help with the Osteo. I also dosed Neo-Phos to keep my P04 numbers above .1. The dinos receded and were mostly gone by the end of May. They were replaced by cyano that I has attempting to fight with just siphoning, water changes, and dosing some MB7. In July I decided it was time to put sand back in the tank. I went with reef grade size and only put a .5-1" well rinsed layer.

Well about 2 weeks ago the large cell Amphidinium returned. I am not sure why as I have kept my nitrates at 10 and P04 has been a little high at 60-70ppb on my hanna. This time I am going to try and fight this without removing my sand. I am committed to siphoning every other day into a 5 micron sock. I have upped my MB7 dosing for now and I will still do small water changes every 2 weeks to keep trace elements for other algae to grow.I have tons of sponge growth in my tank so I tend to believe I have Si coming in despite 3 Di stages on my RO. Because of this I am hesitant to dose Si. My tangs keep anything green from growing on my rocks and I have a large population of snails.

This is frustrating because I was just beginning to repopulate my tank with acros. I lost quite a few in the last battle with dinos. I am doing everything I can to increase the biodiversity of my tank. I added 3 pieces of life rock from my LFS that they have had for serveral months in their curing bin. I added a bunch of pods from Algae Barn back in April and I am wondering if I should get more? This time around the dinos are just on the sand and don't seem toxic. Nothing is bothered by them except me. Some photos from last night before the siphoning:

The 5 micron sock after siphoning

Some of the sponge growth in my tank

 

[Tjm23slo]

@Ento-Reefer I am trying the Enhanced Corals Protocol developer by Cruz Arias. He says he has most success with Amphidinium. I am on Day 7 of this protocol. The idea is that he is essentially resetting your tank via Waste Away, ATM Colony, Vodka, and H2O2 along with Micro Bubbling. Part of the theory is that certain Carbon sources are loved by Amphidinium, vodka is not one of them. It alsos all the correct bacteria to scrub the tank of nutrients so that you can rebuild it to the right levels.

The other source of carbon that the Amphidinium seem to thrive on is CO2. Micro bubbling helps this in a two fold manner. One, you attach the wooden air "stone" to the fresh air source, which helps to combat the inside excess CO2 that creeps into your water. The other part is that the bubbles help lift the dinos into the water column or help them stay lifted longer vs hiding in the substrate.

There is a lot of sand bed stirring and basic vacuuming (I am using the Eheim quick vac) to get Dino crap of the sand bed to expose them more to the bacteria bloom. Scraping the glass and blowing off rocks are also part of it as you need to expose the dino protective slime to the bacteria. Basically all the corals go dormant during the protocol. The PH seems to drop based on the bacteria bloom. The suggestion is to stop dosing the major 3 as well as your corals are not using anything. I have not lost anything, well I banded shrimp, but I think I crushed him with the vacuum by mistake.

Sometimes you need to run this a 2nd time. I will report back in the coming weeks on how this all went.

 

[Ento-Reefer]

@Ento-Reefer I am trying the Enhanced Corals Protocol developer by Cruz Arias. He says he has most success with Amphidinium. I am on Day 7 of this protocol. The idea is that he is essentially resetting your tank via Waste Away, ATM Colony, Vodka, and H2O2 along with Micro Bubbling. Part of the theory is that certain Carbon sources are loved by Amphidinium, vodka is not one of them. It alsos all the correct bacteria to scrub the tank of nutrients so that you can rebuild it to the right levels.

Thanks for posting what you are doing. Is there someplace I can read in detail about this method? Are there documented successes using this protocol?

I am seeing a change in the dinos. This morning it appears that there is green algae mixing in with them as the brown patches appear green.These same patches were brown last night .I did not siphon the sand last night, but I will tonight. The lights have not come on yet but I took a couple of photos to try and show the color change. I wonder if they will stay green all day? I doubt it, but I have to leave for work soon so I'll have to wait till later to see. The front glass has green algae also so maybe I am making some progress.

 

[Tjm23slo]

Green is good. I was just starting to get some before is started this protocol, so I might have been starting along the way.


I am attaching the protocol image. The steps are there but there can be more FAQ material and why around it. I also didn’t follow it completely accurately as I was getting nervous about nutrients and I should not have. The idea is the bacteria bloom chews up all extra nutrients in the tank and builds up denitrifying bacteria as well as nitrifying. By day 3 you have a full on bacteria storm which drops the PH and goes to town on the sludge and stuff plus amphidinium. The day 4-7 you dry skim and kill off some of the bacteria with H2o2 down your skimmer.

All you corals will go into survival mode, so you will not have much alk, Ca uptake or nutrients for that matter. On day 8!(undocumented) you should add in FaStart-M to get you nutrients up to 3-5 and 0.03-0.06 then work to keep them their. If the water is still cloudy the add mor H2o2 to the skimmer line daily until clear. No carbon, no reactors and reduce surface agitation to keep the bubbles from degassing. Placid water surface. In theory you should pre bubble until you PH is up to 8.1-8.2 while alk is 8.2. That’s the ideal start point.

I may need to do this a second time as in added nitrogen and phosphate during the protocol, which I should not have.

 

[Ento-Reefer]

Adding that much vodka to a tank at one time scares me. I would be afraid of losing my whole tank, fish included.

What happened to your tank when you did this? Leaving the skimmer off during this sounds crazy to me. I think I will stick to what I am doing for now as these dinos don't seem to be toxic and are not bothering anything in the tank at the moment.

Please post your experiences if you do this again,

 

[Victoria M]

Quite a while for me, I would say a week before I checked? I saw very little on the sand (since the Dinos where in the same spots) but they did show up under the microscope. Not in large numbers though.

So I guess since im here update:

What didn't work:
- Cleaning the sand regularly. It made me feel better but they just came back.
- Diatoms. Never seemed to be able to win. My sand was way too dead I just didn't have the diversity.
- Dosing to bring phosphates up. This helped but it also caused a Cyano bloom. The Dinos just decided to move in with the Cyano :mad: and those that got disturbed were even in the algae in the glass.

What seems to of worked:
- Removing the sand. Or well 99% of it. I still have a small patch for my Goby but he keeps it disturbed enough I dont see any Dinos.
- Feeding lots
- After a bit of time without sand, I have gotten a fuge running and am letting the nutrients sort themselves out.

I also had a wicked bad bloom after removing the sand and disturbing my sump. I took a look and could still find Dinos floating around free (likely kicked up by something). After 3 weeks, due to a manufacturer snafu, I hit it with UV directly in/out of the display and the tank looks amazing now. I am not seeing them anywhere. So crossing fingers...

I still haven't decided if I am going to put sand back in or not. I may try a test spot.

(Edit: sand not sad)

What kind of snafu would cause you to hit the sand directly with UV? Could this snafu be replicated with purpose?

 

[Victoria M]

Hi all

Here is a photo of the dinos from my tank. I removed the sand last week, and apart from a few small patches of light brown on some of the rocks (I plan to sample them this week), things are looking okay. I haven’t tried dosing Si yet, but have increased my feeding to get nitrates and phosphates up a bit, as they are both low. There are hints of hair algae starting to appear on some rocks now, as well as some green patches on the glass. Fingers crossed it’s moving in the right direction.

On researching how to get rid of Dinos, not only did I find this very useful thread (thank you), but also stumbled across the below article. Based on these results, I plan to run my removed sand in a bucket under the hot water tap for an hour, and then try returning it to my DT. I will let you know how it goes.

https://www.researchgate.net/profil...last_water/links/565ba33208ae4988a7ba861e.pdf

Cheers.

That was a great find about ballast water. Now to apply the idea to the water or sand removed from the tank.

 

[dwest]

I have been slowly trying to get through this thread for the past couple of days, but decided to go ahead and post about my battle. My first dino bloom was back in March and it was mixed. I had both Osteo and large cell Amphidinium. I opted to remove as much of my sand bed as I could and I stopped water changes for 6 weeks. I added a large UV to help with the Osteo. I also dosed Neo-Phos to keep my P04 numbers above .1. The dinos receded and were mostly gone by the end of May. They were replaced by cyano that I has attempting to fight with just siphoning, water changes, and dosing some MB7. In July I decided it was time to put sand back in the tank. I went with reef grade size and only put a .5-1" well rinsed layer.

Well about 2 weeks ago the large cell Amphidinium returned. I am not sure why as I have kept my nitrates at 10 and P04 has been a little high at 60-70ppb on my hanna. This time I am going to try and fight this without removing my sand. I am committed to siphoning every other day into a 5 micron sock. I have upped my MB7 dosing for now and I will still do small water changes every 2 weeks to keep trace elements for other algae to grow.I have tons of sponge growth in my tank so I tend to believe I have Si coming in despite 3 Di stages on my RO. Because of this I am hesitant to dose Si. My tangs keep anything green from growing on my rocks and I have a large population of snails.

This is frustrating because I was just beginning to repopulate my tank with acros. I lost quite a few in the last battle with dinos. I am doing everything I can to increase the biodiversity of my tank. I added 3 pieces of life rock from my LFS that they have had for serveral months in their curing bin. I added a bunch of pods from Algae Barn back in April and I am wondering if I should get more? This time around the dinos are just on the sand and don't seem toxic. Nothing is bothered by them except me. Some photos from last night before the siphoning:

The 5 micron sock after siphoning

Some of the sponge growth in my tank

I was just wondering if I could put some sand back in. Think I’ll wait some more. Thanks.

 

[Ento-Reefer]

I was just wondering if I could put some sand back in. Think I’ll wait some more. Thanks.

Yes, I would wait. I think I should have. However, I hate the bare bottom look and my fish did not like it either. My PBT would spend a lot of time attacking his reflection in the bottom of the tank. He has calmed back down to normal since adding the sand back.
I sure hope I can beat this and get the balance back in my tank. Lately it sure seems like I am going from one algae pest to another and back again.

 

[dwest]

Yes, I would wait. I think I should have. However, I hate the bare bottom look and my fish did not like it either. My PBT would spend a lot of time attacking his reflection in the bottom of the tank. He has calmed back down to normal since adding the sand back.
I sure hope I can beat this and get the balance back in my tank. Lately it sure seems like I am going from one algae pest to another and back again.

Good advice.

I am fighting algae also. Lots of cyano is growing in my tank. I’ll take that over dinos though!

 

[Ento-Reefer]

Good advice.

I am fighting algae also. Lots of cyano is growing in my tank. I’ll take that over dinos though!

The only algae that seems to grow in my tank is cyano and dinos aside from the green glass algae and coralline.I wish I knew why? I do have a large amount of sponge growth both in the tank and the sump.