Hi all. I just wanted to share that I’ve now been free of Amphidinium for a month, after battling it for the past year. I’ll share what’s changed in the tank, and what methods I tried to get rid of it.
I set this tank up in Dec 2019, restarting it due to Dino in the previous set up killing off all my corals. They soon returned in the new set up, which was a real kick in the you-know-what. The first and second photos here were taken in April 2020. It shows the Dino on the sand, and not long after this I removed the sand, but it spread on to the rocks.
Up to this point I tried a lot of different things; weekly 25% water changes, followed by no water changes, dosing nitrates and phosphates, dosing silicates, dosing bacteria, feeding more, feeding less, 2x five day black outs, regular turkey basting, then no basting, adding copepods regularly, and adding live rock from an established tank.
Nothing worked. The corals looked miserable and weren’t really growing, and I’d spend a couple of hours cleaning everything and a couple of days later the rocks would be covered again.
A couple of months ago (ish), I decided to change my ATI Coral Plus bulb for another Blue Plus bulb (tank has only softies and is lit by twin T5s and two TMC Aquaray LEDs. The light change seemed to knock the Dino back almost straight away, but after a couple of weeks they started to come back, although not as bad. It was at this time I fell in to a consistent maintenance routine with the tank and stopped changing things.
I’m a teacher and the tank is in my classroom, and due to lockdown I’ve been working from home. Myself and a colleague have shared the job of going in to work to feed the fish (we have 20 tanks of mostly freshwater) and do maintenance. Because of this, the tank has been fed just once a day, five or six days a week, and I’ve done a 30% water change every two weeks. After each water change I add a tiny amount of Vibrant (1/5 the recommended dose) and that’s it. The corals have really taken off, particularly the Xenia and Palys, and I’ve not seen any signs of Dino for the past month. I’m even thinking about adding sand back in to the tank next week.
The third photo was taken today. I last did a water change last week, and the only maintenance I did today was rinse out the mechanical filter sponge, wipe the front glass and feed the fish. It’s quite sad, but I’m still delighted when the filter sponge just gives off grey detritus, rather than the dark brown Dino that used to clog it up.
I have no idea what I’ve learnt from this battle! I’m wondering if they’ve gone away because the tank has just finally matured after running for nine months, or if the bulb change caused the corals to grow faster which led to more competition with the Dinos, or if the consistent hands off approach over the past few months created more stability. Or maybe none of the above.
I’m sure they’re still in there somewhere, and will come back if/when I get complacent, but for now I’m happy.
Good luck with your own battle
