Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods

[taricha]

How do you guys take the samples that show dino's/diatoms etc?

Not a stupid question! You want to pipette up a little bit of the brown material and put it on a slide, and cover with a slide cover. If you get a lot of sand and debris and can't make out cells, then you might pipette up a sample shake it and let it collect back together. Cyano and Dinos will clump together and you can probably get it separate from sand which can mess up the slide and cover process.

 

[paulsz]

I have large and small cell amphidinium in my 13.5 gallon. I bought the 9W green killing machine and it's helped a bit but not a whole lot. I let the tank go all dark for about 36 hours to help get the small cell out into the water column. That helped a bit. But i've been keepin my NO3 at 10-20 and my PO4 at .15-.25 and algae is growing like mad. I have to pick out almost daily.

Taking samples of the algae, there's a little dinos left. But nothing compared to when the dinos bloomed. However, on the tank walls, the dinos is still in full force. And so i think i will have to scrape the glass and scrape it often (scraping was also recommended in the full blown dinos thread).

One thing though... I had to dose about 0.3ppm worth of PO4 to maintain a 0.2 ppm level 24 hours later. Which means that the tank was consuming 0.3ppm a day. However, the algae is growing like crazy and so i think it's consuming a large part of that 0.3ppm. If I keep doing what i'm doing, it'll continue to be a tank full of GHA. I've added 9 snails that graze on the rock but alone i don't think they can take on the whole load. If I were to pick the GHA every day, would that reduce my PO4 consumption? Would it release some PO4 back into the tank and so I could start dosing less?

 

[taricha]

If I were to pick the GHA every day, would that reduce my PO4 consumption? Would it release some PO4 back into the tank and so I could start dosing less?

You'll soon run into other limiting nutrients and not have to dose that much. But also, you should totally export as much biomass as you can grow. Maybe chaeto would be easier than harvesting GHA.

 

[paulsz]

You'll soon run into other limiting nutrients and not have to dose that much. But also, you should totally export as much biomass as you can grow. Maybe chaeto would be easier than harvesting GHA.

i have a hob filter from my old freshwater tanks. Maybe run some chaeto through there? Is the goal to have the chaeto use up the nutrients and be the "competitor" to the dinos?

 

[taricha]

i have a hob filter from my old freshwater tanks. Maybe run some chaeto through there? Is the goal to have the chaeto use up the nutrients and be the "competitor" to the dinos?

let's call it "a competitor" it's not good enough to be "the competitor".

 

[Silverback]

Not a stupid question! You want to pipette up a little bit of the brown material and put it on a slide, and cover with a slide cover. If you get a lot of sand and debris and can't make out cells, then you might pipette up a sample shake it and let it collect back together. Cyano and Dinos will clump together and you can probably get it separate from sand which can mess up the slide and cover process.

Thanks!

I want to get a better microscope (the unit I have is a childs model) and have sort of landed on these two:

Best affordable microscope

I bought the amscope T490B-LED. Will be here next week. Have you had time to work with your new microscope? Do you have any feedback, analysis, or information to share?

www.reef2reef.com

I'm not planning on getting heavily into anything other than being able to ID dino's etc - would the Bresser allow me to do that? I appreciate there are some extra features on the Omax - just not sure I'd use 'em...

I'd appreciate any thoughts!

 

[paulsz]

I'm not planning on getting heavily into anything other than being able to ID dino's etc - would the Bresser allow me to do that? I appreciate there are some extra features on the Omax - just not sure I'd use 'em...

If it's purely to ID dinos, there are cheaper options out there. If you'd like to have a microscope for the random time you think of something cool you want to see, the Bresser is more than enough.
The bresser is good for dinos too. The camera will come in handy for taking pics to upload to this forum

 

[taricha]

I'm not planning on getting heavily into anything other than being able to ID dino's

Agreed, either of those would be plenty. Built in camera is fine, smartphone on eyepiece is my preferred photo method.
Binocular is cool but unnecessary.

 

[paul01609]

Looks like I’m starting to win the battle,it’s started to turn green

 

[bevo5]

My update - I recently turned the whites down to about 5% across the board. They were up to about 20%. I don't know if they will have any affect on helping slow the spread of the dinos, BUT it sure it nicer because I can't really see the brown spots in the blue. Plus the corals pop like crazy.

I also added a 57w UV (I know that's not really TOO helpful but it can't hurt). The water is looking clearer for sure at least...but that might also just be the blue light making it seem cleaer.

My current plan of attack
-Upped nutrients (10-20 nitrate, .25 phosphate)
-Siphoning into a .5micron sock and returning water
-Turned down whites
-UV
-Dosing Silicates
-Dosing phyto
-Adding pods
-I ordered 20pounds of rock from KP to seed some biodiversity.

I had cheato in the sump but it all died and dinos were growing all over the sump so I turned the light off.

 

[Snoopdog]

So i went ahead and purchased a small submersible UV bulb. I am going to enclose the bulb with a PVC pipe but leave a small slit down the length of the pipe. This slit will be the only exit for UV rays. I will sink the bulb to the sand bed and turn it on. This will protect me and the fish while i float the UV bulb over the sand bed while the dinos are active. My goal will be to avoid disturbing the sand bed too much because i don't want to kill the good bacteria embedded in the sand. I figure i could repeat as needed. I understand this won't kill every dino cell but it should knock it back hard and possibly allow for something else to compete. Any suggestions for this experiment?

I have no idea if it would work or not, but hell I am interested to find out. Please report back!

 

[Snoopdog]

My update - I recently turned the whites down to about 5% across the board. They were up to about 20%. I don't know if they will have any affect on helping slow the spread of the dinos, BUT it sure it nicer because I can't really see the brown spots in the blue. Plus the corals pop like crazy.

I also added a 57w UV (I know that's not really TOO helpful but it can't hurt). The water is looking clearer for sure at least...but that might also just be the blue light making it seem cleaer.

My current plan of attack
-Upped nutrients (10-20 nitrate, .25 phosphate)
-Siphoning into a .5micron sock and returning water
-Turned down whites
-UV
-Dosing Silicates
-Dosing phyto
-Adding pods
-I ordered 20pounds of rock from KP to seed some biodiversity.

I had cheato in the sump but it all died and dinos were growing all over the sump so I turned the light off.

That is interesting because I have dinoflagellates in my display but not a dang one in my sump. Maybe they do not like the real live rock in there? They should like that pristine glass though, there is no coralline algae there.

 

[Silverback]

Is this what I think it is?

 

[paul01609]

Yep it is

 

[Snoopdog]

I think so, they look like they have a mouth section.

 

[Silverback]

started the sodium silicate dosing today - I'll post some pictures and system details tomorrow, and hopefully, this will be the start of the end for the dino's!!

 

[taricha]

Is this what I think it is?

If you think it is small cell amphidinium, then yes.

 

[Silverback]

If you think it is small cell amphidinium, then yes.

I took the sample from the sand bed, where these things seem to live, and I'm not sure that they get into the water column at night, so I was thinking large cell... My 80w UV is getting around 3000lph through it, so I'm wondering if I should slow the flow down a little - total system is around 1250l.

Am I right in thinking that dosing silicates to encourage diatoms to compete is the way to go anyway?

 

[bevo5]

I took the sample from the sand bed, where these things seem to live, and I'm not sure that they get into the water column at night, so I was thinking large cell... My 80w UV is getting around 3000lph through it, so I'm wondering if I should slow the flow down a little - total system is around 1250l.

Am I right in thinking that dosing silicates to encourage diatoms to compete is the way to go anyway?

That's the first step a lot of people seem to take...at least in this thread.

I started doing that and have gotten mine to at least on the testing kit.

I also took down all the whites from the lights - that helped a ton with me not caring as much about it at least!

 

[Silverback]

I started dosing Sodium Silicate a couple of days ago, and this is what I've got (sample from the sand bed again) - less of the dino's (still saw a couple moving about) but I'm guessing these are diatoms?