Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods

[attiland]

Alright ill try out spongeexcel thank you! and ill dose a little less than instructions just to be safe.

I have found everybody with success went up to about 2 ppm. I had no tester so just dumped in the amount for 2 ppm. 2-3 days later diatoms started to bloom. I have than added for about 2 weeks 20 drops ever day to 40g tank.
mall together I used about 1.5 small battles of spongeexcel
Hope this helps. (I had both LC and SC Amphidinium)
As per cyano I wiped it out with a dose of chemiclean

 

[COwCOw]

I have found everybody with success went up to about 2 ppm. I had no tester so just dumped in the amount for 2 ppm. 2-3 days later diatoms started to bloom. I have than added for about 2 weeks 20 drops ever day to 40g tank.
mall together I used about 1.5 small battles of spongeexcel
Hope this helps. (I had both LC and SC Amphidinium)
As per cyano I wiped it out with a dose of chemiclean

I have another question what products would you suggest to make nutrients more stable like nitrate and phosphate? And where could I find Chemiclean? Thank you!!

 

[COwCOw]

hair algae is not driven by Si. Si addition just adds diatoms as a viable competitor for dino and algae resources.
You can start with dosing brightwell spongexcel by instructions, but the hanna low range Si checker is what I'd use before dosing too much more.

Also I have a question for dosing nitrate and phosphate what products would you suggest? and to beat the diatoms from the Si are there any products to beat the aftermath thanks!

 

[attiland]

Also I have a question for dosing nitrate and phosphate what products would you suggest? and to beat the diatoms from the Si are there any products to beat the aftermath thanks!

I used KH2PO4 and Saltpetre(potassium nitrate) it cost pennies

 

[COwCOw]

I used KH2PO4 and Saltpetre(potassium nitrate) it cost pennies

I havent dosed anything yet, I turned down my lights to 10% and I see my sandbed getting more white every day and dino strands getting smaller and I also noticed algae growing on glass, Should I just let my tank go on like this or should I do something.

 

[Zoajohn]

I think adding established live rock from a (visibly) dino free reef should be a concrete part of the treatment protocol. I added live rock from gulfliverock a few months back (while dosing silicates) which added new strains of coralline and other bacteria. I had my amphidinium beaten back to the point where they were only colonizing the glass, then about a week ago I added some rubble that was in my nano's lightless refugium for over 2 months. As a result the dinos have gradually died and turned white. Biodiversity definitely helps.

 

[attiland]

I havent dosed anything yet, I turned down my lights to 10% and I see my sandbed getting more white every day and dino strands getting smaller and I also noticed algae growing on glass, Should I just let my tank go on like this or should I do something.

Turning down the lights may gives you visual cleaning but the Dinos are still there just in the sand. Once lights are back they will come out to play.
if you don’t have corals may work to a certain degree in a long long time but as said above you want competition.
this can be diatoms which will die bac once silicates run out but while they are there other competition can recover and dinos stand little chance to come back.
introduce other forms of competition does help for sure. You can do it in a form of live rock and / or bacterial products like Fauna Marin Bacto Reef ReBiotic.
also common to have small relapse once the gone first time but every time it is easier to beat it. I had probably 2 small relapse but could get them out in maybe a week.

 

[COwCOw]

Turning down the lights may gives you visual cleaning but the Dinos are still there just in the sand. Once lights are back they will come out to play.
if you don’t have corals may work to a certain degree in a long long time but as said above you want competition.
this can be diatoms which will die bac once silicates run out but while they are there other competition can recover and dinos stand little chance to come back.
introduce other forms of competition does help for sure. You can do it in a form of live rock and / or bacterial products like Fauna Marin Bacto Reef ReBiotic.
also common to have small relapse once the gone first time but every time it is easier to beat it. I had probably 2 small relapse but could get them out in maybe a week.

Alright thank you very much!!!!

 

[COwCOw]

I have a question about SI dosing how would I deal with the dino die-off raising ammonia etc.
Also Im also wondering about how much spongexcel would i dose for a 29G Thanks!

 

[ScottB]

I have a question about SI dosing how would I deal with the dino die-off raising ammonia etc.
Also Im also wondering about how much spongexcel would i dose for a 29G Thanks!

No ammonia to be concerned with. They are not "killed" just outcompeted for space very very gradually by the silica fed diatoms.

I don't have an answer on dosing amounts. What do the instructions say?

 

[taricha]

Also Im also wondering about how much spongexcel would i dose for a 29G Thanks

I saw diatom growth show up at any level between a couple of tenths up to a PPM of SiO2.

 

[boomeraudio]

I have found everybody with success went up to about 2 ppm. I had no tester so just dumped in the amount for 2 ppm. 2-3 days later diatoms started to bloom. I have than added for about 2 weeks 20 drops ever day to 40g tank.
mall together I used about 1.5 small battles of spongeexcel
Hope this helps. (I had both LC and SC Amphidinium)
As per cyano I wiped it out with a dose of chemiclean

Trying this now - been battling for over a year now and it’s just gotten progressively worse. Hoping the diatom bloom solves the problem.

did you run a UV at the same time? I’ve heard that the UV might kill off the diatoms and “good” algae that outcompetes the dinos.

 

[boomeraudio]

I think adding established live rock from a (visibly) dino free reef should be a concrete part of the treatment protocol. I added live rock from gulfliverock a few months back (while dosing silicates) which added new strains of coralline and other bacteria. I had my amphidinium beaten back to the point where they were only colonizing the glass, then about a week ago I added some rubble that was in my nano's lightless refugium for over 2 months. As a result the dinos have gradually died and turned white. Biodiversity definitely helps.

Is there a place to pickup less than 10lbs of established and more importantly, pest free live rock online? I think this is a really good strategy.

 

[attiland]

Trying this now - been battling for over a year now and it’s just gotten progressively worse. Hoping the diatom bloom solves the problem.

did you run a UV at the same time? I’ve heard that the UV might kill off the diatoms and “good” algae that outcompetes the dinos.

I have. I had small and large cell Amphidinium.
my full story can be found in my build tread
Post in thread 'The heater failure build'
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-heater-failure-build.783559/post-8323630

 

[lost66]

I thought I won battle with large cell Amphidinium. For couple of months without changing water and trying many many things it was almost gone but my SPS corals almost completely were dead. I think water was depleted from something because when I changed 10% water 2 times in 2 weeks tank started to live again.
And unfortunately dino too... It came back. It is in the sand only, no rocks at all (at least I don't see that).

I have 240g DT, I dose 60ml of phyto from algaebarn and 100ml of spongeexcel daily. And after 2 months I haven't noticed any difference.

I would like to keep doing my water changes because I noticed my corals like it. Maybe not weekly but at least once a month.

Should I siphon the sandbed or leave it?

Any advises? It has been a year with dino...

 

[attiland]

I thought I won battle with large cell Amphidinium. For couple of months without changing water and trying many many things it was almost gone but my SPS corals almost completely were dead. I think water was depleted from something because when I changed 10% water 2 times in 2 weeks tank started to live again.
And unfortunately dino too... It came back. It is in the sand only, no rocks at all (at least I don't see that).

I have 240g DT, I dose 60ml of phyto from algaebarn and 100ml of spongeexcel daily. And after 2 months I haven't noticed any difference.

I would like to keep doing my water changes because I noticed my corals like it. Maybe not weekly but at least once a month.

Should I siphon the sandbed or leave it?

Any advises? It has been a year with dino...

IDose silicates. Keep nitrate and. Phosphate detectable That works.

 

[lost66]

For how long should I do that? It has been months and not much progress.
Also, should I siphon the sand bed or just leave it and let diatoms kill it?

 

[DrMMI]

I thought I won battle with large cell Amphidinium. For couple of months without changing water and trying many many things it was almost gone but my SPS corals almost completely were dead. I think water was depleted from something because when I changed 10% water 2 times in 2 weeks tank started to live again.
And unfortunately dino too... It came back. It is in the sand only, no rocks at all (at least I don't see that).

I have 240g DT, I dose 60ml of phyto from algaebarn and 100ml of spongeexcel daily. And after 2 months I haven't noticed any difference.

I would like to keep doing my water changes because I noticed my corals like it. Maybe not weekly but at least once a month.

Should I siphon the sandbed or leave it?

Any advises? It has been a year with dino...

Have you looked into elegant corals dino treatment? I'm a big fan of that. It worked on 2 of my tanks. Just watch your nutrients as it'll bottom them out rapidly. I had to do it 3 weeks in a row and I've been dino free in one tank since. The other was dino free for about 8 months until I decided to do a series of 30% water changes every day for a week straight to drop my nitrates from over 100 to 10.

 

[boomeraudio]

For how long should I do that? It has been months and not much progress.
Also, should I siphon the sand bed or just leave it and let diatoms kill it?

I did a vacuum of the dinos on the sand bed and it made a big difference in my 20G. The amount of sand is about half of what it used to be. That paired with an explosion of coraline growth, steady nutrients of nitrate and phosphate and dosing spongexcel has seemed to help. I also put my skimmer on a timer of 12 hours on/off so that good bacteria has a chance to thrive. Finally, haven’t scraped the glass in like a month.

Edit:

I noticed my tank really seem to turn the corner after coraline algae started popping up all over the rocks. I started my tank with dry rocks and it's almost 2 years old. It's taken a while, but now it seems to have sustainable nutrients that it wasn't keeping before (I.e. Nitrate & Phosphate). I'm still running a reduced photo period of 7 hours with a ramp from 6-7. Just running blues, UV and purple for now, no white red or green.

Hope this is helpful, my battle isn't won completely yet, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel.

 

[lost66]

Have you looked into elegant corals dino treatment?

Can you please shed more light on this? Never heard on that.

The other was dino free for about 8 months

So it didn't work? Mine was also dino (ish) free for a while and when I started to change the water and save corals dino came back.
I know water changes isn't necessary and we just need to dose what is being depleted but I find it super expensive and time consuming, changing water is much faster and cheaper for me. I use Instant Ocean Reef Crystals and my corals seem to like this salt.
I don't mind stop changing water but my corals were dying so I have something missing in the water and I don't even know what. Testing for everything or sending sample to ICP is too expensive for me,