Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods

[GarrettT]

--> Got some Copepods to help biodiversity

I have a ton of copepods on my sand. They haven't helped control the spread of Dinos for me. I'd focus on other methods personally.

 

[jcosta98]

Feeding heavier doesn't always help rising po4.
The easiest and most controlable way is to dose po4.

Keeping your po4 at at least 0.03 and nitrates at 10 and it's bye bye dino's.

Feeding more = More phosphorus in the water = + po4.

Just listed several ways I was using to provide more No3 and more Po4 into the system. Had prior experience with dosing Phosphate and Nitrogen but prefer not directly dosing it but provide it by other ways, but yes if you want to control how much it really gets into the system, dosing it is the best way.

 

[jcosta98]

I have a ton of copepods on my sand. They haven't helped control the spread of Dinos for me. I'd focus on other methods personally.

Same experience, I already had many before introducing this ones, but guess it can't hurt and helps the biodiversity

 

[Gobi-Wan]

I wiped them out with a rip clean and then hydrogen peroxide dosing to kill the last remnants. I also had a massive gha invasion covering my rocks though which was what caused the Dino infestation by stripping nutrients from the water. Removed all rocks and scrubbed with steel wire brush until they were mostly white, then removed all sand and washed it with a hose in a bucket until the water came out crystal clear (about 10-15 minute process per bucket filled 1/3 with sand) and then rinsed with RO or distilled water before returning. This allowed my nutrients to rise again. H202 dosing is in my opinion to get rid of the last of the Dino’s not the first thing to do. The rip clean removed an insane amount of waste from the system, I’m talking about after I dumped most of the water out of the rock scrubbing tote the bottom was about 6 gallons of what I would be proud to pour out of my skimmer and smelled exactly like skimmate. And that’s just what the algae was trapping in the rock pores. The tank is a 125 with 150 or so pounds of rock and it’s only been set up a year though the rocks have been live for over 3 years in a previous setup. In my case all that garbage was fueling massive gha growth that was stripping nutrients from the water. A hard reset to break the cycle. I also removed some of the rocks to help with flow and maintenance.

 

[kngt]

Is this coolia? I have been battling Amphidinium for a bit and this one is new.

@taricha

 

[taricha]

Is this coolia? I have been battling Amphidinium for a bit and this one is new.

@taricha

yes. coolia is correct.

 

[jcosta98]

Hi everyone, Recently noticed Dinos starting growing , believe this is the strain I'm fighting , although I can't confirm it with a microscope.

I will post here what I already done / been doing , and will update on my fight with dinos , might end up helping someone in the future if I beat them.

So , I was reading 1 ppm No3 and 0.00 Po4 at the start of my dino appearance . This was something I noticed Around 25/12/2021 , but I only started taking action 5 days ago.

Actions I took:

--> Feed heavier , several times a day
--> Started feeding phytoplankton daily
--> Got some Copepods to help biodiversity
--> Started dosing daily Bacto Blend by FM and Waste-Away by Dr tim.
--> Took out my filter sock , hoping to help raise nutrients.
--> Stopped scraping my glass, letting algae grow on it


My plan is to kill it with biodiversity and competing organisms, will see if it works, as of now , I see no regression on the dinos.

Good luck everyone!

Found out it was osteoporosis instead of amphidinium. Kept doing what I described above and added a low power UV 24/7. Most of it is gone now

Current 0.07 po4 ; 1ppm no3 ( cant get no3 higher idk why )

 

[angrynoodle11]

I've been reading through this thread religiously because I thought I had amphidinium but it's all over my rocks, glass, and sand bed. Could this be small cell amphidinium? They move pretty quickly in the sample and they have the little beak to the side.

Photo 1 is from the glass
Photos 2-4 are from the sand
Photo 5 is from the rock.
Thanks so much for your help!

 

[ScottB]

I've been reading through this thread religiously because I thought I had amphidinium but it's all over my rocks, glass, and sand bed. Could this be small cell amphidinium? They move pretty quickly in the sample and they have the little beak to the side.

Photo 1 is from the glass
Photos 2-4 are from the sand
Photo 5 is from the rock.
Thanks so much for your help!

Difficult to confirm at that level of magnification.

Here is a link to @taricha popular Ident guide. Look closely at the embedded videos for both types and make a determination. Really fast ones are likely small cell though. LC Amphids are slower, swimming in a "Roomba" fashion.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/

dinoflagellate-identification-guide.671466/

And here is an article link that may help with both dinos and insomnia.

A Dinoflagellate Treatment Guide

As the title suggests, this is intended as a short guide on what to do when you suspect dinoflagellates are trying to overtake your system. It is an attempt to boil down the protocols discussed across 11,000 posts in this "Are you Tired" thread...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Fins1]

Hi guys. Been battling dinos for about a month in my 180. No improvement yet. Raised my phosphates to .1 nitrates to about 12. Been adding phyto, pods and microbacter 7. Just got my Hanna silica tester ULR in and a bottle of sponge excel.
My questions are: What number am I shooting for on the Hanna tester. I remember reading something about multiplying the Hanna number by something but can’t find it now.
How fast can you raise silica levels?
Anything else I should be doing?
Thank everyone for posting here.

 

[GarrettT]

What number am I shooting for on the Hanna tester.

Around 2.0 ppm or below.

Don’t feed any coral foods. That was a big one for me.

 

[Ober_Reef]

I am battling cyano right now and few spots looked snotty so I go paranoid and took a couple slides. Any ideas how to proceed with both? It took a lot of looking to spot the few cells each in different samples so it doesn’t seem like I have a lot

 

[ScottB]

I am battling cyano right now and few spots looked snotty so I go paranoid and took a couple slides. Any ideas how to proceed with both? It took a lot of looking to spot the few cells each in different samples so it doesn’t seem like I have a lot

Hard to confirm at that level of magnification. Pressed to speculate, I would say I see both large cell and small cell amphidinium. Were the small ones racing around real fast? Were the large ones swimming in a Roomba pattern?

Dosing Chemiclean (or other erythromycin products) would accomplish two things:
a) remove the cyano
b) allow the dinos to take over almost guaranteed

I have no sure fire remedies for persistent cyano. Mine are typically a transitory effect of bouncing or uncoordinated nutrient levels, so I just keep up with manual removal and stabilized nutrients. It can take a while, and yes, it is annoying. But cyano itself doesn't do real damage to corals as long as you manage (remove) it regularly.

 

[Ober_Reef]

Hard to confirm at that level of magnification. Pressed to speculate, I would say I see both large cell and small cell amphidinium. Were the small ones racing around real fast? Were the large ones swimming in a Roomba pattern?

Dosing Chemiclean (or other erythromycin products) would accomplish two things:
a) remove the cyano
b) allow the dinos to take over almost guaranteed

I have no sure fire remedies for persistent cyano. Mine are typically a transitory effect of bouncing or uncoordinated nutrient levels, so I just keep up with manual removal and stabilized nutrients. It can take a while, and yes, it is annoying. But cyano itself doesn't do real damage to corals as long as you manage (remove) it regularly.

Yeah I’m not too concerned with cyano as I k ow how to treat that but the Dinos with cyano is what I am thinking about. Hoping the cyano could outcompete the Dinos ? I know the magnification isn’t the best but I had to use a lesser magnification to actually spot them. I found maybe one per slide and they were very active swimmers.

 

[ScottB]

Yeah I’m not too concerned with cyano as I k ow how to treat that but the Dinos with cyano is what I am thinking about. Hoping the cyano could outcompete the Dinos ? I know the magnification isn’t the best but I had to use a lesser magnification to actually spot them. I found maybe one per slide and they were very active swimmers.

Good attitude regarding cyano. People get into trouble trying kill it all the time. It is extremely common for cyano and dinos to coexist.

How are you set for NO3 and PO4?

 

[marinaaquarist]

I need to seek advice. I bought the HANNA silica tester and my blank always reads L.Lo. Has anyone had this problem? What am I doing wrong?

 

[saltyhog]

I've been reading through this thread religiously because I thought I had amphidinium but it's all over my rocks, glass, and sand bed. Could this be small cell amphidinium? They move pretty quickly in the sample and they have the little beak to the side.

Photo 1 is from the glass
Photos 2-4 are from the sand
Photo 5 is from the rock.
Thanks so much for your help!

1-4 are all SCA. #5 is also most likely all SCA but can't completely exclude something else.

 

[saltyhog]

I need to seek advice. I bought the HANNA silica tester and my blank always reads L.Lo. Has anyone had this problem? What am I doing wrong?

You're probably not doing anything wrong. I don't trust any of the hobby kits (even Hanna) for silicon. I would check with Hanna and submit an ICP test the same day and see how they compare.

Are you trying to elevate silicates due to LCA or SCA? If so what are you using to do so?

 

[mikeytrw]

Hi All,

I posted recently for a visual ID and it was suggested I just had diatoms (tank is only 4 months old) however after more persistent checking of sand with a microscope I found clusters of thousands of tiny moving things which look very much like Large Cell Amphidinium. I've attached a video for your thoughts.

I guess I'm now looking at either dosing silicate or hoping CUC will remove this. The infestation is pretty bad atm.

Nitrate = 1.6ppm, phosphate 0.02 ppm. Both read with Hanna colorimeters.

Apologies for the crappy video.

BTW - the reason I wanted to look so closely again at this is because I noticed my snails were avoiding the sanded, whereas before when I just had diatoms they munched their way through them on a daily basis.

EDIT: not sure if the vid is working so I've uploaded to YouTube:

 

[mikeytrw]

Just as an addendum to the above, I think these are actually Amphidinium Carterae i.e. small cell Amphi.

This picture here aligns perfectly with what I'm seeing.