Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods

[BuddyBonButt]

Still Fighting Amphidinium after 4 months. Honestly for the past year all those times I thought I had a diatom problem, I now believe it was dinos. They never got to the snotty stage but always patches of rust on the sandbed.

1. In addtion to the 36 watt UV on my return, I plumbed in a 55 watt UV into the DT and I am continuing to blast the the rust off the rocks with turkey basters, siphoning into a 10 micron sock and brushing.
2. I put ozone back on my skimmer and running it 24/7 with no ill effects but no real progress.
3. I have been dosing NeoPhos and the Hanna Low colorimeter is pretty steady between .06 - .12 ppm Phosphates. I have not done a 15-20% water change in almost 3 months but only 5 gallon replenishing as I continue to remove the sand bed so my Nitrates are on the high side at 25ppm.
4. "Reef Stew" has all kinds of algae, pods, rotifers,brine shrimp so I put a cup or 2 of that in the tank every 2 weeks.
5. There are small hints of green algae here and there but no GHA in the DT. The refugium however has GHA and what looks to be some turf algae but I still have a heck of time keeping cheato. Yellow and Blue Regal Tang are grazing on the glass which has spots of green and brown.
6. All the corals look decent actually with no tissue loss except for the orange Fungia that was on the sandbed and the Caulestra that has dinos on it. I would appreciate any comments on the following steps which I have yet to try or retry as this is all starting to feel like deja vu:

• Walt Smith Fiji Mud
• DinoX
• Lights out
• keep doing what i'm doing

Thanks for any feedback. Have not yet given up but the tank sure is not fun right now.

Out of curiosity, where do you find reef stew? Is it slang for custom made things your lfs sells or is there a company that sells this stuff in a bottle?

 

[Latte]

Hey all - wondering if I could get any help with IDing these dinos? They seem to be amphidinium and a poster in the main dinos thread agrees, but I'm not sure what cell size. Apologies in advanced for the poor quality, I spent 2 hours trying to get the microscope to focus at a higher magnification but no dice.

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[map2022]

Would someone who's had success controlling large cell amphidinium with silicate dosing mind looking over my regimen below and letting me know if I'm doing something wrong?

My dino outbreak started 2 months ago. I didn't bother IDing the type of dinos at first and just tried UV and dosing NO3 and PO4. That didn't work for amphidinium of course, so I started silicate dosing 2 weeks ago. I haven't made any noticeable progress yet, but (after looking at too many posts) I'm not really clear on where my nitrate, phosphate, and silicate values are supposed to be.

Here's where things stand now:

• Nitrate - 8 ppm
• Phosphate - 0.08 ppm
• Silicate
  • 1-2 ppm (as far as I can tell from Seachem test kit)
  • Have been dosing 1 drop SpongeExcel per 2 gallons tank water daily for two weeks
• No water changes since I first noticed dinos in the tank 2 months ago
• Running UV 24/7
  • Flow rate around 2x tank volume per hour
  • (Started this before I knew it was amphidinium and continued just 'cuz)
• No diatoms visible on sandbed or glass. Very few visible under microscope.
• No film algae on glass

BTW - I'm really curious/suspicious about the lack of film algae on the glass. It makes me think something's quite wrong chemically or biologically and I wonder if that's why I'm not finding diatom growth? I'm very tempted to do a water change just to try to get the tank healthy so something might compete with the dinos. I think I'll also cut the UV back to a couple hours in the middle of the night (just to prevent an ostreopsis sequelae while things are unstable).

Thanks for your input!

 

[KonradTO]

Would someone who's had success controlling large cell amphidinium with silicate dosing mind looking over my regimen below and letting me know if I'm doing something wrong?

My dino outbreak started 2 months ago. I didn't bother IDing the type of dinos at first and just tried UV and dosing NO3 and PO4. That didn't work for amphidinium of course, so I started silicate dosing 2 weeks ago. I haven't made any noticeable progress yet, but (after looking at too many posts) I'm not really clear on where my nitrate, phosphate, and silicate values are supposed to be.

Here's where things stand now:

• Nitrate - 8 ppm
• Phosphate - 0.08 ppm
• Silicate
  • 1-2 ppm (as far as I can tell from Seachem test kit)
  • Have been dosing 1 drop SpongeExcel per 2 gallons tank water daily for two weeks
• No water changes since I first noticed dinos in the tank 2 months ago
• Running UV 24/7
  • Flow rate around 2x tank volume per hour
  • (Started this before I knew it was amphidinium and continued just 'cuz)
• No diatoms visible on sandbed or glass. Very few visible under microscope.
• No film algae on glass

BTW - I'm really curious/suspicious about the lack of film algae on the glass. It makes me think something's quite wrong chemically or biologically and I wonder if that's why I'm not finding diatom growth? I'm very tempted to do a water change just to try to get the tank healthy so something might compete with the dinos. I think I'll also cut the UV back to a couple hours in the middle of the night (just to prevent an ostreopsis sequelae while things are unstable).

Thanks for your input!

My 2 cents. I solved this problem few times now with silicate dosing. (but I am relatively new in the hobby)
1) Dinos never go completely away. If you still see a small patch and its receding, leave it be, it will dissolve on its own.
2) With Si dosing it's hard to predict how much will take to cause diatoms to take over. Try increasing by 10% every day until you see them growing on your glass. Sometimes it takes less than the diatom bloom to kick back the dinos.
3) If you don't have a conch yet, give it a go, for me works wonders for the small patches.
4) I always did a 3 days blackout when dinos seemed weakening. This sends them in the water column and let diatoms colonise the areas where dino were before.
5) don't run UV 24/7 for weeks. maybe start to run it only at night, because it might kill other micro that might compete with dinos. I cannot confirm this from other sources though, it's my impression.
6) Your nutrient levels seem good to me. We don't even know for sure if it's low nutrient boosting them.

 

[Kellie in CA]

I have been jumping around the thread looking for an answer, but haven’t seen it yet. What is the best product to use for silicate dosing?

 

[taricha]

I have been jumping around the thread looking for an answer, but haven’t seen it yet. What is the best product to use for silicate dosing?

I say start with brightwell spongexcel.
Then you can go with a cheaper, more concentrated Si source once you get a feel for how your system uses Si.

 

[Kellie in CA]

Thank you @taricha


I am having a really hard time getting a decent photo. Does this tell anyone anything? They definitely have that "roomba" motion. They don't decrease in darkness... UV had no effect.

 

[taricha]

I am having a really hard time getting a decent photo. Does this tell anyone anything? They definitely have that "roomba" motion. They don't decrease in darkness... UV had no effect.

I lean toward prorocentrum over large cell amphidinium, but not confident from that pic.

 

[Kellie in CA]

I lean toward prorocentrum over large cell amphidinium, but not confident from that pic.

Thank you. I have a better microscope with a camera on the way, but I won't have it until next week.

These dinos have me stumped. They don't form a mat like the ones I have had before did (was an easy UV fix). They break up pretty easily with a blast from a baster, but reappear almost instantly. No bubbles to speak of. Stay put through the night. I have done a ton of manual removal, but doesn't seem to help much. Not fun.

 

[The Opinionated Reefer]

How much Sponge Excel would be needed to induce a diatom bloom in a reefer 350-sized tank?

 

[Kellie in CA]

I lean toward prorocentrum over large cell amphidinium, but not confident from that pic.

Is this any better for ID?

 

[taricha]

Is this any better for ID?

It moves me to maybe 80% in favor of prorocentrum.

 

[AstroMelly]

Please allow me to introduce the latest unhappy member of the dino-club.

Our tank is at the 1 year mark and we had red cyano early on in about Feb-March this year - we beat that with regular sand syphoning, rinsing and returning but it took a couple of months in all.

Now we have dinos - I bought a scope and here's a video of movement and some pics. I reckon large cell Amphidinium hence my post here. Thoughts please @taricha ? I used your PDF to ID - the videos were very useful.

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It's a 6ft peninsula about 220g - our CUC have depleted and not been replenished so I will start by recruiting some new snails - we have a few cerith (I think there are still a few alive under there somewhere), astrea (maybe 3-4) and trochus (probably 3-4) left - which new ones should I grab? I got a couple of (small) mexican turbos yesterday to see if they would go for it. The 3 conches we have seem to like the dino-mat so a few more of those would also be an option - they are also fun to watch. And crabs - red legs ok? We had 6 at the start and added a few more somewhere along the way but are down to just 1 or maybe 2 atm.

As well as upping the CUC we were planning to be syphoning sand as a manual removal method although some have said don't bother. I had planned to syphon the worst patches, replace the water with new as a smaller say 5-10% WC and leave any sand that came out of the tank with the water in a H2O2 solution until the next syphon, when I would rinse well with tap, then RO, then return to tank. Thoughts on this - worth it or not? When we do our 20% WC's we usually end up with about 2-3 litres of sand only - we usually syphon the water (and a little sand) with the biggest python to perform water changes.

And my last option which may move up the list would be Si dosing. I did 2 independent ICP tests about a month ago and both showed Si - I thought we had a diatom bloom at first due to this - I'm attaching the ICPs here just because. There is a RO test from ATI there as well which is zero everything so not sure where our silicate is coming from.

And finally worth mentioning perhaps we had big numbers of pineapple sponges in our sump and we cleaned it thoroughly about 2 months ago. The sponges have not returned in anything like the numbers we had previously. We only removed them from the sump, not the display - there are a few up there but not many. I wonder if this may have paved the way for the dinos somehow?

Of course there are a thousand other things I could share and may have influenced the status quo but the above is probably the main points.

Wish us luck!

Link to my tank in Aquatic Log for params etc..

Main Tank's Parameters

www.aquaticlog.com

Let me know if this link does not work please - I think you should be able to see many of the tanks details. Aquatic Log is great imo btw!

 

[AstroMelly]

Forgot the pics and for some reason cannot edit my post.

 

[Latte]

Wanted to add my experience with what I believe were a mix of dinos to begin with, I took care of them all but couldn't get rid of the LCA. I tried everything, raising nitrates/phosphate, UV filter, peroxide dosing, copious silicate dosing (I for some reason couldn't encourage a diatom bloom here - I think realistically I needed to be testing but instead continuously increased dosage every day for two weeks with no diatom growth.) I dosed an absurd amount of phyto, pods, bottled bacteria, added live rock added chaeto.

What seemed to really knock them out was a very extended blackout. This might not work for you, but the Dino's had already killed off most of my corals and those that remained (an elegance, some zoas and a pipe organ) actually survived my 14 day blackout. which (in addition to UV, a ton of pods and a phyto) seemed to have actually knocked out my LCA infestation.

After about a month of no Dino's I decided to dose some aminos to feed my corals which sparked a reemergence right away. They seem to be fading by themselves now though, so hopeful this brief relapse will go away on its own.

 

[taricha]

Forgot the pics and for some reason cannot edit my post.

agree. diatom, and large cell amphidinium.

 

[ZekeBoniface]

Does anyone have experience with Small Cell Amphidinium toxicity? I have lost both of my Trochus snails, and this morning my Royal Gramma was dead. I have quite a few small cell amphidiniums on the sand, and a bit on the glass.
I am curious if it's likely that is the cause of my losses, or if there could be another cause.
Thanks in advance!

 

[The Opinionated Reefer]

Does anyone have experience with Small Cell Amphidinium toxicity? I have lost both of my Trochus snails, and this morning my Royal Gramma was dead. I have quite a few small cell amphidiniums on the sand, and a bit on the glass.
I am curious if it's likely that is the cause of my losses, or if there could be another cause.
Thanks in advance!

Unlikely to kill your fish dude

 

[JohnGurley]

Starting LCA Dino treatment (Silicate, Microbacter7, Phyto...) should you run my filter socks during the treatment or not? What about Granular Activated Carbon?

 

[taricha]

GAC yes. I wonder if the filter socks might remove a large portion of the phyto that you would be adding.