Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods

[Marshall53]

I'd no longer think of Si as something to dose to the level of NO3-N. Just get Si present and constantly available at a level that diatoms can use. For me, if my SiO2 was above 0.1-0.2ppm then diatoms had enough to grow. When I raised it higher ~1ppm SiO2, they didn't grow faster.

a few tenths to 1ppm SiO2 is a fine target, imo.

I’m just finishing week number 4 with silica and the Dino’s are still on sand and attached to the walls on the coralline algae. I did a 3 day blackout a few months ago before the silica and the Dino’s went away but came back. Do you think doing a blackout now would help?? I’ll keep dosing the silica and keep nitrate and phosphate up. Thanks

 

[Marshall53]

I'd no longer think of Si as something to dose to the level of NO3-N. Just get Si present and constantly available at a level that diatoms can use. For me, if my SiO2 was above 0.1-0.2ppm then diatoms had enough to grow. When I raised it higher ~1ppm SiO2, they didn't grow faster.

a few tenths to 1ppm SiO2 is a fine target, imo.

I’m just finishing week number 4 with silica and the Dino’s are still on sand and attached to the walls on the coralline algae. I did a 3 day blackout a few months ago before the silica and the Dino’s went away but came back. Do you think doing a blackout now would help?? I’ll keep dosing the silica and keep nitrate and phosphate up. Thanks

 

[taricha]

I did a 3 day blackout a few months ago before the silica and the Dino’s went away but came back. Do you think doing a blackout now would help??

Do you have recent microscope pics?
If it's a different dominant type now, then blackout+uv would be helpful.
If it's large cell amphidinium then blackout would be only apparent temporary benefit.

 

[Keko21]

My Dino war has been going on for about a month with amphidinium.
- several 3 day black outs- ineffective
- Dr. Tim's Refresh and waste away- ineffective
- Dosing nightly with h202- ineffective
- syphoning- ineffective

Current Course:
- Dosing spongexcel to grow diatoms- current level around 1ppm, but my nitrates are at roughly 7-10. So if I am understanding correctly I want a 1:1 ratio of nitrogen to silica, so I am likely going to have to bump this up to 1.5ppm-2ppm silica.

- also double dosing Oceanmagik, and I have a 15,000 copepod army coming to help their existing comrades.

- I was running low on some trace elements and did a 10% water change, thinking it would not affect the amphidinum because they can store nitrate anyway- WRONG they came back with a vengeance!!!

Right now I'm happy that they are all staying in the sand, and are not on my rocks or coral but dang its getting crowded and slimy in that sand! I still have no diatoms after 3 days....

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

MB7 may help. It's unclear. It doesn't hurt.
GAC yes, GFO no.
Avoid trace element additions. That's usually the resource that tends to restrain dinos when depleted.
Vacuuming sand is helpful.

DinoX is a general algaecide. Not dino specific.

How do you avoid trace element additions? My 2 part b-ionic alk/calc dosing is required to keep coral alive. I also dose AFR which is same purpose. Are you suggesting we stop these if we have LCA Dinos?

 

[taricha]

How do you avoid trace element additions? My 2 part b-ionic alk/calc dosing is required to keep coral alive. I also dose AFR which is same purpose. Are you suggesting we stop these if we have LCA Dinos?

B-Ionic looks like a fairly straightforward 2-part (with incidental amounts of trace). We mean avoid things like "B-Ionic Transition Elements" etc.

On all for reef, it looks like they actually do intend it to be a significant source of trace/metals.
"In addition to the calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium, All-For-Reef comes pre-mixed with the same elements used in their Trace A and Trace K

A- ELEMENTS - contains anions of the trace elements bromine, fluorine, iodine, lithium, molybdenum, selenium and vanadium in pure mineral form
K+ ELEMENTS - contains cations of the trace elements barium, chrome, cobalt, iron, copper, manganese, nickel, strontium and zinc in pure mineral form"

So while fighting dinos, I'd avoid it and use a simpler 2-part for Ca & Alk.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Yes, I would like to think that you did it: with the dosage of silica there were conditions for diatoms to grow, they grew, they dominated the dinoflagellates and practically eliminated them (allelopathy, maybe?).

Congratulations

Lol while It's nice that he seems to have possibly gotten the dinos to reduce. Now he has diatoms that are as ugly or worse haha. I know I'm commenting on something 5 years old, so I'll delete this or edit as I get further into the story.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

I posted this in the other dino forum but since I had amphidinum this makes a good home too.

Here is my story with amphidinum. Keep up the good fight and keep sharing. What yall shared with me in these forums is how I won the battle.

http://atransgenicworld.blogspot.com/2018/05/dinoflagellates-in-reef-tank-what-why.html?m=1

I'm 5 years late, but did this work long term?!

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

d

directly from Hanna-
hannainst.com

...the question which I asked last week and have not seen answer yet is- are people using the high range or low range checkers?

Same question I have.

 

[bvanfish]

This is what I have been doing. I have been fighting them for a month or two and the tide is for sure turning. I am also doing something along with @TokenReefer. Selective black outs. Using my lid and cardboard to make dark spots on the sand where I’m having any left over troubles. This allows coral, and other areas with diatoms to still grow and beat the Dino while beating back the hard spots

my steps

temp 78.8
turn off all whites red and greens
Block all outside light from getting into the room your tank is in
Drop photo period to 8 hours
Reduce intensity of lights
Get 10 nitrate .1 phos or 20 and .2 of
Dose silicates (a lot) I was doing smaller bits daily and changed to large amounts 1x week (I mix it with rodi and then I use a long pipette and pipe it right to the sand where there’s any spots no pumps for 30 mins)
Dosing different types of live phyto 1-2x a day
Adding pods 1x every other week about
No water change for 5 weeks
No glass cleaning for 5 weeks
Only changed floss when it stopped running through
Dosing 1 cap of MB7 right at light on sometimes 2 caps

this has gotten me to the point of white sand with just diatom dust a bit and no more bubbles being released up or on rocks. Did a water change a week ago and no real resurgence. Doing another tomorrow. Only have cleaned 1 pane of glass.

I did not blow off anything, use any chemicals, or mess with the sand bed at all!

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

These are known morphologies below:

Fig. 4. Light micrographs of the genera Amphidinium (present study). A...

Download scientific diagram | Light micrographs of the genera Amphidinium (present study). A and B: Amphidinium carterae, C and D: Amphidinium gibbosum. E and F: from publication: Presence of benthic dinoflagellates around coastal waters of Jeju Island including newly recorded species | A...

www.researchgate.net

Sick!

 

[Cbones1979]

I believe these are the same type. I was running UV however since it kills bacteria and no these sand dino, I just stopped it. My turf scrubber should help out compete.
Letting tank get dirty to see if it helps.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Ok guys so interesting update. I've been dosing SpongExcel Silica for 12 days. Just above the recommended dose on bottle. I'm doing 1ml = 20 drops/day for 300 gallons.

Took sample under scope of brown stuff on sand. I found some diatoms, not many, but I did find more than before I think. More interesting though... I found 2 critters roaming around which looked like they might have dinos in their stomachs. I'll add photo from my phone now. WEIRD critters lol. The smaller one was really odd it looked like some kind of clam with hairs coming out of it like appendages. It moved around fast and would stop, open up its clam it looked like and stretch out its tentacles.

anyone know what these are? Could they be eating my Dino’s?!

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

@taricha any updates on how your Si dosing experiment is going?

I've been dosing for 3 months now, but I have to keep increasing Si to keep it above zero. Hair algae has really taken over the whole tank, two part usage is almost zero (almost no sticks left), and the amphidinium is just chilling out in the hair algae. PO4 is 0.10+, NO3 is 15ppm, and I'm running UV. I've stopped doing water changes at this point. Not sure what else to try.. anybody else go through a long stage of hair algae with dinos?

Tang gang, snails, tuxedo urchins?

 

[taricha]

anyone know what these are? Could they be eating my Dino’s?!

yes. Those are ciliates.They look remarkably like some I found munching dinos in my system.
see here

Totally. Having your own scope is best, but until you get one I'd be happy to ID any suspected Dinos that anyone wants to send me. PM me for details. It'd need to be next day shipping, because if it sits more than a day in summer shipping heat, I couldn't ID what was left.


I know you were half-joking, but pulling some debris from the bottom of someone's healthy established algae-filled Fuge would be great to seed a new tank with. There's great stuff in there.



Ok, to deliver on the tease... pods & snails aren't the only things that eat dinos. Here's my personal unsung hero dino grazers: Ciliates!
This is a large relative of Euplotes having ingested amphidinium (click each pic for link to video)


This is Coleps having ingested an amphidinium and a couple other dino cells (click for vid moving through focal plane). I've seen a bunch of these in other people's tanks too after they had dinos. Common dino grazer?


This is a hypotrich ciliate of some kind


And Finally, my favorite - these worm-looking ciliates eat Ostreopsis (yep) a handful at a time (!). I hadn't posted these when I shot them back in April of 2016, because (heh) I saw these videos and honestly thought we could solve Dino problems by shipping people bottles with a million of these guys to pour in your tank.
Enjoy video

Only 3 problems with that.
1. Had no idea what they were
2. No idea how to culture them to any density
3. Biggest and most importantly - I didn't realize the huge difference between "can eat toxic dinos" - (these do!), and "can grow and multiply on toxic dinos" (nothing does)

two days ago I got an ID for them from this dude's video (of them eating different dinos)
"Ciliado marino,posiblemente Trachelocerca
Su aspecto recuerda al ciliado Lacrymaria"

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

yes. Those are ciliates.They look remarkably like some I found munching dinos in my system.
see here

Nice I checked your vids and photos. Very cool.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Maybe I can help you all out a bit from my experience. I had a bad case of Dino’s in my 120 gallon reef I tried everything to get rid of them and finally used bleach dosing which did knock them out. I started getting Dino’s back so tried astrea turbo snails and turns out they eat the Dino’s and won’t die. I got 50 of them on eBay for like $60 and it’s been the best purchase I’ve made in combatting Dino’s. I highly recommend looking into those snails there is a bunch of pics in this thread that are lacking a big clean up crew. Dino’s killed all my cleaner crabs just FYI

Anyone check if this works for others?

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

What if I removed all or most of the sand, would then UV work (to kill what's left)? I only have a thin layer of sand for cosmetic purposes that is syphoned all the way to the bottom every week, don't think it does that much biologically.



Wondering if dinos mostly affect people who carbon dose... I started NOPOX around 12 months ago (which resolved my GHA issues). Dinos appeared probably around 6 months after starting NOPOX. By the way, I never aimed for ULN. Always tried to keep phosphates/nitrates at Red Sea recommended levels for mixed reef...

I got dinos with no carbon dosing for what it's worth. Had 0 phosphates.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Small Cell and Lg Cell Amphidinium both lack thecal plates (armor) and so I was surprised that Lg Cell Amphidinium were lysed in freshwater in seconds, but they were. I expect small cell amphidinium will suffer the same, but I do not recall if I have observed it personally under the scope.


I can guarantee spongexcel is providing Si, and the kit is failing to detect. Many other reports of same.
I first saw diatoms on the glass as well, and it makes perfect sense that people with dino outbreaks don't see a diatom explosion upon dosing P, N, & Si. The dinos have already depleted important trace elements. Doesn't mean it's not working. You've now created a situation where Diatoms can compete for scarce elements as they become available.
Removing dino cells directly can speed this process.
Observations of stirring sand triggering visible growth (diatoms and dinos both) are due in part to the scarce resources liberated from within the sandbed.


You did see them. Right here...

Have they fixed this test kit yet? Salifert Silica has 4.4 rating on Amazon. Seems unlikely it is still broken?

 

[taricha]

Anyone check if this works for others?

Astrea and turbos most definitely die if the dinos are toxic (many many reports of dead snails), and they don't graze non-toxic dinos intentionally. If they graze on dinos, it's because the dinos happen to be on the spots they want to eat.

Have they fixed this test kit yet? Salifert Silica has 4.4 rating on Amazon. Seems unlikely it is still broken?

Since I've been burned once on a kit that detected 0% of Si for me and many others, I won't try again. But maybe there's a recent video demonstration of a positive detection of a known dosed amount of Si.
Short of seeing that, I wouldn't buy a kit that I know was a failure in the past without evidence it's different now.