Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods

[Bitcoin Reefer]

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.


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.

Well I'll be your huckleberry and do a more recent trial of the Salifert Silica test. I bought it already. I did 1ml/day for a few weeks and then got salifert and show 0. 1ml for 300gal is very low though so the reading isn't surprising yet. I've upped it by 1ml each day for last 4 days still reading 0, still not that surprised. Today I dosed 5ml (100 drops) for my 300g, and will test again tomorrow. We should know within a week by the time I get to 10+ml/day lol.

 

[taricha]

Well I'll be your huckleberry and do a more recent trial of the Salifert Silica test.

Pull out a liter of tank water into a container test that with the test kit, and then add Silica to that in an amount to get around 1ppm Silica, and test again.
That will be definitive.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Pull out a liter of tank water into a container test that with the test kit, and then add Silica to that in an amount to get around 1ppm Silica, and test again.
That will be definitive.

Is there a calculator to figure that out? Or can someone here tell me how much SpongExcel to add to 1 liter to get to 1ppm?

 

[thedon986]

Is there a calculator to figure that out? Or can someone here tell me how much SpongExcel to add to 1 liter to get to 1ppm?

Brightwell website says one drop per gallon increases the concentration by about .2 ppm

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Brightwell website says one drop per gallon increases the concentration by about .2 ppm

awesome I’ll try this today.

I have good news fam!!!!! I don’t want to get my hopes up yet, but I’ve been dosing Silica for like 27days. It was low amounts mostly 1ml (20 drops) per day for 300 gallon tank. I increased that over the last week each day 1ml/day, I’m currently at 7ml/day (140 drops) for 300gal.

I took two samples yesterday and couldn’t find any Dino’s! Only diatoms I think?! Different shapes of diatoms? Here are photos! The sand looks remarkably like Dino’s, but I think it’s all diatoms now and overall looks much better!

I think now I’ll start tapering off the silica to smaller levels and see if the diatoms start to go away and keep checking to make sure Dino’s don’t come back.

I’ve kept phosphate at .17-.40 for 2-3 months now.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Brightwell website says one drop per gallon increases the concentration by about .2 ppm

Ok so that would be 5 drops per gallon. So I actually had already done a test kind of randomly testing just 1 cup of tank water with 4 drops which is MUCH more than 5 drops per gallon, and I read 0 lol. Ok Salifert broken I guess. Surprising that they'd be broken for years and not fix? Especially when reviews on Amazon are relatively good. Well my diatoms are doing very well, so I must have decent Silica lol

 

[taricha]

I have good news fam!!!!! I don’t want to get my hopes up yet, but I’ve been dosing Silica for like 27days. It was low amounts mostly 1ml (20 drops) per day for 300 gallon tank. I increased that over the last week each day 1ml/day, I’m currently at 7ml/day (140 drops) for 300gal.

I took two samples yesterday and couldn’t find any Dino’s! Only diatoms I think?! Different shapes of diatoms? Here are photos! The sand looks remarkably like Dino’s, but I think it’s all diatoms now and overall looks much better!

Agree! Those pics are all diatoms of a few different types.

I think now I’ll start tapering off the silica to smaller levels and see if the diatoms start to go away and keep checking to make sure Dino’s don’t come back.

I wouldn't cut off the Si yet. I suppose slow ramp down is fine.
I would vacuum out any accumulation brown enough to bother with. Let the diatoms regrow faster than the dinos. In this way, the population will continue to shift further in favor of the diatoms and away from dinos.

Ok so that would be 5 drops per gallon. So I actually had already done a test kind of randomly testing just 1 cup of tank water with 4 drops which is MUCH more than 5 drops per gallon, and I read 0 lol. Ok Salifert broken I guess. Surprising that they'd be broken for years and not fix? Especially when reviews on Amazon are relatively good. Well my diatoms are doing very well, so I must have decent Silica lol

Before we declare it dead, actually do 5 drops in a gallon (1ppm) or 1 drop in a liter (just under 1 ppm). Some test kit chemistry gets killed off by an overdose.

How people can get positive reviews of a potentially broken kit?
They test to make sure they have zero Si, and the kit always reports zero Si. Satisfied customers!

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Agree! Those pics are all diatoms of a few different types.


I wouldn't cut off the Si yet. I suppose slow ramp down is fine.
I would vacuum out any accumulation brown enough to bother with. Let the diatoms regrow faster than the dinos. In this way, the population will continue to shift further in favor of the diatoms and away from dinos.



Before we declare it dead, actually do 5 drops in a gallon (1ppm) or 1 drop in a liter (just under 1 ppm). Some test kit chemistry gets killed off by an overdose.

How people can get positive reviews of a potentially broken kit?
They test to make sure they have zero Si, and the kit always reports zero Si. Satisfied customers!

Did it. 1L, 1drop SE. 0 coloration lol. Left bad review on Amazon.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

I wouldn't cut off the Si yet. I suppose slow ramp down is fine.
I would vacuum out any accumulation brown enough to bother with. Let the diatoms regrow faster than the dinos. In this way, the population will continue to shift further in favor of the diatoms and away from dinos.

Sounds good! I had done 1ml/day for 300g for 3 weeks, then ramped up to 7ml/day over the last week. Dropped to 3ml/day today. Will hold this level for few days then drop to 2ml/day few days, then 1ml/day for few days, checking microscope every day for dinos Let me know if this is too fast. Thanks as always Taricha!

 

[taricha]

Did it. 1L, 1drop SE. 0 coloration lol. Left bad review on Amazon.

Thanks for doing that.
At least it's consistent (at not detecting anybody's Silica) for years now.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Thanks for doing that.
At least it's consistent (at not detecting anybody's Silica) for years now.

Yes sir! or ma'am? I've always wondered lol. Taricha could be either ha.

 

[taricha]

Mr. Taricha Or Jonathan if you like.

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Ok so update. I’ve dropped my dosing of silica over the last week. I may have dropped too fast but now I’m getting some Dino’s under the microscope. Tank looks ok, still maybe best it’s looked in months, but here are scope pics I wonder if I should increase my silica dosages and taper off more slowly over weeks or months? Maybe 1 week tapering from 7ml/day to 1ml/day of silica was too fast? It’s still mostly diatoms, but now seeing some Dinos, and new species of Dino’s, slightly concerns me lol. Are these Dino’s? I’m not even sure on all of them.

I did find another massive Dino eater, or at least it looks like his stomach is full of Dino’s lol.

 

[taricha]

Tank looks ok, still maybe best it’s looked in months, but here are scope pics I wonder if I should increase my silica dosages and taper off more slowly over weeks or months? Maybe 1 week tapering from 7ml/day to 1ml/day of silica was too fast?

I'd agree and keep Si around longer.
Love that ciliate!

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

Ok so I’ve been dropping silica dosing very slowly. Down to .5ml/day from peak of 7ml/day on 300g tank. I had almost 100% ratio diatoms to dinos before. Now I have some kind of new dinos coming in I think? What are these? SCA plus another big one? I cleaned glass and they made a 1 inch line following the curve of my sand within a day. Looks different than my LCA outbreak and my diatom bloom.

These are all 400x zoom.

 

[Troylee]

What’s been the results from adding live rock from a different tank to these tanks with the sand dwellers? My little cube has had them for a couple months and I have them about 80% gone now by just running all blue lights.. I recently got a large 300 gallon tank I wanna transfer my stuff too but don’t wanna bring the Dino’s lol… the new tank came with its own established live rock.. I grabbed a couple chunks and threw them in the sump of my cube hoping this is the nail in the coffin on these dumb things! Ugh.. I’m gonna start siphoning them out daily and doing massive water changes with the water outta my 300 into the 60 gal cube hoping that the different bacteria in the water column will also help me seal the deal.. hopefully, anyways.. haha!

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

1. I had LCA
2. I dosed Silica (7ml/day 300gal) and it went away and was replaced by lots of diatoms on sand
3. Then I dropped silica dose to very small every couple days (1ml/day) and in came small cell amphimidium (see pic above please never got ID confirmation
4. I increased silica to 2ml/day, now have ton of what looks like green and brown cyano?

what the heck is happening lol?

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

1. I had LCA
2. I dosed Silica (7ml/day 300gal) and it went away and was replaced by lots of diatoms on sand
3. Then I dropped silica dose to very small every couple days (1ml/day) and in came small cell amphimidium (see pic above please never got ID confirmation
4. I increased silica to 2ml/day, now have ton of what looks like green and brown cyano?

what the heck is happening lol?

Friendly bump

 

[Bitcoin Reefer]

My current strategy is just leave things as is, because it looks like there’s a lot of biodiversity, so I’m hoping all the little bugs, copepods, or whatever is in there eventually get plentiful enough to eat the cyano, Dino’s, etc? It doesn’t seem like it’s too much of population of dinos. I am noticing a couple of corals starting to act weird again though with slight skeleton showing, so getting worried the Dino’s in there are toxic.

 

[taricha]

What’s been the results from adding live rock from a different tank to these tanks with the sand dwellers?

People have found things like a live rock addition helped if the dino population was small. If the system was overrun with dinos, then simply adding live rock didn't do much to change the bloom.