Dino ID

Keuken · Mar 4, 2022

Hello everyone,

After 3 years of no issues keeping LPS & SPS in a 20g bottomless tank, I started to have problems with Ostreopsis which I handled quite easy by 24W UV clarifier. However, I notice my parametres are not coming back to normal (very low Nitrate: < 1 ppm). I can't see anything resembling DINO in my tank and a bit of GHA started to grow. I was inspecting with my digital microscope throught tank glass when suddenly I got this:

Can anyone identify these??

I apologize for my english as I`m not native speaker.

Thanks

vetteguy53081 · Mar 4, 2022

Your English was perfect
You want to turn off at least white lights or preferably all lights for 5 days and siphon this stuff up. Blow loose with a turkey baster before siphoning
Add 1.5ml of liquid bacteria per 10 gallons daily during the day and at night add 1ml of 3% hydrogen peroxide per 10 gallons during this lights out period
Do not add coral foods or NoPox during this time
Clean filters and skimmer cup daily also

Keuken · Mar 4, 2022

Thanks for your reply,

The problem with siphoning is that I can't locate any spot with visible acumulation to siphon from. That video was taken by carefully inspecting throug all the front and lateral tank glass. Is it possible to identify them from that vid?

Thanks in advance, I will think about implementing that measures you suggest, as I am affraid peroxide may hurt snails, shrimps and so on.

DaJMasta · Mar 4, 2022

At least for smaller tanks, you can use a turkey baster or similar to suck the dinos off of corals and rocks in whatever accumulation there is, then squirt it out through a fine net (like one of the white shrimp nets) and most of the accumulations will just stay in the net. You could probably do the same with a siphon into a sieve and then return the water, but would take more setup to make sure the sieve stays on the hose.

That said, I'm not totally sure that's a dinoflagellate. If the video is the one under magnification, I don't think your magnification is super high - you wouldn't expect to see algae swaying like that at the magnification needed to see a lot of dinos, and if they were that big, you could probably see them by eye. You may very well have dinos on algae, it's not uncommon, but I think the moving things you're seeing are likely copepods of some sort.

Keuken · Mar 8, 2022

Hello Everyone,

I have been trying to catch them in order to proper ID them with microscope, and finally i got something to show you. The scale in the background is 100 micrometres, so those seems to be between 60-80. It seems than I have two different kind of dino-like things, one bigger and slower and other smaller and really fast swimmer (check the second vid). Aditionally, they seem to be translucid, so i can only locate them on black background. Can anyone help me ID these?

Also, I think the strands must be diatoms (Could anyone confirm please?)