Dinoflagelates. A disruptive treatment

[Karliefish]

Hi, just to clarify on the dosing (at night):

Firts week: 0,5 ml per day per 100 liters of net aquarium water
Second week: 1 ml per day per 100 liters of net aquarium water
Third week: 2 ml per day per 100 liters of net aquarium water
Fourth week: 3 ml per day per 100 liters of net aquarium water
Fourth week: 4 ml per day per 100 liters of net aquarium water

We have not tested more than 4 ml

Hope it helps

Thank you for the clarification as I have been under dosing from 350G tank based on the recommended dosing regiment in your post. This probably explains why I have seen poor results. Question…should I dose all at once come night time or spread the dosing over several hours at night? Based on your recommended dosing, I’m now in week three and need to start dosing ~40ml per night this week.

 

[sixty_reefer]

I believe all of you I have listed below expressed an early interest in the process described in this thread.
Have any of you proceeded to implement the process, and, if so, will you please comment whether you found it to be successful?

Thanks in advance for sharing.

@Marco333
@David Gaskins
@JCTReefer
@Marshall53
@rckfsh44
@jrmailo
@sixty_reefer
@chris_pull
@Miami Reef
@drewbeck
@GuppyHJD
@Mike konesky
@Jase4224

No sorry, my interest on the thread was more to try and understand the effects of carbon dosing would outcompete the dinoflagellates. If followed properly this should eradicate most species

 

[Beuchat Verified Sponsor]

Thank you for the clarification as I have been under dosing from 350G tank based on the recommended dosing regiment in your post. This probably explains why I have seen poor results. Question…should I dose all at once come night time or spread the dosing over several hours at night? Based on your recommended dosing, I’m now in week three and need to start dosing ~40ml per night this week.

It is better to spread during, for example 11:00 PM to 4:00 AM. The idea is as much organic carbon shall be up-taken by bacteria and not by dinos (during photosynthesis). Anyway, I am not complete sure there it is a problem to dose during day. But the conducted essay was done with night dosing. So I can not recommend to dose during light hours

 

[Koh23]

I just throw when i go to sleep, dont have dosing pump, so.....

And i'm not that crazy that i wake up every hour-two to dose....

 

[Beuchat Verified Sponsor]

I just throw when i go to sleep, dont have dosing pump, so.....

And i'm not that crazy that i wake up every hour-two to dose....

Lol

 

[mikerosi]

Lol

So is everybody having good luck with this treatment

 

[Thunder_reef]

Not working for me so far on multiple tanks

 

[brandon429]

there is no better way to vet best practices for reefing than a work thread

work thread=huge collection of other people's tanks running a given method, where the author's tank is not the focused outcome but instead the % wins as reported/shown in pics by the entrants.


aligning a couple hundreds reefs with a given method validates it, failure to align a couple hundred reefs with a given method invalidates it, all from simple and free anecdote patterns.

anyone who tells us that anecdotal findings are insignificant in reefing has not ran a work thread, they're reflecting solely on the awesomeness of their own tank. being able to transmit success to others is more important than being able to reef as a master in one's home.

I'm glad to see another work thread involving dinos treatments for large tanks, I rate it as currently the worst scourge in reefing.

the 450 page one in the nuisance algae forum hasn't mustered very many cures whatsoever, although they are brainstorming some nice options for large tanks. Much needed improvement in the matter remains.


Rip cleans have the most cures on file with before/after pics and no tradeoff invasions but they are impractical for large tanks

large tanks need indirect options, things that work via water tuning. a tradeoff invasion is doing something to squelch dinos then getting cyano and GHA so bad the tank looks worse...trading off invasion generations vs just curing the whole issue. the 450+ page dinos thread in the nuisance algae forum is 75% tradeoff invasions and 5% cures and 20% works in progress but at least they're tackling the matter.

respects to Beauchat for running a huge work thread and being accountable for other's outcomes. that's rare. the #1 talk I'd like to see at MACNA is a work thread author reflecting on their % wins as found in a thread on a forum with hundreds of entrants on a matter of significance in reefing.

work threads are how we validate claims given to us in articles or talks or best practices posts.

 

[steve60]

Thanks to everyone on this thread for their comments and experiences. I decided to follow this approach to see what impact it would have on my own battle with dinos and wanted to share my results.

I am just finishing up week 3 of this approach but unfortunately I am not noticing much of an improvement. I'm seeing more brown hairy strands on my rocks and back wall, and the sand remains about the same rusty color. I don't have a microscope so unfortunately can't determine what type of dinos these are, but having had dinos a couple of years ago that I treated with dinoX I'm fairly certain they're the same. I prefer not to use dinoX as it caused a host of other problems the last time I used it, so wanted to give this approach a try.

I have a 750L tank and have been dosing Red Sea NoPox at 6ml/day first week, 12ml/day second, 18ml/day third and will go to 24ml/day tomorrow for the fourth week. I had been dosing 4ml of NoPox daily before I started this approach - not sure if I should have started the first week at 10ml instead. I estimated about 600L total water volume when accounting for rock work and equipment in the sump. That may be too low an estimate, but I thought it would be better to err on the lower side.

I have been keeping Nitrate and Phosphate levels up with NeoNitro and NeoPhos (Nitrate >=5, Phosphate >= 0.05). These have come down over the last 3 weeks from 12.4 Nitrate and 0.18 Phosphate. Currently they're at 5.6 and 0.05. Oddly, the last time my tank looked healthy was when Phosphate was really high between 0.3 - 0.6. At that time I decided to use GFO to bring it down and it quickly (within a few days) brought it to 0.07 - I'm wondering if that drastic change was part of the reason for the dino outbreak.

I've added pods every couple of weeks during this treatment - as far as I can tell, I had no visible pods in the tank when this outbreak started a few months ago, but definitely see them now when lights are out. I've been dosing 30ml of MicroBacter7 daily and feed live phyto every couple of days in the evening after the UV and skimmer are off. My UV runs for 17hrs/day and skimmer for 12. Lights have been on (no whites) for 10 hours a day - I'm decreasing that to 7 starting today.

I'm not certain, but I think a positive that I've seen is that the algae growing on my glass is now green instead of brown. The snails seem to attack that more now.

I have not done a water change during the time of this test, but have cleaned off rockwork and removed dinos from the sand bed by siphoning through a number of 200micron filter socks and replacing the water. Will need to do this again through 5micron filter socks that I have on order.

I've tested for silicate from my RODI and tank - both results with the Salifert kit showed 0. I then tested my tap water to see if there was anything coming in and it was 2ppm.

I've sent out an ICP test and expect to get the results in a week. I'll post an update on those results and what happens when I go to 24ml/day of NoPox.

 

[brandon429]

Nobody should ever, ever write articles on a reef procedure until others tanks are fixed for 20 straight pages. Non work threads articles are selling theory as fact.

That doesn't mean this thread isn't helping some, it's just subject to massive variation away from what the author may have seen in his own home.

 

[steve60]

Following up to my prior post with more observations, info from an ICP test, and microscope identification of what I am dealing with in my tank.

I bought a microscope and had a positive ID of LCA dinos (on sand bed) and chrysophates (rocks and back wall).

My ICP test came back with the following warnings (everything else was within acceptable ranges):

I think I've figured out where the Tin may have been coming from, but no idea where the Mercury is coming from (no broken thermometers or any other sources I can think of). I've tested my tap, rodi and tank water with test strips that check for Mercury and they all read 0. I've started using Brightwell Purit to help remove heavy metals and will send in a new ICP test in a couple of weeks to verify.

Trace elements were low, so I started dosing Red Sea Trace Colors A (Iodine, Bromine, Florine) and that seems to have some positive effect on my duncans (they've been closed up for months, but now I see them starting to open up a bit when the lights go out). I'm also switching my salt mix from NeoMarine to Red Sea blue bucket to see if that helps with trace elements. Will resume normal water changes again.

After increasing my NoPox dosage to the 4 week amount for a couple of weeks (maintaining MB7 daily dosage and keeping Nitrate and Phosphate levels up), I have not seen any noticeable difference in dinos. There was a large increase in chrysophates though. I also started getting a pink slime bacterial bloom in my sump, which I've seen before when the NoPox dosage was increased.

At this point I don't feel like this approach has worked in my situation with LCA. I'm going to slowly back off on the NoPox dosage (to get to a non pink slime dose), and keep up with the MB7 dose. I'll let the Purit reactor run for a couple more weeks to hopefully resolve the mercury/tin issue, then do another ICP test. Manual removal of chrysophates as often as necessary and siphon out LCA from the sand bed through 5micron socks. If the dino situation doesn't improve after the ICP test comes back (hopefully with better results) I will stop the Purit reactor and begin the silicate dosing approach to create a diatom bloom.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Nobody should ever, ever write articles on a reef procedure until others tanks are fixed for 20 straight pages. Non work threads articles are selling theory as fact.

That doesn't mean this thread isn't helping some, it's just subject to massive variation away from what the author may have seen in his own home.

20 pages of people saying they smoke and do not have cancer is convincing to you, while a single well designed study is not?

 

[brandon429]

The issue is that rip clean threads work very well using solely other people's tanks as the example so I'm spoiled by that standard.

we can try this method on some new jobs.

 

[brandon429]

I'm frozen in my tracks if the tank is too big to rip clean, but at least we found a subset of tank sizes that respond really well using solely other people's live time challenges. we need a large tank dinos job here to test

 

[Beuchat Verified Sponsor]

Following up to my prior post with more observations, info from an ICP test, and microscope identification of what I am dealing with in my tank.

I bought a microscope and had a positive ID of LCA dinos (on sand bed) and chrysophates (rocks and back wall).

My ICP test came back with the following warnings (everything else was within acceptable ranges):

I think I've figured out where the Tin may have been coming from, but no idea where the Mercury is coming from (no broken thermometers or any other sources I can think of). I've tested my tap, rodi and tank water with test strips that check for Mercury and they all read 0. I've started using Brightwell Purit to help remove heavy metals and will send in a new ICP test in a couple of weeks to verify.

Trace elements were low, so I started dosing Red Sea Trace Colors A (Iodine, Bromine, Florine) and that seems to have some positive effect on my duncans (they've been closed up for months, but now I see them starting to open up a bit when the lights go out). I'm also switching my salt mix from NeoMarine to Red Sea blue bucket to see if that helps with trace elements. Will resume normal water changes again.

After increasing my NoPox dosage to the 4 week amount for a couple of weeks (maintaining MB7 daily dosage and keeping Nitrate and Phosphate levels up), I have not seen any noticeable difference in dinos. There was a large increase in chrysophates though. I also started getting a pink slime bacterial bloom in my sump, which I've seen before when the NoPox dosage was increased.

At this point I don't feel like this approach has worked in my situation with LCA. I'm going to slowly back off on the NoPox dosage (to get to a non pink slime dose), and keep up with the MB7 dose. I'll let the Purit reactor run for a couple more weeks to hopefully resolve the mercury/tin issue, then do another ICP test. Manual removal of chrysophates as often as necessary and siphon out LCA from the sand bed through 5micron socks. If the dino situation doesn't improve after the ICP test comes back (hopefully with better results) I will stop the Purit reactor and begin the silicate dosing approach to create a diatom bloom.

Hi Steve60,

One of the tank´s owners in our conducted essay was adding Red Sea NoPox and it took quite more time for dinos to recess. I would suggest if you can get Xepta NP-Out ,witch is much more effective or maybe switch to vodka-vintager-sugar as previously explained. In our experience, there is no problem in letting nutrients temporary drop down (bad for dinos and other "algae"), as far as there is not cyano outbreak. The pink biofilm is quite common during treatment (sump, pipes,...) and it is better to be exported, if you can.

Hope its helps.

 

[brandon429]

Dinos…help with ID/treatment

This is going to be an updated thread with pictures once I get my microscope in. Background to what I believe caused them. My phosphates were rapidly increasing so I ran some gfo. The phosphates never got to zero but they did drop rapidly even only using 1/2 cup of gfo on a slow flow. Lowest...

www.reef2reef.com

This tank needs to be worked in my opinion. thats a huge tank, he needs real help

in my opinion you should reach out and work that job remotely, we would not have a chance to help him with rip cleaning, water-only actions/dosers/bacteria control and nutrient balancing are his only practical ways.

he needs to avoid cycling between dinos, cyano and hair algae which is the standard succession in the large dinos thread in the nuisance algae forum, the ideal correction method just kills his dinos and leaves the tank fixed. if that was a 30 gallon nano we would have it rip cleaned by tomorrow, then once more in two months and that fixes 98% of nano jobs for the exact same invasion within my collection using deep clean tests. his tank is the exact target audience for this writeup.

 

[Beuchat Verified Sponsor]

Hi,

I wanted to give an update. I have been able to verify in one of my newly installed aquariums that amphidinium is neutralized using Tropic Marin Elimi NP and NP Bacto Balance.

I hope it helps

 

[chema]

Hi,

I wanted to give an update. I have been able to verify in one of my newly installed aquariums that amphidinium is neutralized using Tropic Marin Elimi NP and NP Bacto Balance.

I hope it helps

Thank you for the info.

According to Tropic Marin each product should be used depending on the nitrate/phosphate levels. Did you use both of them at the same time?

 

[Beuchat Verified Sponsor]

No, first Elimi-NP and after phosphates were depleted below 0,03 I used NP-bacto-balance

 

[Karliefish]

No, first Elimi-NP and after phosphates were depleted below 0,03 I used NP-bacto-balance

Did you find when using NP-Bacto that your phosphates still dropped below .03? I’m having a hard time getting my to stay level at .03z