Dinoflagellate Problem? Could Ulva lactuca be the Answer?

[Reefnewb]

In case you missed it, it didint work. Im on the search for live ulva. It could be the processing or that they really add small quantities of it.

Does algae barn ship to you?

 

[Reefnewb]

In case you missed it, it didint work. Im on the search for live ulva. It could be the processing or that they really add small quantities of it.

Does algae barn ship to you?

 

[B-ridge]

Yes they ship. Only $9 for me

 

[Reefnewb]

Yes they ship. Only $9 for me

Yeah i saw in another thread that he lives somewhere that not many suppliers ship to.

 

[Scrubber_steve]

I’m suprised it’s that cheap to be honest

It's just a sea weed

 

[Reefnewb]

It's just a sea weed

Yeah, but pods are just pods, but they’re 45-60$ lol

 

[Reefnewb]

What light is best to grow this seaweed?

 

[Scrubber_steve]

What light is best to grow this seaweed?

660nm

 

[Cory]

Does algae barn ship to you?

Yes but 60 usd for shipping is crazy for a piece of algae.

 

[TexasTodd]

One thing I do believe is that it keeps some people grounded and keeps their mind engaged. I find this true of me. Worth every dime. Lol

Yes but 60 usd for shipping is crazy for a piece of algae.

Ah, but who with bad Dinos would give $60 to get rid of them....

 

[bluewill]

Ok , so Ive been experimenting all week , I ordered some dried Flake type Ulva Lactaca , didnt recieve yet .also ordered some powdered .
I live in South Florida and usually have the ability to find my own macrolgae's here, especially this week as we've had a brisk 25 knot wind washing everything up onto my beaches. Went out beach combing on Wednesday , could find much Ulva but their was copious amounts of many Macro algae avai;able . Introduced into my sump some handfull's of various types . also added a plentiful amount of various copapods and many other types of Zooplankton . ( also from my local waters , which are very easy to capture many different types by swirling Sargassum weed into a container of water ) I introduced 1000's into my frag tank sump along with the Macro's Wed. night.I also started dosing phytoplankton wed night.
Brief backround on my dino problem , which I have never had in over 30 years of reefing . I set up a 60 gal frag tank about 8 months ago . completely cycled very quickly with much rock and sand from my display tank sump. noticed the Dino outbreak about 4 weeks ago , which I wrongly diagnosed as a diatom out beak, and was going to ride it out . after proper identification, I read thru the expansive Dino thread , and started to take some action about 2 weeks ago. tried 3 day black out , which greatly diminished the Dinos , removed alot of sand ,boiled, and returned to tank last early last weekend , 2 days later Dino's Started returning stronger than before . Saw this thread last Sunday ( Thanks Scrubber Steve) which led me to a couple days of research online. Whats been interesting to me is why I have no outbreak in my display tank , which is much more mature , in terms of the overall biomass . Even though both systems are separated , I am constantly cross contaminating the two systems , when I feed , and moving rock and livestock between the two, and lots of other things . Theirs also a large difference in water parameters between the two. system tank runs very high NO3, and fairly high PO4, frag tank was running undetectable levels of both. I started dosing both Nitrates and Phosphates into the Dino contaminated frag tank on Thursday.
Although I cannot pinpoint the cause within the last 3 days visible Dino's have reduced to almost nothing , and I stopped mechanically removing removing them on Thursday night so I could monitor more accurately. Its been only 48 hours of not seeing the bloom recurring during daylight hours.
I firmly believe the information on certain biochemical release by Macro algaes that may be toxic to dinoflagellates . I also have read that various Zooplankton feed on Dino's . Something Ive added has directly caused the Dino level in this system to drop dramatically , and obviously it has nothing to do with out competing them for nutrients.
So this is what has been added:
5-10 different types of Macro algae
lots of Zooplankton
Nitrates
Phosphates
Zooplankton
I wish these activities could have been a little more like a controlled experiment , but i had no patience to spend months trying one addition at a time.
any thoughts ?

 

[Cory]

Ok , so Ive been experimenting all week , I ordered some dried Flake type Ulva Lactaca , didnt recieve yet .also ordered some powdered .
I live in South Florida and usually have the ability to find my own macrolgae's here, especially this week as we've had a brisk 25 knot wind washing everything up onto my beaches. Went out beach combing on Wednesday , could find much Ulva but their was copious amounts of many Macro algae avai;able . Introduced into my sump some handfull's of various types . also added a plentiful amount of various copapods and many other types of Zooplankton . ( also from my local waters , which are very easy to capture many different types by swirling Sargassum weed into a container of water ) I introduced 1000's into my frag tank sump along with the Macro's Wed. night.I also started dosing phytoplankton wed night.
Brief backround on my dino problem , which I have never had in over 30 years of reefing . I set up a 60 gal frag tank about 8 months ago . completely cycled very quickly with much rock and sand from my display tank sump. noticed the Dino outbreak about 4 weeks ago , which I wrongly diagnosed as a diatom out beak, and was going to ride it out . after proper identification, I read thru the expansive Dino thread , and started to take some action about 2 weeks ago. tried 3 day black out , which greatly diminished the Dinos , removed alot of sand ,boiled, and returned to tank last early last weekend , 2 days later Dino's Started returning stronger than before . Saw this thread last Sunday ( Thanks Scrubber Steve) which led me to a couple days of research online. Whats been interesting to me is why I have no outbreak in my display tank , which is much more mature , in terms of the overall biomass . Even though both systems are separated , I am constantly cross contaminating the two systems , when I feed , and moving rock and livestock between the two, and lots of other things . Theirs also a large difference in water parameters between the two. system tank runs very high NO3, and fairly high PO4, frag tank was running undetectable levels of both. I started dosing both Nitrates and Phosphates into the Dino contaminated frag tank on Thursday.
Although I cannot pinpoint the cause within the last 3 days visible Dino's have reduced to almost nothing , and I stopped mechanically removing removing them on Thursday night so I could monitor more accurately. Its been only 48 hours of not seeing the bloom recurring during daylight hours.
I firmly believe the information on certain biochemical release by Macro algaes that may be toxic to dinoflagellates . I also have read that various Zooplankton feed on Dino's . Something Ive added has directly caused the Dino level in this system to drop dramatically , and obviously it has nothing to do with out competing them for nutrients.
So this is what has been added:
5-10 different types of Macro algae
lots of Zooplankton
Nitrates
Phosphates
Zooplankton
I wish these activities could have been a little more like a controlled experiment , but i had no patience to spend months trying one addition at a time.
any thoughts ?

Not sure if it was the macroalgae or the increased nutrients you added. Have you seen the increased nutrient thread?

 

[B-ridge]

Link to increased nutrient thread please? Curious to read

 

[bluewill]

I saw the thread .My conception of the thread is that their all correct , that increasing the nutrients will allow other forms of life that will out compete the dinos and prevent them from blooming in an enclosed system. i think the overall answer , is that Dino's are just one form of many that live together in our systems . each of these lifeforms that develop together like in nature , have had millions of years to adapt to survival of their species. The one's that couldn't are not here , this is evolution . The rest of us life forms that are presently here because we have adapted to survive in a very competitive biomass, like humans and our immune systems who suffer thru an onslaught of biological atttacks on us daily but are still healthy and survive as a species. I dont think the thread was intended to insinuate that dino's would be directly killed by increasing the NO3/PO4 . and Im not convinced that may have happened in my frag tank. This thread was started because Scrubber Steve linked together an accidental occurrence in "ITSaName" system and the possibility of a chemical attack of some sort. If you read the link that Scrubber Steve provided at the beginning, we can see that there is some validity to the possibility that Ulva releases a biochemical that is toxic to Dino's . ( FYI this is how all our antibiotics are developed ,a natural chemical that is toxic to a strain of bacteria , or virus)
my post above , is to hopefully say that you guys should continue on this path .I think it's completely logical that there are probably many natural chemical compounds that directly kill Dino's, just need to find them, or one.
I'm not finished as I still have a dino outbreak , and dont know if it will completely stop , or continue on , but ill keep this thread updated.
If it stopped, it makes sense to me that their was not enough time to build an onslaught of competitive organisms to out compete them. so Im more inclined to think something killed them, or stopped them from multiplying.

 

[Reefnewb]

660nm

Awesome. Is that a bulb from Home Depot or one you found online?

 

[Scrubber_steve]

Awesome. Is that a bulb from Home Depot or one you found online?

Its the spectrum of light most necessary for photosynthesis

 

[bluewill]

Saw this this morning . interesting maybe not a biochemical released by macroalgae, but algicidal bacteria growing on the Algae that can ward off dinoflagellates.

"Algicidal bacteria offer a promising tool for the prevention of red tides, because they are able to play a key role in terminating blooms in coastal areas. This study details the detection of vast numbers of algicidal bacteria attached to the surface of seaweeds such as Ulv a sp. and Gelidium sp. (of the order of 106 cells g−1 wet weight in some cases). Algicidal bacteria were isolated from Ulva sp. and Gelidium sp. from the coast of Osaka Bay from April to September 1999, and their algicidal properties were assessed using the prey microalgae Karenia mikimotoi, Heterosigma akashiwo, Fibrocapsa japonica and Chattonella antiqua. K. mikimotoi was the red tide species most susceptible to the algicidal bacteria isolated from seaweeds. Sequence analyses of the 16S rDNA gene revealed that these algicidal bacteria belonged to the genera Alteromonas, Pseudo-alteromonas, Vibrio, Cytophaga, Cellulophaga and Octadecabacter, and the family Rhodobacteraceae. Algicidal properties of five of 10 strains of bacteria isolated from seaweeds, belonging to the genera Alteromonas, Pseudoalteromonas and Cytophaga, have been previously reported in coastal red tide areas. It is therefore possible that seaweed beds play a significant role as providers of algicidal bacteria in preventing red tides to coastal waters.

 

[Woody1911a1]

Absolutely AMAZED !!!

got my 1 oz of sea lettuce from Algae Barn on friday , but didn't have time to deal with it because I was leaveing the next morning for 4 days , so I put it in a mesh bag and floated it in the display part of my evo 13.5 . got home today to find that 75 % of my 3 month dino nightmare gone !

other than debris from dead algae and brown covered sand around the very outside edges , I've got white sand !

 

[Scrubber_steve]

Absolutely AMAZED !!!

got my 1 oz of sea lettuce from Algae Barn on friday , but didn't have time to deal with it because I was leaveing the next morning for 4 days , so I put it in a mesh bag and floated it in the display part of my evo 13.5 . got home today to find that 75 % of my 3 month dino nightmare gone !

other than debris from dead algae and brown covered sand around the very outside edges , I've got white sand !

Do you have some photos of before & after?
Keep us updated pls on any further changes.

 

[Cory]

We have hope! Possibly a cure. Thats great news Woody!