Dinoflagellates and Light Cycle

[Neil Fox]

I have an outbreak of Dinos in my frag tank. This is the second time this has happened and it seemed to be caused by eliminating a Bryopsis problem that seemed to fuel them. The first time this happened I did the blackout thing, three days and they were gone for awhile but have since returned though not on such a large scale. I have been trying the H2O2 method but I am not sure how well it is working, they don't seem as prevalent but I have heard that not all Dinos succumb to this. I have been doing some research and have come across some websites that actually sell bio-luminescent Dinoflagellets.

One of the things that struck me was that too long of a light cycle is not good for them. My understanding is that they typically go into a free swimming stage at night and reconvene in daylight, that is why the tanks look cleaner in the morning. That being said, I was wondering what would happen if, instead of a blackout, the lights were left on 24 hours and they would never enter a free swimming stage. Has anyone tried this?

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

An interesting read. http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-11/rhf/index.php#5

 

[Capn Briarius]

Okay, totally not interested in being able to tell you what MY plan is for dinos, but it's actually my job to have a plan, I think I got a good idea. I think there is value in looking at your particular red slime, in my case we are pretty sure it is ostreopsis, and explains why things are going wrong. Evertythung testing at zero, right ... red slime alagae should not be a problem. That's true for cyano in most cases, remove the Po4 and No3 and starve it out. That's actually a bad plan for dino's. However, both cyano and dinos like light, and I would guess that most of the time,,if you have dinos, you also have cyano ... but that may be tank specific.

So, the tank was receiving regular water changes, I have cut that off and I am dosing Kent products for magnesium and also to buffer alkalinity. None of these issues were being addressed, I don't have any budget. Also of course they assumed it was cyano, and we got it under a scope, and it's clearly dinos. Again, to say the tank is cyano free would be wrong, but it's less of a concern.

Obviously, I want to get all and calcium,in check, as well,as,strontium and all other elements, and with no budget and time, I can't be dripped ng kalk and hoping I don't kill the Ph. Since I am at these tanks part time, an LFS suggested these blocks,,and I,forget the brand. Helps me since I am not there every day to dose ... using those,,like I said an alk buffer, and then I think we will do like a 48 hour blackout, of the main tank I have Id'd as having dinos, and I am hoping that is not only a short term problem, but with water parameters in check, I can actually add fast growing corals like xenia that should outcompete the dinos.

Someone, wasn't me, a long time ago said, every tank has ich. And I would go further,,every healthy tank has dynos and cyano. Parasites. It's all about what you do,to keep it in check.

 

[Capn Briarius]

And I say not intersested in telling you my plan, is because I never had to face this problem before and I hoped I never had to. My plan is still mostly a shot in the dark, almost literally. Couple days to get water parameters in check, 48 hour blackout.

 

[Capn Briarius]

These are not my tanks, been hired to fix these tanks, almost be easier to start over. 15 years old though. Stable as a baby's bottom, wait that doesn't make any sense, stable, as a horse ...who cares, point is they are stable, test zero across the board.

Maybe they souldn't test zero? Right? If you want a good environment for a dinofalgellate bloom .... maybe zeroes is good.

 

[Capn Briarius]

First thing I did was dose Magnesium. Actually the first thing I did was put a shell, a small abalone shell covering a small patch of this "algae" to see how it responds, with being light deprived. Nice thing about an abalone shell is it has holes that allow gas exchange, so you can use them to like spot certain trouble areas and just light deprive.

It's a great little tool you can use, move around your tank and shade whe you want, find them for like $10 on ebay. I brought some in yo ... but still I am about to go gangster on these dinos. Tank is going to look like a bum is living in it for 2 days, all the cardboard and duct tape ... and if you don't keep the water parameters in check, after that ...it aint gonna be pretty, soft corals will survive a short blackout no problem, if you have a reasonable bioload. Totally shocking thing though, to any kind of photosynthetic reaction, so ... it's hard to anticipate what that reaction will be in that old tank, even with just mushrooms and zoas.

Yeah .... and then still not going to do a water change. Buffer alkalinity. Dose mG. I have some Kent products. Matter of fact I spent $42 of my own money on these blocks an LFS sold me. I got no dates on test kitx, I got limited like .... everything. No budget at all right now.

Hey, for a lot of reasons, I am going to do the best that I can with limited funds. Matter of fact, they haven't paid me a dime yet. Brought in, just for fun like some of my fossil collection, a Nautilus and a Megaladon tooth.

Long drive, inconvenient location. Long drive from my house. I do not like auto feeders or auto dosers because that is so lazy that you don't have 5 seconds, or whatever.had to submit to a background check ... But my job is to drive out there,,check,the skimmers,,etc.

 

[Reefer1978]

I like what you are guys are thinking off with the light cycle, and that's actually how I believe I finally defeated ostreopsis, to the point that I was thinking of productizing the idea, but don't have the investment capital. But here goes, if someone else wants to try this. Just heads up, this is an idea that would be running on an ongoing basis for 6 months to a year, as it'a a very slow approach to getting rid of dinos.

So imagine you have 2 containers, 1 being the tank, and 2, smaller controllable storage container that's hooked up to the tank and water is circulating through it, but you can shut it off as needed, hopefully through DA or Apex controller on a schedule (Refugium, or a whole other container, with some rock, or pieces of egg crate, or filter floss). There should also be a small circulating pump in this container. Your tank runs as normal, so lets say light cycle is from 8 am to 8pm, with total darkness at 10pm (no moonlights). Second container light turns on at midnight, and runs for 6 hours, until 6 am or sunrize, which ever comes first.

So so far, what we are getting is the following. When lights go off in the main tank, dynos start free-swimming looking for more light (energy source). Decent amount of them, depending on your flow, will make it to the refugium, and cling to what ever is in there as they like they light, and want to stay and draw from the energy. You just created a daily killing jar. How you kill the dinos in there is up to you.

So right before 6 am, flow to the container should be turned off so dynos don't escape, and killing can begin. I thought of 3 main ways this can be accomplished:

1. Hydrogen Peroxide - bug a huge dose, something you would not be comfortable dumping into the tank. a good start is 10x of what we dose tanks, and go from there, it will dissipate before the water is back on and will not be introduced into the tank
2. Bleach - same as Hydrogen Peroxide - large dose, I used 1ml per 10 gallons. Same as above, leave water circulating for a few hours, with a powerhead going, most should be gone in 8 hours lets say
3. Hook up an overpowered UV to the outlet, and turn it on at this point. When I say overpowered, I mean again 5x recommended UV for the flow, so it cooks everything going out of the killing jar. In this method, there's no need to turn the flow off at close to 6am, I would say turn the UV on 15 minutes prior to 6, and dial in the duration by watching the container for a few days to see how much time it takes for all dynos to dissipate from the killing jar.

Another potential improvement is to dump the water in steps 1 and 2, and have this be a small water change. Dead dynos release all the toxicity back into the water, and for infested systems it would be good to keep it out of the tank.

 

[cb684]

So, I have some experience with this. For the strains I worked with, 84 hrs blackout did the trick. I know, I should know better and make sure that I knew the species I was dealing beforehand. I did not, I only made sure I knew it was dinoflagellates and started changing things in the tanks.
I have seen dinos with low and high NO3 and PO4 so nutrients in my experience did not make any difference.
In most of the cases, I also had some cyanobacteria in the tanks.
I tried different things including H2O2 and Vibrant with minimal improvements.
The last time I tried UV, it helped but did not solve the problem. It did help a lot ridding the tank from cyano.
All times after an 84 hrs blackout (using a thick tarp on top of the tank and making sure no light reached the sump) they disappeared and did not come back.

 

[m0jjen]

Ill give it a go to awnser the OT. There are different approaches to treating dino, i myself currently have it and from the looks of it im winning Having an extreme photoperiod can have its benefits in the sense that you can manually remove alot of it with a small hose (im currently doing this twice daily). I doubt they will die from it alone though. They will probably keep growing for "all eternity" unless other organism can be favored. This is probably why there arent any quickfixes around, its all about balance im my eyes.

The favorable thing about having a normal lightcycle is that manual removal daily helps alot and slows them down, another manual removal that can be done is filterfloss in the overflow or sump, or even both. This traps alot of the free swiming dinos during the night which can be removed in the morning. I run floss 24/7 and change it morning and evening. It its litterly drenches in dino.

A blackout probably staves dino to death since they are photosyntetic and needs light to live. If you combine a blackout with manual removal you will reduce their numbers drastically.

My corse of action has been:

* Remove sand
* Raise No3 and Po4 (had 0 no3 and 0.003 po4) which staved the whole system making it a nice place for dino e.g that can establish in more extreme conditions. The reasoning behind this is to favor algae and whatnot once the dino is starting to reced and die.
* Manual removal with a small tube (2x 5L water a day) which is replaced with fresh new water. I dont do any waterchanges besides this
* Filterfloss in overflow and bubbletrap

Now that i have very little dino left i've started H2O2 dosing to finish it off. I've done some testing in a container and the h2o2 definitily finish them off and kill them in the container. I did 5 tests before starting the dosing in my tank. I dose 1ml per 10gallon atm and plan on ramping it up to 1.5ml per 10 gallons if 1 ml dont work and can go up to 2 ml per 10 gallons if needed.

It seems like im winning, cant be sure but they have been reduced.

 

[Shep]

Stay on topic or you will be removed from the thread.

 

[Capn Briarius]

sorry. I'M old school reef guy with an old school poblem.

 

[Neil Fox]

Thanks for the input all. Here is what I am basing my extended photoperiod hypothesis on:

In an experiment where continuous illumination was provided for 72 hours, zooxanthellae maintained a natural progression of reproductive phases for at least the first 11 hours. At Hour 17, unnatural populations of phases were noted, and the trend lasted for the duration of the experiment. Notably, zooxanthellae contained an abnormal number of chromosomes (designated as '3-4 Chromo' in Figure 10) and failed to divide in an orderly fashion.

Figure 10. Continuous illumination disrupts the normal reproduction cycle of zooxanthellae (at least in this case: Clade B from Euphyllia glabrescens).

Source, Dana Riddle.

For some background, this is a frag tank, bare bottom. The diagnosis has been confirmed as Dinoflaggelate, I believe Ostreopsis. Some time ago, I had an outbreak of Dinos but it seemed to be defeated by a blackout, the problem was I lost a few really nice SPS species in the process. A while later, I picked up some Bryopsis on a frag plug. I used Vibrant to kill it off effectively but within a matter of days I had a major Dino outbreak. I have been using H2O2, now at 2ml per 10gal, daily, split into two doses. This doesn't seem to do much. I had also tried Vibrant but it is just causing my corals to get really pale and killing off most all the algae. My glass never needs cleaning. These Dinos don't appear to be Toxic as my snails are unaffected. There are some antifungals etc. that have shown some promise but they have side effects. That is the reason I considered an extended photoperiod, as it may disrupt the chromosomes ability to divide. The problem is that the zooxenthellae in the coral tissue may also be affected as this in itself is a type of Dinoflagellates.

I know there is a massive thread regarding dinoflagellaes, but I was more interested in the lighting aspect. As a side note, I do know that I must have cross contaminated my display tank as I have added livestock from the frag tank and even a rock with some Gorgonians. I noticed too late that the Dinos were growing on the tips; however, they quickly died off and never returned without any intervention. Clearly the conditions in that tank are not conducive to Dinos. Right now all my frags look pretty good but I don't want to risk contaminating another tank and don't want to kill them with an extended light cycle.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I know there is a massive thread regarding dinoflagellaes, but I was more interested in the lighting aspect.

I dont think you can actually leave out the other aspects of the biosphere when it comes to dino's though.
And I also think folks get hung up on the "contaminating" other tanks aspect. I have never had "dinos". ever. Why? I used to never ever qt. basic dips. Lots of light. And back when, really poor light and not very much. Natural seawater with only a basic sand filter. Seaweed kelp and other macros and other stuff I found on the beach. No Dinos. Also no massive cyanos.
Whats fueling them? whats killing them? More importantly I believe is, what is eating them and out competing them.

If you read J Sprung, Randy F(dino articles and silicate dosing), PaulB, Garf, Steve Tyree, etc etc, its about microfauna and diversity. Randys article(Look on R2r), he was actively dosing silicates to increase the Diatoms in his tank. His point was, they eat other stuff, esp the green algae that grows on the glass, and hes growing sponge in cryptic areas of the system to consume a plethora of other micro flora and fauna and bacterias to balance the system..

SO once you read up on all that stuff, you'll understand why I used to recommend adding Garf grunge, fiji mud and established live rock to a tank to cure cyano, diatoms and Dinos. But people think Im crazy to say that. I mean why would something in a bottle not be better? Well I don't know. But, I don't have cyano problems, and have never had Dinos, and I only occasionally have diatoms(dusty brown glass)

Most will , even with written studies, proof from experts, will still blame the presence of "nuisance " organisms on the lights, magnesium levels, alkalinity, Po4, silicates, contamination, spores, etc etc etc , rather than look at the basic population control of micro flora and fauna and means to safely introduce them.

It turns into the question of, are tanks to clean and sterile. Its pretty obvious to me that yes they are. And no, my tank does not look like a dirty swamp. its quite tidy.

 

[Neil Fox]

As I mentioned, this is confined to my frag tank. My display doesn't have a problem. That tank has wild collected rock, lots of pods and is densely packed with sps and a massive cleanup crew. I am trying to find a biological rather than chemical means of control. Dinos often occur in nature though, hence Red Tides.

 

[Reefer1978]

As I mentioned, this is confined to my frag tank. My display doesn't have a problem. That tank has wild collected rock, lots of pods and is densely packed with sps and a massive cleanup crew. I am trying to find a biological rather than chemical means of control. Dinos often occur in nature though, hence Red Tides.

Neil how long ago do you believe you exposed the display to dynos?

 

[Neil Fox]

Hi nvladic. I am assuming about a month ago. I had a small piece of rock with some corals attached that I put in the display for a couple days while I was working on the frag tank. At that time I hadnt really been thinking about Dinos, I just though maybe some Cyano. I was glad that the Dinos never showed up in there. Within days te frag tank was covered. A couple days after that I put a sample under a microscope at my Brothers.

 

[Reefer1978]

Hi nvladic. I am assuming about a month ago. I had a small piece of rock with some corals attached that I put in the display for a couple days while I was working on the frag tank. At that time I hadnt really been thinking about Dinos, I just though maybe some Cyano. I was glad that the Dinos never showed up in there. Within days te frag tank was covered. A couple days after that I put a sample under a microscope at my Brothers.

I hope you are right and the tank defeated them on it's own, but please watch it closely for the next few days/weeks/months. My contamination started with introducing some dry rock, that I was told sat dry for a few months in a back-yard and was pretty dry actually. It took 2-3 months in the tank for it to develop into something that I noticed. First it was a few random tiny microscopic air bubbles on the rock, I think back in the day I even posted a few pictures of them asking what was the cause. I got everything from algae, to pumps sucking in air, etc, etc. But a few weeks later the usual slime started showing up. From then on, with every battle, I was watching the rock for air bubbles, slime followed few weeks later.

 

[ifarmer]

do you have any corals in the tank now?
a couple (at least 2 or 3 times) of 5 continuous days light without light would eliminated them .
If you do not have any corals then I would say turn off the light for 10 days would do it.
I did a two times 3 days light out but they came back soon the water change took place. I ended up doing another 5 days light out and I have not seen it again since

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

As I mentioned, this is confined to my frag tank. My display doesn't have a problem. That tank has wild collected rock, lots of pods and is densely packed with sps and a massive cleanup crew. I am trying to find a biological rather than chemical means of control. Dinos often occur in nature though, hence Red Tides.

Understood. Dinos exist pretty much everywhere in the ocean. And IMO most every tank.

 

[Tplummer]

I like what you are guys are thinking off with the light cycle, and that's actually how I believe I finally defeated ostreopsis, to the point that I was thinking of productizing the idea, but don't have the investment capital. But here goes, if someone else wants to try this. Just heads up, this is an idea that would be running on an ongoing basis for 6 months to a year, as it'a a very slow approach to getting rid of dinos.

So imagine you have 2 containers, 1 being the tank, and 2, smaller controllable storage container that's hooked up to the tank and water is circulating through it, but you can shut it off as needed, hopefully through DA or Apex controller on a schedule (Refugium, or a whole other container, with some rock, or pieces of egg crate, or filter floss). There should also be a small circulating pump in this container. Your tank runs as normal, so lets say light cycle is from 8 am to 8pm, with total darkness at 10pm (no moonlights). Second container light turns on at midnight, and runs for 6 hours, until 6 am or sunrize, which ever comes first.

So so far, what we are getting is the following. When lights go off in the main tank, dynos start free-swimming looking for more light (energy source). Decent amount of them, depending on your flow, will make it to the refugium, and cling to what ever is in there as they like they light, and want to stay and draw from the energy. You just created a daily killing jar. How you kill the dinos in there is up to you.

So right before 6 am, flow to the container should be turned off so dynos don't escape, and killing can begin. I thought of 3 main ways this can be accomplished:

1. Hydrogen Peroxide - bug a huge dose, something you would not be comfortable dumping into the tank. a good start is 10x of what we dose tanks, and go from there, it will dissipate before the water is back on and will not be introduced into the tank
2. Bleach - same as Hydrogen Peroxide - large dose, I used 1ml per 10 gallons. Same as above, leave water circulating for a few hours, with a powerhead going, most should be gone in 8 hours lets say
3. Hook up an overpowered UV to the outlet, and turn it on at this point. When I say overpowered, I mean again 5x recommended UV for the flow, so it cooks everything going out of the killing jar. In this method, there's no need to turn the flow off at close to 6am, I would say turn the UV on 15 minutes prior to 6, and dial in the duration by watching the container for a few days to see how much time it takes for all dynos to dissipate from the killing jar.

Another potential improvement is to dump the water in steps 1 and 2, and have this be a small water change. Dead dynos release all the toxicity back into the water, and for infested systems it would be good to keep it out of the tank.

Killing jar..... i like the name and idea.