Dinoflagellates and low nutrients

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lReef lKeeper

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Hey guys, I've been battling Dinos for a while now, and think I've figured out the issue. Dinos utilize low to no nutrients (from what I've read) and I have 0 nitrates and 0 phosphates. By "battling" I mean dosing DinoX, turned my Radions to all blues, and not doing my weekly routine water changes. I've been debating between adding a macroalgae reactor while dosing Brightwells NeoPhos and NeoNitro, or just turning off my skimmer for a few days and testing to see where my levels are and going from there. My skimmer is extremely oversized for my current system (Nyos Quantum 160 on a 80ish gallon SPS system). I have no refugium and more than enough rock and sand to sustain the system.
I recently turned my whites, reds, and greens back on after a couple of weeks with them all being turned off, and BAM ... Dinos have come right back.
I guess what I am looking for is a little advice or recommendations, considering the tens of thousands of dollars I have in high end Acropora. Pic of tank and Dinos ...

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Top Shelf Aquatics
Feel your pain, I have been dealing with a similar situation. I started getting a little cyano here and there so I refreshed my GFO and Carbon. The cyano started receding to almost no visible sign and a week after that there was a brown slimy substance starting on my leathers with long stringy appearance and then spreading over the coralline on the side panels. It was growing/ spreading everywhere in a matter of a few days. Rocks, corals, sand, glass, in the sump and all over the equipment in the water. I’d siphon and blow off remaining bits, rinse socks in RO, only to have be back everywhere in hours.
After reading and reading and some more reading I came up with the the same as you, low nutrients and possible major changes in biological(system) balance, allowing Dinos to take hold. A few weeks prior I added an Aquatic Life T5 to my pair of AI 26hd, also lost most Zoas right before adding the T5 to the tank. Which the added nutrients from the zoa loss kinda explains some of the cyano. However between fresh GFO, Carbon and new lighting there would have been some fairly quick changes in chemistry and light spectrum, that leads me to low nutrients can certainly lend to favorable conditions for Dinos. After coming to this conclusion I put my GFO and Carbon reactors on timers and slowly reduced the time they ran each day, also did the same with the T5s. Currently the are a few small places where the brown stringy slime is visible but 90-95% is gone. Now I’m using a baster to suction off the remaining slime and day by day it is less visible in the display tank. That being said, in my sump the Cheato now has noticeable brown slime that will develop daily. I vacuum this off the top of the water with a shopvac daily and is seemingly lessening with time. After further reading on Cheato there is more than a few articles on Dinos being linked to the algae, furthermore many aquarist are moving away from using Cheato in their systems. *probably 99% of the time it’s fine but that 1% is a real pain in the tuckus!
I plan to remove the T5s and stick with straight LED and I have also bought an algae scrubber to replace the Cheato in the sump which I will be installing in the near future.

Probably not a great deal of info or advice for your particular situation but thought I’d share my recent/ current experience I’ve been dealing with Dinos. Maybe in some part it will spark an idea to help with your situation. I believe there are some who dose hydrogen peroxide for Dino resolution.

Hope you figure it out,
Adam
 
ADAM said:
Feel your pain, I have been dealing with a similar situation. I started getting a little cyano here and there so I refreshed my GFO and Carbon. The cyano started receding to almost no visible sign and a week after that there was a brown slimy substance starting on my leathers with long stringy appearance and then spreading over the coralline on the side panels. It was growing/ spreading everywhere in a matter of a few days. Rocks, corals, sand, glass, in the sump and all over the equipment in the water. I’d siphon and blow off remaining bits, rinse socks in RO, only to have be back everywhere in hours.
After reading and reading and some more reading I came up with the the same as you, low nutrients and possible major changes in biological(system) balance, allowing Dinos to take hold. A few weeks prior I added an Aquatic Life T5 to my pair of AI 26hd, also lost most Zoas right before adding the T5 to the tank. Which the added nutrients from the zoa loss kinda explains some of the cyano. However between fresh GFO, Carbon and new lighting there would have been some fairly quick changes in chemistry and light spectrum, that leads me to low nutrients can certainly lend to favorable conditions for Dinos. After coming to this conclusion I put my GFO and Carbon reactors on timers and slowly reduced the time they ran each day, also did the same with the T5s. Currently the are a few small places where the brown stringy slime is visible but 90-95% is gone. Now I’m using a baster to suction off the remaining slime and day by day it is less visible in the display tank. That being said, in my sump the Cheato now has noticeable brown slime that will develop daily. I vacuum this off the top of the water with a shopvac daily and is seemingly lessening with time. After further reading on Cheato there is more than a few articles on Dinos being linked to the algae, furthermore many aquarist are moving away from using Cheato in their systems. *probably 99% of the time it’s fine but that 1% is a real pain in the tuckus!
I plan to remove the T5s and stick with straight LED and I have also bought an algae scrubber to replace the Cheato in the sump which I will be installing in the near future.

Probably not a great deal of info or advice for your particular situation but thought I’d share my recent/ current experience I’ve been dealing with Dinos. Maybe in some part it will spark an idea to help with your situation. I believe there are some who dose hydrogen peroxide for Dino resolution.

Hope you figure it out,
Adam
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info, man. It's been an uphill battle. While reading your post I realized one thing ... I'm also running an Aquatic Life T5 fixture. I only run it for 6 hours per day at my peak Radion setting, wonder if we are into something or it was the sudden change in lighting. Hmmm
 
Tidal Gardens
I would try turning off your skimmer like you mentioned and feed more to get your nutrient levels up.. I have had similar issues trying to run a tank to clean in the past, I temporarily pulled all media i.e. carbon, phosguard, poly filters, shut down skimmer and increased feedings.. tank cleared in a few days, now I just run skimmer, small amount of carbon and feed more and the problem has not returned.
 
Retro Reefer said:
I would try turning off your skimmer like you mentioned and feed more to get your nutrient levels up.. I have had similar issues trying to run a tank to clean in the past, I temporarily pulled all media i.e. carbon, phosguard, poly filters, shut down skimmer and increased feedings.. tank cleared in a few days, now I just run skimmer, small amount of carbon and feed more and the problem has not returned.
Click to expand...

As of 11pm last night ... my skimmer is turned off, I am dosing NeoNitro, NeoPhos, and DinoX and I am feeding Selcon and Garlic soaked frozen LRS Nano, LRS Reef Frenzy, and PE Mysis very heavily. Carbon and GFO were pulled a couple of months ago. I'll test my levels in a couple of days and see what's happening. Have I mentioned that I HATE these dang dinos ?!
 
Did you look into the H2O2 method?
I saw where people were having success with this method but didn’t want to try it until I un-did my recent changes to my system.
 
Top Shelf Aquatics
I had dinos for about 2 months. They were HORRIBLE and covered everything. I bought a HOB carbon filter (just for the extra mechanical filtration) and blew the dinos off of every surface every day. Did a 20% weekly w/c religiously making sure to pull out all the dinos I could, and changed the filter pads after I did every w/c. This worked for me. I have been dino-free for 1.5+ years. I run without a sump so no fuge for me either.
 
ZachH455 said:
I had dinos for about 2 months. They were HORRIBLE and covered everything. I bought a HOB carbon filter (just for the extra mechanical filtration) and blew the dinos off of every surface every day. Did a 20% weekly w/c religiously making sure to pull out all the dinos I could, and changed the filter pads after I did every w/c. This worked for me. I have been dino-free for 1.5+ years. I run without a sump so no fuge for me either.
Click to expand...
I've been doing that for months to no avail. My issue is nutrients are reading 0 and my specific Dinos ... thrive in that kind of system
 
You can just buy trisodium phosphate from amazon along with sodium/potassium nitrate. It’s so much cheaper than anything from an LFS.

For a start you are trying to do a million things at once and it will almost certainly fail. Stop fidgeting and playing with everything. Stop dosing dinoX and stop changing your water. It isn’t helping.

I have been in your situation. My tank sucks up phosphate far too quickly. Slow things down a little bit and regularly check your nutrients levels. Make small adjustments regularly and it will be gone quite quickly in around 3-4 weeks.

Don’t give up because it can be beaten and definitely never let your nutrient levels hit zero again.

Good luck
Zane
 
Test your nutrients and maintain them in the range of detectable phosphate and at least 5ppm nitrate, but more is just fine. Maintain alkalinity, calcium and magnesium as normally done. Run tank lights as normal. Don't add a macroalgae reactor and just let algaes grow in the display. You need the micro and macroalgal species to come in and undercut the dino's slime mat. As the nutrients increase and larger biodiversity of algae and pods are sustained in the system, the less real estate the dino will have.

Won't hurt to add a UV if you're not currently using one- it won't cure anything on it's own, but can speed dino's exit and act as a bit of insurance should you slip on your nutrient balance in the future and allow the tank to become too sterile. Dino's will never leave your system completely but they can't do any harm if they can't a foothold on the available substrates and bloom to plague proportions. They are beatable without a doubt. Don't give up. Good Luck!
 
I was in a similar situation with different types of algaes recently, I tried different kinds of chemicals (dino x, chemiclean, bleach, vibrant, peroxide, etc) and antibiotics. Even blackouts and reducing photoperiod, or lowering intensity of my lights. Some worked for a few days to weeks, then algae comes back. Like you I had 0 N03 and 0.03 P04 readings. I even turned off my skimmer during the day, and dosed KN03 to raise my N03 to 3-5ppm. But no effect.

I dont know if it's just luck or anecdotal, but the thing that worked for me to get rid of my dino and diatoms (some cyano too), is I started a DYI ATS, and did 10% WC everyday for 10 days (siphon the algae while doing WC). For the first week, the algae stopped getting worse, then after the 2nd week, you can see that its receding. I think I am on 1 month mark of zero algae. Only thing left now is my GHA, but its starting to fall off the rocks as well (about 50% left). I havent changed anything other than that. I still feed same amount of food and same frequency.

Whichever method you choose to try, I hope you get same luck as me!
 
Deltec
I recently battled dinos. I dosed flourish and stump remover (nitrate). Also, blew off every surface of the tank, sucked the dinos through a 20 micron filter sock, and ran a UV sterilizer. The tank turned green for a while but it didn’t take long to get rid of the dinos that way! Good luck! They can be defeated!
 
The strings and the dark appearance looks like cyanobacteria to me. Cyanobacteria typically occur with very low phosphate in the water and make use of phosphate deposits in rocks and gravel. Dinoflagellates in my experience like blue light. Zooxanthellae are Dinoflagellates too.
What is the color of your pest under white light?
 
ReefBot Lab, Automated Water Tester
When I see a little dinos in the sand in my fish tanks (shop) I change the silicate remover in the RODI unit. And after a few weeks it is gone.
But in this case I believe it might be cyano.
 
When you checked under a microscope did you find out what type of dinos you have? Sometimes an over-sized UV will help with ostreopsis.
 
Deltec

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