How did your dinos start?

[bubbaque]

I am curious to know how dinos started to show up in your tank. The more I read about it it seems people start to get dinos after they dose nitrate or started dosing aminos.

I started to get dinos after I dosed no3 in my tank. I seen @d2mini say he had brown fluffy algae in his tank when he was doing the triton method and his nitrate went to zero. He dosed nitrate and he looked to have dinos show up. @ReefBum on his YouTube channel said his dinos showed up when he dosed aminos and feed coral food. @Russ265 was dosing nitrate and had dinos show up.

I'm not saying if you dose nitrate or aminos you will get dinos but it seems to me that by doing so it may cause an issue.

What are your thoughts?

 

[d2mini]

Not exactly.
My nitrates dropping to zero caused my massive cheato brick to crash/melt/dissolve into the tank.
Between that, and the fact that the Triton Elements contain fuel for algae growth, I started having all those algae issues in the display.

In either case, too many excess nutrients. But if you can't seem to register nitrates, you'll need to either dose something, add more fish, feed more, etc. Just be careful and continue to test regularly.

 

[bubbaque]

I think the sudden burst of nutrients though dosing may cause an imbalance instead of just doing it the natural way. I am not sure you need to register nitrates either, tanks like mike&terry are beautiful but they register no nitrates.

Just reading through posts of people who experienced dinos seemed to dose some sort of nitrate or aminos is what got me thinking about this.

 

[d2mini]

I think the sudden bust of nutrients though dosing may cause an imbalance instead of just doing it the natural way. I am not sure you need to register nitrates either, tanks like mike&terry are beautiful but they register no nitrates.

Just reading through posts of people who experienced dinos seemed to dose some sort of nitrate or aminos is what got me thinking about this.

Every tank is different, and mature tanks are going to be more self sufficient. But the coral will tell you if they are starving or not. Like with p04, there may be just enough nutrients going into the system for the system to consume with very little left over.
My case was most definitely due to a nutrient dump. If you just want to try dosing nitrates, you do not want to go from zero to 20ppm. You just want to dose a very small amount and see if you can bring it up so it at least registers on your test kit, aiming for 1-2ppm. Then evaluate for awhile. Incremental changes is key.

 

[brandon429]

dinos are obligate hitchhikers, no form of nutrient addition is their cause. They must be brought in by the keeper, not practicing quarantine (when it involves frags or water transfers into our tanks, fish are another issue)

nobody knows how long you have to QT fish so their slime coats don't vector in the scourge. when someone figures that out, these ought to go to the wayside which sounds really crazy to say today given the number of lost tanks to true dino invasions.

Tanks that have not sourced from dino infected media cannot get dinos no matter what actions you take regarding nutrients, my tank is like this.

The reason you can get cyano and green algae in any tank in the world under any nutrient setting is because they are not requisite hitchhikers. they get into your tank even if you import nothing (natural vectors only a microbiology lab can control or exclude)

all dinos started by ineffective quarantine as the sole and complete cause. whatever makes them bloom or recede is incidental and not well controlled by anyone, though gains are being made.

 

[bubbaque]

I'm not saying that dinos just appear in your tank, wether they come in on a frag or rock or whatever, they are being out competed by something else in the tank until you dose no3 or aminos.

I was just reading through a popular member on RC "JBNY" and he said every time he doses Acropower he would get dinoflagellates.

 

[Ahbaloch]

How do you dose nitrates?

 

[saltyhog]

I think it's just the opposite. Low nutrients are what most often causes them to get a foot hold. Dosing nitrates and phosphates is how I got rid of mine.

 

[Crashjack]

I think it's just the opposite. Low nutrients are what most often causes them to get a foot hold. Dosing nitrates and phosphates is how I got rid of mine.

Same here.

 

[Ahbaloch]

I have undetectable nitrate and nitrite and very low phosphate

And i am getting some

What do i do do?

 

[Tft12]

I get dinos every time I carbon dose (not with every single dose of carbon, but every time I try to start a consistent carbon dosing schedule). I’m absolutely not speaking for other people and I’m saying if you dose carbon you’ll get dinos. I know lots of people dose carbon and don’t have dino problems.

For me, I used biopellets for a few months, got dinos. Stopped biopellets and waited a long time. Absolutely no more dinos and didn’t come back until I started experimenting with carbon dosing again. Started a low dose of vinegar via dosing pump, got dinos after awhile. Stopped vinegar, dinos eventually went away and stayed away until I started carbon dosing again. Used Prodibio Bioptim, after awhile got dinos again. Stopped Bioptim and dinos eventually went away and stayed away until I started carbon dosing again. Used NoPox and repeated the scenario again. At this point, whatever the mechanism may be, in my system carbon dosing = dinos. I stopped any attempts at carbon dosing over a year ago and my tank has been dino free ever since. Maybe there’s something unique about my system that causes this, or maybe there’s a consistent user error - though I will say that I intentionally kept the vinegar dose way below recommended starting doses, and same with NoPox.

For me, consistently dosing nitrate hasn’t lead to dinos showing up. I’ve been dosing nitrate for a few months.

 

[Ahbaloch]

How are you guys dosing nitrates,?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

How are you guys dosing nitrates,?

Food grade sodium and potassium nitrate is readily available online.

Once you have some, dissolve it in fresh water and dose it daily, such as 2 ppm daily.

 

[tastyfish]

Immature tank, with limited biodiversity (ie competition), elevated phosphates and zero nitrates.

With many people choosing dead rock and bacteria in a bottle, I believe we are creating the perfect environment for dinoflagellate blooms in our tanks. Speaking to those with far more longevity and experience in the reefing hobby than I, it appears that the number of tanks affected by dinoflagellates is increasing. Could this be down to more reporting via social media, or an actual increase in cases? I'm not sure.

However, like cyanobacteria, dinoflagellates are pioneer organisms and mixotrophic, so they can combine photosynthesis and metabolism of trace elements. They will readily uptake Nitrogen, however contrary to popular belief, high nitrates do not hinder dinoflagellates, they accelerate growth. Like cyano, the dino's trick is to be able to switch to other sources when N is in short supply. They can also uptake N directly from Urea and Ammonia. This gives them distinct advantages in a low nitrate environment with little competition for real estate.



Some interesting reading below:

Putting the N in dinoflagellates, Dagenais-Bellefeuille and David Morse:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3849724/

Relative Uptake of Urea and Ammonium by Dinoflagellates or Cyanobacteria in Shrimp Mesocosms, Burford 2004
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10750-005-1702-3

 

[puffy127]

I started my FOWLR with dry and dry rock 8 months ago and have a uv sterilizer attached. QT'd all fish and snails for over a month. Added pods and phyto, no corals, no other additions. No dosing, and still got a dino outbreak. I feed heavily too.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Like cyano, the dino's trick is to be able to switch to other sources when N is in short supply. They can also uptake N directly from Urea and Ammonia. This gives them distinct advantages in a low nitrate environment with little competition for real estate.

I do agree that dinos can compete well in low nutrient environments, but I don't think it is that particular aspect. Most photosynthetic organisms in our tanks can use ammonia (most algae prefer it to nitrate) and urea.

Perhaps dinos are better at it, but it is not just because they can and others cannot.

 

[Ahbaloch]

Is this dino?

 

[Deezill]

I got dinos when I used NoPox. My Nitrates hit zero and so did phosphates. Along with that my bio load was very low because I did not have many fish and I also ran BRS GFO. This caused phosphates to zero out. I was always told to have no nitrates and phosphates but things seemed to have changed. I never thought I would see the day when I want nitrates and phosphates. I got nervous and picked up NoPox because I had No3 5ppm lol. But now I have let them climb up to 10 ppm and my phosphates are at 0.50 and I had to dose for phosphates because they were undetectable by my Hanna checker. I won't be using NoPox anymore great product actually works lol. but now I am fighting a strain of Dinos called Coolia. So I would actually have to say my cause was zero nutrients.

 

[Brew12]

Many dinoflagellates will thrive in low phosphate conditions. I would suspect that the different additives such as amino's may be fueling the growth of "something" that is driving PO4 down. That opens the door for problematic dino's to thrive.

 

[brandon429]

Neat to consider: the decade matters regarding the start of our dinos

Not a nineties invader

yet captive reefs and extensive detailing of them existed then

For me, had kept reefs five years before I heard or saw of dinos invasion

It’s a 2000s/opening of trade routes thing

Location vectored. Not universally associated with keeping reef tanks, these particularly invasive strains, but sure might be now due to mixing of sources and 1% rate of quarantine

I always like to keep the position that dinos can be avoided. About ten thousand pico reef keepers feel they can be avoided, having never had an outbreak once (and the way those tanks are cleaned is much different than how large tanks are cleaned for sure)

dinos weren’t always an organism we got by happenstance. Sourcing of materials and cross contamination made them common, the dirty two thousands, the boon of the trade and shipping around the globe of live reef materials

The simple way to investigate an etiological claim for dinos is to apply the opposite condition to a dinos challenge tank and watch it self fix

Never happens on pattern

One offs, light patterns is best we can get

We see dinos in live rock threads all the time now for sure, and agreed perhaps farming frags in sterility might have selected for the expansion of that type of frag associate. Above it was mentioned about too clean reefing


Nobody who does tank cure work gets better than 30-40% dino fixes, post alt proof if that’s a poor call.
That’s imo why we can’t at nutrients as the cause of dinos, invasions present in both nutrient conditions in tuners threads. Now that bad cells are cast around and commonplace, a new reefkeeping -behavior- from us needs to evolve if you want to be dino free

And that behavior is: farm them no more on purpose. If someone can post a pic of their dinos challenge, I’m seeing a pic of a farmers garden. The behavior, not the nutrient, is the