My battle with dinoflagellates

[Snoopdog]

I will go back and edit this thread with the full details soon, but I want to give an update on my dinoflagellates. This is my 4th day of putting in my second UV light and I am hard pressed to find dinoflagellates. I pulled algae from the sand and the following picture is all I saw. It looked like some kind of pod deep in that, well whatever that is. I could not find any dinoflagellates though. I see nothing on the rock, coral, sand or back glass. I actually did decide to look elsewhere and finally I found a string of it in the refugium. Under the microscope I saw maybe 30 ostreopsis hanging on some algae, and some really thick looking clear worms with them. This led me to think that whatever little guys were hanging around were hanging out there and had not found their way to the main tank, so I gave them help. Literally I think they have almost completely lost the battle. I am going to keep at least one UV light in the rear of the tank for a month, maybe two. I will probably pull the first UV light in a few days.


So to reiterate, the following picture shows all that is currently on my sandbed, this stuff, that is all. Not the hundreds of dinoflagellates I would normally find on slime. Whatever this stuff is, that is all that remains. I have my lights on full blast now and so far nothing, I ran them for about 5 hours yesterday and also no occurrence.

 

[Nburg's Reef]

That's awesome! This stuff sucks.

I had a little outbreak after killing off cyano in my DT with chemiclean and UV took care of it really quick. Are you doing anything to boost competing organisms like bacteria/pods/phyto, etc to keep it in check long term?

 

[taricha]

What remains after the UV eradicated your ostreopsis is some cyano. Much better.

 

[Snoopdog]

That's awesome! This stuff sucks.

I had a little outbreak after killing off cyano in my DT with chemiclean and UV took care of it really quick. Are you doing anything to boost competing organisms like bacteria/pods/phyto, etc to keep it in check long term?

Lots of live rock.

 

[Snoopdog]

What remains after the UV eradicated your ostreopsis is some cyano. Much better.

Do dying off dinoflagellates cause ammonia? I lost a chromis two days ago, then two more chromis today. I noticed my tang is breathing a bit heavy and my ammonia was elevated. I can definitely attribute the green chromis death to....well them being chromis and dropping. The two chromis were in there all day while I was at work but I was not expecting the ammonia to be elevated to .4

 

[taricha]

Do dying off dinoflagellates cause ammonia? I lost a chromis two days ago, then two more chromis today.

The dead dinos ammonia production will be a super-tiny fraction of the ammonia from the dead fish.

 

[Snoopdog]

The dead dinos ammonia production will be a super-tiny fraction of the ammonia from the dead fish.

I am just curious, one dead Chromis the first day, all day and then removed that night. Two dead the next day, then removed that night. Is that a ton of ammonia? I got them out as soon as I got home but they were in there all day. Is that substantial ammonia?

So this does not happen again, I have something to remove the ammonia until I can make RO/DI water but that was scary to me. The tang's pectoral fins were red.

 

[taricha]

Could be. I've measured decomposition from dead algae, and it produces tiny amounts of ammonia. Even a small amount of fish protein when consumed by other organisms would be a more likely cause of detectable ammonia.

 

[Snoopdog]

Even a small amount of fish protein when consumed by other organisms would be a more likely cause of detectable ammonia.

Can you elaborate more on that.

 

[taricha]

Can you elaborate more on that.

Randy on Ammonia "In fact, most any organism in a reef aquarium that lives by consuming food (rather than by photosynthesizing) excretes some amount of ammonia.

The reason that such organisms excrete ammonia is that they take in far more nitrogen from the organic foods that they consume than they need to build new tissues."

dead "algae" cyano, dinos, gha or whatever is going to have a much lower level of N-rich protein than a fish, and it'll get consumed more slowly than dead fish. In my system, a dead fish would get nibbled in ways big and small by all kinds of things in just a few hours. This would represent a really N-rich food. Thus whatever got a bit of a meal whether it's a hermit crab or bacteria will excrete ammonia.

Though of course there could have been something else preceding the fish death that caused both the ammonia level and the fish death.

 

[Snoopdog]

Randy on Ammonia "In fact, most any organism in a reef aquarium that lives by consuming food (rather than by photosynthesizing) excretes some amount of ammonia.

The reason that such organisms excrete ammonia is that they take in far more nitrogen from the organic foods that they consume than they need to build new tissues."

dead "algae" cyano, dinos, gha or whatever is going to have a much lower level of N-rich protein than a fish, and it'll get consumed more slowly than dead fish. In my system, a dead fish would get nibbled in ways big and small by all kinds of things in just a few hours. This would represent a really N-rich food. Thus whatever got a bit of a meal whether it's a hermit crab or bacteria will excrete ammonia.

Though of course there could have been something else preceding the fish death that caused both the ammonia level and the fish death.

That kind of helps, but also exposes more questions. I will do more research on it.