My progress on Dinoflagellates and what is working

[marlinmon]

Have to drop this here ;Woot:

*nudi’s salivate* lol

 

[Drewe]

Have to drop this here ;Woot:

You know, it's actually kind of nice looking at first [emoji23]

 

[vlangel]

Definitely a cliff notes version would be super helpful to people. The main issue in the dino thread especially is that there seem to be two main camps.

The "dirty" method, used when nothing else has worked so that you can culture more easily manageable nuisance algae that will out compete the dinos

And the "clean" method, dropping nutrients so the dinos have nothing to feed on. Once they're in there in large numbers they usually have to be manually removed while the problem that originally created it is dealt with.

And then there's folks that just say toss on a UV sterilizer, blackout for 72 hours and hope for the best. It's really hard to gauge exactly what you need to do.

By the way - I've got a buddy that has had a recurring aptasia problem that Aptasia-X and the likes weren't working on. He found some off the wall treatment that involved (and I'm not making this up) injecting lemon juice concentrate into them. He read some article that suggested the remnant acidity from the lemon prevented the aptasia from re-colonizing that spot.

I definitely wouldn't suggest it, because if even aptasia refuses that spot I would imagine that a lot of good things would refuse that spot as well. Oddly enough, it worked for him and he hasn't had an issue with it in years.

I was an aquarium tech and I actually have used lemon juice against aiptasia. My first go to is super buffer but if there are a lot of aiptasia using super buffer alone will cause the ph and alk to spike. To offset that I would use lemon juice.

I never experience dinos in any of our clients tanks or any of my own tanks until a few weeks ago my seahorse tank had a weak outbreak. Seahorses are notoriously dirty so on 50 gallon system I have a skimmer rated for a tank thats 180 gallons plus I was doing 24 gallons a week WCs. I never dreamed that my tank would be depleted of nutrients because that had never happened in the 4+ years I had been keeping seahorses but that is what happened. In the old days all our tanks had higher NO3 and PO4 and those tanks never got dinos. I have a fish tank now that has PO4 1ppm and NO3 is 50ppm and its as clean looking as can be. Its a mixed reef with macro algae along with softies, LPS and a few SPS and a lot of diversity of pods, worms, micro stars and cuc. For the macro algaes sake I'd like to keep the ratio of NO3 to PO4 at 30:1 which means I need to get my nitrates down some. However I run my fish reef high in nutrients by design and that works well for me. Macro algae out compete dinos when they are flourishing. This is my fish reef.

2019-02-01_06-06-56 by Dawn Gilson, on Flickr

 

[Fish_Sticks]

Also note that for algea, they have to convert nitrogen into ammonia for consumption, and that ammonia is easier for them to consume. Its possible that the nitrates may not be high, but there is detritus thats supplying ammonia for the algea.

Are algea better at using the ammonia than the bacteria? Wouldnt that cause more bacteria to die off and your algea to continue getting worse as it replaces bacteria?

I have no idea... There are a lot of cases where people have no nitrates and phosphates but still have algea growth. If algea prefers ammonia, then it may not be using nitrates if you have enough detritus...

 

[Drewe]

Also note that for algea, they have to convert nitrogen into ammonia for consumption, and that ammonia is easier for them to consume. Its possible that the nitrates may not be high, but there is detritus thats supplying ammonia for the algea.

Are algea better at using the ammonia than the bacteria? Wouldnt that cause more bacteria to die off and your algea to continue getting worse as it replaces bacteria?

I have no idea... There are a lot of cases where people have no nitrates and phosphates but still have algea growth. If algea prefers ammonia, then it may not be using nitrates if you have enough detritus...

For stubborn algae like bryopsis, and now dinos, I stick an ammonia badge in the sump for this very reason. I've noticed with manual removal there can be slight ammonia spikes. At first I figured it was due to dead parts of the sand bed being disturbed while cleaning.

 

[Fish_Sticks]

Maybe. I wonder if it could be that the bacteria have to repopulate.

 

[Jeff_H]

You mention Microscopes were used and MArine B... What type of dinos were IDed?

Agreed. I certainly did not intend to be snarky, so I apologise if it came off that way. I did a LOT of research, microscopes were employed, marine biologists were consulted. The field I work in makes it easy to have these resources available.

Nuisance algae may always be present, but an infestation is not always present. Of course it cannot be completely eradicated, but the initial infestation can and should be eradicated as fast as possible when possible. I mean this stuff went from one spot to covering the entire tank within 24 hours. It was not a wait and see situation.

Would you mind sharing what type of Dinos were IDed?

I've been dealing with 2-3 different types of dinos now for months. I think I've beat back all everything but the Amphidinium with UV, and I'm now working on a plan to get them under control.

 

[Forextrader421]

You offered no solution to the problem. Dino can spread fast and suffocate corals quickly if not eradicated before it’s tipping point. You clearly have no understanding of the op problem. You say go slow and don’t use these quick tactics. What would you suggest? Let them dunk take over until it balances s out? Or you adjust your nutrients, try to manually remove Dino daily , if nothing else works try the peroxide cautiously. We are trying to weaken Dino so the other types of algae can take a foothold and compete with the Dino. Low nutrient setups with improper balance are prone to Dino