New theory on dinoflagellates, after some research.

[Bugeater281]

Ill start by saying I could be way off, and this won’t really help when it comes to getting rid of them. I’m currently battling them and decided to do some research. It seems no one really knows exactly where they come from for sure, and that’s where my theory comes into play.

After researching the amphidinium species, I came across a book titled Freshwater Dinoflagellates of North America. It listed in its notes that it goes over the amphidinium species. Which peaked my curiosity, after multiple hours of reading info in scientific books and research papers. I found some interesting info, I may be wrong due to not knowing exactly which subspecies is in the reef tanks. However, amphidinium are considered a brackish species, and are also abundant in the Great Lakes(which actually feeds my water supply through the Missouri River). This makes me wonder if we could actually be adding the dinos into our tanks with our water, and don’t have issues untell parameters are just right for them. Can rodi filters actually filter out something so small? And would the water treatment plants kill them? I’m not well versed in how they clean city water.

Also, amphidinium is not the only species considered brackish. Coolia and prorocentrum are also found in brackish water and potentially fresh(haven’t gotten that far with my research yet).

Now I may be wrong, and call me out if I am(I love learning). This whole idea was brought on when talking to some local reefers and local shops. Multiple people ended up with a Dino outbreak around the same time as I did. I talked to a local shop and the owner says he gets it in at least one tank a year around November. Ironically a paper I’ll link to on here shows the Great Lake populations of amphidinium actually increases between August and October. How ever this paper only shows a few years from the 80s and that may or may not still be accurate.

The book that made me realize they my survive in freshwater.

And here a short excerpt from a scientific paper from 1985(I’ll try to find newer Info)

And this is the link to the paper...

https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyNET.exe...dex="1986+Thru+1990"/>&QueryTerms=amphidinium

 

[KrisReef]

5 micron prefilter should remove dino's. Still, If you had dino's in your water supply it could be easy to bring them in incidentally just rinsing buckets with tap?

 

[Hemmdog]

5 micron prefilter should remove dino's. Still, If you had dino's in your water supply it could be easy to bring them in incidentally just rinsing buckets with tap?

I’m on board with that theory

 

[Bugeater281]

5 micron prefilter should remove dino's. Still, If you had dino's in your water supply it could be easy to bring them in incidentally just rinsing buckets with tap?

This is kinda my thought, I do this all the time.

Though I think i stumbled down a rabbit hole. Another paper found that too much light can kill amphidinium, and toluene(a hydrocarbon) inhibits them while fuelling other phytoplankton.

 

[Bugeater281]

Selenite and selenate are both toxic to fish, amphidinium and other algae’s. However selenite is more toxic to fish then selenate, which is considered moderately toxic to fish. However both selenite and selenate are equally toxic to amphidinium and other algae’s. I’m no chemist, so I’ll let the smarter people on here figure out if this is useful or not. But both selenate and selenite can be converted to selenium, which is needed in our tanks anyways.