gbru316
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- May 13, 2022
- Messages
- 896
- Reaction score
- 1,638
- Location
- Melbourne, FL
- What state or country do you live in
- Florida
Now that the dinos have gotten a foot in the door, raising your phosphate probably isn't going to put a stop to them.
Every surface in your tank is a battleground. Organisms are constantly fighting for control of it. What we, as reefkeepers, try to do is encourage the things we want while discouraging the things we don't want. This is often initially a losing battle, and is why all tanks go through an ugly stage. That ugly stage happens because the surfaces are not yet inhabited by the good stuff.
We have many different levers we can pull to affect change but water quality is at the forefront. When we allow phosphate to drop to an undetectable level, we've removed one of the necessary building blocks for easier-to-control organisms (ie coralline, hair algae, coral, etc). So less desirable ones claim the space. When that happens, we need to both correct our best "lever" by getting our water quality right, but we also often need to go beyond that. Unfortunately, there's not a one-size-fits-all solution to dinos. For me, it required UV, manual removal, blackouts, and dino-X. But I had a prorocentrum bloom. An ostreopsis or amphidium bloom might require different tools. ID is kind of important because they all behave slightly differently. Some easily disperse into the water at night making UV a super-effective way to control them. Others don't and require different methods.
If it's in the budget, a basic microscope will allow you to ID the species of dinoflagellate and allow you to tailor a plan of attack. Plus, it's just cool to have as there's so much (invisible) life in your tank that being able to see it adds a new dimension to reefkeeping. Nematodes, sponge spicules (kind of look like the mercedes logo without the ring around it), cyano, diatoms, copepods, and infinite other organisms are present, we only need to be able to magnify adequately to observe them.
Here's a dinoflagellate ID and treatment guide put together by our resident dino expert, @taricha, and here's the dinoflagellate megathread.
Every surface in your tank is a battleground. Organisms are constantly fighting for control of it. What we, as reefkeepers, try to do is encourage the things we want while discouraging the things we don't want. This is often initially a losing battle, and is why all tanks go through an ugly stage. That ugly stage happens because the surfaces are not yet inhabited by the good stuff.
We have many different levers we can pull to affect change but water quality is at the forefront. When we allow phosphate to drop to an undetectable level, we've removed one of the necessary building blocks for easier-to-control organisms (ie coralline, hair algae, coral, etc). So less desirable ones claim the space. When that happens, we need to both correct our best "lever" by getting our water quality right, but we also often need to go beyond that. Unfortunately, there's not a one-size-fits-all solution to dinos. For me, it required UV, manual removal, blackouts, and dino-X. But I had a prorocentrum bloom. An ostreopsis or amphidium bloom might require different tools. ID is kind of important because they all behave slightly differently. Some easily disperse into the water at night making UV a super-effective way to control them. Others don't and require different methods.
If it's in the budget, a basic microscope will allow you to ID the species of dinoflagellate and allow you to tailor a plan of attack. Plus, it's just cool to have as there's so much (invisible) life in your tank that being able to see it adds a new dimension to reefkeeping. Nematodes, sponge spicules (kind of look like the mercedes logo without the ring around it), cyano, diatoms, copepods, and infinite other organisms are present, we only need to be able to magnify adequately to observe them.
Here's a dinoflagellate ID and treatment guide put together by our resident dino expert, @taricha, and here's the dinoflagellate megathread.
