Cuprisorb for dinoflagellets??

[Balletomane]

Ok, it's been a month or so with the Cuprisorb....

I do believe that there is recession of the plague. Far from eradicated but it seems to be slower to recover after siphoning. Fingers are crossed...

I just don't dare introduce anything new until this stuff is gone.

 

[natas]

Balletomane

I too seem to be getting positive results using cuprisorb to kill my dino. I have been fighting mine since Jan. I put cuprisorb in a few weeks ago when I discovered a rusting pump. I found a few older threads about iron and dino which lead me to cuprisorb. So far it seems to be working better than all the other treatments for Dino I have tried.

I wonder if you have excess iron in your tank from rust or maybe it's the type of salt you use. What brand do you use?

 

[shred5]

Hmm interesting I had got a pm about me recommending cupisorb along time ago because I thought iron might help fuel dino's.. People in the area where there was large amounts of iron in their water had suffered with dino's.. Lowering nutrients never seemed to to get rid of dino's just made them worse.. Dinos seem to be able to survive in very low nutrient water where other algae seem to die off.. Growing algae that out competes dino's for what ever it needs seems to work really well for them... That could be iron..

Julian (two little fishies) has a new product out called...MetaSorb... Wonder how that stacks up!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Do either of you grow macroalgae? That may be a good way to strip out iron, if iron is actually an issue.

 

[shred5]

Do either of you grow macroalgae? That may be a good way to strip out iron, if iron is actually an issue.

That is the only way I and others were able to deal with them.. We started to raise nutrients enough for green algae to grow and started refugiums with macros and they went away...

I have not had to suffer with them for probably 15 to 20 years or so though but I have not had a fuge in a long time either.....

I figured it out because in the early days of reef keeping I never had them and we used to grow macros in our tanks.. Yea I have been in this hobby a long time.. It wasn't till skimmers started getting more efficient and we removed the macros from the tanks that dinos reared its ugly head.. As skimmers and more nutrient export stuff became available they got worse..

So what ever it is that they need green algae can out compete them for it...

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

FWIW, I've grown macroalgae for many years as well, and have never had dinos either, despite iron dosing, and my system is definitely not a low nutrient system.

 

[Squidmotron]

I would say easily 75% of people I've seen with bad dino problems either have macroalgae in a refugium or have explored it. It's that old adage: there is no simple solution to dinos or the problem wouldn't be so maddening.

However, that doesn't mean it doesn't help. I suspect it does. Because I've never gotten the plague-like proportions of dinos since I've had a large refugium with macroalgae. However I have gotten outbreaks that are annoying and too much for my taste.

I'd be interesting to explore if there is a level of macroalgae that causes dinos to really decline. I normally trim mine back at set intervals, but I wonder if I let the biosmass get larger if that will really help.

We often struggle to be really scientific about things in our own tanks because I'm unlikely to wait 2 months and do nothing else while my macroalgae grows. Dinos are too toxic and unpleasant. Chances are I'm going to try 6 or 7 different things in that interim and then not really know what caused them to go away, if they did.

And my odds of not having a lengthy "lights out" period? Very small. Because it's the only thing I 100% sure know at least curbs an explosion.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'm also not sure that chaetomorpha is as good at sequestering stuff as is Caulerpa (which is what I have).

 

[Squidmotron]

I'm also not sure that chaetomorpha is as good at sequestering stuff as is Caulerpa (which is what I have).

I have caulerpa as well. I know it's good because it substantially outcompeted the cheato I had when I had both.... until I had no more cheato.

You make me think of something, though. I've managed to keep dinos under control for some time. But I have them coming back now. I don't have much caulerpa right now. Not long ago, I pulled out quite a bit. Maybe I need to be careful about how much I harvest because if there's only a tiny amount it doesn't grow enough to outcompete... or something... grasping at straws I admit.

 

[Panta rhei]

For me and for 100% of my friends with dino issues it was bad rodi with high level of silicates, try to check your water (both tank and new one)

 

[Squidmotron]

For me and for 100% of my friends with dino issues it was bad rodi with high level of silicates, try to check your water (both tank and new one)

It's interesting that you say that, because a new (untested) theory is to do the exact opposite. A hypothesis is that diatoms could keep dinos in check.

 

[Panta rhei]

I use dinos instead of time as a resin check: dinos appearing? Time to change the postfilter cartridge

 

[Squidmotron]

I use dinos instead of time as a resin check: dinos appearing? Time to change the postfilter cartridge

And you're quite sure it's dinos and not diatoms?

I posted this in another thread, but once when I added a bunch of sand to my tank (in the fuge), my dinos population exploded within about 2 hours. I had made no other changes in several days and it was visually obvious. I figured it couldn't be silica because that wasn't a problem with dinos. But I didn't know what else in that sand would contribute... I thought maybe what I was seeing was just a combo of dinos and diatoms.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Yes, I presume he means diatoms, which are often associated with silicate. Few other organisms (presumably including dinos) have any use for it at all.

 

[Panta rhei]

Typical filaments with an air bubble on the tip... I would say dinos.
I add: brown and incredibly stinking

 

[gmastr85]

I am also battling Dino's and they have progressively been getting worse. I've had them for at-least 6 months now, probably longer. I remember I had a small patch of them for a very long time, but they never did much. I always figured it was diatoms. Then one day my 40g breeder sump got a leak. I had to remove the sump and make a new one. Ever since then my tank has never been the same. I had grape calerpa and cheato algae in my previous sump. The calerpa always out-competed the cheato and my tank was always spotless. The calerpa pretty much out-competed everything. All it took was a once-a-month trimming. Since starting my sump over, I only have cheato algae, and it grows so slowly; and obviously doesn't touch the dinos. I have always run carbon and gfo. The gfo keeps the dinos in check, but only slows them down.

So my problem has progressivey been getting worse. My sandbed is completely covered and it's moved onto my rocks. I've tried so many things including lights out for 4 days, blowing the sandbed and rocks, and raising my ph level. I've only managed to raise it up to 8.35 using kalkwasser. The thing about kalk is only so much can be absorbed into a gallon of water. I'm going to try mixing a kalk slurry next and dumping it in directly to the tank.

I've thought of trying peroxide, but I haven't yet because of the thought of losing the 80 or so corals in my tank. I've reached a tipping point though, because nothing is working, and now my corals are experiencing die-off and I can just tell my tank isn't happy.

I finally found some Fauna Marine Ultra Algae X, and have that on order. I plan an assault in about a week on my dinos. I will be dosing the Algae X, adding Grape Calerpa to my sump, adding new high capacity carbon and gfo more frequently, putting cardboard around my tank for a 3 day lights out period, manually removing what dinos I can, and raising my ph using a kalk slurry/drip. I've tried some of these things individually already but I believe a combination of all of them will be necessary.

I've been reading up on ways to get rid of dinos over the past two months. There is no guaranteed way to get rid of them though. Anyone have any other ideas?

Also does anyone know a better way to manually remove the dinos besides a turkey baster. The baster is okay for a small tank but just takes forever on a larger tank. And I end up blowing more around than actually removing them...

Thanks!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

If you get dinos from a depleting DI system, it isn't from the silicate. Certainly could be something else, however.

 

[Squidmotron]

If you get dinos from a depleting DI system, it isn't from the silicate. Certainly could be something else, however.

I wonder, though...

I don't really explore scientific papers in any great depth or profess any great knowledge of marine biology. Yet, I've done many a Google search on this topic and have come across lots of writing on the fact that dinos consume diatoms.

For instance, this abstract mentions virtually every single dino that Pants has flagged as being from someone's tank:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19737193

I have already seen my own population explode when adding sand. It could be something else in the sand (any ideas?), but...

If many dinos do obtain energy from diatoms, doesn't it stand to reason that silicates could -- indirectly -- help fuel dinos?

...

It turns out, incidentally, that this detail is incredibly important to me. I was about to experiment with adding silicates to me tank. I purchased the water glass and a silicate test kit. I may try it anyway, though, as it will tell me something either way.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Ah, well, OK. I hadn't thought through the whole food chain. I presumed that dinos were purely photosynthetic since they seem to just sit there and bubble.

That said, I've also dosed silicate for many years and have never gotten dinos, and I've never heard it reported back as a result of the silicate dosing that I recommend.

Maybe it is a different type of dino than the ones we get as pests.

 

[shred5]

For me and for 100% of my friends with dino issues it was bad rodi with high level of silicates, try to check your water (both tank and new one)

Here is the problem.. Most people cant tell the difference between diatoms which live off silicate or dinos.. They look almost the same sometimes.
I also used a ro D/I made for removing silicates.

I know for a fact I had dino's too because I had them examined at a university to know for sure what I was dealing with... I was working with Bob Goemans, John Tullock and a couple of others at the time, I also think this was discussed on fish net.... Yea that's how long ago I had them... Randy am I dating myself?