Cyanobacteria or Dinoflagelettes?

[tekknoschtev]

I posted this in a local forum before it was reccomended that I post here to get a more accurate identification. Oddly enough it fits the description of Dinoflagelettes as noted in many different posts elsewhere online - looks ok in the morning but like hell swallowed the tank by mid afternoon, gathers are the water surface later in the evening, traps air bubbles (though I've had cyano do the same thing), and chokes out corals. Cyanobacteria, from my prior research, acts similarly, but I've never had it grow on corals, just the sand bed.

I'm not necessarily looking for advice in treating it, but if you have any tips, that'd be greatly appreciated. Currently we have removed all of the corals to prevent them from being smothered and they are in a 40gal frag/prop tank and looking much better than they did in the current tank. The fish and anemone remain in the 150 as catching them and cramming them into a smaller tank, or transporting them to somewhere as a temp housing seems like it would be more stressful.

I have included pictures to help in differentiating between Cyano and Dinos. The color is accurate which leads me also to believe that it is indeed Dinos, as I havent seen cyanobacteria in color forms such as this. That's not to say it isnt possible, but I'm looking for an ID so I can follow up with appropriate treatment.

Saddleback clown with Sebae Anemone. The rock did NOT have any of this stuff on it the previous day, however, yesterday afternoon it just suddenly appeared.

In case it isnt evident, there is a small colony/patch of green star polyps underneath this crap. We've been using a turkey baster to suck the stuff off of them so they didnt get smothered. Again, appeared within a matter of hours.

For the past week or so, the zoanthids would be covered in a light dusting of this brown stuff as well; not opening fully. We assumed the problem was flow as we previously had relatively low flow in the tank.

For what its worth, this tank itself has been up and running only about 2.5 months, however, it was an upgrade from our 40gal system which had been running for quite some time.

Tank Parameters:
- 150gal 72x18x26 glass aquarium
- 130lbs live rock
- 100lbs live sand
- 2x 400W 10K XM, 2x 95W VHO .03 Actinic
- 55gal sump/fuge
- Kent Marine Nautilus EX 24 modded
- Feeding: about 1 tbsp ever MWF. Target feeding of sun corals MW with mysis.
- Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate: 0
- pH: 8.4.
- Flow consists now of a Seio 2600, two Maxi Jet 900s, a JBJ 1800 and a Mag 9.5 for return from the sump.

If anyone can help differentiate between cyanobacteria and Dinoflagelettes I can follow up with appropriate actions. I've read conflicting information about each, but have effectively treated Cyano before and I'm confident in our ability to beat this as well.

Thank you very much,

Steve

 

[ONEMANBAND]

I am no expert but it looks like cyano to me with hair algae coming back when the cyano disappears. I would try Chemi-clean. If you go that route make sure to take your skimmer offline while treating the tank or it will foam like mad.

 

[rshimek]

Hi Steve,

The image shows a microalgal growth that is probably a mix of dinoflagellates and diatoms. Such growths also contain cyanobacteria, but as minor component. This type of outbreak is characteristic of new tanks, generally, around 6 to 7 months old, that have inadequate biological filtration as well as nutrient export problems.

These algal outbreaks are, as with cyanobacterial outbreaks, symptomatic. In other words, they are not the problem but, rather, are indicative of the problem which too much dissolved nutrient in the system. Treating these algae or cyanobacteria with chemicals is worse than useless, by killing the algae without attacking the root cause of their appearance in the first place, you simply boost the nutrient level in the system, while destroying large portions of whatever biological filter you have.

To address the problems, you need to reduce the nutrient levels in the in the system significantly. For a plan of attack see the sticky thread, near the top of the forum listings titled, "Red slime algae...."

Yes - I know they are not red slime algae. But the same solution will work in both cases.

 

[graveyardworm]

There is a good chance that it is dinos, but I wouldnt rule out diatoms associated with tank cycle, I think the only way to make positive ID may be under microscope, I have a similar stuff in my tank just not as bad as what you have. Air bubbles form during the day and go away at night, There is also a film on the surface of my water which I attribute to it. If it is dinos they can be very difficult to get rid of. I've heard that ozonation helps. Chemicals may work but I'm not a big fan and I wouldnt use until other more natural methods have been tried, or atleast researched thoroughly. Check you make up water to insure your not adding excess nutrients. Also adding a refugium with good macro if you have the room may help remove what your algae is feeding on.

( Sorry to tread on your response Ron, apparently we were working at the same time.)

 

[tekknoschtev]

Cool, that's on par with what I was looking for. I guess I mis-spoke when I said "treat" the problem. By "treat" I meant to fight the underlying problem. I was told in the local forum that we were likely over feeding, so we cut it in half for the time being. We've started skimming a little wetter, and are cleaning the rocks off now in buckets of salt water.

Being a mix of all of that... crap... explains the discrepencies in IDing. I'm aware of the nutrient problem and we will follow up accordingly. No chemical treatments in this tank (we did Maracyn in our 40 to treat cyano, and it "worked" but the tank took a while to look the same again). The maracyn was used to get the cyano gone while we fixed the problem (which at the time was low flow it seemed). All in told, the tank is 2.5 months old, but the system before was running for well over 6, which would put it in your range of common occurences - thats pretty interesting.

Thank you very much. We'll follow up accordingly and get this gone! I'm glad someone encouraged me to post here.

 

[rshimek]

Hi,

I have microscopically examined a lot of samples of these films; I used to encourage folks to send them to me. The relative abundances of dinos/diatoms/bacteria varies a lot, but all three are generally present. It takes agressive - and long term acction to treat the problem. The good news is that once it goes away, it almost never reappears in tanks.

 

[ltouchette]

Hi Steve,

The image shows a microalgal growth that is probably a mix of dinoflagellates and diatoms. Such growths also contain cyanobacteria, but as minor component. This type of outbreak is characteristic of new tanks, generally, around 6 to 7 months old, that have inadequate biological filtration as well as nutrient export problems.

Hey Ron,

When you say "that have inadequate biological filtration" do you mean inadequate overall or inadequate because the biological filter hasn't been extablished yet? I have about 120 lbs of well cured live rock in my 65g display tank that was in a friends 220 tank for 2 years, it was taken directly from his tank to mine in less than 8 hours and kept wet for the trip. My tank is 5-6mnths old so I'm hoping that I do have or at least will have adequate biological filtration. I'm also useing macro algea in my sump which is growing like crazy, I've already harvested some out once. My return pump sends about 650gph back to the tank through 2 return nozzles and I also have a seio in there which is pushing 650gph around. I always have some microbubbles in my tank so I can see that there is water movement everywhere.

I should have "adequate" biological filtration eventaully right? I hope... My amonia always tests 0ppm.

A couple weeks ago I started growing algea in my tank which looks identical to tekknoschtev's, in fact the long picture of his tank, with the green algea inside the glass, is exactly what mine looked like. I was overfeeding, i learned, and have cut back, the glass no longer coats with that algea and the growth of the other brownish algea has slowed but it hasnt stopped.

There's alot of good advice in the forums about this and I think I can successfully combat it.

Thanks,
LT

 

[tekknoschtev]

Wow, what a coincidence. Thanks to the positive ID in this forum and the extensive reading, this is what were at:

So thanks everyone.

 

[graveyardworm]

Tank looks great!

 

[tsquad]

Wow what a turnaround! Awesome!

 

[Moloch_0]

What solution worked for you?

 

[tekknoschtev]

We cut the lights for 24 hours, and then every day there after we ramped it up an hour, and now its been running at 4 hours a day for the last week. We're going to start putting it up to an eventual 8-10 hours in the end, but slowly and monitor how things go. If the stuff comes back at all, the light gets cut an hour.

We also started using filter floss between the baffles of the sump, and blew the rocks off daily (sucking this stuff out was a pain, this was easy). The filter floss got changed daily, or sometimes multiple times per day depending on how gunked up it got.

Feeding effectively got cut in half.

And we also increased the flow. Those pictures were days after we added the SEIO 2600. We had a total of about 750gph flow in powerheads, plus the Mag 9.5 for return. This was too low of flow in the tank, but the SEIO 2600 kicked that up a bit, and now things are getting back to normal.

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

Congratulations on succesfully eradicating the mess from your system. Dilligence pays off!

 

[ostrow]

You didn't do water changes in the interim? You solved that just with lighting, blowing/capturing the stuff, and reducing feeding?

 

[ostrow]

Gonna try this. Using filter bags on the overflow drains, hopefully will catch most. A tad worried it might clog the overflows or drain lines but hopefully not. Lights are off until 5pm tomorrow.

I don' t see any corals in your tank. Not sure how this will work. I think I may have to increase lighting to 2hrs after day one.

Got an IPSF Mix n Match so hopefully that'll help bio filtration along. Not clear why it would be off but it can't hurt.

 

[tekknoschtev]

No, we didnt do waterchanges, as they seemed to only fuel this outbreak. Oddly enough, all information I could find pertaining to dinoflagellets said the same - the trace elements in the new water fuel it. So we went without water changes.

We placed filter floss between the baffles of our sump, after the skimmer but before the return compartment, so if fo whatever reason it got tooooo clogged, the water would just fall over the baffle instead of through it.

No corals in the tank because this stuff was smothering them. We have a 40gal frag grow-out tank, seperate from this system, and put every coral that we could in there. Not enough room though, so some got moved to the fuge where this stuff, ironically, wasnt growing, or at least as fast. For what its worth, some corals did get overlooked and were subject to the full black out on day one, and then only an hour on day two, and so on. Ran at 4 hours for about 5 days, then bumped to 8-9 hours which is where we were in the beginning. The corals that remained in the tank survived and are actually spreading pretty well. Everything is in fact, now that this isnt choking things out.

Good luck!

 

[ostrow]

Yeah, you know, I've been doing more water changes of late and I am seeing it getting worse. But I'd missed that advice in my reading.

My corals have nowhere to go...

Whoa Nellie! Ok. So, let's just ignore everything the expert here says? Well, not everything, but the water change part.....

Ron, what are your thoughts here???

 

[tekknoschtev]

Also, as an indication, the anemone stayed in the tank as well - and the anemone is far more sensitive to changes than say my zoanthids. It was quite unhappy about the no light situation, but now is better than ever.

We actually did one giant water change (~50gal) to try and deal with it when we thought it was merely cyanobacteria. When treating cyanobacteria alone, water changes helped imensely, but 24 hours after the water change, this stuff was covering everything accept the fish and the anemone. The glass, rocks, corals, PVC, sand, etc was all covered. At night, it would accumulate at the surface, and look like strands of snot hanging down in the water.

Oh, and on top of everything else, we increased the flow 3 fold. So that seemed to help a little too

 

[ostrow]

I can't figure out what to do about my fuge. Did lights out for 24, but can't decide how to light now... the 1hr a day increase seems risky for the chaeto and (new) gracilaria I have in there.

 

[tekknoschtev]

I guess in the case of this stuff - you have to take some chances. Our chaeto survived, and actually grew explosively after the lighting was back on track.