Pants, Are you still doing the ID and survey?
I am still doing the ID and survey stuff. I've sort of hidden the website away
here since I haven't had time to make it look decent and include some helpful info.
The most frustrating part of this topic is all the conflicting information? You never know if your talking too someone with [profanity] syndrome, an award winning Microbiologist, or simply people dealing with multiple strains of a similar organism.
So just for the record I'm not an award winning Microbiologist. I'm a grad student working on my PhD working with dinos. This is a bit of a departure from all my formal training since all of that was on vertebrates (mostly salamanders). While an undergrad at Berkeley I was lucky enough to be chosen to go to a research station that Berkeley has in Mo'orea, French Polynesia and that is where I discovered dinoflagellates. I studied coral bleaching and recovery of fungid corals when exposed to different strains of symbiodinium. When I'm in a coral store I am always drawn to the fungids, and I love going to public aquariums and telling people, who otherwise just walk right past it to look at more fish, about coral (I volunteered as a docent for awhile).
My PhD is about genomics in dinoflagellates. So all this pest dino stuff is pretty far from what has become my expertise. You guys would all be much better served by a dino researcher who does more biochemistry or ecology than me. If I wasn't so curious I could have done my whole PhD without ever looking at a dino under the microscope and spent 99% of my time at the computer. I'm looking mostly at biotech when I finish the PhD, but the pest stuff has made me consider a job working for one of the aquarium supplement companies really digging deep into solutions for pests.
That all might be TMI, but I've just spent all night throwing up and rolling around in pain due to injuries from a car accident 2 weeks ago and my stomach is starting to settle a bit now and I'm in a sharing mood for some reason. (Now thats TMI).
On the trap idea, how small do I need to go with the sock? The 25 micron does not seem to be small enough.
It really depends on your genus of dino. Ostreopsis and Gambierdiscus are both pretty large cells (40 micron +), but Amphidinium is sometimes about half that size and the tiny dino I've haven't been able to put a genus to is a bit less than 10. Ostreopsis, Gambierdiscus and Amphidinium all have a flattened body plan (like a sesame seed) typical of benthic dinoflagellates (woohoo for convergent evolution).
The sizes I just quoted for these genera are actually the longest dimension. Ostreopsis and Gamierdiscus are maybe 20 microns thick (varies widely between species, but the ones I've actually pulled from tanks are this size). Amphidinium is so thin I've never managed to measure it. If you take a look at
the movies I've posted you can occasionally see the cells turn on their side. If the whole length is 20 they are maybe 5 microns thick and 10 microns wide (just eye-balling it here so your guess is as good as mine).
I don't even have a sump on my tank (its a dirty lps/softy tank) so I've only worked setting up a light trap for flatworms. I've been curious how they measure pore size.
+1
Also, the fact that all of our tanks are so different means that what works great for one person is not necessarily protocol for another. Not only as far as the strain of Dino, but considering our unique tank chemistry... I have mostly soft corals so I've gotten away with a 14 day blackout with minor ill effects... can't really do that with an SPS tank.
Tough pest to say the least.
I've mostly seen dinos in sps tanks with vigorous nutrient reduction. You might be a good candidate to try raising your phosphates/nitrate a tiny bit to see if you can get other algae to wipe out your dinos for you. Dinos are not competitive at high nutrient levels.
I am going to send a sample to pants once the weather stabilizes. The only exception would be if I beat this stuff before I get a chance to send a sample.
I'm in the same boat - waiting for the weather to warm up, but hopeful I can beat it before then
Good news is it seems like a lot of people seem to beat their dinos while waiting to send me samples. I'm good luck like that I guess.
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