Dinoflagellates.

[TampaSnooker]

It's made by the fine people that brought us Sano decades ago.

 

[TampaSnooker]

So bet it. Any knowledge is good knowledge. Any correlations at all might give us a tip.

We are also getting better at identifying dinos.

For instance, I know I probably don't have the Ostreopsis that a lot of you have, now, thanks to Pants' magnifications.

What I have looks almost identically like the Amphidinium slides, although it's possible it could be Procentrum I suppose. I'm not exactly an expert.

Squidmotron, what did your colonies of Amphidinium look like?

Pants ID'd mine as Amphidinium, too but I had two suspect algaes and I never positively identified which was the culprit. One red/purple like the ostreopsis pics; one golden green fuzzy clumps. Massive coral mortality when the green one was in bloom, but I believe he said that species is epiphitic - it rests on other surfaces as a colony. It is a poor swimmer but migrates into the water column at night, which is why UV helped me, I think. I had wondered if the fact that I lost whole colonies in a matter of hours was due to them all settling on that coral that day. My specimen was isolated from a water column sample.

I"m in for a Benjamin to fund research, too. He's been a tremendous help.

 

[Squidmotron]

Squidmotron, what did your colonies of Amphidinium look like?

Under a microscope? Just like Pants' photo. Naked eye? It starts out kind of looking a bit like cyano. And at first I thought it was. It's a little browner, though. Quite rusty looking. I would blow it off and it would come back shortly. Amazing stuff. Towards mid-afternoon it would start reaching up towards the light and there would be air bubbles. As more and more of it appeared, it would start covering a lot of stuff. I half-expected to see cyano under a microscope, but all I saw were dinos.

I'm about 50% sure I had osteropsis in a previous tank a long time ago, and -- to be frank -- whatever dino that was actually seemed much worse. I would describe that to the naked as thinner and less globby... more stringy. And more persistent. If I do 3 days lights out on Amphidinium , it is significantly beat back. More than 5 days lights out and I won't see it for several months.

It is a poor swimmer but migrates into the water column at night, which is why UV helped me, I think. I had wondered if the fact that I lost whole colonies in a matter of hours was due to them all settling on that coral that day. My specimen was isolated from a water column sample.

Thank you. That is excellent information. A long time ago, I tried the hydrogen peroxide treatment on what I had (which was a slightly different strain) and it did nothing. Less than nothing. I doubled and tripled the dose. Still nothing. I didn't try it again because I figured it was nonsense. But this migration strategy means maybe I should try it again.

Too bad I no longer have a UV device. That'd be worth a shot.

I really want to try Ozone, but it's expensive, scary, and I'm almost certain it won't work.

 

[Squidmotron]

Exposure to water with a salinity that is ~10ppt different will kill any dinoflagellate according to him. Not much can work better than that.

Yeah but any solution that is tantamount to starting a new tank is not worthwhile imo. I cannot take every single thing out and expose it to a different salinity. I might as well just start a new tank.

Again, having several different species (with some acting similarly) and with some things working on lightening their attack to doing nothing at all poses a real problem.

That's fine. We can figure them out one at a time (supreme optimism here, I know). Lots of different species of algae too, all with their own treatment. It has to be possible.

 

[TampaSnooker]

The results I'd be expecting is that dino blooms happen more often in tanks that are low in bio diversity and corals.

My losses were in a mixed reef display tank and a propagation system - one, but not the neighboring one. Prop System 1 never got affected despite sharing corals and source water. Biodiversity was not lacking. But there are hundreds of Dino species and they have different biology and chemical defenses.

Pants told me he has Dinos that eat Amphidinium. After seeing what these guys can do, I'm reluctant to treat fire with fire. Who knows what the super Dinos are capable of...

 

[Squidmotron]

Let me guess. Your other tank has a less strict nutrient reduction policy? That's my case at least. ,

 

[DNA]

Prop System 1 never got affected despite sharing corals and source water..

Reefers have mentioned this quite a few times and it's a big clue, but we can't make anything out of it.
In my tank there is less in the sump, but they are still obvious. In a friends tank they really took off in a new frag tank sharing the same water and lighting.
Someone moved a dino rock to the dino free tank in the same system having the dinos migrate off of it.

It could be as simple as the dinos finding the most favorable sports in the system since they do take the whole tour several times during each day and night.
The connected tanks have dinos for sure, but they don't settle there for some reason. Dinos know what they want and flock there.

---

I just found a short and very precise article by a local fish disease vet. (In Icelandic)
It's about dinoflagellates and diatoms in the ocean and how they bloom and affect aquaculture here.

I've met him, he is a great guy and I'm going to try to have him over for a chat.

 

[TampaSnooker]

Let me guess. Your other tank has a less strict nutrient reduction policy? That's my case at least. ,

Yes. System 1 wasn't affected - I keep it cleaner for SPS. System 2 is dirtier for zoas, shrooms and LPS. It got hit the worst. The display tank was likely a victim of neglect as our attentions were focused on stopping the carnage in system 2. I had another factor affecting mine - we got poisoned with what I assume to be fertilizer pellets in our freshwater RO reservoir and we had a steady influx of phosphate and other nutrients that surely fed the bloom. That water got used everywhere, so it's even stranger that system 1 never got affected.

 

[jedimasterben]

Well, last night I dropped a bomb on my dinos.


I drained the 10g tank that all my old coral and some rock was in, took around 20 seconds or so. I then filled the entire tank with straight RO/DI water. Took me about a minute to fill it up from the water jugs I had so I didn't splash too much lol. After it was full, I timed a full minute. After that, drained the tank again about 20 seconds. Lastly I filled it back up with new saltwater. So the rocks at the bottom of the tank got almost two minutes of freshwater exposure, stuff at the top got a little over one.

Hopefully this punches them in the face! The corals looked good this morning (the lights don't come on til 11AM), so hoping for the best

 

[DNA]

That was my thought when I heard first about their freshwater intolerance.
Doing it on my 400g system would be a big challenge though.

Some of your mirco-fauna must have perished as well.
Please post the short and long term changes to your tank.

 

[jedimasterben]

The previous freshwater dip I didn't see any microfauna death other than bristle/fireworms. Still see copepods going apey, feather dusters and sponges were all fine - I do expect to lose some of my feather dusters, unfortunately, but a quick trip to the ocean to pick up some macroalgae will fix that

 

[natas]

Wow that is extreme. I run a 120g so I don't thing I would be able to pull off what you did.

I wish you luck.

And just to keep everyone in the know my dinos are still shrinking since I put in the cuprisorb.

 

[SurlyT]

I don't know if anyone will find this helpful, but my most recent water parameters were measured as followed. These came from AquariumWaterTesting.com, whose results I know some people find dubious - so take from them what you will.

Date Sample Taken: 03/27/14
Salinity Measured at 1.025 SG

Ammonia (NH3-4): 0
Nitrite (NO2): 0.008
Nitrate (NO3): 2.3
Phosphate (PO4): 0
Silica (Sio2-3): 0.9
Potassium (K): 229
Ionic Calcium (Ca): 275
Molybdenum (Mo): 0.1
Strontium (Sr): 7.5
Magnesium (Mg): 1438
Iodine (I): 0.04
Copper (Cu): 0.03
Alkalinity (meq/L): 4.1
Total Calcium (Ca): 440
Boron (B): Not tested
Iron (Fe): Not tested

My pH generally runs 8.19-8.34 throughout the daily cycle.

According to AWT, the silica, magnesium and copper levels were rated as too high, and potassium was rated too low (I'd stopped dosing potassium as I thought the dinos might be making use of it). All other levels were rated good.

I find this interesting because some people have suggested that silica and copper were related to dino blooms, and that reducing these elements has helped cut back on the dino population. Maybe that's what got it started in my case.

 

[Squidmotron]

I'd be curious about iron since some reefers have claimed a correlation. I have never measured a single phosphate level either with a dinos outbreak. Which technically should be bad for living things. 2 test kits and a Hanna Checker reported absolute 0.

 

[Squidmotron]

Yes. System 1 wasn't affected - I keep it cleaner for SPS. System 2 is dirtier for zoas, shrooms and LPS. It got hit the worst. The display tank was likely a victim of neglect as our attentions were focused on stopping the carnage in system 2. I had another factor affecting mine - we got poisoned with what I assume to be fertilizer pellets in our freshwater RO reservoir and we had a steady influx of phosphate and other nutrients that surely fed the bloom. That water got used everywhere, so it's even stranger that system 1 never got affected.

Ah, so it's the dirtier tank. Oddly for me it was the opposite.

Another crackpot hypothesis busted, then, for me. *sigh*

 

[DNA]

I find this interesting because some people have suggested that silica and copper were related to dino blooms, and that reducing these elements has helped cut back on the dino population. Maybe that's what got it started in my case.

In nature plankton is a foundation in the food chain.
The most common are diatoms, dinoflagellates and [calcareous plankton].
These need mostly nitrates, phosphates, silica and light to thrive.

They take turns to bloom given the ocean conditions at a given time and they color the ocean in brown, white, green, red etc.
What causes this is mostly about the mixing of the nutritious deeper sea to the upper layers where there is bright sunlight.

The masses they produce are immense and essential to life in general.
If we only could keep them from blooming in our tanks we would be fine.

 

[natas]

Anyone else willing to try cuprisorb to combat Dino? I currently am and it really seems to be working for me so far. Please see my thread in the advanced forum about rust and dino

 

[jedimasterben]

For my amusement, I just put a bag of Cuprisorb into my QT tank.


On 4/25 I did my ultimate FW exposure to the tank. On 4/28, this is what I come home from work to find:

Envy me.

 

[Squidmotron]

Beautiful dino showcase pics!

 

[jedimasterben]

Yeah yeah, I'm the prettiest girl at the ball.