Dinoflagellates.

[mandrieu]

Yeah, the pics are pretty bad. When the light go out, they go out....

I've tried pretty much everything you can imagine, including several 3 days dark instances, with the exception of stopping weekly water changes.

My parameters are fine, 0 Phos, 2-3 NO3, and all the others as you would expect.

5 months ago I upgraded my 55 to this 125 tank, moved everything minus the sand, which I replaced with new. But I had started having this pest in the old tank about 1 month before.

I keep siphoning the stuff but it comes back.

I run GFO, GAC, and add kalk with a bit of vinegar.

I've had cyano a couple of times in the past and this thing doesn't quite look like it. Not a mat, more like a dusty stuff in the sand. If I disturb it, it breaks easily. Not stringy with bubbles either. Not too red, more like rust/golden under the white lights, redish under the blues.

As an engineer, which I am, I'm fairly systematic, but I have to admit I have no idea what to do next. I really want this thing out! LOL - It's a great to test my patience and endurance though...

Thanks for your help

 

[natas]

Hard to say. When you say it goes away at night I am thinking Dino. But the dusty appearance screams diatom. How old is the sand? What you may have is a very small patch of dino. Have you tried siphoning out?

 

[dartier]

What you are describing sounds like diatoms, and your photos are consistent with diatoms. The normal trigger for diatoms is silicate. In my tank I have also found that iron triggers diatom outbreaks.

Do you have many sponges in the tank? They also need silicate.

Are your RO/DI filters up to date? Exhausted filters could lead to silicate in your make up water.

Dennis

 

[DNA]

Mandrieu, this looks like dinos and cyano to me.
The orange arrow points to dinos and the rest would be cyano, most likely on top of more dinos.

Try to shut off all your pumps and blast your all your rocks with a powerhead, looking for a subtle dust blowing off and later forming strings in the water column.

If that is still inconclusive take samples from the brown areas and look at it through a microscope.
Cyano is more purple usually. I don't think you will have problem deciding between diatoms and dinos.

Since they come and go daily and you have had them for 5 months I'd expect dinos.

My dinos do not always look the same, sometimes it's just dust, very small strings and no bubbles or very long stings with lots of bubbles. Individuals produce small gas bubbles that travel up the string and form larger ones that eventually break lose.

 

[mandrieu]

Thanks guys.

Natas: yes, I siphon them a couple of times a week and they come back next day.

Dartier: I test silicates (salifert) and get 0. I have a few small sponges in my rocks. Been looking at them and they don't seem to grow much, but who knows. There could be more where I can't see them. My RO/DI filters seem to be in good shape and I test water regularly. When I get 2 or 3 ppm I change them. Currently 0 ppm. I use Instant Ocean salt.

DNA: I'll try that and see what happens. I'll see if I can get a microscope. Nice! - Love this hobby... one more gadget!

Thanks folks

 

[GQuinn]

Any updates from anyone?

 

[Steveb]

sigh mine appear to be getting worse...

 

[DNA]

I have even less dinos than last update.
Cyano is still going strong but only half so compared to two weeks ago.
My display tanks algae is at around 25% from its high.

It's been five weeks since I lost most of the dinos and by the rate things are going it could be a clean tank in another five.
The immediate change in the corals was amazing so there is no doubt about the ill effect dinos have on them.
They colored up in a few days and growth that had been none before was noticed.

The most drastic action I did was to turn off the calcium reactor.
Three days later the dinos crashed.

The changes that brings is less calcium, alkalinity, Magnesius and CO2 entering the tank.
There was also a 0,1 drop in pH. I'd expect that odd drop instead of a raise to be because of alkalinity drop.
I had been doing measures before to lessen the amount of CO2 entering the tank that could have been working well.

Last weekend and the one before I measured Ca at 350 and alk at 5.5.
I did a 20% water change then and fired up the Calcium reactor again at low flow rate of CO2 and effluent, without any changes to the dinos.

Like many complex things there is a combination of elements that can cause a certain situation.
The reactor going down could have been the last in what pushed the dinos away.
I can't say it's a solution yet, but if you have nothing else to try, go ahead and let your parameters go low and see how it goes.

 

[mandrieu]

Not much to report on my end. Still undefined about what I have is dinos or cyano. I Bought a microscope but I don't have it yet, hopefully on Saturday. Can't wait to take a look at this thing.

This week I reduced the photo period to 6 hours to see what happens. I have not noticed a significant change in the past 4 days. Maybe a bit more, likely because I only syphoned the stuff just once.

I won't do my weekly water change this week. I'm trying to change just 1 or 2 things at the time so I can correlate "I did this, it resulted on that" sort of thing. We'll see.

 

[SurlyT]

I'm not willing to say I've beaten my dinos yet, but it's been over a month since I've seen them. But then I took drastic measures and the tank chemistry is probably still settling down.

 

[Chris Abbott]

Same here, the bloom has al but disappeared but now I am seeing a stringy red turf in one small spot. Have no ideas around what caused the change since I gave up fighting them and maintained consistent normal husbandry.

 

[GQuinn]

I want to thank everyone for their input. I have been battling this also for the last few months, although mine never got to plague proportions. I did lights out two different times during this period and this seems to knock them down and out, but eventually they came back after the first lights out. The second time I used hydrogen peroxide with the lights out and removed my sand bend as this is where they always seem to start. So far so good, but it has only been a week.

 

[jedimasterben]

Ugh, can these *******s travel through air??

The only things that have come from the infested tank that weren't acid washed or bleached were my maxi anemones, and those were dipped in peroxide and attached to no substrate before putting them into the new tank. No shared equipment (like nets or anything), I always thoroughly washed my arms if I touched the dino holding tank. I just don't get it, and I hope I'm wrong, but this is how the last plague happened - it started only on the tips of a gorgonian and went to **** from there.

 

[DNA]

jedimasterben. In my tank there were dinos literally in every drop of water and they also attach to fish and corals.
I would not be surprised if they can survive a trip through fish and coral guts and it only takes one to start a plague.

 

[jedimasterben]

Unfortunately true. We'll see what happens.

 

[Adrnalnrsh]

"The Brown Plague"

 

[Kieth71]

Alright,I thought i had beat them but unfortunately they came back. They are not as bad as they were but the fact i have any is a bit depressing.They restarted with just some bubbles on the rocks but turned back into my familiar foe.I have tried alot of things to beat them over the long time i have been dealing with them. I will go over them as to show the different things i have tried.
1. I dosed kalk slurry at night so my ph would not drop.This worked pretty well which caused me to install a kalk reactor.
2.I dosed peroxide,this was not very effective in my case
3.I changed out all filters on my r/o unit and even disinfected the unit itself. I have made sure to keep up on these changes as i have heavy iron which turns the sediment filter red after about a month.
4.I ordered the expensive ultra algae x. This stuff worked for me while i was dosing,however once i did a water change and turned the lights back to a full cycle i would see signs of it returning.
5.I tried lights out periods.This only works for a short time then the dinos come back.
6.The closest i have come to ridding myself of them was a lights out period of 48 hours then i would start dosing the ultra algae x and shorten my light cycle to like 5 hours total.This worked for about a month after the last algae x dose but once i did water changes and turned lights back up they came back.I have one more thing to try and then i may be out of answers.I am going to dose mb7 hoping the bacteria will out compete the dinos.-Kieth

 

[SurlyT]

Yeah, mine are definitely back again and picking up speed quickly. I'll probably try to fight them a while longer - manual removal, tighter mechanical filtration and maybe a new salt mix - but I suspect I'm going to be nuking the tank before the end of the year if not sooner. WTH.

 

[mandrieu]

Same with me. I'm on dose #7 of Algae X. My tank is 125 G, minus rocks and sand I guessed about 100 G net water, so I'm dosing 20 ml every other day. Darn dinos seem to be laughing at it. It seems to be working on other algae types though. No water changes for the past 2 weeks, lights down to 6 hours. I've also been dosing mb7. I keep syphoning them from the sand, but as soon as lights come on, they come back every day.
Not sure what else to do. I'll finish the Algae X treatment but my expectations are pretty low at this point.

 

[SurlyT]

Where'd you get the Algae X, mandrieu? You're not far from me, but I can't find it anywhere locally (or online either, for that matter). In combination with the blackout it worked pretty well for me for a while, so I might consider another round with it.

You know, you mention dosing MB7 and I've been dosing Prodibio - but I'm starting to wonder if dosing bacteria is a good idea in this situation. We know that there's a symbiotic relationship between certain types of dinos and certain types of bacteria, which is why I asked a few pages back whether a broad-spectrum antibiotic or UV might be helpful. At this point I've been reduced to a bare-bottom fish-only system, so if it wrecks the biological cycle I don't really care anymore. Heck, I'm not even convinced that dumping a gallon of bleach or muriatic acid into the tank would be a permanent cure.