karimwassef
Active member
Also. Killing the enemy isn't enough. You need to repopulate with healthy organisms before the dinos recover from the blow.
Dinoflagellates.
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mannyhernz
Member
Thanks..
Will my corals be ok? Mainly sps
Also have a fuge with plenty chaeto and pods..
justthewife
New member
Going out today to look for a good bacteria additive. Any suggestions? Is the SeaChem Stability a bacteria additive? If so, is it good or are there better suggestions?
PorkchopExpress
New member
They will be fine. In fact I will guarantee you they will look much better and happier after the blackout considering the abuse they are getting with the dinos in there right now. After 3 days your tank will probably be mostly, if not all dino free and your corals will be very happy because of it. 3 days is not going to hurt your corals or fish, just feed them very heavily the day before. IME anything over that might. The most I've done is 4 days at which point I did start to see some of my SPS start to STN however I cannot prove that it was because of the blackout or something else.
If you do do a blackout, you will need complete darkness. Cover the tank and sump with blankets or something. Of course, continue on course with feeding heavily and repopulating your zooplankton and dosing phyto to promote other algaes and ensure the dinos don't come back. If you don't, depending on what species of dinos you have, blackouts only kick them back for a few days to up to a few weeks, then they return.
They will certainly be present in nearly every system - of this I'm sure. From my experience of successfully (so far) eradicating them, a multi-pronged attack to kill and remove most of them whilst dealing with the underlying issue and culturing a competing population of organisms will work.
Don't do a 3 day. It wont work. Others who have tried this have even witnessed the dinos coming back together in the water column when the lights come back on.
8 days minimum (I think I did 10) *complete* blackout (including sump, grow lights etc) with the tank covered, then slowly bring in blue-lights only over the next two weeks before introducing white WILL kill off nearly all of them.
Don't do half measures. at 4/5 days, I still had dinos clinging on, they were certainly in the water column past this time.
Very good advice - you have to ensure that their food source is removed and they cannot spring back so in addition to fighting nutrient levels and introducing competition, you must constantly remove the dead/dying dino's to reduce the chances of them springing back and also stop them adding to nitrate/phosphate levels.
Clean your skimmer DAILY. Use a wet-skim and siphon up the dead dinos from the sump. I had 5-8mm of them on the bottom of my sump.
I posted my full method below. When the tank came out of blackout it was SPOTLESS. As clean as it was when I first filled it. Touch wood, no dino's 8 weeks later.
That doesn't look like Dinoflagellates to me. Having recently been plagued and (so far) having dealt with them, however I am not an expert and there are many species.
This is what mine looked like (a small sample of what was in the tank):
After speaking with some very helpful (and much more experienced reefers than me), I decided to employ a multi-pronged strategy to defeat them (this was performed in a relatively new tank, with only a few SPS frags) This consisted of the following:
1: Remove:
- Siphon to *waste* all the dinoflagellate mass I could with as little as possible water change (replacement water used TMC Pro Reef synthetic salt to ensure no organics) Do NOT try to pass through a filter sock or floss, they will pass through and re-form.
2: Create a hostile environment:
- 8 Day Total blackout (sump and tank wrapped in black plastic) followed by Blue-only lighting for 5 days before introducing whites gradually
- Maintain very low phosphate and Nitrate (Double Rowa amount, changing every 3/4 days)
- Double carbon media, replacing every 4 days
- Raise pH using Air stone to maintain 8.2+
- Wet Skim and clean it constantly - you need the skimmer at peak efficiency to remove dinos in the water column
3: Outcompete:
Create nutrient competition with good profile of microfauna/flora (Initial 10 x dose of FM Ultra-Bio, followed by daily top-ups of normal dose with UltraBak
Remember: Siphon Dead/Dying Dinoflaggelates to waste!
The reason for removal of as much of the dinoflagellate mass as possible prior to blackout and during is two fold: Firstly, they will break down and provide more free nutrients (you are trying to reduce this). Secondly, even if they are not toxic when growing in the tank (as mine were not), they can release toxins when dying off. I ost two conches who started to feed on an area of dying dinoflagellates on the sand.
The good news is that 6 weeks later, and they have not returned and the tank is (as far as I can tell) free of them.
A word on this approach, however - it is not for the faint hearted. Fortunately for me, I did not have a big stock of SPS. (Hammerheads, Acan, soft corals and LPS were fine).
However in my case, it did trigger a massive issue with the fish stock. As they were in the dark, they retreated to the rock and did not feed. This lowered their immune system and allowed a protozoan infection (probably Crytpocaryon) to take hold (I believe this came into the system on some macroalgae from another reefer previously).
So this method is certainly effective, and much more so than miracle in a bottle chemicals, however some care needs to be taken.
justthewife
New member
Where do you get Ultra-bio?
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Quiet_Ivy
New member
Reef Diva, I don't mean to be rude but are you sure you have dinos? Cyano can look very very similar, and it likes higher nutrient conditions like you'd see after a crash. UV probably wouldn't kill cyano as it's not floating around the water column at night.
Biodiversity with respect to dinos means microscopic flora and fauna, pods, sand bed organisms, etc and supplying enough food to sustain them.
"No magic bullet, use a multi-pronged approach" could be the theme song of this thread, unfortunately.
hth
ivy
justthewife
New member
Is FM Ultra bio the same as Ultra Lith? Sorry for being dumb about this product:sad2:
Quiet_Ivy
New member
That's not a stupid question at all. You're seeing bubbles because your lights were on longer. Not to get into a big biochemistry discussion, but yes, too long a light period can harm photosynthetic organisms. Will it hurt dinos more than your SPS? I don't know and I *definitely* wouldn't risk pushing the photoperiod too much at once.
hth
ivy
Not a silly question at all. it's a mixture of bacteria, TBH, I suspect anything that increases the variety and number of bacteria and other micro organisms would benefit the fight.
What you are looking to avoid is removing a dominant organism and leaving a vacuum which other unwanted organisms (or the same ones) can exploit again...
Personally I'd ditch the UV, it's indiscriminate and you want to increase the competing bacteria etc in the water column. The dinoflagellates would disperse into the water column with a blackout anyway, use the skimmer and siphon to remove them.
karimwassef
Active member
The bacteria is primarily in the filter media - sand, rock, plumbing, surfaces... They're not in the water column like dinos.
Sure, they'll get killed too if they go in, but dinos have the unique behavior of free floating in the dark. This makes them especially vulnerable to UV with a protracted lights out phase.
But as the dinos die, they need to be exported out - wet skimming. They also leave a hole in the ecosystem that must be filled by other organisms. I don't think bacteria is the answer. I added phyto myself. But bacteria may be part of the answer too. I also added pods, live rock, live sand (yes-really), new chaeto, and fed... Once the dinos were being killed, I wanted to give every other competing organism a chance to fill the void in the food chain! I threw the kitchen sink of life at them wanting to introduce any element that could outcompete them. I even bought the most invasive photosynthetic corals I could- rhodactis on two massive pieces of live rock covered in worms and sponges. Yes- I introduced aggressive corals in the middle of the Dino fight.
Something won out in the end- but I can't say what it was. I just know that my chaeto started performing again and I began exporting. I even added an ATS and the algae fills up like a machine now and I feed heavily but export very hard too.
PorkchopExpress
New member
the point of the 3 day isn't to eradicate them as i mentioned in a later post...the point is simply to knock them back quite a bit which will allow other algaes to take a foothold...he has corals, sps in his pictures, an 8 day will surely kill them...and you have no idea what dinos i nor he has so you have no idea what a 3 day would do...in my tank 3 days is all it took to clear them every single time and, followed by UV and dirty method is all it took
besides, prolonged blackouts may or may not be any different from shorter ones as the dinos are likely to return considering they can form cysts for months and survive in complete darkness...blackouts aren't the answer, they're just used to weaken the dino population in perparation for the real attack
PorkchopExpress
New member
UV worked for me on one occasion without the dirty method so it most definitely is a viable option. There is enough bacteria on the surface area of the rocks and sand that you are not disrupting the bacteria population by zapping a few in the water column. A skimmer by itself isn't enough to eradicate dinoflagellates or this thread would never have reached 100+ pages.
Billybatz9
New member
Guys I'm pretty bummed. I'm doing the dirty method and it seems like it's getting a lot worse. No red slime or anything. Any ideas on what I shold do?
Dinoflagellates
Dinoflagellates
PorkchopExpress
I don't have dinoflagellates. I posted a cure for dinoflagellates which took me a hour to compose and which does work based upon the writing of Randy Holmes Farley. If anyone seriously wants help with this problem, then send me a message and I will tell you what to do. I am going to tell you it is a lot of hard work and it is not what I posted.
Last year I had a client's tank crash because they turned off the heat in the entire building and the room went down to 40 degrees. Needless to say almost everything died. All the rock became covered with dinoflagellates. I took all of the rock home and put them into a 90 gallon tank, no fish, no coral, good flow, new, clean water, LED light and watched the dinoflagellates thrive for months. I kept turning the lights on for a few weeks and off for a few weeks. Got nowhere.
Finally I left the lights off for several months. Finally after 1 year it appears that the dinoflagellates are finally gone. Is anybody really scared now. Because this little experiment really blows my mind. This is how insidious dinoflagellates can be.
Dinoflagellates
PorkchopExpress
I don't have dinoflagellates. I posted a cure for dinoflagellates which took me a hour to compose and which does work based upon the writing of Randy Holmes Farley. If anyone seriously wants help with this problem, then send me a message and I will tell you what to do. I am going to tell you it is a lot of hard work and it is not what I posted.
Last year I had a client's tank crash because they turned off the heat in the entire building and the room went down to 40 degrees. Needless to say almost everything died. All the rock became covered with dinoflagellates. I took all of the rock home and put them into a 90 gallon tank, no fish, no coral, good flow, new, clean water, LED light and watched the dinoflagellates thrive for months. I kept turning the lights on for a few weeks and off for a few weeks. Got nowhere.
Finally I left the lights off for several months. Finally after 1 year it appears that the dinoflagellates are finally gone. Is anybody really scared now. Because this little experiment really blows my mind. This is how insidious dinoflagellates can be.
Billybatz9
New member
The dinos are killing some of my sps. Keep landing on them. I blow them off and 30 mins later, they are on same spot. I've been trying now for 4 days. Nto sure how long it's supposed to be.
I feed 4 time a day pellets (fat thumb pinch) or 1 cube of mysis and 1 cube cyclops with dirty water and all.
Dinos are even covering spots that had green hair algae growing and growing their own brown hair.
