Dinoflagellates.

[karimwassef]

Randy's theory of the dinos being dependent on some other element may be relevant here. An excess of something that we're not used to measuring could excite them. It doesn't have to be a nutrient or a toxin. It could just be a non-reactive or trace element that dinos depend on and that are not common in most tanks. Maybe a little pollution gives them a boost. Maybe it's a pesticide or air spray that was accidentally introduced...

I guess a test would be a complete transplant of life from one system to a completely different new system (different equipment, etc...) to see if the dinos travel with the rocks and sand or if they disappear due to the absence of another source of pollution.

If they disappear - then it's a pollutant in the equipment/system.
If they reappear - then they're traveling with the rocks and life.

I personally don't think it's the result of a thinwall rubbermaid container since I don't use any. I do use the thick agricultural grade stuff.

If would be great to isolate a chemical source though.

 

[taricha]

Are you blowing them off the rocks and catching them with filter socks?
Also need to go either all dark or blues only for a few days.
Also need carbon to remove their poison as they die

Doing carbon. Don't have filter socks or a place to put them.
I'm doing something different with light. Trying high light, grow algae and lots of life, rather than light starve.
Darkness is Plan B.

 

[reefcentral123]

well just for the record i'll type up what caused my dinos to appear

-started with dry rock
-was running GFO and phos was at 0, nitrates at 50 ppm in a BB tank
-never stayed on top of cleaning detritus, it would settle in a corner out of sight
-hydra 26 running pretty strong settings

tank running for about 1.5 years? there was one spot on the rocks that whatever coral I put there would have brown slime growing on it and it would die eventually... come to think of it I'm pretty sure it was dinos. Maybe a lack of good flow/light in that area weakened the coral and they would take over? But when the coral died they would disappear as well so they were always being kept in check?

-i had a light running 24/7 in my sump so there was a lot of algae and coralline growing there

-did a massive cleanup of the sump where i removed all the gunk and algae, cleaned everything and removed the sump light.
-started throwing in a shot of vodka every night (dumb :headwally
-i started dosing "Two Little Fishies AcroPower Amino Acids for SPS Corals"

then it got real bad real fast. killing all the algae in the sump, turning off the light in the sump and dosing the vodka in excess n the AA was the main cause it seems like.


now i'm waiting on this cermedia block to arrive.. shut off skimmer.. dosing kalk... dosing phyto... pods everywhere but im still culturing some. did a 3 day lights out where 90% of dino disappeared but it came back. also dosing prodibio, zeobak and coral snow are on the way as well... doing dirty method -> nitrates at 25 ppm right now but phos at 0 for some reason... i'll buy a UV as well when i get the chance. 50 micron sock coming in as well so i can suck up the ones on the rock. no more water changes so that's a plus. im using activated carbon as well im not to keen on being exposed to ion channel toxins..

:spin2: ostreopsis ovata btw

 

[seamonster124]

Doing carbon. Don't have filter socks or a place to put them.
I'm doing something different with light. Trying high light, grow algae and lots of life, rather than light starve.
Darkness is Plan B.

You have to have a way to remove them physically as they begin to die. I would consider implementing socks or any other type of physical filter, rinsed cleaned or replaced daily

 

[Fish Keeper82]

How much phyto are you adding?
Bottle of Seachem says 5mil for every 50 gallons. This about you are adding?

 

[seamonster124]

Ah, I see. Well, I probably would worry more about something toxic in it, but in theory, a toxin might encourage dinoflagellates. I think the odds are heavily against that possibility, though.

I'm sure yo uare right. I went ahead and bought a 44G Brute food grade anyways. I noticed the roughneck smelled a bit like chemicals and I found some forum posts about them not being food grade.

 

[seamonster124]

How much phyto are you adding?
Bottle of Seachem says 5mil for every 50 gallons. This about you are adding?

I'm adding live Phyto. Seachem is dead. I add 4oz per roughly 125G Total water volume 1-2 times per day.

The growth of funky little creatures has been very interesting. I may have 10 types of macro feather dusters.

 

[reefcentral123]

I'm adding live Phyto. Seachem is dead. I add 4oz per roughly 125G Total water volume 1-2 times per day.

The growth of funky little creatures has been very interesting. I may have 10 types of macro feather dusters.

i thought u said earlier in the thread the dirty method worked for you did they come back afterwards?

 

[taricha]

Still working on the idea of how to scale up the effectiveness of adding micro life to a tank sized infestation.
My skimmer "green tea" just isn't a large enough amount to disrupt the dinos sandbed home.

Has anyone tried a sandbed transplant?

I think I could culture a large mass of live sand with lots of micro critters, then remove top layer of my dino sand and replace with my fresh sand.

Been done before?

 

[seamonster124]

i thought u said earlier in the thread the dirty method worked for you did they come back afterwards?

Yep, they came back for two days and covered everything. But now they're all gone"¦ this time I just blew them off with a powerhead and collected them with a filter sock. Now we are crystal-clear"¦ Really makes no sense

 

[reefcentral123]

Yep, they came back for two days and covered everything. But now they're all gone"¦ this time I just blew them off with a powerhead and collected them with a filter sock. Now we are crystal-clear"¦ Really makes no sense

i'm thinking manual removal to be mandatory at this point, reduce their population severely and hope whatever other organisms u have in the tank can fill the dinos place... if not they come back. how big is your filter sock? i got some 50 um coming

 

[rallibon]

I thought I'd post an update on my dinos (follow-up to my posts #2652 and #2696).

The summary is they are 90% gone, with a couple of patches on the sand and on a couple of rocks. In fact my pictures "“ both of original bloom and the "œafter" pictures "“ look quite like the experience of FishKeeper82 in post 2696. In fact it also sounds like we adopted a similar approach.

Symptoms
Like many I originally thought I had a cyano outbreak before the dinos appeared. In fact I may well have had both as DNA among others have suggested the one often succeeds - or supplants - the other. I realised it was dinos when long strings developed with bubbles and from the colour and consistency. I bought a microscope but was not able to work out a definitive ID of species but as noted earlier I suspect it was not Ostreopsis Ovata as it seemed not to be too toxic. I lost a few snails (not all), a few SPS frags and smaller colonies but nothing else. Some SPS seemed particularly affected especially at the growth tips and succumbed, others seemed entiorely unaffected. LPS and clams were unaffected as were other invertebrates. 3 BTAs sulked but survived.

What I did
I decided to try a multi-prong strategy which has the advantage of maximising chances of some success but disadvantage that I cannot really determine what "“ if anything "“ was the main cause of improvement. I continued to run my existing UV (don't know wattage) and added another 36W V2 Vectron (25 watts) and ran it at 800 litres / hour. I added quite a lot more live rock and rubble to my DT, sump and frag tank. I added an additional grow lamp to encourage extra chaeto in an in-line water change tank. I added some more pods (much more expensive and less available here in the UK than in the US). I siphoned out visible dinos in my frag tank (easier as no sand) and from rocks in DT. I fed a little more and stopped straining the thawed "œice water" before feeding. I added phyto in a fairly unscientific way "“ just pouring in maybe 50ml per day either into DT, into sump or both. I removed my 3 sand-sifting starfish (astropecten polycanthus) based on the theory that they were depopulating my sandbed of micro-fauna. I changed the resin in my RO cartridges and added an additional resin cartridge before the ATO reservoir. I added Sera Silicate remover. I removed my Rowaphos from reactor (replaced with the silicate remover). I dosed more sodium bicarbonate to raise dKH. I added beneficial bacteria (mainly zeobak) on an ad hoc basis, usually but not exclusively with coral snow.

What happened
I noticed a gradual improvement from mid-January where there was more coralline appearing on the rocks where dinos had covered them, and I noticed some dinos no longer carpeting the sand. Last week I did another 3 day blackout which "“ as one would expect "“ made most visible dinos recede. Since then they have only reappeared as described above in a few patches and for now appear not to be gaining any foothold. It remains to be seen if they disappear completely, launch a comeback or remain in this status quo.

My theory
I think my "œbloom" (maybe wrong word but I am happy to be corrected) MAY have been down to (1) impurity in my RO unit (TDS reading was 80-90 before I changed the resin) (2) surprisingly low dKH (between 5 and 6); (3) using Chemiclean when I thought I had cyano (4) depleted microfauna in sandbed

Curent State
For the first time in several months I am enjoying my aquarium again, and would be fine if it stayed as it is right now even with some patches of dinos. I have replaced a couple of the dead SPS frags with new ones that seem fine. Things may all go downhill fast again as I take nothing for granted in this hobby but for today at least my glass is half full.

Good luck everyone.

5 "Before" pictures - "after" pictures to follow

 

[rallibon]

"After" pictures

 

[mannyhernz]

"After" pictures

Pretty nice. I am currently at 80% dinos gone..same method as you described, only difference is that i added bio spira and mb7 instead of the stuff you used. I do notice that the dinos cleared all my coraline algae off the tank glass..do they eat coraline?

 

[DNA]

I thought I'd post an update on my dinos (follow-up to my posts #2652 and #2696).

Excellent post rallibon!
I've tried most of what you have but not all at once.
Let's hope your current status will not decline.

 

[seamonster124]

i'm thinking manual removal to be mandatory at this point, reduce their population severely and hope whatever other organisms u have in the tank can fill the dinos place... if not they come back. how big is your filter sock? i got some 50 um coming

I have 100 and 200 micron ssocks.I do replace every day or two days at the very most.

 

[joti26]

Yes trying similar ralibon, ordered new skimmer and replacing RO membrane as I also suspect that, didn't test it with tds as really knew it was past it's best and felt the money for a metre might as well be just spent on a new membrane. Adding Nyos Bac and my little population of pods daily. Pretty sure cyano is linked as well as I had similar to you. Mine aren't or don't seem to be toxic and still convinced my coral beauty is eating it! Still getting some every day on soft corals and lost my Duncan and Cat's paw but everything else still coping. It's interesting how it seems to change though, had none on sand for a few days but now less on glass. Then last two days more on sand again. My cheato has hardly grown at all since the outbreak and really torn on lighting in the sump as I put a grow light in and that's when I got a massive cyano outbreak so took it out and put the T8 back in but like you thinking the lack of lighting isn't helping outgrow the Dino so trying the stronger grow light again tonight. I have also added some polyfilter to help get rid of any toxins especially if the RO was dodgy. Very persistent on some soft corals and not others also interesting, two zoas next to each other and one gets it the other one doesn't. Looking forward to getting where you are, nearly there though and definitely nowhere near as bad as some!

 

[dragon174]

I have been fighting dino's for a very long time as well. I have been able to get it contain it to just the sand bed and it also doesn't seem to be affecting my sand sifting star fish. At this point, I have tried the dirty method with very little success, I'm running a 36w UV with low flow rate, change filter socks every other day.

I have noticed coralline growth on the back of the tank again and other green algae grown on my return lines. At this point, I am thinking about removing my star fish, and sucking out all of the sand. I don't want to go bare bottom, so I was thinking about slowing adding in a crushed coral type base back into the tank. Has anyone ever tried this? Will the dino's attach to crushed coral base like they do to sand? I'm sure the answer is yes if they can and do attach to corals and rocks.

The only other thing I can think about doing is getting another dragon goby. Other than the constant sand storm he created, the tank was free of dino's. I don't have any corals in the tank (just some zoo's and a small hammer coral). The zoo's are doing outstanding and aren't being affected by the dino's.

This is the weirdest stuff I have ever had to deal with in the hobby (15+ years).

 

[reefcentral123]

a lot of you seem to be running UV, i'm gonna go research on what will fit my tank and how to set it up and I'll do a 3 day blackout when the UV comes in... so when they are in the water column.

 

[seamonster124]

Anyone care to explain to me why UV would be beneficial also what are the side effects?