Dinoflagellates.

[Kurt03]

Just got my scope and took a few quick pictures and wanted to see what others think.

Ostreopsis? Doesnt seem to be moving.


Diatom in the middle? and more of the circular unknowns? I have tons of these in the slides. They dont seem to be moving.


Not sure what this is but looks like it has a belly full of those circular things.

 

[taricha]

Just got my scope and took a few quick pictures and wanted to see what others think.

Ostreopsis? Doesnt seem to be moving.


Diatom in the middle? and more of the circular unknowns? I have tons of these in the slides. They dont seem to be moving.


Not sure what this is but looks like it has a belly full of those circular things.

Great pics!
Pic 1: ostreopsis in the middle. Not moving because it's dead. That clear oval thing next to it is its theca (armor).
If you really wanted to, you could get a detailed shot of the pattern of the shapes of the thecal plates that form the armor, and identify the exact species. Not much point though. It's ostreopsis.
Also that's a fantastic shot of how tiny your little round things are by comparison. Big Ostis are like 50-80 microns long, which puts those guys under 10 and well smaller than any other dinos that typically bloom in aquariums.

Pic 2: yep, some kind of pinnate diatom, also confirming the crazy tiny size of the round things.

Pic 3: no clue. Got a video? Movement helps so much.

 

[StrangeDejavu]

Wow, what a huge size difference between the Ostreopsis and the mystery dinos. I'm very interested to see an ID of what's in pic 3 as it does appear to be consuming these.

 

[melmel3]

i beat this crap Yay!!!!! So far clean 2/3 weeks...
started from adding too much coral food i believe

What worked for me (took about a month to kill) at least for now, I hope :

-Started spot dosing H2o2 which seemed to work for a bit but came back/spread STRONG after 7-10 days (dose was @ 1ml/10gal)

-Did a 3 day blackout and just kept dosing peroxide but generally in tank

-That put a good slow to it but then after a few days still came back bad

-Started looking into UVs and got a great deal on a turbotwist 9w

-Raised dose of H2o2 to 2ml/10gal and did another 3 blackout on the 3rd day of blackout received and setup the UV at very slow flow about more than 45,000 uw sec/cm2 or about 40gph - 24/7

-Kept dosing 2ml/10 gal at night for about 1-2 weeks after 2nd blackout and so far so good....

*Obv corals didn't appreciate the h2o2 and closed up but after an hour they were fine

My setup prior to UV sterilizer
57g rimless/ 20g sump
Diy ATS & skimmer

 

[melmel3]

^ did get some Cyano coming in from under the sand shortly after the dyno cleared,could see it because its right behind the glass. so i just spot dosed peroxide into the sand where the cyano was and for now its not showing it face

 

[Kurt03]

Youtube is still rendering the video but heres the link, it should be done soon.
https://youtu.be/ihIS2oTi6kc

Its kinda long but figured I would leave the whole video there and you can skip around as you wish. There is some good video around 5:30 at higher magnification. The moving object has some sort of moving tentacles/whiskers on its face(if its called a face!)

 

[Kurt03]

grr not sure why it changed the resolution, ill fix it and post a new link.

 

[StrangeDejavu]

Just ripped the bags off my tank. Sand is pristine, I see no traces of anything stringy anywhere. The tops of the rocks are still somewhat brown which I think might be diatoms. Cyano is also completely gone. The filter floss was almost completely clean which is a change. Prior to this, every 3 days, my floss was dark brown and stunk to high heaven. My snails also appear to be out of their "dino coma" and are moving around again. Water is a little cloudy but parameters test 0ppm nitrite, 0ppm ammonia and 1ppm nitrate. pH is lower than usual at 7.69 which is to be expected. Unfortunately, I don't think I own a Tailspot Blenny anymore. :/ He's not in his usual two holes and he never came out when food hit the water. It's been an hour and a half since the tank has been uncovered and I still can't find any trace of him. I'm about to do a 25% WC to help remove some of the dead dinos then dose MB7 and phyto.

 

[Kurt03]

Take a sample of the brown from the rocks and lets see what it looks like Good luck!

I need to figure out a way to mount a webcam to mine, so much nicer looking at it that way.

 

[StrangeDejavu]

Take a sample of the brown from the rocks and lets see what it looks like Good luck!

Oh jeez, I forgot I had a microscope of my own now, lol.

Apologies in advance for the quality, it's really hard to hold a phone steady with these short eye relief eyepieces. I could be wrong, but I believe i'm seeing loads of dead dinos in the first pic/video- only one appears to be alive. In the second, you can see the "Symbiodinium" looking orbs with a single live Amphidinium.

Amphidinium (?)

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ohvNzD8MCzg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Amphidiniun

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ifMwdNZThNI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[Newguy76]

Grats strange on what I hope for you is a complete Dino distruction. I take off my 6 day black out tomorrow hoping for the same

 

[StrangeDejavu]

Grats strange on what I hope for you is a complete Dino distruction. I take off my 6 day black out tomorrow hoping for the same

Thanks man, let's hope so! I'm going out of town tomorrow and won't be home until Monday morning so instead of running moonlights as planned, i'm going to blackout the sides with cardboard and leave the light off. It won't be a total blackout but it will be in a dark room so hopefully it'll still have a positive effect. Tank is already smelling much better so fingers crossed.

 

[Newguy76]

I opened my tank up on Friday afternoon. Looks good. Still have not turned lights on higher than 10% blues. Also started dosing microbater as well. Ran rowasphos for the last 3 days of black out. Going to pull it out tomorrow and add carbon to the reactor. So far looks a ton better all my white rock is back to white with no signs of Dino. Started my fuge this weekend as well as going to install an ats up flow as well. More to come

 

[Kurt03]

Wonder if anyone has noticed an increase in no3 or po4 when the Dino's disappear?

It looks like mine are in a decline since I've been overfeeding and dosing po4. Has anyone else dosed po4 and noticed this? I'm closely testing po4 to make sure I don't add to much, but I'm adding .016 - .03 every few days on top of dosing oyster feast, flake food several times a day, reef chili, and whatever else I feel like. I still test below .02 on red sea and .003 on hanna ulr. Not sure which to believe but the same end result, it's pretty low! Something's eating all those nutrients, hopefully it's mostly good stuff

 

[Fish Keeper82]

Update to post #3170
I have waited a while to post this to be sure im Dino free but it has been over a month since I have seen any.
I have not seen any amphidinium or ostreposis in over a month with several Water changes and dosing ALK a few times.

Why they went away I don't know but I can tell you what changes I did to eventually work for me. The dirty method did not work for me or at least not entirely. During that dirty time i removed GFO, stopped water changes , added a slow flow UV, skimmed less, was over feeding 50%flake 50%frozen, adding seachem stability, and adding phyto (dead seachem) and over time i started to get algae on the glass and on the rocks. Ostreopsis dinos were no longer visible after the addition of the slow flow UV but Amphidinium Dinoflagellates were still there in big numbers. After a couple of months of no new change I decided to completely do a 180 and went super clean. I was just trying something different and was expecting to have my dinos get worse but at the end they were gone.

Things i did during this clean phase that I was not when doing the dirty method were, I added GFO, skimmed 24/7, regular water changes, limited feeding flake food to about 5% and started feeding 95 % frozen, stopped dosing seachem phytoplankton. Slowly Amphidinium Dinoflagellates started to receed to visible elimination in over the course of about 2 months time. I had been doing 3-4 day lights out every time they were in big numbers. Every lights out periods it seemed like it was taking a bit longer for them to reach big numbers.
I never stopped the lights out periods to keep them at bay since the beggining.
A couple of key notes id like to add was i never intentionally added any new biodiversity into the tank. I added a few frags they were all dipped with Bayer and bases were soaked in regular 3% Hydrogen Peroxide. I cannot be certain but i believe the bio swing to get them in balance was all available in the tank. It would have been highly unlikely much of anything survived the H2O2 and even if it did it would have such an effect in so little time. Also algae balanced out during the clean phase. It receded as well and now I have only hard green algea on the glass and rocks. No GHA or other nuisance algae.

At the end of the day all I can really say is after what seems to be an eternity(about 7 months), I'm glad they are gone and looking forward to adding some more corals.

 

[DNA]

Thanks for the update Fish Keeper.

Did you have mostly amphidinium?
I'm asking because these settle in places my ostreopsis do not like and your sandbed is clean.

 

[DNA]

I bought a high quality 80W Deltec UV and installed it two weeks ago.
It's treating around 200 g/hour (750 lilters/hour)

This has changed:
More algae on the glass.
Slight increase in dinoflagellates.
Big increase in cyanobacteria.
Miniscule increase in water clarity.

The reason I did not do this earlier is that I had no faith in it, but I had to try.
I'll run it for three months to be sure and then probably remove it.

Another week of UV has passed.
The algae on the glass is about the same as last week.
Dinoflagellates have increased somewhat, but it's hard to tell since....
Cyanobacteria has taken over and covers most of the sand and parts of the rocks as well. I've seen plenty in the past, but this is a new reckord.
Water clarity has decreased since the water column is packed with cyanobacteria.

At the moment UV seems to be having negative effect on my tank and definitely not doing anything to reduce the dino menace.

 

[DNA]

I've got a new lead based on the pieces I've added to the puzzle so far, combined with new ones.
I think it's a really good one and I'm seeing the big picture, but we know how things tend to pan out with dinos.

It's summer so reef related things are moving slowly, my tank looks like **** and the drive to test this lead is hardly there.
At the moment I feel like this may be my last attempt, but who knows, perhaps hope will show up.

 

[Kurt03]

What's the idea? I might be able to test also.

What does your po4 test at? Try and dose po4 to get slightly elevated levels and see what happens.

 

[Fish Keeper82]

Thanks for the update Fish Keeper.

Did you have mostly amphidinium?
I'm asking because these settle in places my ostreopsis do not like and your sandbed is clean.

Initially all samples I viewed were Ostreopsis on rock and sand they were stringy and produced bubbles. Bothered the heck out of corals since they made the polyps close up.After UV for some reason It got rid of them easily( I know that was not your experiance with UV). Here is a picture of them

That left Amphidinium to grow and produce a heavy mat but no string or bubbles. It grew all over the sand bed but virtually none on the rocks at all. These did not bother corals at all. ( other than that picture you you quoted when that new light was added that seemed to attract them to that bare white rock, that lasted a few weeks. That picture was also a couple of days after a 4 day lights out. That post was about the abnormality of Dinos flocking to that rock) What made me check them under the scope again was your comment about UV not working on Ostreopis. I was very surprised to find all Amphidinium under the scope from then on.

I still belive these guys had something to do with it. Although I never saw them actually eat Dinos they did multiply in my tank and would see one with the naked eye from time to time in the water column and in my filter socks when changing them. Biggest I saw was 3/4" or so:

EDIT:I actually just spotted one of those worms which is rare and even more so in the sand. It's under the GSP shadow, south tip of the shadow.
Notice after no signs of dinos the sand has nice green algae tint now.

In hindsight I believe I had Osteopsis and Amphidinium since the beggining. I belive i got the easiest samples to get at first which were got from the strings with a q- tip.
After UV and the strings were gone, I was scooping sand and looking at those samples of all Amphidinium. To answer your question I belive the greater part of my Dinos were Amphidinium. But Ostreopsis were heavy before UV. I lost a lot of coloration in corals from basically not openining up for about a month on strings on the polyps.