Dinoflagellates.

[OrionN]

Have you tried ethromyacin?

Erythromycin works again Cyanobacteria (those red and green slim "algae"). However these Cyanobacterial are easily control by control nutrient in the tank.
Dino is another mater entirely.

For a great variety of reasons, adding antibiotic to our reef tank is a huge NO in my book.

 

[Pants]

I think people would find it helpful to know how you bought/accessed a microscope.

 

[jedimasterben]

I think people would find it helpful to know how you bought/accessed a microscope.

Oh lol. I borrowed it from the high school here in town. I work for the school district, though, as otherwise I don't think I could have gotten to take one home.

Was interesting trying to get the camera to be able to see properly lol


Oh, and here is a still.

 

[DNA]

I spent a good part of Saturday reading published research papers by scientists.
I keep reading very similar material as scientist dive into small areas and scrutinize it.
They often come up with solid results, but are oblivious to the big picture like how their subject behaves in nature.
They all seem to acknowledge how little they know and "further studies" is something they all mention.

I did however find some good stuff on Ostreopsis Ovata and here is the short version.

When it's cultured it's reported to divide exponentially on day 10 from culture start, to be stationary on day 18 and senescent on day 25, not being able to divide anymore.
This would indicate that individual cells have at least a months lifespan.

They do produce a brown wax like mucilage in abundance that helps them to occupy surfaces.
They also produce a fibrous strands that adds mechanical properties to the mucilage as well as to form strings like you can see on my picture on page 1 of this thread.
I see these two as the two compounds in fiberglass strengthening each other.
These are also used to hold on to surfaces and possible predation on micro organisms adding palytoxins to the mix.
If that's how their mixotropic feeding goes I'd call their predation part teamwork.
(Credits go to Giorgio Honsell and team for this info).

 

[Forgiven1973]

Will this UV sterilizer work for my 120g with about 55g in sump? Will post my battle and pics hopefully tonight

 

[Forgiven1973]

May i add Id plan on running from my return and dump back into skimmer chamber of 3 section sump. Could this help with 3 days lights out and blasting rocks with cleaning back wall and pumps?

 

[yeldarbj]

A UV can help manage the problem but won't fix it in my experiences.

 

[Forgiven1973]

My battle with dinos started about 2-3 weeks ago that i could tell. (New to this) had a small amount on pumps before that but we moved and i used all new wAter for the tank transfer. Not sure if there was any die off from rocks while arranging aqua scape or not. I came home one night and my wife had stripped a boarder in a very close bathroom and had painted the room. Wasnt sure if fumes could of leached into tank causing this problem or not. Heck im not 100% certain its dinos but whatever the heck it is has killed off most of all my sps. Ive went through all but the last 3 pages so far of this thread but finishing shortly. Seems like no sure thing so i was thinking of trying peroxide dosing in my 120g with 55g water in sump. While dosing i was wondering about running the above uv sterilizer for 3 days with lights out with the return end of sterilizer going into a filter sock that id change out and wash daily. Whats everyones opinions? Below is some pic.

Pants: ill likely shoot u a PM

 

[Forgiven1973]

Btw: this was on front and back of tank within a couple days. I had cleaned off front glass and before i knew it my red dragon was white and others dying

 

[swk]

From what I can see, doesn't look like dinos to me

 

[jedimasterben]

My battle with dinos started about 2-3 weeks ago that i could tell. (New to this) had a small amount on pumps before that but we moved and i used all new wAter for the tank transfer. Not sure if there was any die off from rocks while arranging aqua scape or not. I came home one night and my wife had stripped a boarder in a very close bathroom and had painted the room. Wasnt sure if fumes could of leached into tank causing this problem or not. Heck im not 100% certain its dinos but whatever the heck it is has killed off most of all my sps. Ive went through all but the last 3 pages so far of this thread but finishing shortly. Seems like no sure thing so i was thinking of trying peroxide dosing in my 120g with 55g water in sump. While dosing i was wondering about running the above uv sterilizer for 3 days with lights out with the return end of sterilizer going into a filter sock that id change out and wash daily. Whats everyones opinions? Below is some pic.

Pants: ill likely shoot u a PM

[pics]

IMHO not any species of dinoflagellate I've seen.

 

[jedimasterben]

55w SunSun CUV-155 UV Sterilizer should be here early next week. Will be placed on my return pump and have 100% water going through it, which is around 370GPH, right at 7.2GPH per watt. Should be sufficient for 'stage one' sterilization. Wish me luck. :uzi:

 

[DNA]

55w SunSun CUV-155 UV Sterilizer should be here early next week. Will be placed on my return pump and have 100% water going through it, which is around 370GPH, right at 7.2GPH per watt. Should be sufficient for 'stage one' sterilization. Wish me luck. :uzi:

This mode is very similar to what I tried for some months without any noticeable results.
I wish you good luck though.

 

[jedimasterben]

This mode is very similar to what I tried for some months without any noticeable results.
I wish you good luck though.

Were you running it the same way? I'd like to compare data once I have some

 

[DNA]

~600 g/h with more than 95% of my return pumps flow going through it.

 

[jedimasterben]

DAYUM this thing is gigantic. Also took almost $40 in plumbing since it only has hose adapters :angryfire:

 

[jedimasterben]

Well, last Wednesday morning I unplugged all of my lighting, so only ambient light (measured 10 PAR coming in through the blinds in the morning to the front glass of the tank) for three days, and on Thursday I took a powerhead to all of the rocks and sand and stirred everything up in hopes to get as many dinos through the UV sterilizer as possible. On Friday night when I got home, I noticed that with the room light on, the tank was awfully yellow, so I flipped on a cool white CFL I have over the tank (which gives off a very pretty, bright white, and the water and everything was definitely yellow. I had recently replaced my ROX 0.8 carbon and I'm running two 400mL bags of Purigen, but that didn't stop this stuff, the Purigen was 100% pee yellow, so I pulled it out and started the regen process and put in a full cup of ROX 0.8, which cleared the water up within a couple of hours.

Plugged all of the lights back in on Saturday morning, and on Sunday I took a couple of water samples and put under a microscope. The water column was perfectly clean, nothing in it, but when I took some schmutz (basically leftover dino mucousy gunk) from a dead gorgonian and put it under 100x mag, I noticed tons of dead dinos and maybe half a dozen live ones. I scraped a bit off of a rock and put it under, and it had only a few dead but a bunch of live ones.

One unknown would be if the UV would actually kill the dinos outright or if it would just do as it is named and just sterilize them, which wouldn't really be apparent for 30 days according to the research by DNA above, assuming that I am plagued by O. ovata and not another species that would behave slightly differently.

At any rate, going forward, I will more than likely continue to do routine blackouts, I'm considering as much as weekly, every Wednesday through Friday, or possibly every other week, all the while keeping flow high in the tank to keep them suspended and keep flow through the sump (which has 100% of evertything go through the UV sterilizer ) at around 370GPH to keep stage one sterilization going.

 

[DNA]

When it's cultured it's reported to divide exponentially on day 10 from culture start, to be stationary on day 18 and senescent on day 25, not being able to divide anymore.
This would indicate that individual cells have at least a months lifespan.

I may have read this wrong and probably should have referred to a culture instead of individual cells.
One can image tracking a single rapidly splitting cell is problematic.

I've read a lot of articles on dinos, but there are still so many unanswered basic questions.
The scientist I've emailed don't reply and the dinos are happy and they prosper.

 

[DNA]

.
.
For those that didn't know already.
The life cycle of dinoflagellates, including all possible described transitions.
.

Pellicle cysts are temporary.
Resting cysts are long term.

Diploid cells contain two complete sets (2n) of chromosomes.
Haploid cells have half the number of chromosomes as diploid.

Meiosis is a specialized type of cell division which reduces the chromosome number by half.

----

Since cysts are dinos defense against hostile environment they are my pick for this weekends reading on the subject.
Below are some interesting points from what I read.

Indeed, during dinoflagellate evolution the need to adapt to fluctuating environments and/or to seasonality is thought to have driven the development of this life cycle stage. Most protists form dormant cysts in order to withstand starvation and UV damage. However, there are enormous differences in the main phenotypic, physiological and resistance properties of each dinoflagellate species cysts.
-
The data from those studies suggest that P and N levels determine the type of cyst produced during reproduction: pellicle cysts under phosphate-limited conditions and resting cysts during nitrate limitation.
-
Among all environmental factors, nutrient limitation and changes in temperature are the most common triggers for resting cyst formation.
-
The same study also suggested that dinoflagellate cysts are able to detect chemical signals emitted by predators.
-
The survival of pellicle cysts after passage through the digestive tract of Crassostrea gigas has been reported.
-
Resting Cyst Formation as a Defense against Parasitic Attack.
-
Similarly, pellicle cyst formation by the Alexandrium catenella in response to phosphorous limitation was reported.

Here is the whole artice.
http://www.mdpi.com/2076-2607/2/1/11/htm

 

[DNA]

Pants do you have numbers of the samples you have received on each species of dinoflagellates?

Ostreopsis sp.
Amphidinium sp.
Prorocentrum sp.

These seem to be the most common, but what is the ratio and how much falls into the "other" category?