Dinoflagellates.

Hi all -- I've had the same nuisance algae for months now on an established tank. 90G, 1 Yellow Tang and 2 Clownfish, great skimming, 65w UV sterilizer, GFO, Carbon, and a Kessil AP700 light on an 8 hour cycle with 2.5 hours at 80% max. Parameters are all perfect, near zero.

The purple hairs don't have any bubbles -- they just wave around the in current. Are these Dinos and is the right call to add more Nitrate and Phosphate? Should I just get another fish?
 

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Check out post #4404 for the paper towel test referenced there.
If it is dinos, would be great to know what kind forms strings and is indifferent to 65 Watts of UV on a 90gal tank.
(We ought to also be able to devise a peroxide test to distinguish between cyano, spirulina, diatoms, and dinos, as they have radically different sensitivities to being oxidized.)

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@taricha...how did you end up beating ostreopsis? My N&P levels have been up for over a month now and ostreopsis is still forming on my sand bed. ive removed 80% of the sand and am about ready to completely remove it all. Not sure it this best or not.

Also, 2 weeks ago i added into my DT cheato from the LFS in hopes this would outcompete the dinos but doesn't look to be helping. UV is still running....

what are your thoughts moving forward for my tank...

thanks.
 
Livingjewels said:
The picture s where you first have it stirred up seems to look like it, however the one showing it slumped on the bottom says something else to me.



When I did this with mine the Dino seemed to remain in suspension; some would drop to the floor but not that much.



My new set up had a mix of orange sand like Dino / diatoms, but also had the odd membrane of cyano in places..



I tried a product called clean M by continuum and bacter M together and within a day or two it was significantly cleaner..



A week or so and the tank was spotless..



Like I've said the 1st Dino I had was very resilient and wouldn't go, the 2nd time i managed to clear it up, you may have a mix of stuff their form what I gather from the photos.. £30 it is worth a try..
Click to expand...



Hey thank you for your advice I'm going to try those 2 products ,, I found the clean M stuff,, the other however I can't seem to find, did you mean this stuff ? Continuum bacter gen-m
7ff341795cb2f6cfc5fa072b780407e2.png



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So I've been thinking about the reasons dinos kill algae scrubbers and then make it hard for them to get started again...

In nature, algae is able to win... so it is a capable competitor.

I think that we need to create an environment where algae has a supreme advantage over dinos & all other life...

This is for those situations where the tank is effectively dead or almost dead - so kill or cure

What if we turn off all light except on the scrubber. The algae scrubber's flow is basically air-exposed with tremendous flow. In that situation, the dinos should have a very hard time attaching since the water depth is effectively a few mms. Dinos can't survive in air.

So, the algae would have the complete upper hand with nutrients, light, air exposure and high flow. The dinos being heterotrophic would consumed dying material but can't use photosynthesis... at some point, the algae will have enough nutrients to get started...
 
That might work, although it would stress any corals with photosynthetic symbionts. I'm not sure that you could keep the tanks lights out long enough to make much of a difference, as compared to just shutting off the lights altogether, the way many people do.
 
Vdubin00 said:
Hey thank you for your advice I'm going to try those 2 products ,, I found the clean M stuff,, the other however I can't seem to find, did you mean this stuff ? Continuum bacter gen-m
7ff341795cb2f6cfc5fa072b780407e2.png



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Yes that's the product I used, the other is a similar bottle, just says bacter M on instead..

Let me know how you get on,
 
Vdubin00 said:
Hey thank you for your advice I'm going to try those 2 products ,, I found the clean M stuff,, the other however I can't seem to find, did you mean this stuff ? Continuum bacter gen-m
7ff341795cb2f6cfc5fa072b780407e2.png



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Yes that's the product I used, the other is a similar bottle, just says bacter clean M on instead..

Let me know how you get on,
 
Well guys I chose to use Dino x , cause that's what my LFS had, I gave that a shot along with a 5 day 4 night black out period, and things seem to be gone ! Only a lil bit of white stringy things on the rocks ! So far so good, I probs just jinxed it tho =\


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I'm curious about Dino X. Instructions say to keep lights on but all of success stories have been with lights out. What is that about? Just curious.
 
I have used dino-x and only turned on the LEDS on my ATI hybrid PM 8 bulb. I think I dosed it 3-4 times and with every dose, the tank was crystal clear with no carbon or UV online. It killed off the dinos. Dosing hydrogen peroxide gave me crystal clear water also so I'm guessing dino-x might have some hydrogen peroxide in it. Dinos was gone for several weeks but I think I reintroduced it to the tank when I put a acclimation box back into the tank that I only hosed down. I'm going to dose dino-x again if it gets out of control again. I'll also be bleaching my fish trap and acclimation box to stop reintroduction of dinos.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, I lost a few SPS frags but I attribute those losses to the dinos itself. Those frags were being smothered by the dinos for weeks and blowing off the dinos when I get home from work every hour was not helping those frags. All lps and fish were unaffected. There was a nutrient spike after the dinos die off so suggest doing a massive water change once you see the dinos gone. It turned all my SPS brown from the nutrient spike.
 
.
This post is here for those that already have or will be following my lead.

I've not been able to find any dinos now for months. I expected the tank to take time to bounce back and have been doing tests with small samples of corals from the last post. The first two samples of Montipora and Acropora corals melted away quickly so I got a number of general samples from nature since the microfauna was still not at it's best and continued to dilute the lingering toxins with regular water changes.

Now I'm at the third sample and it's doing much better than the previous one. For the first time in years I have corals that are growing at full speed. The tank is good now for montipora and almost there for acropora.
 
Last edited:
Hello. I am having trouble identifying this nuisance. I have a Red Sea Max 250 retrofit with Steve's LEDs. It has been up for around 2.5 months. There is chemiclean present. I am only running Blue/Violet light right now, except for when taking the following pictures. pH is 8.3, salinity is 1.025, alkalinity is 8 and ammonia is 0ppm. I do not know whether or not these are Dinos but I do suspect it is. I have had no clean up crew fatalities to speak of. Can you guys lend me your opinion please?

Front of tank for reference.


Sand bed.
 
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