Dinoflagellates.

[Av8bluewater]

I know this won't help much but I'm going to do my top off now by using a bucket to siphon hose above my aquarium and direct the hose around to my problem spots. Gonna blast the areas with fresh water. Maybe use turkey baster with fresh water in tight areas. My tank is too big to take out all the rocks. I've had dinos for about 1.5 weeks and they seem to be going away but I've done a lot of manual blasting and tooth brushing. I have awesome skimmer and filter socks cleaning seems to help.
I also used a very very small amount of Hydrogen Peroxide. Maybe about 4-5 lids a day for 3 days (300 Gallon total system) Not sure if that really did anything but some say that's dangerous.
Some corals still grow but most are new frags getting used the the tank haven't seen much growth if any.
I travel for work so it's hard for me to clean the filter sock as much as I 'd light. I got a new grow light for the fuge but I only have about 1/2 gallon of chaeto so If you have a big mature fuge I think it would probably help. If I can't get it to go away I may set up an algae scrubber in the hopes the algae will rob it of what it needs. Not to start an algae scrubber debate but I have ran them before and believe it's a stronger nutrient vacuum than macro.
It's really irritating because I had just put in a bunch of new frags. Maybe I got them from another tank. I have dipped everything that went in the tank with coral RX. Could come in on fish I guess. All my rock was dry rock.

 

[brandon429]

If its any help, the amount of peroxide you are using has no effect good or bad. If you ever want to see a big thread where lots of people post their use of it, good and bad, a new poster just kicked up the thread again in the Nanos forum. Pest algae challenge thread. The reason it might be helpful to dino infested tanks is because it shows a wide array of coral being exposed to it, and in what dilution. Try everything else first, but before giving up give the p a dedicated not haphazard shot and see how it goes

I can't say peroxide will cure dinos, what we like to show is how to go about as best we can it if it's your chosen method.
Imo the way to prevent dinos is by quarantining substrates along with animals before dt addition
But if you get stuck with a bad entry, at least there are options.



even for those who would never dose in tank it's interesting to see the array of animal life exposed to it along with predictions/outcomes etc. There are dino cures, pair it with uv for a free radical from hell approach
Some tanks respond to nothing and my main take away from this thread is certain virulent strains might win no matter what when using methods that preserve the biofilter/ non recycling methods etc

I linked this thread for its amazing pics of little- known vectors to many threads this is a good thread for rc to have as a reference. Hope I never get dinos

 

[Eyore]

Tbh I haven't read all this thread (yet)

I have had dinos twice, a few years ago when I moved house, I was careless, loads of detritus got freed up, I needed to reuse a lot of the water, got dinos. Fish died, corals died
Tbh (once I figured out what the hell it was) I beat it easy- 10 days blacked out, dosed zeobak, coral snow, staged the lighting on. They didn't return

This time though, it's been hard. Last time I was lps (bar a single sertipora), now largely sps.
Tbh my natural instinct is to blackout, I know I could probably push 7 days for the sps. But it's risky, not just the lack of light, but the amount of filtration demands that were controlled by the dinos, allong with the nutrient release as they die back makes me nervous

Fwiw, I tried the algae x route, didn't work (as stated zooxanthelae is a dinoflaggelate), coral colour suffered in a big way, more than the dinos did! A lot did die, and were replaced by cyano, cyano reseaded over 5-7 days, then dinos fully reemerged!

So in the end I went down a different line

Reduced lighting from to 12 hours blue (2hours ramp up 2hours ramp down 8 hours 100%) 25% of led fixture. 5 hours white red violet (3 hours 100% 1 hour ramp up, 1 hour ramp down ) from a previous of the same as the blue for these 3 channels (75% of fixture)

In tandem with trying to keep the tank cleaner of organics, ie gac gfo, kz coral snow, filter socks to catch particulates, heavy skimming. Plus Fm ultra bio to outcompete
Also weekly water changes with synthetic salt while siphoning the rock work to waste.
Trace elements (in my case Inc nacl free salt) stopped

This worked, the sand bed was left free from siphoning. The dinos died back in around 2-3 weeks across the board, at least in regard to what is visible.

However this was a month ago, I am not 100% do no free. I couldn't continue with that lighting forever and keep sps. At the moment white red violet is 8 hours a day, I won't increase until I see no dinos. I know it could go either way. However I also know that 5 hours kills them, so 6 is probably good if I need to repeat.

The organically clean tank is not without its own problems in an sps tank though

 

[Pallobi]

About 4 weeks ago I started dosing peroxide at a rate of 1 mL per 10 gallons... I never altered the light cycle or did lights out... I turned up the flow around all areas of the system... At about 10 days in, it didn't seem to help much, maybe a little... I then upped the dose to 2 mL per 10 gallons, and with a little siphoning of the more affected areas of the tank, at about another 10 to 12 days, they seemed to be all gone... That was a week ago or so, and so far so good... I can't say they won't come back at this point, or that I have beaten them or for certain eliminated the source... But I do feel the peroxide had a hand in their reduction and apparant disappearance... At this point I'm feeling good about things and I was a bit of a skeptic concerning the peroxide... The hermits, snails and urchin didn't appear affected, however my corals haven't been happiest for a while now and I can't honestly say their the peroxide had a hand in it... The water turned crystal clear too, which was interesting as I also use carbon and it doesn't make it clear up quite as well as the dosing did... There were no fish in this system, so I can't comment on how they would have reacted... But if it helps anyone, it seems to have helped with the Dino's... So I'm happy, for now...

 

[brandon429]

Pallobi nice post that does fall in line with most of what we read about peroxide use. we try to take it to the max just shy of hurting the non targets, and then if it happens to burn out the dinos thats a nice side effect. I can truly say across literally thousands of interactions about tankwide peroxide use I have never heard nor seen of any report of fish stress, across all common species we keep in these boxes. Fish aren't even factored on our list of sensitive species we keep tallying in the big peroxide thread. glad it seemed to have worked for you. Ive seen tankwide usage of doses sustained at 4mls per ten gallons which seems like a bigtime dose, there is room for advancement in peroxide use when tank invaders are truly bad. you getting results at 2:10 is in line with what other posters wrote. Its use in tank is typically discouraged here in the chem forum out of safety concerns, however for dino battling and for the purposes of this thread where the original tank was lost, I say exploit anything known to work as a last chance effort.

as far as corals being stressed, sure I believe that. this aint soda water but hey when times are hard its at least an ace in the hole lol

 

[DNA]

The calcium reactor has now been running for two weeks and my Blenny is eating a brown algae off the sand-bed so I'm assuming that to be diatoms.

I have a few very small patches of oxygen producing brown algae on the rocks. Those could be dinos, but they are in very small numbers and seem to be really struggling.

Let's see what happens next when I get my parameters up to SPS levels.

 

[Potsy]

Have you considered buying an inexpensive microscope to definitively identify anything suspicious? It helped me a lot when I was battling ostreopsis and it enables me to determine if there are any dino hitchikers along with new additions of coral.

 

[DNA]

I've got access to top notch microscope at a lab now.

The thing is over here we have not had any live rock or hard corals entering the country for a few years.
Luckily I gave a friend a sample of all my corals so I can get frags there plus everything else he has.

He´s got the same Ostreopsis sp. as well so now I get to choose between no corals at all or corals with some dinos.
I have no option but to bet that the conditions will not be favorable for a dino outbreak this round.

 

[Crkbaby]

dinoflagellates are really easy to identify since they go into a free swimming stage with the absence of light. If your tank looks pretty normal when the lights come on and looks like hell before they go off you have dinoflagellates. Easiest way to remedy I have found with experience is run a filter sock and switch daily for a 4 day period do a 48 hour lights out reintroduce light in 2 hour intervals each day until back to normal. Monitor your ph and use kalkwaser to keep ph at normal daytime levels throughout the lights out periords.

 

[TampaSnooker]

DNA - wasn't it established earlier that freshwater kills dinos very quickly? Most corals are tolerant of brief freshwater exposure. I used to treat brown jelly protozoan infections on LPS like Euphyllia with chlorinated tap water. Many SPS are exposed at low tide and therefore, rain on occasion.
It's been a while since I"ve read through this thread, do you have a UV sterilizer? It would be very effective at night when they are free swimming. Same with filter socks.
Good luck and keep with it. Persistance pays.

 

[brandon429]

I completely agree about UV this is one invader it has a real chance with

unlike ich

its only a party when someone brings their pond sterilizer. anything less like one rated for an aquarium is no party, its an iffy.

 

[Potsy]

Dinos are unmistakable under a microscope, especially ostreopsis. Even during the photoperiod they'll be swimming around in their odd, tetherball like fashion. And like I said before, a few seconds in freshwater, and I mean seconds, and those dinos are dead. I've confirmed this with my microscope and with a microbiologist who specializes in dinos. Every new addition gets dipped, including snails. The dipping in tandem with my microscope will ensure that I'll never get dinos again.

 

[TampaSnooker]

Potsy, any issues killing snails with fw? I know salinity changes can kill them quickly. Perhaps it's related to duration of exposure.

 

[Potsy]

Potsy, any issues killing snails with fw? I know salinity changes can kill them quickly. Perhaps it's related to duration of exposure.

I'm very careful to only dip their shells, leaving their operculum(?) or shell entrance out of the freshwater. Regardless, the dip only last a few seconds so I don't think much harm would come to the snail, especially if it shut itself in the shell.

 

[DNA]

A month ago I got a few frags so I started 8 hours photo period with all lights on.
The frags I got from a known long term dino tank, but they are at acceptable numbers there.

At the same time I noticed a few new patches and strings with bubbles that looked just like dinos.
I decided to raise the nitrates and cut short the curing of 20kg of live rocks I had been keeping for two weeks in a bucket.

The nitrate levels got to 25 mg/l and the dinos vanished fast and can't be found right now.
The frags didn't like it either, but they seem to be recovering.

If this can be repeated I'd be convinced, but until then it's a possible cure for at least a minor outbreak of Ostreopsis dinos.

 

[burnah]

i killed ostreopsis ovalis 2 years ago with a chemical produced by my LFS, after it killed almost all my sps. i changed from biopellets to vodka a few months ago, which lead to a bacterial bloom with biofilms. after those were gone, small strains of dinos started on patches of algae. i also experienced a stop in green and red algae growth. nutrients are not detectable, BUT from my experience i suspect a nitrate limitation in bacterial and algal growth, which opens a niche for the dinos. nitrate limitiation and not phosphate, because i suspect my LR to be leaching phosphates. i started feeding heavier, and added some fish, as well removed some old liverock from my sump, now they are slowly receding, but i have to say theye were here at a very small scale.

when i first saw them again, i felt very sorry for my tank, as i feared the worst. now, after reading all those threads again, i am at least willing to fight them.

if anyone has access to a chromatograph, i would ship a sample of the chemical that kills dinos. my lfs fills bottles and sells them, but does not state whatever is in there. it wiped them out within a few days. i have not yet taken a sample of my current dinos, but 2 years ago i shipped a sample to PANTS in the US, the biologist specialising in dinos. confirmed ostreopsis ovalis, and from the current pattern of distribution in my tank i would guess its the same.

greetings to iceland, martin

 

[dgarrets]

Hey DNA I had dino's last year and from your description I may have had the same strain - I don't know though as I do not have a microscope. I tried all of the remedies listed and have to say none of them really worked for me either. After losing almost all of my corals I decided to take drastic measures and turned the lights out for 5 weeks! There really were no corals that we doing well when I did this and all of the ones I had from the beginning (2 years of growth) were goners by this point anyway.

I had a seritosa survive and even color back up after the 5 week lights out period and that was it. I am currently rebuilding my tank and have not seen any signs of the dreaded dino's since last October.

Will they come back? Possibly, but for now it appears that I have gotten over them.

Wish I could contribute something that give people hope, but for the strain I had nothing worked - this includes high PH, tons of siphoning and turkey basting, heavy skimming, tons of GFO and ROX carbon and changes, 10 micrometer filter bags changed daily, ultra algae x, multiple 3 day and 5 day lights out periods - you name it I tried it.

I never killed my bacterial filter and some of the fish survived the dino's (I did lose a few algae eaters) - but things are back on track.

This is one mean pest!

 

[Mikefromaz]

Help please. I believe I have dinos. The sandbed grows this dusty stuff at an amazing rate. What I never saw on my original reef for over ten years is this grainy looking stuff in my skimmer output which almost looks like microscopic dark brown pepper. When the foam breaks as it enters the skimmer cup this drool looking like chicken soup collects above the skimmer on the sides of the cup. I do weekly 10% water changes have 0 nitrates, 0 phosphates. Run G.F.0, carbon and Purigen. One fish, a large simulations and a handful of frags in a 40g. System. Any thoughts?

 

[bertoni]

There are lots of approaches to try. I might try ramping up the GFO slowly, since that works in some cases, and is easy to try. I might cut back on the feeding. Is there a typo in your post? I'm not sure what's in the tank.

 

[Mikefromaz]

Hi.....thanks for the reply! Yes a typo....meant to say a large finger leather, almost a foot high. I was wondering maybe some of the yellow stuff might be waste or even toxic stuff from it. For all the years I'vehad reef tanks I never have seen the yellowish kind of gflop as I have with this one. I also used some bacterial enhancer to speed up the cycle when the tank was new. Can't help but wonder if that didnt start an issue all to itself? The tank is super clean and my only fish gets an aspirin size pinch of food once a day. One other thing....I am using a 200micron filter sock which also turns chicken soup color.