Dinoflagellates.

Yeah, I've been fighting this thing for 6+ months. I'm not giving up... Anyway, I got Algae X online from Barrier Reef Aquariums, but it seems to be out of stock right now. Regardless, I've followed the instructions precisely and I don't see any improvement so far. I'm on dose number 7 and I plan to finish the treatment but my expectations by now are not that high. If this fails, I have no idea what else to try.
At some point I thought it might no be dinos, but got a cheap microscope and I was able to ID the nasty bug.
But I'm not giving out, I'm not going bare bottom, and I'm not trashing my tank. There has to be a way to beat this sucker. LOL - I was just reading a thread where someone claims to have beaten dinos using Ich-attack from Kordon. Go figure...
 
Not sure how I missed this thread for so long, luckily it seems Potsy and Jedimasterben have been passing on many of my thoughts.

I'm still identifying algae people mail me if any of you need help with the ID side of things. I'm also looking for "Guinea pigs" for an idea I want to try (especially if you have a microscope of your own).

I've been posting my photos and videos at algaeid.com and youtube. I still don't have pictures of all 4 major groups of dinos I've found in marine aquaria. I'd also love to add other pest algae just to round out the site a bit.

I didn't see much discussion here about the toxins produced by these guys and wanted to make sure everyone is taking proper precautions.

Ostreopsis sp. makes palytoxin. This is a toxin all reefers should be familiar with as palythoas and zoanthids produce this toxin and there are stories every year of hobbyists nearly killing themselves by mishandling these corals. Amphidinium isn't really thought of as highly toxic, but I've talked to too many reefers with Amphidinium blooms who have experienced personal health effects when killing these that I think we should treat Amphidinium with respect as well.

The dinos won't release the toxin until they die, so before starting any eradication procedures you should make sure the area around the tank is well ventilated, and have carbon ready to run. It would be a good idea to keep everyone (including other pets) away from the tank and wear gloves and a mask if you are getting a lot of dino die off.

I know we as hobbyists often get pretty blasé about safety when working in our tanks, but please stay safe. These organisms can hurt and even kill you if you are killing enough of them at once.
 
Compared to any of us, he's the god of dinos. Now if he could just toss down a few lightning bolts and smite all of the problem ones in our tanks :)
 
Here's an interesting finding...

I had a mild bloom of ostreopsis a while back (sample identified by Pants) that for whatever reason subsided on its own. As an experiment, I placed some of the dino in a quarantine tank I had running and left it in the dark. Several months later I put a sample of quarantine tank water and silt under the microscope and found ostreopsis happily spinning about.

If you have an infestation of this species, lights out isn't going to work.

As I wrote before, all new additions to my tank get a quick dip in freshwater for a few seconds. My experiments show that dinos die instantly when exposed to freshwater. I can see the inflated and burst ostreopsis cells under the microscope after a few drops of freshwater in the petri dish.
 
Hopefully chlorine bleach will workly nicely, though. I'm nuking my tank as soon as I can find a new home for my fish.

Make sure that bleach gets in every nook and cranny of your display, every pump, pipe, etc.

I dumped a gallon of bleach in my display to get rid of a dark maroon fuzzy red algae. I battled it for months but it thrives in low nutrient conditions and concentrates bromide in its cells so that no herbivore will touch it. Interesting thing is that prior to the sterilization of the tank, I had trouble with LPS whereas in a previous tank they'd grow like weeds. After the bleach, they started to do well.
 
Pants, thanks for reminding us on the toxicity issue. I've been really careless about it, which is not good. So are you saying the toxic effects of the die off extend to the air outside the tank (you mention ventilation in your post)?
 
Yes, that's correct. I had fairly serious reactions to die off. Pants ID'd Amphidinium in my samples. My symptoms included temporary hearing loss - severe muting of all sound for a few days.
 
I have a lot of brown powdery stuff in my tank I though it was Dino but it's not under a microscope. But the Cyano I've been fighting has been unreal..
 
Interested to know what species I have. Anyone ?
 

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I had a tank crash last month after moving all my livestock to a new tank. There was a pump in the sump that had a broken wire and whatever it leeched into the water killed all my sps. It was all very tragic and traumatic but it's not the reson for this post. The aftermath of the die-off was a huge dino explosion. They covered everything. All I had left was fish, rocks, two sick anemones and lots of dinos. After a lot of searching and reading this is what I did. I took my diatom filter, put a large fresh charge of powdered carbon in it and tied a bag of Cuprisorb on the end of the discharge. The carbon, which I changed daily, was to remove toxins and organics. I tied the bag of Cuprisorb onto the discharge end because I knew the diatom filter would fluidize it in the bag for maximum exposure and the bag would never get clogged. Then even though I run biopellets, I dosed 25ml of vodka daily. My total system volume is about 600gal. In about 9 days all the dinos were gone.
From my experience you have to starve them out using fresh high quality carbon, resins like Cuprisorb to remove all trace metals (just a guess of how it might work), and carbon dosing to bring your nutrient levels as low as you can. The carbon and Cuprisorb pose no danger to sensitve livestock, but the appropriate care needs to be taken with carbon dosing if you have never done it before.
 
Reefkeeper2, I tried all that you mention, besides from Cuprisorb which is not available here. I used up my Polyfilter though.
Sounds like you got copper and metals in the water.

Did you not have any ground fault interupter? It could have saved your tank?
 
Yes, there is a ground fault interrupter. I'm assuming it did not trip because the Tunze pump had a two pronged plug and not a grounded three prong.
Polyfilter does not remove metals as completely as Cuprisorb. It is pre-treated so it will not remove trace elements. Cuprisorb will continue to remove metals until the resin is exhausted or the water is stripped. Polyfilter will not work as well for this application.
 
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Interested to know what species I have. Anyone ?

It is hard to tell form a single still, but that looks an awful lot like Gambierdiscus. Gambierdiscus is a close relative to Ostreopsis. Its the one I've seen least often in marine aquaria. I haven't gotten good pictures because all the samples have come from over seas and have taken so long to get here they have died in transit. Are you in the United States?

Gambierdiscus produces a bunch of different toxins, including the familiar Palytoxin. They are also cyst formers. In my experience though they are the least resilient of the benthic pest dinos bothering aquarists.

This video is pretty good. (close-up at the end)


It could also be Prorocentrum. There are a few species of Prorocentrum that are more circular like that (Prorocentrum levis). I've seen Prorocentrum species in every tank I've looked at under the scope, but I've yet to personally observe a Prorocentrum bloom from an aquarium. At a macro level it will look the same as the rest of these dinos, so I might have simply not looked at enough aquarium blooms.


Can you get some pictures where some of the dinos are more on their side or other orientations?


[EDIT]Some pictures I have of Prorocentrum levis that haven't made their way to my website[/EDIT]
 
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Are you still dino free? Did you just let it run its course?

I still have a few left. Less than 5% of the original plague. (Even 1%)
You can see the daily swing on the animation from yesterday evening and this morning.
It's also interesting how they don't sit on the purple, green, white, coraline that covers the rocks.

The macro-algae on the rocks is almost all gone, Cyanobacteria is fading and I'm hoping dinos will not take it's place.
I deviced a way to see Cyano in the water column. It's millions of 1/4" (5mm) super thin strands, swirling in the currents at great densities.
At the same time the water looks clear in normal lighting.
Some reefers think Cyano is the plague, but at the moment it's my friend and it's an absolute joke compared to dinos.

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I'd like to mention it again.
The effect Ostreopsis dinoflagellates had on the tanks health are very clear.
Drastic changes in coral growth and color came back days after the dinos faded.





daynight_8547.gif
 
I live in the UK. The sample was identified as dino's at my LFS in March. I have had these for about a year so their pretty resilient. I've tried a 3 day blackout whilst dosing peroxide. This knocked them back but they soon returned. I then tried a blackout and dosed Zeobak, same result. So I just kept on top of them with cleaning and syphoning. Tried again recently with a 6 day blackout while dosing a mixture of coral snow and Zeobak. I also removed half the sand bed and live rock. The rock is in a small tank in complete darkness. At the moment the DT is on reduced lighting 7 hours blue 2 hours white. I am waiting on some DinoXAl to finish them off. The thing is I get a nitrate reading in the blackout period and as soon as I increase the lighting I lose the nitrate and they start to appear. On previous tanks I always had nitrate and no dino!s
 
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