Dinoflagellates.

[DNA]

Keep in mind that many tests can be done in a test tube first before the tank is put under stress.
Figuring out your healthy dinos division rate could be used as a measuring stick on non lethal tests.

 

[PorkchopExpress]

Tank suffered an ostreopsis outbreak yesterday despite of the 55W UV sterilizer. I have to vacuum twice a day just to deal with it. Now I am not so sure about the UV sterilizer effectiveness and H2O2 either.

I think I'm going to try a different route: foster copepods to thrive and hopefully they will eat it all. I have switched the skimmer off, no phosguard, no GAC and lots of food and phytoplancton (nannochloropsis, isochrysis and tetraselmis)

That really sucks to hear...

What flow are you putting through your sterilizer? Also, I was under the impression your method of pouring back in your skimmate was working?

 

[GilliganReef]

I beat DINOS by:
running a GFO reactor, Carbon reactor
every other day siphon into filter socks/replace
weekly 10% W/C, every other week 25%
3 days lights out once a month.
The thing I found to help really fight it was adding beneficial bacteria into my tank.
Started 15 day prodibio Bioclean
6 weeks prodibio reefboaster.
Been doing this for 3 months now and No DINOs.

 

[Montireef]

I noticed that almost everyone talk about "dinos" in such a general way...and almost nobody identify the kind of dino he/she is fighting with.

Porkchopexpress:
I think it worked for some time, almost a month. Eventually the weird microorganism started to starve and almost vanished, but as ostreopsis can make cysts, it succeded in coming back after the predator was gone.

GillganReef:
Running a GFO and so many W/C does not make sense to me. Lights out does nothing to ostreopsis and many dinoflagellates, but I could try Prodibio Bioclean although I seriously doubt it can make any difference. Can you elaborate it please?

 

[cal_stir]

Tank suffered an ostreopsis outbreak yesterday despite of the 55W UV sterilizer. I have to vacuum twice a day just to deal with it. Now I am not so sure about the UV sterilizer effectiveness and H2O2 either.

I think I'm going to try a different route: foster copepods to thrive and hopefully they will eat it all. I have switched the skimmer off, no phosguard, no GAC and lots of food and phytoplancton (nannochloropsis, isochrysis and tetraselmis)

When vacuuming are you replacing the water with fresh saltwater? I found that adding fresh always helps the dinos, I pump the vacuumed water through a 5Um sediment filter back into the system, I ended up removing most of my sandbed and that seems to be the final blow to the dinos, I can't find any now and I have or had ostreopsis, and I'm still running my UV.

 

[IUfan]

I have no idea what dinos I had. I stopped running GFO about 4 weeks ago. Whatever dinos I have are now gone, tank and SPS has never looked better.

Mangroves help keep Po4 down, and get a bit more film algae on the glass but that's not so bad.

I wish I was able to ID which Dino it was for you guys, but no microscope, and there gone now.

 

[Montireef]

When vacuuming are you replacing the water with fresh saltwater? I found that adding fresh always helps the dinos, I pump the vacuumed water through a 5Um sediment filter back into the system, I ended up removing most of my sandbed and that seems to be the final blow to the dinos, I can't find any now and I have or had ostreopsis, and I'm still running my UV.

I do it in a similar way through a filter bag as well.

What kind of dino was it in your case?

 

[PorkchopExpress]

I noticed that almost everyone talk about "dinos" in such a general way...and almost nobody identify the kind of dino he/she is fighting with.

Porkchopexpress:
I think it worked for some time, almost a month. Eventually the weird microorganism started to starve and almost vanished, but as ostreopsis can make cysts, it succeded in coming back after the predator was gone.

GillganReef:
Running a GFO and so many W/C does not make sense to me. Lights out does nothing to ostreopsis and many dinoflagellates, but I could try Prodibio Bioclean although I seriously doubt it can make any difference. Can you elaborate it please?

during that month, did you notice any other algaes starting to take hold? i know as soon as my dinos receded, i had a diatom bloom on the sand for 2 weeks and then most of them went away except for small areas in the shaded/less flow regions of my tank where they come and go...then gha started patching up in small areas and now i have some sort of thin, clearish colored, slimy algae covering some parts of rock and producing bubbles but not really harming anything...all this could be attributed to me trying to elevate my NO3 and PO4 by buying more fish and feeding heavier plus adding amino acids because my nutrients keep reading 0

 

[Montireef]

Just coralline algae, red, violet and an ugly greenish one. My tank sits in the sun and gets lots of sunlight from 8:00 till 17:00 besides a T5+leds ATI fixture.

I have more than 20 tangs and about 300 snails (mainly turbos, tectus and trochus) grazing on every little algae that could show up. NO3 and PO4 are always undetectable despite I sometimes switch off the skimmer and have no other filtration system that the one provided by about 400 SPSs. I feed quite heavy frozen food, pellets and flakes not less than 4/5 times a day.

 

[cal_stir]

I do it in a similar way through a filter bag as well.

What kind of dino was it in your case?

mine was ostreopsis, I found the dinos passed through a 100uM filter sock, I believe the dinos are about 40uM.

 

[Montireef]

They are 60x40um and I found that most of them are retained in a 50um filter bags.

Did you achieve to beat them? How? Did you find any good way to deal with them?

 

[cal_stir]

They are 60x40um and I found that most of them are retained in a 50um filter bags.

Did you achieve to beat them? How? Did you find any good way to deal with them?

Manual removal via blowing and vacuuming, 72 hr lights out with 7 days h202 and continuous UV, removal of sand bed except for under the rocks, no water changes for about 3 months now, except one accidental 5 gal.
I let my po4 rise to .06 ppm and no3 to 5ppm and doubled my carbon, I have micro algae starting to grow again, have to clean the glass every 3 days.
I find the odd one but they are small, look darker than normal and don't swim.

 

[Montireef]

I find the odd one but they are small, look darker than normal and don't swim.

Which are you talking about? Maybe amphidinum or prorocentrum?

I also have amphidinum in my tank. This dino is a nuisance but quite easy to handle as it will go away with a 5 days black out and doesn't spread as quickly as ostreopsis.

 

[Montireef]

I will keep on running the 55W sterilizer on the return pump besides a 11W sterilizer in the sump. I will keep on vacuuming the nasty snot as needed (probably in the morning and in the evening). Let PO4 and NO3 rise a little bit (skimmer and Phosguard are off) to forest other microorganisms and seed the tank with bentonic copepods (Arcadia) and heterotrophic bacteria (biodigest and TheraP).

I will not perform any black-out as I don't want to directly attack ostreopsis and forest cyst forming.

There is a small critter (parvilucifera) that parasitizes ostreopsis (and many other dinos) and kills them. I am going to try get some and try this way simultaneously.

 

[cal_stir]

Which are you talking about? Maybe amphidinum or prorocentrum?

I also have amphidinum in my tank. This dino is a nuisance but quite easy to handle as it will go away with a 5 days black out and doesn't spread as quickly as ostreopsis.

I have this
[URL=http://s1139.photobucket.com/user/Cal_stir/media/IMG_0981.jpg.html][/URL]

 

[Montireef]

Looks like ostreopsis, same as me.

 

[glocklt4]

90 gallon display/30g sump
SWC 160
Lots of Seachem Matrix (not carbon)
100 lbs of live rock roughly
7-8 small fish
MaxCap 180

Water Changes throughout this was 20% every 1-2 weeks.

I wanted to share with everyone my recent bout with Dino's.

So....

My Nitrates were finally down to <1ppm and phosphates ~0.04. My tank was previously overstocked and I had been running biopellets to help with the nutrients. However my PH was constantly low ~7.8 - barely ever making it over 8.0. My organics in my tank were high (obviously since the presence of cyano) and my corals weren't happy. I decided to add Rox Carbon (never ran GAC on this tank). After 24 hours of Rox carbon my tank started to look great - PH started to go into the 8.1/8.2 range as well. My Monti's appeared the worse and they started to actually repair themselves (encrusting monti's had tissue that receded in the middle of them) and color up. Of course the Rox carbon was a temporary fix as it exhausts in a short amount of time.

Right before I added Rox I removed a medium size hippo tang (4-5 inches) and a couple of smaller fish to help with lowering my organics. At this point I knew I just had to play the waiting game for things to get back to normal. (Had low Nitrates/Phosphate before this, but knew my DOC's were possibly a cause to my problems).


My T5's were all a year old (8x54w Tek Light) and I decided to replace 4 bulbs (out of 8). 2 Coral Plus, 1 Aquablue special and 1 Pure Actinic. This was a drastic coloration change as I replaced 1 fiji pink and 3 blue plus.

Shortly after, my Corals were getting better and cyano was manageable, but I started to notice "brown algae" growing on the upper back glass, powerheads, frag racks but not really on the bare bottom or the rocks. My nitrates were < 1 (0.2) and my phosphate at around 0.08. My first reaction was that my new T5's and their spectrum (much warmer) were the cause, so I cut back the amount of time I was running the two Coral+'s as well as raised my light a few more inches and it at first seemed to help slow the growth but my glass and frag racks were still getting covered. I had to clean my front,side and black glass a lot.

Once I realized it wasn't getting better and that my cyano was actually starting to get worse also (GAC most likely exhausted - this was the 30 day point), I knew GAC (Rox) wasn't going to compensate (unless I constantly changed it out) and that something else was the matter. I went ahead and replaced my GAC with a fresh 2 cups) and I decided to take my biopellets offline, as I figured at this point with the smaller amount of fish and their size that BP is probably overkill plus it could be increasing the amount of "ogranics" in the tank. After taking that offline my PH began to hang out around 8.3 with the lights on. Dino's were still a problem at this point, Cyano getting a bit better but still existent. I had also been dosing trace elements which I decided to stop.

So after a month and a half of all this I can see my corals are doing great but there was cyano and dino's present still. Just the corals on the frag racks were getting dino's growing on them.... At this point, I hadn't lost a coral so I never actually went into panic mode. I began to wonder, hmmm what else could be the matter, the dino's and cyano were not completely out of control, but ugly and annoying.

After a few days of just waiting. My wife comes to me and says, "ugh, the stupid water jugs take forever to fill up" (we make RO water for drinking). Use to take 30-45 minutes to fill up (5 gallon water jugs) and now its taking 1.5 to 2 hours. I think to myself, "uh, yeah that's bad". I go and look at my MaxCap 180 and notice my PSI is at 20'ish and should normally be up near 60psi. I bypass my sediment cartridge first and no luck. I bypass my carbon block and BAM the PSI goes back to normal. I check my TDS on my RO and DI's cartridges and I was pushing 4-5ppm TDS into my (RODI) reservoir which I used for my ATO buckets and my water change water.

Replaced all my filters for my Maxcap (mid March) accept for my RO membranes. Cleaned my ATO buckets as well as my Brute trashcan reservoir.
Anyhow, since then my dino's are just about gone (definitely not progressing) after a few water changes and scrubbing.

One thing I noticed was I didn't have any coraline algae growing for quite some time. Since then I am starting to see it in new places.

Well, I've been reading about dino's today for about 3-4 hours after about the same experience as you. I changed from PC lighting to LED actually about 2 months ago or more. I thought the LED's were amazing because they could be turned up so much brighter. I tried to turn them up slowly compared to what I had before, but maybe it was still too strong because shortly after my mushrooms were all white and bleached. Shortly after that a bunch of "brown algae" started to appear. I have been thinking that the change in light just caused a bunch of algae to appear, but now I'm thinking it's actually dinos. I added a GFO reactor today after testing water and getting .1 phosphates at LFS (to confirm my test). I have been doing extra water changes but it appears that I shouldn't have. On side note, my salinity has been high for quite a while because my spectrometer has been off by .005. It was at actual 1.030 when i thought it was 1.025. Now that is corrected and I'm down to 1.024 and spectrometer is fixed. I am wanting to see if things level off a bit before making any more changes, but looks like I have a challenge ahead of me. Oh joy...

 

[karimwassef]

Is there consensus that removing phosphates is not the right approach to dealing with dinos? GFO, water changes, etc?

 

[Montireef]

I have come to a conclusion that differs from what everybody claims:

If I stop the pumps and water movement, dinos also stop thriving and it is very easy to vacuum clean them. I have also found that the stronger the water is pumped the faster the dinos spread and go out of control.

I have also found that it is better to stop the skimmer and feed heavier.

 

[mfaso24]

I had Dino's about two weeks ago. I caught it really early before it got bad. I originally thought it was cyano but after a day or so realized it was Dino's. I immediately blacked out the tank for 72 hours and then ran only actinics for a week. After a week, I went back to my regular full lighting schedule. It's been like this for a week or a week and a half and still no sign of Dino's returning.