Dinoflagellates.

[DNA]

How are your battles going?

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My SPS corals are still heading south, but slowly after the initial plunge.
They look just as bad as my current reefing mood.
The dinos seem to have found a new and an increased population density they seem to intend to stick with.

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For ostreopsis we have found loads of methods that don't work, but none that do any permanent good.
It's been more than three years since my battle started and frankly the dinos still rule the tank.

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[DNA]

I've been thinking how scientists get their density samples.
I think they just take a very small sample, less than 1ml, out of the water column and then count the dinos using a microscope.
Then they publish their outcome as dinos/volume

I think we could do something similar to figure out our dino situation compared to everyone else.
If this was done to enaugh number of tanks we'd get an interesting picture on dinos in reef tanks.

We'd have to standardize the sample method to something like, 4 inches below the surface, 2 hours after the lights go out.

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I'd have to say I'm getting really tired of dinos.

 

[cal_stir]

I took some samples last night. 2 hours after lights out I turned off all pumps for 10 minutes, took @ 1ml from 4 inches below water level and put 2 drops on 4 slides, couldn't find any dinos.
I squeezed a sample out of my 10uM filter sock and prepared 2 slides, found 1 cell of ostreopsis.
I took a sample of skimmate and prepared 1 slide and found 5 ostreopsis dinos.

I still have some brown patches showing up on the bottom of my tank and green and brown film on the glass and when I look at samples of that I see mostly diatoms and green algae and a few ostreopsis and a dozen amphidinium.

I have ordered some Kordon ich attack to see if I can rid the rest of the dinos.

The diatoms appeared about a month ago after I raised my po4 to .04 ppm and my no3 to 5 ppm and have remained very consistent, my po4 is currently .03 ppm and no3 is 4 ppm, I feel the diatom bloom should have subsided by now. I'm going to add some more diatom eating clean up crew as well.

 

[DNA]

Way to go cal stir and you even took it to the next level.
I would not be bothered by the odd cells since I think all tanks have them anyway.
It seems like you have your dinos under control at the moment. Lets hope you have turned things around.

From earlier when i had the massive dino blooms I used to turn off my pumps and blow the dinos off of all surfaces.
They would clump up and sink to the bottom in 5-10 minutes. I had billions of dinos in my tank at that time.
I think dinos are not naturally boyant and will sink slowly during the night in calm water, but during the day they often produce oxygen that pulls them towards the surface.

 

[cal_stir]

Way to go cal stir and you even took it to the next level.
I would not be bothered by the odd cells since I think all tanks have them anyway.
It seems like you have your dinos under control at the moment. Lets hope you have turned things around.

From earlier when i had the massive dino blooms I used to turn off my pumps and blow the dinos off of all surfaces.
They would clump up and sink to the bottom in 5-10 minutes. I had billions of dinos in my tank at that time.
I think dinos are not naturally boyant and will sink slowly during the night in calm water, but during the day they often produce oxygen that pulls them towards the surface.

Next sample will be 2 hrs after lights out, 4 in below water line and off the bottom before and after I turn the pumps off.

I agree that all tanks have dinos but it would be nice to know for sure.

 

[Royce7586]

Were you successful with the kordon ick attack and how much did you dose?
Do you what kind of dinos you have/had?

Well i stopped dosing for about 2 weeks, The dinos stayed about the same but started regrowing a bit more so I bought another bottle.

I got about half way into that bottle thinking it wasn't working this time. Then I realized I hadn't took my carbon off and sure as **** the next day they were receding again after a few more days of dosing they are looking to be on their last legs. I did a large water change yesterday will report back later today on if they regrew like they normally do after water changes.

The dose I was using was 1 shot glass during the day and 1 shot glass during the night. That was the first dosing phase I did. 2nd time around I've only been doing 1 shot glass a day. This is in a 55g with 10g sump....I know that isn't scientific dosing but if you read the instruction on the ich attack it pretty much says if suggested does isn't working add more and more lol. So I seemed to find success at those levels.

I'm not sure what kind I have but I do know all these things dont work, hydrogen peroxide, gfo, lights out, fauna marin ultra algae x (tho i think I might have had 2 kinds of dinos cause the fauna did kill about 20% of it when it was at its worst) due to mine being so resistant to what works for some people I would guess that I had osteporis but I really have no idea

 

[Royce7586]

Way to go cal stir and you even took it to the next level.
I would not be bothered by the odd cells since I think all tanks have them anyway.
It seems like you have your dinos under control at the moment. Lets hope you have turned things around.

From earlier when i had the massive dino blooms I used to turn off my pumps and blow the dinos off of all surfaces.
They would clump up and sink to the bottom in 5-10 minutes. I had billions of dinos in my tank at that time.
I think dinos are not naturally boyant and will sink slowly during the night in calm water, but during the day they often produce oxygen that pulls them towards the surface.

I agree with the sinking, when I would siphon out dinos and pour the water back in I could get the good majority of the dinos to just sink to the bottom of the bucket and then pour the water from the top back in the tank

 

[Montireef]

Watch the colour of the snotty stuff: it is normally brown when loaded with dinos and whitish if they are empty because dinos stopped thriving.

It is not safe to blow them if they are brown: you will spread them and multiply like crazy.

They sometimes accumulate energy from the day light and start building the mucilage in the first minutes on the dawn. They spread using the water flow and can stick to any surface surprisingly strong. I have found that it is better to slow down the pumps specially when lights are on.

 

[Principal_P]

Aren't dinos really susceptible to the light? Once you turn the turn the lights out they virtually disappear...only to return again the next time you turn them on. You can almost watch them grow in intensity throughout the day they grow that fast. If there's no change when the white lights go out then it probably wouldn't be dinos.

 

[Montireef]

Dinos are benthonic in daytime and pelagic in nighttime. They multiply all day long but are specially visible in the light

 

[cal_stir]

Dinos starting to bloom again, did my first dose of ich attack, fingers crossed.

 

[mfaso24]

I found that large and frequent (every two days) water changes has helped me amazingly.
I used algae x with good results however it came back really bad. Cleaned up the tank and started algae x again which didn't do too much 2nd time around. That's when I tried water changes. I heard this somewhere and I believe in it for many aquarium issues: "the solution to pollution is dilution."

 

[Royce7586]

Most people find water changes actually increase their dinos

 

[cal_stir]

Most people find water changes actually increase their dinos

Ya, I tried large frequent water changes in the beginning and only fueled it, 0 water changes worked best for me.

 

[mfaso24]

Yeah water changes was my original plan but I shyed away from it originally from everyone saying it fuels it.

 

[cal_stir]

It's day 2 dosing ich attack and it appears that the dinos are cysting, the first photo is new cysts, the second is what appears to be dinos turning into cysts, you can see what looks like a cyst forming inside the dino, the third is some pics of cysts I found on the web.
I don't think this battle can be won.

[URL=http://s1139.photobucket.com/user/Cal_stir/media/IMG_1175.jpg.html][/URL]
[URL=http://s1139.photobucket.com/user/Cal_stir/media/IMG_1174.jpg.html][/URL]
http://[URL=http://s1139.photobucket.com/user/Cal_stir/media/dinos.png.html][/URL]

 

[rog2961]

I saw some dinos in my tank starting to grab hold. I ended up opening a window after water change and they started to go away.

 

[cal_stir]

I saw some dinos in my tank starting to grab hold. I ended up opening a window after water change and they started to go away.

I don't quite understand what your saying.

 

[Royce7586]

Forgot to report on my waterchanges I have since done 2 decent size changes and my dinos have not come back, how strong of dose are you using Cal stir. What do you mean by the cysting is it different from what they normally do?

 

[DNA]

That's very interesting photos Cal Stir and they definitely shows us that a temporary attack is not likely to produce a permanent fix.
I've said it a few times that finding what causing blooms would be the holy grail.

Scientist in the field have documented ocean blooms in late summer and the cause to be current bringing nutrients up from the deep.
I'm not sure they have proved it or if it goes with reef tanks.
My tank and a constant dino bloom for years points to something else taking place.

Even though this ick attack experiment seems to be a failure, at the same time it's an important step forward.

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I used to get a big and obvious increase in dinos with water changes.
Now I do 25% monthly without any visible changes.

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Rog2961 is saying he lowered CO2 in the house.