Dinoflagellates.

This is a qt tank and has quite a few frags in it, I'm starting to get quite concerned over the health of the coral. Hence my thought to move to the display. Is this what you mean by fill the tank with coral? Or larger pieces? Maybe my increased feedings is helping the coral fight back..

Older pic but shows the coral load.
41fb05626fd1beb7eb1bf28dd10248e8.jpg
 
nvladik said:
The post DNA mentioned is the one where he suggested fully filling the tank with coral to see if the additional chemical warfare introduced would kill off dynos. It's harder for peeps with large tanks to give that a show as that will require thousands spent on coral to try it out, possibly loosing the livestock and investment, but in a smaller tank its a much cheaper test.
Click to expand...

Also im looking at a few mariculture pieces that i might purchase, these are larger than single stick frags so might make a bigger difference. I dont want to purchase them and put them into a toxic environment though, should i be running carbon? Are the dinos that i have the ones that release toxin into the water?
 
nvladik said:
Hey guys. Quick update on my tank. Alk issues continue. With every Alk dose increase, Alk reading drops. :) I started out dosing 36ml daily (BRS Two part) and if you guys recall Alk was dropping below 6.5 dKh. I started to increase the dose slowly, and my Alk went down further to 6.4, so I initially thought my testkit was going bad. I cross checked with API testkit, got 11 dKh, ordered replacement RedSea reagent and waited a week for it to get delivered. Replacement kit, and my friend's Hanna confirmed readings of 6.4 and 6.1, I once again find myself thinking API tests are junk.

Last Saturday Alk hit bellow 6. I am still slowly increasing the dosage, did a small one-time increase on Monday and still slowly adding more. I started off yesterday with 6.5 dKH, dosing 60ml of 2-part daily. This morning (testing at the same time daily) it read 6.4, so slowly still going down. Increased the dose again, so as of today I am doing 72ml daily of Alk, 57ml of Calcium.

Tank mostly still looks great, lost some torches and one small SPS colony, my guess is both due to super low Alk.
Click to expand...

have you checked the Mg++ concentration. If it's low, your Alk would never balanced out, and will remain low regardless addition of carbonate .
 
Kurt03 said:
ATS? or a dyno scrubber like adding a screen in front of the powerhead or something?
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I would try dyno scrubber first. $5 test vs. ATS which are much more expensive. Plastic screen, or filter floss, in a magnet or suction cup clip. You will see dynos next day, after lights are on. Wash it at least once a day, better if a few times in the beginning. And your tank looks infested, so watch out for toxicity.
 
nvladik said:
1250 on Sat, checking it weekly and adjusting from there.
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1250 ppm for magnesium is fine. I ran at 1100 ppm for years because Instant Ocean came at that level. The canonical ocean average is 1275 ppm or so. You can raise the level higher, and it'll still be safe.
 
Kurt03 said:
I have a 20g fish/coral qt that started to get Dino's. I'm pulling the coral out and possibly the one fish as they have done there time. Let me know if anyone wants me to try anything specific. I've been dosing mb7, phyto, feeding more. Also running skimmer and UV only at night. I am just moving to turning the skimmer off completely. They seem to be declining but I wouldn't mind experimenting a little if anyone has ideas.
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If you had sand-dwelling amphidinium dinos, I would suggest some H2O2 dosage tests. Any chance we could talk you into a microscope ID? I'd bet on ostreopsis.
But I got an experiment for you. The lowest low tech dino treatment conceiveable.
An In-Tank Fresh Water Dip:
Turn off the flow in the tank. Take a gallon or two of plain RO/DI water you would use to mix up new salt water with and instead siphon it through an airline tube, and direct the flow of fresh water right into the dino slime. A few seconds of direct FW flow right on the dinos might kill them immediately. (Of course it'll take a day or two to know if it worked.)
Under a microscope a single drop of FW added to a couple of drops of osti water causes about half of them to visibly lose their armor immediately. I think Pants reported that water just 5 or so ppt off from the tank water caused dino cells to lyse.
 
Sure, I should be able to get ahold of a scope. With the fresh water dip I need to pull my corals out and then we are good to go. I'm guessing the Dino's won't spread to my display right? The environment has to be right for them? I'll still scrub the frag plugs of etc on transfer.
 
Actually, I would very much worry about moving dinos with the coral frags to an uninfected tank, but I don't think you'd need to pull the coral out anyway.
They might close up for a minute or an hour, but after the gallon of FW disperses - turn the flow back on when you finish with the tube - you're only talking about a 5% salinity drop, (10% if you do 2 gallons). I don't think the corals would even care all that much.


Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using Tapatalk
 
The dinoflagellates might spread to the tank, but the odds are good that they won't be an issue. I agree that they need a favorable environment to become a plague.
 
bertoni said:
The dinoflagellates might spread to the tank, but the odds are good that they won't be an issue. I agree that they need a favorable environment to become a plague.
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Yep. Revising my answer. I'd worry about transferring dinos to a young system, but if it's mature, established then agree it's not likely a concern.
 
3 years old, 220 gallons.
Im not so worried about the addition of fresh water on the 20g. More the stress already on the sps in there and any toxicity that they release. Im running a bunch of carbon in a tlf reactor so i guess i should be good. Im sure the dinos are just starving the corals as most are quite pale. Im dumping quite a bit more food in so hopefully this turns around.

Ill try and get ahold of someone at work to see if there is a microscope i can use. There is a confocal microscope in the building also, not sure if this would be helpful or just use a normal scope?

For reference (after turkey basting, i should have taken before pictures :facepalm: It seems to help but only a little):



Added the dino scrubber. I only had gutter guard handy, i will get some more dense mesh soon if needed.



I have two of these snails and they are the only ones left, my astrea's have died one by one. These seem unaffected so far. I think they are Nerite snails.
 
The rubble was dry from left over rock etc that I just kept over the years. I'm using my mature display tank to seed this pack of rubble, then will transfer to the 20g that has Dino's. Maybe if timed correctly it can help get me over the hump?

Not sure how long to leave it in the display to seed?
 
Kurt03 said:
The rubble was dry from left over rock etc that I just kept over the years. I'm using my mature display tank to seed this pack of rubble, then will transfer to the 20g that has Dino's. Maybe if timed correctly it can help get me over the hump?

Not sure how long to leave it in the display to seed?
Click to expand...
Nice idea. A bucket-o-pods. If your tank is already thick with them, then 2 or 3 nights (with pod food scattered in the rubble pile). But, if you are needing pod population to grow, I think I read somewhere the generations are something on the order of 20 days.
 
Ahh I should have put some food in there, didn't think about it.

Tank is getting more brown with the increased feedings. Not sure that the Dino's are getting worse, but just darker. Nothing seems to be growing on the gutter guard yet. Tank is also more cloudy than normal. Just my observations. :)
 
I have to take back my thoughts from about two months ago about my constant low calcium levels.
My test kits tend do drift slightly lower over time, but I verified my results with a kit from another manufacturer so I was pretty confident about what I was posting.

Now I've got a new kit from the same manufacturer giving me a calcium reading of 460 instead of a 380 for the old one.
Here is the Salifert story if you are interested. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2273650&page=2
 
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