Dinoflagellates

laserjim

laserjim

Another Day In Paradise
Anyone had any luck getting rid of this. I thought it was diatoms at first, no such luck.Its starting to kill some corals. its not easy to clean and siphon it out of a 265. Would need a snorkel. Im afraid I might have to tear it down,I just covered the tank and am going to blackout, heard it comes back though. Anyone have any success getting rid of this ?

nitrates 0 Salifert
phos. 0 Hanna
silcate 0 Salifert
 
they are evil, but w alot of time and patience, you can prevail, Start by doing no new water changes, try to keep ph up around 8.3-8.4, I had to run kalk in a seperate doser ,tied in with apex to monitor, watch salinity and other values, and finally used turkey baster w hose attached to sump sock and manually filter out as much as you can daily, uv cant hurt . good luck, took a few months but did win, for now anyways, not sure how or why i got them.
 
In my 25 years plus, this has been the biggest thing that "put me to my knees" on a tank. It was the toughest thing to get rid of in my experience. There is a "strange thread" somewhere on RC about feeding with skimmate, but I never tried. Keep us posted on what you do and how it is going.

mike
 
I had it for the longest time, Found out that the problem was the dosing. I stopped and started changing my filter socks everyday and it went away.
 
I believe I'm dealing with the same thing. my tank has pretty much been running since 2006 (at least the same rock/sand) and most life is a couple years old so I really do not want to scrap everything. I have been putting it off and putting it off, but I'm going to have to try to get this fixed somehow too.

The weird thing is it is ONLY in my sand. It does not spread to rocks or glass and I can siphon my sand clean at 1pm in the afternoon and by 2pm the sand is covered with it again! It fades away when the lights start dimming for night, but it comes right back when they turn back on in the morning.

best picture I could take under the radion of the sand

 
I have a 180. Not as big as yours. I changed filter Sox once a day and it took time but it went away. Just know there is no quick fix.
 
I had it a while back and tried a few things like blacking out the tank. Then someone told me to try not doing a water change for a while and keeping the tank "dirty" but changing filter socks and media everyday or as often as you can. Believe it or not that actually worked for my tank. My nitrates went up and slowly over time it went away. So I would start there as mentioned above. Hope it works out, keep us posted and good luck!
 
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2307000

This is a very long thread with some of the most experienced microbiologists in the hobby involved. There is no answer that will fit on this page. First, get a sample under a microscope and determine what species you have. You are spinning your wheels if you don't know what species you have - at least to the genus. Some form cysts and will always be present. Some are epiphitic and require specific hosts to survive. Generalities like using UV (very slow flow, feed from the tank - not sump), raising pH via Kalk, cease water changes can help but won't work on some species. Some beat dinos by dirtying up the tank and outcompeting via common pest algaes, which are easier to erradicate once the pest is gone.

There is some hope in outcompeting them via predatory cilliates which can be cultured in aged skimmate or via the introduction of fresh live rock. If you opt to try the skimmate approach, you will need a microscope to positively identify that you have grown cilliates or other organism that will actually eat your species of dino - there is video evidence about 20 pages into that thread. Also remember that dinos are a integral part of any healthy aquarium - it's a broad family of microbes, including zooxanthellae, so drugs are not an option. There's just a handful of them that are bad - some are very bad and even produce palytoxin.

From dealing with a very potent infection of Ostreopsis and Amphidinium a few years ago, I believe in the microscopic approach. Introduce phytoplankton to feed and maintain a predatory population of cilliates. I believe that I beat my troubles by the constant introduction of new corals with their microfauna (commercial setting). I also maintained constant kalk dosing because my dinos were causing wild fluctuations in KH.

One last thing to consider if you have a bad infestation - healthy dinos don't release toxins; dying dinos do. I suffered bad hearing loss and disorientation on the days that I was able to kill off large numbers. Use fresh carbon while aggressively attacking them. Open a window if possible. I presume my skimmer aerosolized the compounds my dinos were releasing as they died, causing my symptoms. Hooking an exhaust fan from sump to outside probably isn't a bad idea if you have a toxic species.

Good luck - and post up your (hopeful) success stories
 
Sounds like it would be MUCH easier to reboot the system entirely. Is there any risk for anyone accepting livestock from a tank with Dino's?
 
I've had dinos for nearly a year now and they've killed most of my corals. I've tried hydrogen peroxide(helped reduce), raising PH, raising mag, UV, black out, etc. As of now, they're mostly gone after not doing water changes for several months and just manual removal every few days. I also used skimmate as suggested in one of the threads posted above me.
 
Thanks, Started a blackout and turned off my auto water changer and bio pellets. Go from there I guess
 
I had it extremely bad, by extremely i mean the stuff was also getting stuck on my fish. Syphoning it out during water changes made it worse, almost like the stuff got more powerful when new water was added. How i fixed my dino problem was 2 weeks lights out (at the time i only had a few cheap zoas and 1 frogspawn in the tank) lights out also consisted of towels draped over the tank to hide outside light. I also syphoned the dinoflagellates out thru a brine shrimp net and re added the syphoned water back into the tank. After 7 days it was completely gone but i didnt want to take any chances and went another 7 days. When the 2 weeks were up i set my timers to only allow 1 hour of light per day. Upping 1 hour each week. The dinoflagellates never came back, i dont wish that stuff to get into anyones tank. Also none of my corals died, but then again i didnt really have any in the tank. The key (well what worked for my species of dinoflagellites) was lights out for a long period of time and NO water changes, water changes was seriously like steroids for my dinoflagellates. I wish you luck jim, i know what its like to have the stuff
 
I'm nearing the end of their misery in my 36 bow....letting my tank go a bit and letting GHA grow is doing a nice job. I'm doing a clean upgrade to a 90 now though and hope to never see the bastards again lol
 
Stir sand regularly if you have it and leave a window open. I have beaten it quickly a couple times in the past. Quickly being a couple weeks.
 
Is there something you can dip your corals in, that will kill the stuff that is on or around them?
 
laserjim said:
Is there something you can dip your corals in, that will kill the stuff that is on or around them?
Click to expand...

I'm hoping for an answer to this question. I have a problem with calothrix from the looks of it. I'm completely restarting with a new tank but I hope the corals can be transferred over if treated properly.
 
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