Dinoflagellates.

[Adrnalnrsh]

Don't think so, looks like same stuff that was all over my frags

[cal_stir]

I wonder if you went too fast, I let my cyano go for about 4 weeks before I chemicleaned it, I controlled it by sucking it up with a baster when it was getting too heavy. I also let the green micro algae grow on the glass until I could barely see through it, about 3 or 4 days. I turned my skimmer on when hair algae was starting to grow on the back glass, scraped it off with a scraper.
I maintained my no3 @ 3ppm (sulphur denitrator) and po4 @ .03 (lanthanum chloride)

I sample my socks every change under the scope and can't find dinos, I also let the bucket stand for awhile when I vacuum the sand and sample it at the bottom, middle and top and nothing.

[Adrnalnrsh]

I wonder if you went too fast, I let my cyano go for about 4 weeks before I chemicleaned it, I controlled it by sucking it up with a baster when it was getting too heavy. I also let the green micro algae grow on the glass until I could barely see through it, about 3 or 4 days. I turned my skimmer on when hair algae was starting to grow on the back glass, scraped it off with a scraper.
I maintained my no3 @ 3ppm (sulphur denitrator) and po4 @ .03 (lanthanum chloride)

I sample my socks every change under the scope and can't find dinos, I also let the bucket stand for awhile when I vacuum the sand and sample it at the bottom, middle and top and nothing.

Some of it could be diatoms the more I think about it. However, there's still some dinos.



I've had dinos and cyano for months. The cyano actually went from being purple to green and I thought it was actually green algae but it was matted like Cyano and turned black as soon as I dose chmiclean. I did not remove it first. I killed it, then sucked it all up via water change. Perhaps that caused a mini cycle. Snails are all over the brown stuff however.

[karimwassef]

I think chemicals only help dinos. Other than absorbing media, I'm very cautious of using algae killers or removers.

[Adrnalnrsh]

definitely, but Dinos and Cyano have a symbiotic relationship so I wanted to terminate the cyano.

[Adrnalnrsh]

I maintained my no3 @ 3ppm (sulphur denitrator) and po4 @ .03 (lanthanum chloride)



Where did you get these things?

[bertoni]

I don't know that it's generally true that cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates have some sort of symbiotic relation. That's possible, but I think we see a lot of blooms that are fairly heavily dominated by one or the other.

[EvMiBo]

Question about dosing micro fauna: are Copepods and amphipods actively eating cyano, Dino's etc? Would it be better to not dose as much phytoplankton initially to force the pods to eat undesirable things like cyano, Dino's, algae?

[Adrnalnrsh]

I don't know that it's generally true that cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates have some sort of symbiotic relation. That's possible, but I think we see a lot of blooms that are fairly heavily dominated by one or the other.

Correct, I don't think its generally across the board. But it does happen. I have to find the article I read. Don't know if its related to specific types.

[Adrnalnrsh]

Question about dosing micro fauna: are Copepods and amphipods actively eating cyano, Dino's etc? Would it be better to not dose as much phytoplankton initially to force the pods to eat undesirable things like cyano, Dino's, algae?

Could be a combination of eating and the phyto out competing them. After all, diatoms, cyano, dinos and green phyto are all types of "phyto plankton".

[cal_stir]

Where did you get these things?
I use Brightwell Aquatic Posphat-e and dose it in a 10Um filter sock.
http://www.marinedepot.com/Brightwell_Aquatics_Phosphat_E_Liquid_Phosphate_Remover_for_all_Marine_Aquaria_Phosphate_Remover_Add itives-Brightwell_Aquatics-BW01144-FIADSAPR-vi.html

I have a diy sulphur denitrator, similar to this
http://www.marinedepot.com/Korallin_BioDenitrator_w_o_Pump_Bio_Denitrators_Nitrate_Reactors-Korallin-KL9111-FIFRISDN-vi.html

[cal_stir]

Question about dosing micro fauna: are Copepods and amphipods actively eating cyano, Dino's etc? Would it be better to not dose as much phytoplankton initially to force the pods to eat undesirable things like cyano, Dino's, algae?
There's a lot more to micro fauna than copepods and amphipods, the phyto feeds most of it and being live I believe it competes directly with dinos and the nutrients the dinos are thriving on.

[EvMiBo]

I know there's a lot more to micro fauna but amphipods, Copepods and phyto is really all I'm willing to try and culture.

I just wonder if adding Copepods and amphipods before feeding phyto would work better in initially getting rid of cyano, Dino's, etc. then when the population out competes cyano and Dino's start feeding phyto. Improbably over thinking it hah.

[bertoni]

History seems to indicate that most people don't find animals that eat cyanobacteria or dinoflagellates, at least not enough to solve the problem. You might get lucky, though.

[karimwassef]

History seems to indicate that most people don't find animals that eat cyanobacteria or dinoflagellates, at least not enough to solve the problem. You might get lucky, though.

This is why I support a multi-prong approach. Increasing bio-fauna is great. I got fresh live rock, pods, etc...

But I also went on the offensive with UV

[cal_stir]

I know there's a lot more to micro fauna but amphipods, Copepods and phyto is really all I'm willing to try and culture.

I just wonder if adding Copepods and amphipods before feeding phyto would work better in initially getting rid of cyano, Dino's, etc. then when the population out competes cyano and Dino's start feeding phyto. Improbably over thinking it hah.
I did add pods and pods+ prior to dosing phyto, about 4 weeks prior, but once I started the phyto it was like the final nail in the coffin.

[EvMiBo]

Okay good to know. Great info here.

[DNA]

It's been two weeks since I added more live rock and sand.
Since there was no visible sign of anything positive after a week I did another test.

I added a dead shrimp in a plastic mesh to the tank and let it rot.
That has been going on for a week and now I'm on my second shrimp.

This was done to see if the dinos disliked the additional ammonia.
They don't seem to care at all, but there is a pleasant side effect going on.

The rest of my SPS, fingernail sized brown leftovers, are showing their polyps for the first time in months.
There is some color also showing in their tissue.

My tank has been going through phases like this for years so ...

[DNA]

Maybe I should look into diatoms as my weapon of choice?

[Adrnalnrsh]

It's been two weeks since I added more live rock and sand.
Since there was no visible sign of anything positive after a week I did another test.

I added a dead shrimp in a plastic mesh to the tank and let it rot.
That has been going on for a week and now I'm on my second shrimp.

This was done to see if the dinos disliked the additional ammonia.
They don't seem to care at all, but there is a pleasant side effect going on.

The rest of my SPS, fingernail sized brown leftovers, are showing their polyps for the first time in months.
There is some color also showing in their tissue.

My tank has been going through phases like this for years so ...

I was reading something yesterday where the person raised their nitrates to beat back the dinos. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1620464

[karimwassef]

I think there's a misconception about nutrients and corals. I had it for a long time and I'm convinced that it's a myth. I could be wrong, but here goes.

Nitrates and Phosphates are not evil. They don't kill corals on contact and they are actually necessary for a healthy thriving system. In nature, the export mechanisms are so healthy that the flow of nutrients is balanced (in and out) that the corals can grow with little competition from algae or dinos, etc...

It's like dieting by eliminating all fat and sugars. It's extreme and not healthy.

There is a happy middle place.

[Adrnalnrsh]

So good news is most of the brown stuff I recently saw was in fact diatoms. Now I'm starting to see very short patches of green hair algae.

What dinos I did see have disappeared and only ones left appear to be fading away and don't have any bubbles.

Phosphates were at .1 on Saturday and am waiting on new Nitrate kit as I am not sure what they are.

[cal_stir]

So good news is most of the brown stuff I recently saw was in fact diatoms. Now I'm starting to see very short patches of green hair algae.

What dinos I did see have disappeared and only ones left appear to be fading away and don't have any bubbles.

Phosphates were at .1 on Saturday and am waiting on new Nitrate kit as I am not sure what they are.
I went until the hair algae was starting on the back glass, let it go for a couple days, scraped it off and started my skimmer back up.

[EvMiBo]

I think there's a misconception about nutrients and corals. I had it for a long time and I'm convinced that it's a myth. I could be wrong, but here goes.

Nitrates and Phosphates are not evil. They don't kill corals on contact and they are actually necessary for a healthy thriving system. In nature, the export mechanisms are so healthy that the flow of nutrients is balanced (in and out) that the corals can grow with little competition from algae or dinos, etc...

It's like dieting by eliminating all fat and sugars. It's extreme and not healthy.

There is a happy middle place.

furthermore, there are several thriving, well established/mature systems that have what most would consider "high" nitrates and phosphates.

[karimwassef]

This is posted in another thread. Just passing it along here

http://www.skepticalaquarist.com/phosphate-cycle

[Adrnalnrsh]

Just tested NItrates with a new Salifert kit and they're at 25ppm.

Edit: Just tested phosphates again using my Hannah ULR and they are at 0.012264 (4 / 1000 * 3.066). Algae growth has even slowed down since Saturday when they were 0.1ppm. I have been feeding one frozen cube daily.

[Montireef]

Question about dosing micro fauna: are Copepods and amphipods actively eating cyano, Dino's etc? Would it be better to not dose as much phytoplankton initially to force the pods to eat undesirable things like cyano, Dino's, algae?
Copepods DO eat lots of dinos. You'd better add phytoplankton to make them breed like crazy. You need big numbers because dinos spread so quickly.

[Dfee]

So you're 100% sure that pods won't be one of the things that die during Dino's? I just don't want to waste my money buying them

[karimwassef]

I've never regretted buying pods. I've only regretted not buying enough.

[bertoni]

There are lots of species of dinoflagellates. Copepods might eat some or all species, but I wouldn't count on them fixing any large bloom, personally. That said, I like buying small animal cultures and stocking them as live food and for general cleanup. They probably will survive a dinoflagellate bloom.

[cal_stir]

I've never regretted buying pods. I've only regretted not buying enough.
My sentiments exactly.

[Adrnalnrsh]

After this thread and reading more about plankton in general. I've now come to the conclusion that live phytoplankton and zooplankton are probably lacking in most reef Aquaria and are much more essential than I previously thought.

Being the bottom of the food chain in the ocean it sort of makes sense now.

[Quiet_Ivy]

So you're 100% sure that pods won't be one of the things that die during Dino's? I just don't want to waste my money buying them


Nothing is 100%, but my dinos are exploding; they're coating the walls of my tank. The worst patches are literally covered with various pods. Speck like pods, copepods, ?amphipods, hydroids, etc. I have grammarus -looking shrimp running around too. They aren't killing off or even really reducing the dinos by any means, but they're alive in there. These aren't the commercially available ones. Actually aren't the tisbe/tigger pods detrivores anyway?

I did lose pods (and dang near everything else) by repeatedly scraping off 2 inch thick coating of dinos on 3 aquarium walls. Don't try that at home.

hth
Ivy

[Adrnalnrsh]

I would try phytoplankton then

[cal_stir]

I have reduced my phytoplankton to 100ml 4 times a day, got a little algae growing on the sand bed, put some under the scope and still can't find any dinos

[34cygni]

Wow.

I read the entire thread. It's an epic. I totally feel DNA's pain.

Maybe I can help you guys make sense of what you're seeing...

The thing about mixotrophic dinos is that they're predators that acquired the ability to photosynthesize, not autotrophs that evolved into predators. That's why if you treat O. ovata like algae, you lose.

The big mystery is where are dinos getting their nutrients from? Especially in a ULN system?!? Even scientists seem perplexed...


Recent studies have provided increasing evidence of a link between nutrient enrichment and harmful algal events (Hallegraeff 2010). However, in our study, although peak abundances coincided with a decrease in nutrient concentration, we did not observe a clear relationship between the bloom and nutrient concentrations; an observation supported by other studies (Vila et al. 2001; Shears and Ross 2009).

The reason nobody can correlate nutrient levels with dino blooms is that the dinos aren't operating in autotrophic mode. Ostreopsis ovata can do that if there are enough nutrients in the water...


This investigation shows that the removal of bacteria associated to O. cf. ovata unaffected cell yield algal cultures, while it appears to confer a higher cell number at mid stationary growth phase. This finding is in agreement with previous results reported for other toxic dinoflagellates (e.g. Uribe & Espejo, 2003; Green et al., 2010 and references therein), and it is reasonably due to the lack of bacteria-algal competition for nutrients, together with the absence of algal degradation by bacteria.

...but obviously that's not what's happening in our reef tanks. When O. ovata (or any dino) is nutrient-limited, it solves the problem the same way we do: by eating something. That's what's happening in our reef tanks.

Think about it. What do you guys know about dinos?


I've read that there are a number of symbiotic bacteria hosted in the dinos' mucilage.

Dinos and Cyano have a symbiotic relationship

Remember the evolutionary history of the enemy: mixotrophic dinos are predators that acquired the ability to photosynthesize. These bacteria, the cyano... They're food. Dinos are no more symbiotic with them than people are symbiotic with cows. I mean, yes, we protect cows and we feed cows and we want cows to be fruitful and multiply, but that's because we eat cows. On paper, domestication is a big win for cattle -- there are lot more cows in the world than there would be if cows were free to gambol and frolic in a natural landscape filled with predators and diseases -- but the only benefit an individual cow derives from its relationship with humans is in the abstract philosophical sense that existence is better than nonexistence. We're the ones who benefit from that relationship, as dinos do from theirs.

Heterotrophic bacteria are rich in phosphorous; diazotrophic cyanobacteria can fix nitrogen and are rich in iron. That's the hat trick -- the big three limiting nutrients in aquatic ecosystems, right there.

This isn't my idea. It popped up in a scientific paper on red tides from 2010 and so obviously applied to O. ovata in a ULNS reef that my jaw dropped open when I read it.


Dinoflagellate predators often have considerable grazing impact on and sometimes control the natural population of prey including heterotrophic bacteria (Seong et al. 2006; Jeong et al. 2008), cyanobacteria (Jeong et al. 2005b), nanoflagellates (Jeong et al. 2007b), diatoms (Jeong et al. 2004d; Yoo et al. 2009), other dinoflagellates (Jeong et al. 2005c), and ciliates (Smalley and Coats 2002). ...

By combining the results of Jeong et al. (2005b) and Seong et al. (2006), I propose a possible mechanism of the outbreak and/or the persistence of offshore or oceanic red tides (Fig. 9); many MTDs [MixoTrophic Dinoflagellates] such as K. brevis, P. donghaiense, and P. minimum are able to feed on Synechococcus sp. and heterotrophic bacteria. Therefore, if the MTDs feed on some cyanobacteria which can conduct nitrogen fixation (e.g. Mitsui et al. 1986) and heterotrophic bacteria which usually have high P : N ratios (e.g. Tezuka 1990), the MTDs are able to obtain nitrogen and phosphorus simultaneously for their growth in offshore or oceanic waters.

Red tide dinos aren't benthic, of course, but O. lenticularis is...


The genera of bacteria found with Ostreopsis clone 116 did not change during the course of these studies, suggesting a selectivity in the dinoflagellate-bacterial association similar to that reported in other algal-bacterial systems (11, 19). ...

The total bacterial cell/dinoflagellate cell ratio remained essentially constant through the initial 28 days of culture growth. Following this period, there was a steady, significant increase in the total bacterial cell/dinoflagellate cell ratio through 49 days of culture growth. The percent total bacteria directly associated with the dinoflagellate cells was high (above 70%) in the inocula used to initiate the dinoflagellate cultures in this study. This percentage decreased significantly (to values below 10%) during the first 7 days, followed by sharp increases (60 to 80%) at 21 to 35 days of culture growth. ...

The dinoflagellate cells appeared to exercise some control on both the total density and distribution of the bacterial populations present in the respective culture flasks. Peak dinoflagellate culture growth rates (first 4 to 7 days of culture, Fig. 1) were associated with reduced numbers of bacteria directly associated with the dinoflagellate cells (Fig. 2), while peak relative dinoflagellate cell toxicity (Fig. 2, shaded area) was associated with a significantly increased fraction of closely associated bacteria. Later stages of culture growth (35 to 49 days) were marked by reductions in dinoflagellate cell toxicity and relatively uncontrolled increases in the total bacterial cell/dinoflagellate cell ratio. Increases in bacterial population densities associated with the decline of phytoplankton blooms have been reported elsewhere (10, 36).

Results presented here show that bacterial genera associated with 0. lenticularis grown in clonal laboratory culture are not toxic when grown individually in pure culture. Marked increases in the proportion of these bacteria directly associated with the surfaces or extracellular matrices of these microalgal cells were correlated with the development of peak dinoflagellate toxicity during the static phase of their culture growth. Subsequent declines in dinoflagellate culture density and toxicity corresponded to uncontrolled increases in the total bacterial cell/dinoflagellate cell ratio and decreasing proportions of bacteria directly associated with Ostreopsis cells. These results suggest that associated bacterial flora may play a role in the phasic development of toxicity in laboratory growth cycles of these algal-bacterial consortia.

In other words, not only are the dinos eating heterotrophic bacteria, they're farming their preferred food species of heterotrophic bacteria!


>The total bacterial cell/dinoflagellate cell ratio remained
>essentially constant through the initial 28 days of culture
>growth. Following this period, there was a steady,
>significant increase in the total bacterial cell/
>dinoflagellate cell ratio through 49 days of culture growth.

That means that the dinos were running the show for the first month or so, but then they lost control and the system shifted to a state in which bacteria were ecologically dominant. What happened?


>The percent total bacteria directly associated with the
>dinoflagellate cells was high (above 70%) in the inocula
>used to initiate the dinoflagellate cultures in this study.
>This percentage decreased significantly (to values below 10%)
>during the first 7 days, followed by sharp increases (60 to
>80%) at 21 to 35 days of culture growth. ...
>Peak dinoflagellate culture growth rates (first 4 to 7 days
>of culture, Fig. 1) were associated with reduced numbers of
>bacteria directly associated with the dinoflagellate cells
>while peak relative dinoflagellate cell toxicity was
>associated with a significantly increased fraction of closely
>associated bacteria.

The dinos start off with plenty of food (over 70% of the bacteria in the flask) and eat their way through it in the first week, reproducing rapidly while their food bacteria drop to 10% of the bacterial population. The dinos respond to this crisis by producing poison to suppress competing bacteria and encourage the growth of their food bacteria. They're like farmers spraying weed killer to prevent competition for nutrients in the soil and maximize the growth of their crops, and the population of the dinos' bacterial "symbionts" rapidly recovers over the next two weeks to over 60% of the total bacterial population, preventing a crash in the dino population.

Maximum measured toxicity comes at week 4, corresponding to a decline in the population of the dinos' associated bacteria to about 50% of the total population. The dinos have hit a point of diminishing returns. Metabolic waste products and the physical remains of dead dinos and bacteria are piling up in the mucilage -- all the stuff the dinos' bacteria can't eat -- and more and more poison is needed to keep unwanted bacteria away from that growing food resource, but now it looks like that strategy is failing and their food supply is threatened.


>Later stages of culture growth (35 to 49 days) were marked
>by reductions in dinoflagellate cell toxicity and relatively
>uncontrolled increases in the total bacterial cell/
>dinoflagellate cell ratio. ...declines in dinoflagellate
>culture density and toxicity corresponded to uncontrolled
>increases in the total bacterial cell/dinoflagellate cell
>ratio and decreasing proportions of bacteria directly
>associated with Ostreopsis cells.

At week 5, the dino population is declining. Interestingly, the population of dino-associated bacteria rebounds to over 80% of the total bacterial population -- in all likelihood by eating dead dinos. Even more interestingly, the dino population doesn't rebound along with their food supply, but instead continues to dwindle in weeks 6 and 7... Obviously, something has changed.


Dinoflagellates are so delicate and easy to kill...it's only that in ideal conditions they reproduce very fast (both sexual and asexual) and can suffocate any system.

The shift from a system dominated by dinos to a system dominated by bacteria resulted from eutrophication. In a weird way, it looks like ostis are in the same boat as we are -- they're battling eutrophy, too -- and I suspect this explains why "the dirty method" of dino control works. Getting a little sloppy with the housekeeping just helps nature take its course, moving up the eutrophic tipping point where opportunistic bacteria and protists can invade the mucilage and overrun the ostis' bacteria farm.

And speaking of opportunistic bacteria...


12/30/2014, 09:42 AM #554
karimwassef
What did you add? Food? Live rock? Love sand? Salt? Additive?


12/30/2014, 09:45 AM #555
Montireef
two kgs live rock and 2 litres skimmate


12/30/2014, 10:41 AM #557
Montireef
Yes, my system was too ULNS and noticed important bacterial growth in the skimmate so I dumped the whole cup. Corals got very happy and extended polyps. One week later I noticed ostreopsis mucilage turning white and on the microscope I see millions of these microorganisms thriving.

I have also been dosing large amounts of Ca(OH)2 keeping pH around 8,7 and put off CO2 input to the Ca reactor.

Live rock was from Indonesia


12/30/2014, 05:59 PM #577
karimwassef
So you're cultivating bacteria in your skimmate for a week and then adding it back in?

That's the first I've ever read or heard of this. Anyone else?


12/30/2014, 07:16 PM #578
cal_stir
I've checked my skimmate under the microscope, seen some microbes and some dinos but never microbes attacking dinos, but I never let it culture for a week.
I will let it culture and take another look.


12/30/2014, 11:43 PM #580
Montireef
Originally Posted by karimwassef
So you're cultivating bacteria in your skimmate for a week and then adding it back in?

That's the first I've ever read or heard of this. Anyone else?

Not only bacteria but many other microorganisms like nematodes and ciliates. Skimmate is mainly water plus a Ca and Mg insoluble carbonates. It has no nitrate and little phosphate but can have SH2.

Snails keep pooping black crap for almost a week, that's the main drawback. Lol


12/30/2014, 11:45 PM #581
Montireef
Originally Posted by cal_stir
I've checked my skimmate under the microscope, seen some microbes and some dinos but never microbes attacking dinos, but I never let it culture for a week.
I will let it culture and take another look.

You will be surprised of the amount of life you will find. LPSs love it


12/31/2014, 10:21 AM #582
karimwassef
My skimmate is ugly sludge that smells like feces. It varies from brown water with black sludge to yellow water with brown sludge depending on how wet I run it.

Are we talking about the same thing?

Isn't the skimmate what we're using to export the dinos and is primary intended to remove DOCs?


12/31/2014, 10:28 AM #584
karimwassef
Do you let it settle and just pour the yellow liquid? Do you throw the brown chunks in? Break them up first?

Monti - I'm not doubting you. I've just never heard about it so I want to know more.


12/31/2014, 11:19 AM #585
Montireef
Yes, the same nasty stuff.

I poured it in two times, one litre in the morning and one litre in the night, only the liquid, avoid solid chunks.

What we want are the bacteria and microorganisms, not the solid inert stuff.


12/31/2014, 11:21 AM #586
Montireef
The next day I watched cristal clear water, higher redox and many black poop from my turbo snails (they love it). Corals extended awesome polyps two days after pouring it.

Turning skimmate into probiotic tea?!?!?!? Pure genius. Thanks, Montireef!

But DNA provides us with counterexamples...


I have a 400g system
On day 1 the skimmate was 7 days old.

Day 1: 0,5 liters of skimmate added in the morning.
Day 2: 0,5 liters of skimmate added in the morning.
Day 3: 0,5 liters of skimmate added in the morning.
Day 3: 0,5 liters of skimmate added in the afternoon.

2 liters in all added over 3 days.
No reduction or increase was noticed in the dino population on the sandbed.

In the last round I emptied the cup right after adding the skimmate.
In less than an hour the skimmer had gathered around 0,5 liters of skimmate of similar transparency.

My results:
Skimmate alone does not help against Ostreopsis dinoflagellates.
If skimmers are really effective at removing an organism that prays on Ostreopsis, it's likely it can multiply in the skimmer cup so further tests are in order.
Right now I 'd like to see if this will work with added live rock.

It's been two weeks since I added more live rock and sand.
Since there was no visible sign of anything positive after a week I did another test.

I added a dead shrimp in a plastic mesh to the tank and let it rot.
That has been going on for a week and now I'm on my second shrimp.

This was done to see if the dinos disliked the additional ammonia.
They don't seem to care at all, but there is a pleasant side effect going on.

The rest of my SPS, fingernail sized brown leftovers, are showing their polyps for the first time in months.
There is some color also showing in their tissue.

I'm so sorry, DNA. I thought you had a chance.

It looks to me like heterotrophic bacteria are the foundation on which ostis build. These bacteria are rich in phosphorous. Dinos are P-rich organisms, as well, but less so than the bacteria, so there's excess phosphorous in their diet. This waste phosphorous is used to recruit cyano, which is also P-rich, but less so than the dinos. And now the dinos have access to P from the bacteria and N and Fe from the cyano. Sky's the limit.

I thought Montireef outcompeted the ostis' bacteria by triggering a minicycle when he added LR. A cycling bacterial biofilter is basically a series of overlapping bacteria blooms, during which nutrient demand is very high. Montireef's experience suggests that slowing the reproduction of the food bacteria by giving them some competition can cause an established dino population to eat itself out of house and home in a matter of days. The addition of a massive dose of heterotrophic bacteria and protists -- Montireef's probiotic zoom juice -- to the system thus seems like the perfect follow-up: the dinos, stressed and perhaps turning on each other because of the sudden scarcity of food, couldn't fight off the invasion. A combination of starvation, hungry protists and microfauna, and "algal degradation by bacteria" apparently overwhelmed the dinos. In essence, Montireef artificially tipped his system into a state where it was dominated by heterotrophs... It's the dirty method without the dirt.

But DNA couldn't repeat the experiment. I wonder... Montireef reported snails pooping black for almost a week. Did your snails do that, too, DNA? I'm wondering if Montireef's skimmer was off when he dosed, and if you left yours on just that one time you checked the skimmate cup less than an hour after dosing, or if it was on every time...?

The example of O. lenticularis suggests that benthic dinos secrete poison at least in part to control the population of bacteria around them to favor their preferred food species. If O. ovata is doing the same thing, then parachuting in a zillion tiny globs of colloidal organic carbon infested with heterotrophic bacteria and protists seems like it would be absolutely the last thing it wants.




<i>Ecology of a bloom of Ostreopsis cf. ovata in the northern Adriatic Sea in the summer of 2009</i>
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cecilia_Totti/publication/51629038_Ostreopsis_cf._ovata_bloom_in_the_northern_Adriatic_Sea_during_summer_2009_ecology_molecula r_characterization_and_toxin_profile/links/00b7d52e1abed195e5000000.pdf

<i>Cell Growth and Toxins' Content of Ostreopsis cf. Ovata in Presence and Absence of Associated Bacteria</i>
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Laura_Pezzolesi/publication/258123582_Cell_growth_and_toxins_content_of_Ostreopsis_cf._ovata_in_presence_and_absence_of_associat ed_bacteria/links/00b7d52712c5800f93000000.pdf

<i>Growth, Feeding and Ecological Roles of the Mixotrophic and Heterotrophic Dinoflagellates in Marine Planktonic Food Webs</i>
http://hosting03.snu.ac.kr/~hjjeong/Publication/OSJ%2045%2065.pdf

<i>Associated Bacterial Flora, Growth, and Toxicity of Cultured Benthic Dinoflagellates Ostreopsis lenticularis and Gambierdiscus toxicus</i>
http://aem.asm.org/content/55/1/137.full.pdf

[Adrnalnrsh]

Wow.

I read the entire thread. It's an epic. I totally feel DNA's pain.

Maybe I can help you guys make sense of what you're seeing...

The thing about mixotrophic dinos is that they're predators that acquired the ability to photosynthesize, not autotrophs that evolved into predators. That's why if you treat O. ovata like algae, you lose.

The big mystery is where are dinos getting their nutrients from? Especially in a ULN system?!? Even scientists seem perplexed...




The reason nobody can correlate nutrient levels with dino blooms is that the dinos aren't operating in autotrophic mode. Ostreopsis ovata can do that if there are enough nutrients in the water...




...but obviously that's not what's happening in our reef tanks. When O. ovata (or any dino) is nutrient-limited, it solves the problem the same way we do: by eating something. That's what's happening in our reef tanks.

Think about it. What do you guys know about dinos?






Remember the evolutionary history of the enemy: mixotrophic dinos are predators that acquired the ability to photosynthesize. These bacteria, the cyano... They're food. Dinos are no more symbiotic with them than people are symbiotic with cows. I mean, yes, we protect cows and we feed cows and we want cows to be fruitful and multiply, but that's because we eat cows. On paper, domestication is a big win for cattle -- there are lot more cows in the world than there would be if cows were free to gambol and frolic in a natural landscape filled with predators and diseases -- but the only benefit an individual cow derives from its relationship with humans is in the abstract philosophical sense that existence is better than nonexistence. We're the ones who benefit from that relationship, as dinos do from theirs.

Heterotrophic bacteria are rich in phosphorous; diazotrophic cyanobacteria can fix nitrogen and are rich in iron. That's the hat trick -- the big three limiting nutrients in aquatic ecosystems, right there.

This isn't my idea. It popped up in a scientific paper on red tides from 2010 and so obviously applied to O. ovata in a ULNS reef that my jaw dropped open when I read it.




Red tide dinos aren't benthic, of course, but O. lenticularis is...




In other words, not only are the dinos eating heterotrophic bacteria, they're farming their preferred food species of heterotrophic bacteria!


>The total bacterial cell/dinoflagellate cell ratio remained
>essentially constant through the initial 28 days of culture
>growth. Following this period, there was a steady,
>significant increase in the total bacterial cell/
>dinoflagellate cell ratio through 49 days of culture growth.

That means that the dinos were running the show for the first month or so, but then they lost control and the system shifted to a state in which bacteria were ecologically dominant. What happened?


>The percent total bacteria directly associated with the
>dinoflagellate cells was high (above 70%) in the inocula
>used to initiate the dinoflagellate cultures in this study.
>This percentage decreased significantly (to values below 10%)
>during the first 7 days, followed by sharp increases (60 to
>80%) at 21 to 35 days of culture growth. ...
>Peak dinoflagellate culture growth rates (first 4 to 7 days
>of culture, Fig. 1) were associated with reduced numbers of
>bacteria directly associated with the dinoflagellate cells
>while peak relative dinoflagellate cell toxicity was
>associated with a significantly increased fraction of closely
>associated bacteria.

The dinos start off with plenty of food (over 70% of the bacteria in the flask) and eat their way through it in the first week, reproducing rapidly while their food bacteria drop to 10% of the bacterial population. The dinos respond to this crisis by producing poison to suppress competing bacteria and encourage the growth of their food bacteria. They're like farmers spraying weed killer to prevent competition for nutrients in the soil and maximize the growth of their crops, and the population of the dinos' bacterial "symbionts" rapidly recovers over the next two weeks to over 60% of the total bacterial population, preventing a crash in the dino population.

Maximum measured toxicity comes at week 4, corresponding to a decline in the population of the dinos' associated bacteria to about 50% of the total population. The dinos have hit a point of diminishing returns. Metabolic waste products and the physical remains of dead dinos and bacteria are piling up in the mucilage -- all the stuff the dinos' bacteria can't eat -- and more and more poison is needed to keep unwanted bacteria away from that growing food resource, but now it looks like that strategy is failing and their food supply is threatened.


>Later stages of culture growth (35 to 49 days) were marked
>by reductions in dinoflagellate cell toxicity and relatively
>uncontrolled increases in the total bacterial cell/
>dinoflagellate cell ratio. ...declines in dinoflagellate
>culture density and toxicity corresponded to uncontrolled
>increases in the total bacterial cell/dinoflagellate cell
>ratio and decreasing proportions of bacteria directly
>associated with Ostreopsis cells.

At week 5, the dino population is declining. Interestingly, the population of dino-associated bacteria rebounds to over 80% of the total bacterial population -- in all likelihood by eating dead dinos. Even more interestingly, the dino population doesn't rebound along with their food supply, but instead continues to dwindle in weeks 6 and 7... Obviously, something has changed.




The shift from a system dominated by dinos to a system dominated by bacteria resulted from eutrophication. In a weird way, it looks like ostis are in the same boat as we are -- they're battling eutrophy, too -- and I suspect this explains why "the dirty method" of dino control works. Getting a little sloppy with the housekeeping just helps nature take its course, moving up the eutrophic tipping point where opportunistic bacteria and protists can invade the mucilage and overrun the ostis' bacteria farm.

And speaking of opportunistic bacteria...




Turning skimmate into probiotic tea?!?!?!? Pure genius. Thanks, Montireef!

But DNA provides us with counterexamples...






I'm so sorry, DNA. I thought you had a chance.

It looks to me like heterotrophic bacteria are the foundation on which ostis build. These bacteria are rich in phosphorous. Dinos are P-rich organisms, as well, but less so than the bacteria, so there's excess phosphorous in their diet. This waste phosphorous is used to recruit cyano, which is also P-rich, but less so than the dinos. And now the dinos have access to P from the bacteria and N and Fe from the cyano. Sky's the limit.

I thought Montireef outcompeted the ostis' bacteria by triggering a minicycle when he added LR. A cycling bacterial biofilter is basically a series of overlapping bacteria blooms, during which nutrient demand is very high. Montireef's experience suggests that slowing the reproduction of the food bacteria by giving them some competition can cause an established dino population to eat itself out of house and home in a matter of days. The addition of a massive dose of heterotrophic bacteria and protists -- Montireef's probiotic zoom juice -- to the system thus seems like the perfect follow-up: the dinos, stressed and perhaps turning on each other because of the sudden scarcity of food, couldn't fight off the invasion. A combination of starvation, hungry protists and microfauna, and "algal degradation by bacteria" apparently overwhelmed the dinos. In essence, Montireef artificially tipped his system into a state where it was dominated by heterotrophs... It's the dirty method without the dirt.

But DNA couldn't repeat the experiment. I wonder... Montireef reported snails pooping black for almost a week. Did your snails do that, too, DNA? I'm wondering if Montireef's skimmer was off when he dosed, and if you left yours on just that one time you checked the skimmate cup less than an hour after dosing, or if it was on every time...?

The example of O. lenticularis suggests that benthic dinos secrete poison at least in part to control the population of bacteria around them to favor their preferred food species. If O. ovata is doing the same thing, then parachuting in a zillion tiny globs of colloidal organic carbon infested with heterotrophic bacteria and protists seems like it would be absolutely the last thing it wants.




<i>Ecology of a bloom of Ostreopsis cf. ovata in the northern Adriatic Sea in the summer of 2009</i>
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cecilia_Totti/publication/51629038_Ostreopsis_cf._ovata_bloom_in_the_northern_Adriatic_Sea_during_summer_2009_ecology_molecula r_characterization_and_toxin_profile/links/00b7d52e1abed195e5000000.pdf

<i>Cell Growth and Toxins' Content of Ostreopsis cf. Ovata in Presence and Absence of Associated Bacteria</i>
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Laura_Pezzolesi/publication/258123582_Cell_growth_and_toxins_content_of_Ostreopsis_cf._ovata_in_presence_and_absence_of_associat ed_bacteria/links/00b7d52712c5800f93000000.pdf

<i>Growth, Feeding and Ecological Roles of the Mixotrophic and Heterotrophic Dinoflagellates in Marine Planktonic Food Webs</i>
http://hosting03.snu.ac.kr/~hjjeong/Publication/OSJ%2045%2065.pdf

<i>Associated Bacterial Flora, Growth, and Toxicity of Cultured Benthic Dinoflagellates Ostreopsis lenticularis and Gambierdiscus toxicus</i>
http://aem.asm.org/content/55/1/137.full.pdf
Mind blown![emoji33] [emoji100]

[karimwassef]

34... If your chain of events is correct, how do you link the UV results? In my case, it was a rapid decimation of dinos .

Maybe dead dinos become a good source for the competing bacteria and tips the scale.

If that's the case, then UV alone would be more effective that UV and skimming?

[DNA]

34 Cygni, thanks for shedding light on several difficult issues.

I've for long suspected bacteria to be a big player when it comes to dinos, but for reefkeepers they are hard to track for several reasons so they don't get discussed much here unless it's cyanobacteria.

When it comes to cyanobacteria I've described it as a relationship and not being a symbiotic one.
If I disrupt both the cyano and dinos. Dinos will settle in their usual spots first and then the cyano will settle on top.
It's like the cyano is seeking out the dinos. It could also be the dinos are attracting the cyano for their benefit, but once this has taken place on the sand it can last for weeks.
At least twice the end result has been a big reduction in dinos so one may think cyanobacteria to be a negative force on dinos.
On the last occasion on the other hand only few weeks ago the cyano left and didn't leave a dent in the dinos that have stayed at max densities since.
It seems like it's difficult for reefers and scientists to get the same results repeatedly or the dynamics and adaptations of the dinos are playing trics on us.
Most scientist admit they don't know enough and further studies to be needed.

A natural dino bloom has been described to have a rubber band effect with the predators in tow.
The predators will always catch up and the bloom will reside.
In my closed ecosystem there has been a constant mild bloom for years and predators have never got the upper hand.
Unfortunately this law of nature does not apply in my reef tank, but still my bloom has not exceeded mild for a long time.

But DNA couldn't repeat the experiment. I wonder...

I kept my skimmer running after pouring the skimmate in.
I think it's mostly the toxins rather than the cells that are doing harm, but when is it produced and does skimming or charcoal help?
Shutting them off may give a rise to the toxins and put livestock in danger.
At the time I had some SPS doing alright so I opted against it.
I only have astrea snails and they stay off of dinos.

Since 34Cygni is not in a galaxy far, far away... I hope to see more of your rays around here.

[taricha]

Wow.

I read the entire thread. It's an epic. I totally feel DNA's pain.

Maybe I can help you guys make sense of what you're seeing...

The thing about mixotrophic dinos is that they're predators that acquired the ability to photosynthesize, not autotrophs that evolved into predators. That's why if you treat O. ovata like algae, you lose.

The big mystery is where are dinos getting their nutrients from? Especially in a ULN system?!? Even scientists seem perplexed...




The reason nobody can correlate nutrient levels with dino blooms is that the dinos aren't operating in autotrophic mode. Ostreopsis ovata can do that if there are enough nutrients in the water...




...but obviously that's not what's happening in our reef tanks. When O. ovata (or any dino) is nutrient-limited, it solves the problem the same way we do: by eating something. That's what's happening in our reef tanks.

Think about it. What do you guys know about dinos?






Remember the evolutionary history of the enemy: mixotrophic dinos are predators that acquired the ability to photosynthesize. These bacteria, the cyano... They're food. Dinos are no more symbiotic with them than people are symbiotic with cows. I mean, yes, we protect cows and we feed cows and we want cows to be fruitful and multiply, but that's because we eat cows. On paper, domestication is a big win for cattle -- there are lot more cows in the world than there would be if cows were free to gambol and frolic in a natural landscape filled with predators and diseases -- but the only benefit an individual cow derives from its relationship with humans is in the abstract philosophical sense that existence is better than nonexistence. We're the ones who benefit from that relationship, as dinos do from theirs.

Heterotrophic bacteria are rich in phosphorous; diazotrophic cyanobacteria can fix nitrogen and are rich in iron. That's the hat trick -- the big three limiting nutrients in aquatic ecosystems, right there.

This isn't my idea. It popped up in a scientific paper on red tides from 2010 and so obviously applied to O. ovata in a ULNS reef that my jaw dropped open when I read it.




Red tide dinos aren't benthic, of course, but O. lenticularis is...




In other words, not only are the dinos eating heterotrophic bacteria, they're farming their preferred food species of heterotrophic bacteria!


>The total bacterial cell/dinoflagellate cell ratio remained
>essentially constant through the initial 28 days of culture
>growth. Following this period, there was a steady,
>significant increase in the total bacterial cell/
>dinoflagellate cell ratio through 49 days of culture growth.

That means that the dinos were running the show for the first month or so, but then they lost control and the system shifted to a state in which bacteria were ecologically dominant. What happened?


>The percent total bacteria directly associated with the
>dinoflagellate cells was high (above 70%) in the inocula
>used to initiate the dinoflagellate cultures in this study.
>This percentage decreased significantly (to values below 10%)
>during the first 7 days, followed by sharp increases (60 to
>80%) at 21 to 35 days of culture growth. ...
>Peak dinoflagellate culture growth rates (first 4 to 7 days
>of culture, Fig. 1) were associated with reduced numbers of
>bacteria directly associated with the dinoflagellate cells
>while peak relative dinoflagellate cell toxicity was
>associated with a significantly increased fraction of closely
>associated bacteria.

The dinos start off with plenty of food (over 70% of the bacteria in the flask) and eat their way through it in the first week, reproducing rapidly while their food bacteria drop to 10% of the bacterial population. The dinos respond to this crisis by producing poison to suppress competing bacteria and encourage the growth of their food bacteria. They're like farmers spraying weed killer to prevent competition for nutrients in the soil and maximize the growth of their crops, and the population of the dinos' bacterial "symbionts" rapidly recovers over the next two weeks to over 60% of the total bacterial population, preventing a crash in the dino population.

Maximum measured toxicity comes at week 4, corresponding to a decline in the population of the dinos' associated bacteria to about 50% of the total population. The dinos have hit a point of diminishing returns. Metabolic waste products and the physical remains of dead dinos and bacteria are piling up in the mucilage -- all the stuff the dinos' bacteria can't eat -- and more and more poison is needed to keep unwanted bacteria away from that growing food resource, but now it looks like that strategy is failing and their food supply is threatened.


>Later stages of culture growth (35 to 49 days) were marked
>by reductions in dinoflagellate cell toxicity and relatively
>uncontrolled increases in the total bacterial cell/
>dinoflagellate cell ratio. ...declines in dinoflagellate
>culture density and toxicity corresponded to uncontrolled
>increases in the total bacterial cell/dinoflagellate cell
>ratio and decreasing proportions of bacteria directly
>associated with Ostreopsis cells.

At week 5, the dino population is declining. Interestingly, the population of dino-associated bacteria rebounds to over 80% of the total bacterial population -- in all likelihood by eating dead dinos. Even more interestingly, the dino population doesn't rebound along with their food supply, but instead continues to dwindle in weeks 6 and 7... Obviously, something has changed.




The shift from a system dominated by dinos to a system dominated by bacteria resulted from eutrophication. In a weird way, it looks like ostis are in the same boat as we are -- they're battling eutrophy, too -- and I suspect this explains why "the dirty method" of dino control works. Getting a little sloppy with the housekeeping just helps nature take its course, moving up the eutrophic tipping point where opportunistic bacteria and protists can invade the mucilage and overrun the ostis' bacteria farm.

And speaking of opportunistic bacteria...




Turning skimmate into probiotic tea?!?!?!? Pure genius. Thanks, Montireef!

But DNA provides us with counterexamples...






I'm so sorry, DNA. I thought you had a chance.

It looks to me like heterotrophic bacteria are the foundation on which ostis build. These bacteria are rich in phosphorous. Dinos are P-rich organisms, as well, but less so than the bacteria, so there's excess phosphorous in their diet. This waste phosphorous is used to recruit cyano, which is also P-rich, but less so than the dinos. And now the dinos have access to P from the bacteria and N and Fe from the cyano. Sky's the limit.

I thought Montireef outcompeted the ostis' bacteria by triggering a minicycle when he added LR. A cycling bacterial biofilter is basically a series of overlapping bacteria blooms, during which nutrient demand is very high. Montireef's experience suggests that slowing the reproduction of the food bacteria by giving them some competition can cause an established dino population to eat itself out of house and home in a matter of days. The addition of a massive dose of heterotrophic bacteria and protists -- Montireef's probiotic zoom juice -- to the system thus seems like the perfect follow-up: the dinos, stressed and perhaps turning on each other because of the sudden scarcity of food, couldn't fight off the invasion. A combination of starvation, hungry protists and microfauna, and "algal degradation by bacteria" apparently overwhelmed the dinos. In essence, Montireef artificially tipped his system into a state where it was dominated by heterotrophs... It's the dirty method without the dirt.

But DNA couldn't repeat the experiment. I wonder... Montireef reported snails pooping black for almost a week. Did your snails do that, too, DNA? I'm wondering if Montireef's skimmer was off when he dosed, and if you left yours on just that one time you checked the skimmate cup less than an hour after dosing, or if it was on every time...?

The example of O. lenticularis suggests that benthic dinos secrete poison at least in part to control the population of bacteria around them to favor their preferred food species. If O. ovata is doing the same thing, then parachuting in a zillion tiny globs of colloidal organic carbon infested with heterotrophic bacteria and protists seems like it would be absolutely the last thing it wants.




<i>Ecology of a bloom of Ostreopsis cf. ovata in the northern Adriatic Sea in the summer of 2009</i>
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Cecilia_Totti/publication/51629038_Ostreopsis_cf._ovata_bloom_in_the_northern_Adriatic_Sea_during_summer_2009_ecology_molecula r_characterization_and_toxin_profile/links/00b7d52e1abed195e5000000.pdf

<i>Cell Growth and Toxins' Content of Ostreopsis cf. Ovata in Presence and Absence of Associated Bacteria</i>
http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Laura_Pezzolesi/publication/258123582_Cell_growth_and_toxins_content_of_Ostreopsis_cf._ovata_in_presence_and_absence_of_associat ed_bacteria/links/00b7d52712c5800f93000000.pdf

<i>Growth, Feeding and Ecological Roles of the Mixotrophic and Heterotrophic Dinoflagellates in Marine Planktonic Food Webs</i>
http://hosting03.snu.ac.kr/~hjjeong/Publication/OSJ%2045%2065.pdf

<i>Associated Bacterial Flora, Growth, and Toxicity of Cultured Benthic Dinoflagellates Ostreopsis lenticularis and Gambierdiscus toxicus</i>
http://aem.asm.org/content/55/1/137.full.pdf
Thanks. Thread was already a must-read before that post. Great job.

[fftfk]

Alright - just picked up an emperor aquatics 40 watt uv.
324860
To deal with the Dino's (and anything else they potentially help with)
324861
324862
I have a feeling that most people who haven't had luck with UV underpowered their UV relative to the size of their tank. My tank is 140 gallons. I'll report back in a couple of days as to how it's going!


Update - I've been having some success with my UV but it has not entirely wiped out the Dino's. I do think it has thinned them and definitely slowed any new ones from growing.
325974
325975
325976
One big item where I see improvement is over the back wall. The tank has a pretty big cleanup/water change last weekend and the back wall is still relatively clear. Before the UV the back wall would have had a good coating on it.
325978

One item I forgot to mention. I said I have an emperor aquatics 40 watt UV. That was incorrect. I have the 40 watt lite so my flow might still be a little too fast through it.

[solaris11]

In the process of a week long blackout and dosing h2o2.....when I briefly turn the lights on my water looks disgusting. ....plan on going a week blues and slowly raising my lights from 3 hrs at 30 percent after the blackout....today started a syphon through a filter sock on top of skimming...I could see them flying around in my water column....as soon as I turned lights on they started attaching...all the while dosing h2o2 and running carbon and a gfo reactor...I have a small system but would not like to start from scratch but I'm at my wits end.

[34cygni]

34... If your chain of events is correct, how do you link the UV results? In my case, it was a rapid decimation of dinos .

Maybe dead dinos become a good source for the competing bacteria and tips the scale.

If that's the case, then UV alone would be more effective that UV and skimming?

I haven't given a lot of thought to "the clean method", as it seems like how it works is straightforward enough, and my bias is towards bioremediation. But I fully understand that other hobbyists are into technological fixes, and I expect that if marine permaculture is possible, it'll be a thoughtful combination of these two different approaches that makes it work. So I'll take a stab at it.

It's certainly possible that lysing dinos and bacterioplankton and whatever else are releasing significant amounts of dissolved organic carbon into the system, as well as cellular detritus that gets skimmed off. This DOC would fuel the growth of heterotrophic bacteria and could perhaps result in the disruption of the dinos' little bacteria farms, but it could also fuel the little bacteria farms... In any case, Occam's Razor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor) says that UVS is killing the free-swimming dinos, which are the adult dinos, meaning you're killing off most of the reproducing population -- fewer grown-ups means fewer babies.

But on the other hand, slow-flow UV sterilizes the heck out of the water column, which means that way fewer random bacteria and protists are floating around that could potentially get into the dinos' bacteria farms. Additionally, one of the papers I read mentioned that adding a solution of dissolved organic carbon extracted from red algae speeds up the growth of dinos in vitro -- like I said, DOC could also fuel the little bacteria farms... However, I don't know if this applies in axenic cultures or not, meaning I don't know if DOC boosts dino growth by boosting bacteria growth, or if dinos can directly absorb dissolved organic carbon from the water. There are hints that they can, and it makes sense that they can to at least some extent, given that they can utilize NO3 and PO4 directly from the water, but I haven't found proof.

Anyway, UV looks like a double-edged sword to me: it controls the dino population, but it may also help protect and nurture the survivors. I hope that's helpful.

And since you brought up UV, I did notice something in the thread that got me thinking...


01/27/2015, 05:09 AM #680
Montireef
Completely agree, Dennis, specially on this:

"unlike the predators, the dinos can encyst and wait for the predators extinction, and then grow to plague proportions without any biological controls"

Almost one month later I am spotting some ostreopsis cells on the microscope. They were gone, but now they are back.


01/27/2015, 10:19 AM #681
PorkchopExpress
Really? Is your UV still online?


01/27/2015, 01:52 PM #682
Montireef
I never switch it off

The possibility that dinos could evolve UV resistance should not be dismissed out of hand. Everyone knows that dinos have an extensive bag of biochemical tricks to work with, and the reason for this is that they have honkin' huge genomes. The smallest dino genomes are larger than our own, and the largest known have an order of magnitude more DNA base pairs than we do. Dinos seem to be DNA hoarders, and given that C. taxifolia -- the seaweed that ate the Mediterranean -- came out of an aquarium (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/algae/chronology.html), it's even crossed my mind that the invasive variant of O. ovata that's burning up the Med and the waters around Korea and Japan could have come out of a marine aquarium.

Molecular evidence for the aquarium origin of the green alga Caulerpa taxifolia introduced to the Mediterranean Sea
http://www.com.univ-mrs.fr/~boudouresque/Publications_pdf/Jousson_et_al_1998_MEPS.pdf

UV resistant dinos would be bad. Imagine UV resistant O. ovata adapting to the intertidal zone.

Just thought that should be on the table, that's all.


34 Cygni, thanks for shedding light on several difficult issues.

LOL. My pleasure. I hope I can help, though do bear in mind that the foe in our crosshairs is one of the three main primary producers responsible for generating most of the biomass in modern marine ecosystems, the other two being diatoms and coccolithophores (http://www.mbari.org/staff/conn/botany/phytoplankton/phytoplankton_coccolithophorids.htm). That's why Quiet_Ivy has 2" of dino goo on her glass (I am in awe of that, BTW -- never seen it that bad). We are hunting big game, here, and failure is to be expected.

I've for long suspected bacteria to be a big player when it comes to dinos, but for reefkeepers they are hard to track for several reasons so they don't get discussed much here unless it's cyanobacteria.

You're absolutely headed in the right direction. Bacteria are players in all algae outbreaks, directly or indirectly, but most algae don't eat the bacteria...


If I disrupt both the cyano and dinos. Dinos will settle in their usual spots first and then the cyano will settle on top.
It's like the cyano is seeking out the dinos. It could also be the dinos are attracting the cyano for their benefit

The dinos are creating a phosphorous-rich microenvironment to recruit cyano. This kind of thing is very, very, very ancient behavior among single-celled organisms -- the Earth's ecology consisted of nothing but single-celled organisms for billions of years, and the highest evolutionary form they reached was a bacterial mat, a sort of bacterial biofilm on steroids in which a layer cake of many different microorganisms grow one on top of the other, passing nutrients from layer to another in a more or less cooperative manner. Bacterial mats are now rare outside of unusual environments like hot springs and hypersaline pools, but you can still see an echo of Earth's ancient ecosystem in a Winogradsky column (http://archive.bio.ed.ac.uk/jdeacon/microbes/winograd.htm), or in Shark Bay, Australia (http://www.sharkbay.org.au/nature-of-shark-bay-stromatolites.aspx), or in the underlying microbiology of a deep sand bed.

Artificial Cyanobacterial Mats: Growth, Structure, and Vertical Zonation Patterns
http://bioold.science.ku.dk/mkuhl/pages/PDF/Fenchel%26Kuhl2000.pdf

Dinos also feed their "symbiotic" bacteria with simple organic carbon molecules that are like french fries for the bacteria -- not a lot of nutrition there, but a lot of calories. A lot of energy. All photoautotrophs seem to do this. When terrestrial plants are nutrient-limited, for example, they trade excess sugar generated by photosynthesis to fungi and bacteria in the soil in exchange for nutrients. Algaes do the same thing (http://www.sams.ac.uk/david-green/algal-bacterial-interactions) -- it's normal to find a few heterotrophic bacteria clinging onto the surface of individual phytoplankton cells, for example.


once this has taken place on the sand it can last for weeks. At least twice the end result has been a big reduction in dinos so one may think cyanobacteria to be a negative force on dinos.
On the last occasion on the other hand only few weeks ago the cyano left and didn't leave a dent in the dinos that have stayed at max densities since.

In my experience, the three-dimensional structures in which algaes present, whether it's a stringy mass of bubbly goo or a green shag carpet, are detritus traps to gather organic matter for their associated bacteria to break down, releasing nutrients that the algae needs. This, too, is an ancient strategy for gathering nutrients which was employed for billions of years by bacteria -- mature cyanobacterial mats, for example, are "phosphorous pumps" which trap so much detritus that even amidst a bunch of P-rich organisms like cyano and heterotrophic bacteria, there's excess PO4 generated by the bacterial decomposition of organic material. PO4 is practically insoluble in oxygenated seawater, so instead of being released into the water column, most of the excess PO4 diffuses out the bottom of the mat, into the anoxic water in the seafloor sediments.

Perhaps the cyano growing atop your ostis is sometimes able to collect enough detritus to contaminate the dinos' bacteria farm or attract other, hungrier protists and microfauna that quietly ate their way through the dino bloom.

Other possibilities that occur to me are that the cyano grew so thick and lush that it prevented the dinos from photosynthesizing effectively, or that the cyano produced toxins of its own and fought back. However, it seems unlikely that cyano would be able to shade out the dinos, as dinos (like all freshwater and marine algaes that I'm aware of) can adjust their photosynthesis machinery to work with less light. It also seems unlikely that dinos would recruit a species of cyano that could poison them -- behavior like that should be edited out of the species by evolution.

Thus, it appears that letting the cyano grow may be another backdoor route to "the dirty method", like Montireef's probiotic tea.


It seems like it's difficult for reefers and scientists to get the same results repeatedly or the dynamics and adaptations of the dinos are playing trics on us.
Most scientist admit they don't know enough and further studies to be needed.

That paper proposing that mixotrophic dinos obtain P from bacteria and N from cyano dates from 2010, and it's apparently the first time the idea was put in print -- or at least the first time the lead author of the paper was aware of it being put in print, as he used the phrase "I propose a possible mechanism". That was just 5 years ago. Think about it: we're about as close to the cutting edge of science as reefers are ever likely to get. If we finally have a viable mental model of what's going on, we finally have a chance -- maybe not a big one, but a chance just the same -- to think our way through this thing.


A natural dino bloom has been described to have a rubber band effect with the predators in tow.
The predators will always catch up and the bloom will reside.

Yes, that's broadly true of trophic relationships across all ecosystems at every level. Fluctuations in the population of bunnies will "rubber band" the populations of predators that feed on rabbits, for example, and the population of bunnies fluctuates in part because they're being "rubber banded" by the changing fortunes of the plants they eat (for example, less rain = less plants = less bunnies). An ecosystem can be viewed as a rat's nest of interlocking feedback loops with no true equilibrium point.


In my closed ecosystem there has been a constant mild bloom for years and predators have never got the upper hand.
Unfortunately this law of nature does not apply in my reef tank, but still my bloom has not exceeded mild for a long time.

It's the toxins that trouble me. Of course, GAC saves the day, and this hobby requires so many consumables already that what's one more? But I don't like to see hobbyists stuck on yet another treadmill, especially when an equipment failure could potentially cause real heartbreak, or even pose a health risk.


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.

Ecology and oceanography of harmful marine microalgae
https://www.terrapub.co.jp/e-library/nishida/pdf/nishida_023.pdf


I kept my skimmer running after pouring the skimmate in.

If Montireef confirms that his skimmer was off, I encourage you to try again, this time following the Montireef Protocol.

I understand your reluctance. Saltwater hobbyists are often brimming with energy, invention, and inquisitiveness, but at the same time the more deeply invested we are in our systems -- not just in terms of time and energy and money, but emotionally invested, as well -- the more conservative we become. We don't want to put at risk all that we have accomplished, to say nothing of livestock that we're proud of or sentimental about.

But I submit that if you're ever going to try it, now's the time.

Reason one: Your new LR and sand is probably still cycling. Maybe this is important, maybe it isn't. Let's worry about that later.

Reason two: You've made your corals, and in particular their zooxanthellic symbionts (...which are dinos, do bear in mind) very happy with all that nitrogen you've released into the system. Corals keep their symbionts nitrogen-limited to force them to pump out sugar, and as much as half of this sugar goes towards making mucous -- which sounds a little disgusting until you consider that mucous is the front line of coral's immune system. They secrete mucous to lift bacteria off their surface, and then release the mucous into the water, and the bacteria drift harmlessly away. Right now, your corals' symbionts are PUMPED! They've finally gotten the nitrogen they crave -- that's why they colored up. The corals may even have let them have enough nitrogen to multiply. With all those healthy, happy symbionts, your corals are in about as good a position to protect themselves from an onslaught of bacteria as they ever will be.

Reason three: If Montireef dosed with his skimmer off, then you've proven that the Montireef Protocol doesn't work with the skimmer on. That's useful information. The obvious next experiment to try is to test whether or not the skimmer really is the variable by dosing again with it off, and only you can do that experiment because it should be run in the same system under similar conditions.

Reason four: You've held this thread together, kept it on topic, and driven the discussion forward for TWO YEARS. You were the one who called everyone's attention to what Montireef did:

Did you miss the possible cure for Ostreopsis dinoflagellates?

Montireefs claims need to be repeated by several third parties.
He got rid of them with two kilos of fresh live rock and 2 liters of skimmate.
With donated tank water two more reefers got rid of them as well.
He's got videos to back up what seems to be microbes attacking the dinos.
He's identified his dinos with a microscope.

Drop your gut feeling and let's prove if this really works.

I ask you to accept your own advice.

Reason five: Curiosity. Just simple curiosity.

And, of course, if Montireef pops up and says, "I don't know what you're talking about, 34cygni -- my skimmer was on the whole time" then I wasted my time composing all that and will feel duly embarrassed. But that black snail poop... I just have a feeling his skimmer was off, and I'm willing to go out on a limb occasionally looking for the leverage to push the hobby forward another inch or two.

[karimwassef]

UV kills dinos and bacteria in the water column.
The dinos are free floating in the dark, but set up farms in the light.
The nitrifying bacteria are predominately not free floating. They're resident in sand beds and inside rock structures.

Every night, the dinos float kills them. The skimmer and nitrifying bacteria export/consume their remains. This strengthens the good bacteria.

I don't see UV as kill or cure with chance determining the outcome. The day/night transition in dino behavior determines the ultimate outcome.

[karimwassef]

As far as UV resistance, I'm sure dinos have had a few million years of the sun's UV C at their back.

As far as techie solutions, most of us are thankful that we have them. Modern medicine makes excellent use of them. So why not the reef? Good bacteria vs. bad bacteria is real, but so are the implements of hygiene and diet to promote the good.

[PorkchopExpress]

The possibility that dinos could evolve UV resistance should not be dismissed out of hand.

i believe that is the point where i am at...when i first purchased my 55w UV pond sterilizer, it took care of my dinos practically over night (34 gallon all in one - UV installed during a 3 day blackout)...for 6 months i did not see any dinos at all...after a move i purchased a new, bigger tank - 70 gallon with 30 gallon sump and since then i've seen dinos on 2 occasions...none of them got out of control, as soon as i saw them i sucked them up and immediately started feeding the tank like crazy to get NO3/PO4 up which has worked...at least for me the UV approach is no longer working by itself, it requires me dirtying up my water as well...i believe my dinos will lay dormant for some time and bloom at opportune moments...i don't believe i'll ever get rid of them and the next time they decide to bloom, the UV and dirty water may no longer work...i might have to take a poop in my aquarium at that point

[karimwassef]

You need to change the UV regularly if you're using continuously. As well as cleaning it.

[Quiet_Ivy]

I'm discouraged. My tank is in a holding pattern. I'm feeding phyto, and enough pellets/mysis for an imaginary clownfish. I have *maybe* 0.2 nitrates, undetectable phosphate (Salifert for both). Skimmer is producing 30mL to 60mL a week, set at max wet. (I'm collecting it in a bottle a la Montireef) There's no other algae. The dinos on the sandbed have been replaced by cyano. Or a mix. It's difficult to tell.

The dinos on the glass aren't going away. I get a white fog on the glass which eventually turns yellow and develops the odd spot pattern of dinos.

Where's the green algae? Diatoms? Anybody? Looking at my monthly tank shots I see that my sandbed is becoming less and less alive. There aren't any hair worms along the front at all anymore. No spaghetti worms in the sandbed. Pod population has come back to normal, and seems to hang out on the glass in the dinos. Sandbed is clumping into little hillocks, oddly.

I am very hesitant to add fish or inverts back as I don't really know what the toxin level is.

Advice? Suggestions?

Here's a sandbed pic. Can't really tell if that's dinos mixed in the cyano or what. The green isn't algae, it's a different strain of cyano. The blurry trio at the bottom center are green pods.

http://i1164.photobucket.com/albums/q561/Quiet_Ivy/28g%20Reef%20Tank/August%20pics/Aug%20reef%20pics%20001_zpsigzyllc8.jpg (http://s1164.photobucket.com/user/Quiet_Ivy/media/28g%20Reef%20Tank/August%20pics/Aug%20reef%20pics%20001_zpsigzyllc8.jpg.html)


Ivy

I'd really like to know what was going on in Montireef's cultured skimmate. Were conditions anoxic/anaerobic? Did the bottle contain the motherload of n-fixing bacteria? Or was it the protozoan predators?

Oh and the 2" coat of dinoflagellates was more neglect than severity of infestation. I had literally never heard of dinos being a problem in captive systems and assumed I was seeing normal algal sucession in a new tank. I'm a 'wait and see' aquarium keeper so I didn't panic until things started dying.

[karimwassef]

Have you considered planting a large mass of chaeto or grape caulerpa?

Maybe get a green hair algae rock from a local reef keeper or store?

I think my chaeto and DSB refugium was a strong contributor to my health during the recovery.

[Adrnalnrsh]

I would shut off the skimmer and raise phosphates otherwise green algae might not show up

I dose Brightwell NeoPhose so that I sit around 0.02 ppm. Otherwise Hanna URL says 0.000ppm

[Quiet_Ivy]

Have you considered planting a large mass of chaeto or grape caulerpa?
Maybe get a green hair algae rock from a local reef keeper or store?

I have a huge ball of chaeto taking over the right side of my tank. It's full of bristleworms! Ech. The rock sounds like a good idea. Only one LFS and they don't allow algae, but someone local must have killer algae.


I would shut off the skimmer and raise phosphates otherwise green algae might not show up

I dose Brightwell NeoPhose so that I sit around 0.02 ppm. Otherwise Hanna URL says 0.000ppm

I really go back and forth on the skimmer. On the one hand it's not doing much due to being crammed in the back of an all in one with fluctuating water levels. On the other hand, my tank is very deep and I know one of my pumps is flakey. It's probably oxygenating the water if nothing else.

Phosphate will surely come up with the mysis. I'd like to dose nitrate, but I can't find a reasonably pure form of it locally.

thanks for the advice
ivy

[Adrnalnrsh]

I'm feeding super heavy live and dead frozen food phosphates don't budge

Nitrates are still high

[dartier]

Phosphate will surely come up with the mysis. I'd like to dose nitrate, but I can't find a reasonably pure form of it locally.


Ivy, Seachem Flourish Nitrogen and Seachem Flourish Phosphorus can be used to adjust your NO3 and PO4.

If those are locally hard to get, you can mail order them from http://www.petsandponds.com/ or you can order dry fertilizers (in Canada) from http://www.theplantguy.org/. One order of dry fertilizers should last you a lifetime.

Dennis

[EvMiBo]

Thanks for your contribution 34cygni (among many others),
What a great read page 62 is.

[DNA]

Ivy.

My experience has told me that new fish don't do too good and often die within hours.
All my large fish are doing very well. Small pod eating fish less so. I'd not add any.

My advice if you want to add fish into the dino soup is to acclimate them to the toxins over a at least a month.
A fish may survive a much higher slowly increased dose than one just exposed to high toxic levels.

[Quiet_Ivy]

Ivy.

My experience has told me that new fish don't do too good and often die within hours. All my large fish are doing very well. Small pod eating fish less so. I'd not add any.
.

That's what I'm afraid of. I had a yellow clown goby who loved eating pelagic pods and he was an early casualty. Adding a fish would be an easy way to increase nutrients but I think it would be cruel to add a fish in just to be poisoned. No fish for me!
Thanks for the advice
Ivy

[Quiet_Ivy]

Ivy, Seachem Flourish Nitrogen and Seachem Flourish Phosphorus can be used to adjust your NO3 and PO4.

If those are locally hard to get, you can mail order them from http://www.petsandponds.com/ or you can order dry fertilizers (in Canada) from http://www.theplantguy.org/. One order of dry fertilizers should last you a lifetime.

Dennis

*major facepalm* Never thought to check online. I phoned all the feed stores locally and they offered me either 25kg bags or told me KNO3 is illegal.

I can only get Seachem's freshwater products locally, which all have copper and who knows what else.

Thanks! Off to place an internet order.
Ivy

[karimwassef]

I wonder what adding a large volume of nitrifying bacteria would do. Something concentrated like TurboStart900 would create a significant rebalance of bacteria.

[Dfee]

I feel that I'm very close to winning this battle, but need help to push them over the edge. All i have done is start to feed heavy, remove skimmer, and siphon them into my filter sock every day or every other day. Nitrates and phosphates still not registering on test kit (API, i know, i know.) They only seem to be on sand bed, especially where it meets up with the tank's glass. I'm running Pura Carbon in bag and BRS phosphate media in bag.

I'm not sure they are even still dino's anymore. But they do (very slowly) come back during the lights on period, over the coarse of a day or two.

Any help greatly appreciated. Last couple days of posts have been great.

I'm going to run over to my phone now and post some pics of what i have.

Oh yeah, one more thing, seem to have trouble growing coralline. Alk at 10, Calcium at 450, Mag at 1500

One more thing, I do have hair algae growing a bit on most rocks, thats why i just added phosphate media

Thanks

[Dfee]

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/18/48c893b729a8e06429abd75a81e8da69.jpg
This is today, last I siphoned was 24 hours ago

[Dfee]

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/18/5ea9a500c6d7d74a3523adf40040e3bd.jpg
This is if I leave it for about a week

[34cygni]

UV kills dinos and bacteria in the water column.
The dinos are free floating in the dark, but set up farms in the light.
The nitrifying bacteria are predominately not free floating. They're resident in sand beds and inside rock structures.

Every night, the dinos float kills them. The skimmer and nitrifying bacteria export/consume their remains. This strengthens the good bacteria.

I agree that UVS can effectively control a dino population, but it doesn't wipe them out, and some fraction of the DOC released when a dino (or any microorganism) is killed by UVS may be absorbed by the dinos' food bacteria. And some of it will go to feed bacteria we consider beneficial, as well. And some of it will be captured by still other bacteria, of which there are a great many in reef tanks. No one group of bacteria will have a monopoly on the DOC released by a UVS.

For some insight into the microbiology of coral reefs, I urge any interested reefer to read the book Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas (http://www.amazon.com/Coral-Reefs-Microbial-Forest-Rohwer/dp/0982701209) by Forest Rohwer (http://www.uctv.tv/shows/Coral-Reefs-in-the-Microbial-Seas-Perspectives-on-Ocean-Science-21703). It's accessible, engaging, and short, but it introduces readers to some hardcore science, and ULNS reefers may find some of what Dr. Rohwer has to say to be of particular relevance to their slant on the hobby.


I wonder what adding a large volume of nitrifying bacteria would do. Something concentrated like TurboStart900 would create a significant rebalance of bacteria.

It looks to me like heterotrophic bacteria are the foundation on which ostis build. These bacteria are rich in phosphorous. Dinos are P-rich organisms, as well, but less so than the bacteria, so there's excess phosphorous in their diet. This waste phosphorous is used to recruit cyano, which is also P-rich, but less so than the dinos. And now the dinos have access to P from the bacteria and N and Fe from the cyano. Sky's the limit.

I thought Montireef outcompeted the ostis' bacteria by triggering a minicycle when he added LR. A cycling bacterial biofilter is basically a series of overlapping bacteria blooms, during which nutrient demand is very high.

I agree that our best bet to outcompete the ostis is to outcompete their food supply with, as you put it, "a significant rebalance of bacteria". I'm looking for a bigger gun than just the nitrogen cycle bacteria, though...


as soon as i saw them i sucked them up and immediately started feeding the tank like crazy to get NO3/PO4 up which has worked

Don't forget DNA's cautionary tale:


I raise nitrates and it makes a considerable dent in the dinos.
Algae moves in and covers much of my rocks.
Dinos move back in and sit comfortably on top of the algae.
Cyano really gets going and covers the dinos.

You know, that's almost haiku...

I raise nitrates, it
makes a considerable
dent in the dinos.

Algae moves in
and covers much of my rocks.
Dinos move back in

Comfortably on
top. Cyano gets going,
covers the dinos.

So close! One line is a syllable short... Okay, so the bad news is that O. ovata is known to be epiphytic, which is Science for "it grows on algae". The point of that observation being that what you guys are seeing is normal behavior this organism exhibits in the wild, and it's another reason why ostis can never be outcompeted by algae.


...at least for me the UV approach is no longer working by itself, it requires me dirtying up my water as well...i believe my dinos will lay dormant for some time and bloom at opportune moments...i don't believe i'll ever get rid of them

Sorry the problem recurred in your new tank. Sorrier still to tell you that you're right: they will lay dormant for years, bloom at opportune moments, and you'll never be rid of them. Out in the real world, that's pretty much their job. Dinos are survivors. They have to be because they're a keystone of marine ecosystems, responsible for generating vast amounts of biomass, and an entire suite of organisms has evolved to take advantage of this food resource, and another to take advantage of the organisms taking advantage of it, and so on up the food chain.

Short of a miracle fix -- I like to imagine multiple high-speed micrographic video cameras at different angles localizing individual dinos, and a green laser blowing them apart (I bet dinos fluoresce at certain wavelengths, making them easy to see in the dark) -- all we can do is try to keep them in check.


the next time they decide to bloom, the UV and dirty water may no longer work...i might have to take a poop in my aquarium at that point

If "the clean method" really has stopped working for you and you're resorting to "the dirty method" with the UVS on, I can only guess that the UV is working against you by killing other protists and bacteria that circulate through the sterilizer. Perhaps that's why you have to let things go so far to make it work. Next time, consider taking the UV offline when you "go dirty", or perhaps turn the UV off during the "day" when the dinos are settled down to give other microorganisms a chance to move around. Be prepared for an explosion in the dino population -- this looks like it could be one of those "it's going to get worse before it gets better" situations. See if the dirty method works faster with UV only at night or with UV completely off. Then turn the UVS back on to slow the rebound of the dino population after you knock them back and tidy up. In theory, it's the best of both worlds. Food for thought, anyway.

Speaking of dinos developing resistance, though, it also crosses my mind that even if Montireef's probiotic power-up works, the dinos might be able to adapt to that, as well. The problem is that pretty much the same menagerie of microorganisms is going to be coming out of the skimmer every time, and the dinos may eventually find the right mix of toxins to repel them, or at least to repel the most rapacious species. But on the other hand, maybe some of the organisms in skimmate tea are heterotrophic dinoflagellates, and we're fighting fire with fire.


I'm discouraged.

I don't know if you were actually born there, but you are a true Canadian. I would be waaaay beyond discouraged at this point if I were in your shoes.


Where's the green algae? Diatoms?

Remember DNA's warning... You may be setting yourself up for disappointment if you dose nitrogen to grow green algae.


Looking at my monthly tank shots I see that my sandbed is becoming less and less alive. There aren't any hair worms along the front at all anymore. No spaghetti worms in the sandbed. Pod population has come back to normal, and seems to hang out on the glass in the dinos. Sandbed is clumping into little hillocks, oddly.

Yes, your sand bed appears to be dying. My guess is that the clumps are made by bacterial biofilm goo gluing the sand grains together (http://throughthesandglass.typepad.com/through_the_sandglass/2011/08/sunday-sand-grains-chains-and-biofilms.html). Your sand bed "clogged", meaning there's no longer enough infauna to turn the sand and break up the biofilm goo, and it crusted over. The crust somehow got broken up a bit, and now you have clumps.

Dinos killing a sand bed is interesting... How was yours set up? Did you follow Shimek's list of "DSB safe" livestock when stocking your tank? If not, what were your livestock choices, in particular for your sand bed CUC and your CUC in general? How long was your sand bed in place before your dino outbreak? Did you have the usual very low or undetectable N and P at the time of your outbreak, and if so was that normal for your system? Have you ever seen offgassing from your sandbed? If so, have there been more bubbles or fewer bubbles over time? Thanks for any information you care to share, and if anybody else has dinos and dead or dying sand, same questions. Sand is on my mind ATM.

Quiet_Ivy, if you intend to try probiotic dosing and want to try to turn your tank around -- and I'm guessing you do, as you haven't torn it down and started over -- I suggest you consider collecting skimmate from other hobbyists, as yours is coming in slowly, and your tank's ecosystem seems to have slid so far that you may lack some of the microfauna you're trying to cultivate. An infusion of new life at the bottom of the food chain would probably do your tank some good. And the sooner, the better.


I'd really like to know what was going on in Montireef's cultured skimmate. Were conditions anoxic/anaerobic?

No -- if you put it in a sealed container and it goes anaerobic, everything dies except anaerobic bacteria, which would then die in turn when dumped into oxygenated tank water. Not that you would be at all inclined to dump that reeking bottle of foulness into your tank...


12/31/2014, 03:13 PM #594
Montireef
Just place some GAC on your filter/mesh to remove the bad stuff and release the stinky waters back to the tank, I'm sure you will be surprised.


12/31/2014, 03:38 PM #597
Montireef
And this is the outcome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OeWIJrUzRoo&feature=youtu.be

No trace of ostreopsis ovata (probably the worst dinofalgellate I have ever come across) after a few days.

Which is not to say that it won't smell bad. I mean, y'know... Skimmate. Plus, a small anoxic zone will almost certainly develop among the larger bits of gunk that settle to the bottom, but this shouldn't be disturbed as a trickle of nutrients, in particular nitrogen, is coming out of it as the gunk decays, and this helps keep the system going as it "matures".


Did the bottle contain the motherload of n-fixing bacteria? Or was it the protozoan predators?

Remember where we stole skimming technology from: the wastewater treatment industry (but fair's fair: they got the idea from us in the first place (http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rv/feature/)). Skimmers excel at removing colloidal organic carbon, a squishy, somewhat nebulous intermediate phase between dissolved organic carbon (individual molecules floating around in water) and solid matter. The reason the wastewater treatment people were interested in such a thing, and the reason the technology came full circle and returned to the aquarium hobby in new and improved form, is that there's quite a bit of colloidal organic carbon in poo.

Bacteria love colloidal organic carbon, the fresher the better. It's solid enough for them to colonize, but soft enough that the enzymes they release can get into it and break down the individual molecules -- fragments of old proteins -- that it's made of into smaller pieces that the bacteria can consume. And where there are bacteria (and oxygen) there are things that eat bacteria, some of them single-celled and some of them multicellular...

Basically, I theorize that Montireef's reported success was the result of millions of these microscopic rafts of colloidal organic carbon, all of them carrying bacteria and perhaps also other hungry things, sticking to the dino mucilage and contaminating it with exactly the sort of organisms the dinos are trying to exclude. If so, it would reasonably follow that DNA's reported failures happened because he left his skimmer on and removed the colloidal organic carbon before it could do any good.

[34cygni]

So here's a fun science fact: dinos love sand.

Dinos are found in pretty much any sort of marine sediment, but sand is their favorite. I know people have tried removing sandbeds, and Squidmotron gave us this rather amazing report of his experience adding sand...


04/30/2014, 04:11 PM #206
Squidmotron

I just discovered something that is interesting. Since I have never heard this before in relation to dinos I thought I would pass it along.

Today I added about 15 lbs of pink somoa sand (not live) sand to my refugium. I was curious if there was any particular reason the dinos weren't growing much in my refugium and so thought to recreate the environment of the aquarium above. My refugium never had any substrate. Just caulerpa.

Within 4 hours, dino populations exploded. And I mean exploded. Dinos rose to much larger than normal heights in their usual spots and started covering all the rocks. The substrate began literally bubbling as new dinos formed (even in tank areas where I did not add sand).

(and yes, these are not diatoms -- as you might expect from the addition of sand -- although I wonder if there are both present)

Has anyone tried rejiggering their system so that there's no sand anywhere except in a cryptic tank or a cryptic remote deep sand bed? I'm wondering what happens to mixotrophic dinos and their cysts when the only sand they have access to is dark and full of hungry heterotrophs... And filter feeders like cryptic zones. Having some of them around couldn't hurt.

Like I said, I've been thinking about sand.

[PorkchopExpress]

@karim - the bulb in my UV was replaced @6 months and thoroughly cleaned.

@34cygni - my UV is on a timer - it turns on at 10pm and are on until 6am...i really only care about killing the dinos while they are free floating...having the UV on all day long also raises my water temp up 2 degrees and i don't have a chiller

also it's true, dinos definitely love sand and is probably another reason why my UV is no longer working alone anymore...before when i had the smaller tank and got dinos, i had removed the sand bed prior to installing the UV and they vanished almost overnight...in the new tank i have a good 2-3 inches of sand again and they aren't quite as easy to beat

i actually just got another bloom yesterday and now it's become apparent that every time i've had a bloom, the only thing i did the night before was dose Acropower amino acids...this time was no exception, i dosed a half a cap of Acropower and sure enough the next day i had a bloom...i remember when i first got dinos in the old tank i was dosing vinegar, Acropower, using chemicals like chemiclean to get rid of cyano - a whole bunch of stuff...i stopped everything except Acropower which i dose seldomly and now it appears if i dose too much of it i get a bloom

[Montireef]

The skimmate I dumped in the system was the full content of the collection cup after a couple of weeks working. It was warm and not anoxic since it was on a working skimmer blowing humid air all the time.

I put a drop from the bottom of the cup under the microscope to find lots of nematodes, cilliates of diferentes kinds, heterotrophic dinoflagellates (oxyhrris marina) and tons of bacteria (spiros and cocos). There was a whole ecosystem teeming with life.

[Quiet_Ivy]

So close! One line is a syllable short... Okay, so the bad news is that O. ovata is known to be epiphytic, which is Science for "it grows on algae". The point of that observation being that what you guys are seeing is normal behavior this organism exhibits in the wild, and it's another reason why ostis can never be outcompeted by algae.


DNA has a very sparse, poetic prose style. Also is there anything dinos can't do? So you're theorizing that the 'dirty' method works not because the green algae outcompete dinos for nutrients, but because there's a concurrent bacterial or microfaunal bloom which outcompetes the farmed dino-bacteria for food?

I don't know if you were actually born there, but you are a true Canadian. I would be waaaay beyond discouraged at this point if I were in your shoes.
Remember DNA's warning... You may be setting yourself up for disappointment if you dose nitrogen to grow green algae.

Lol I suppose we're a bit tough, Canucks. I wanted to set up a more complex ecosystem than is possible in freshwater, and learn Stuff. It's definitely been a learning experience, though mostly not a positive one.

I think DNA may have the same situation I do; severe lack of biodiversity very low in the food chain. Perhaps lower than is usual with dinos? I look at a lot of algae posts on the newbie forum, and nobody with out of control algae seems to have dinos. (That said there was someone on Reef discussion today with suspicious dinos-or-cyano). Several people have had sucess adding pods, which may indicate that their infestation hasn't nuked all the organisms below pods. My pods are actually doing well, I saw some of those snowflake hydroids and a couple of flatworms this morning.


Dinos killing a sand bed is interesting... How was yours set up? Did you follow Shimek's list of "DSB safe" livestock when stocking your tank? If not, what were your livestock choices, in particular for your sand bed CUC and your CUC in general? How long was your sand bed in place before your dino outbreak? Did you have the usual very low or undetectable N and P at the time of your outbreak, and if so was that normal for your system? Have you ever seen offgassing from your sandbed? If so, have there been more bubbles or fewer bubbles over time? Thanks for any information you care to share, and if anybody else has dinos and dead or dying sand, same questions. Sand is on my mind ATM.

It's not a true DSB as my tank is an all in one about 40cm square. Shimek recommended not trying dsb without a square foot of unobstructed sand, so I went with about 3cm sugar-sized oolite. It was started with dead sand, when I started the tank (also with dead rock) but I got cups of sand from 3-4 people. Begged some spaghetti, hair, bristle worms too. CUC was bristleworms, nassarius, cerith, astrea snails, a serpent star (he's still in there!), 1 red reef hermit (still alive too), collonista snails, 3 sexy shrimp. No snails/shrimp have survived.

I don't have an exact date for the outbreak but I see I noted "diatoms are back? some kind of algae?" around 1.5 months after the cycle finished. I've never had measurable nitrate in this system. Phos was .03 right after the cycle, dropped to zero once the diatoms kicked in and has been undetectable since. Which is ironic as I intended this to be a lagoonal biotope. Max diversity of lower life forms as they're interesting and not seen as much as say, a fish.

Well that biofilm explanation sounds reasonable although that's a really bad sign. I had been blaming the wildly fluctuating alkalinity I had for almost a month during the worst of the outbreak. (I can tell I'm about to get a breakout of dinos just by watching my alk drop. Interestingly, coralline algae has receded dramatically despite normal Ca and Mg levels)

I've been turkey-bastering cyano/dinos out so I break up the surface. I took out a 10cm square section because it looked anoxic. I see more bubbles along the front glass than when I started. Do you suggest deliberately stirring it? I've been leaving it alone except for picking dino/cyano out in the hope that the worms will come back.

I suggest you consider collecting skimmate from other hobbyists,

Now this is an interesting idea! Local reefers already think I'm mental; this should confirm it without a doubt. *g*


Basically, I theorize that Montireef's reported success was the result of millions of these microscopic rafts of colloidal organic carbon, all of them carrying bacteria and perhaps also other hungry things, sticking to the dino mucilage and contaminating it with exactly the sort of organisms the dinos are trying to exclude. If so, it would reasonably follow that DNA's reported failures happened because he left his skimmer on and removed the colloidal organic carbon before it could do any good.

Hm. I don't have the reference to hand, but AA mag did a study on carbon dosing and bacteria. They found that skimmerless tanks had bacteria counts close to authentic reefs while tanks with skimmers had 1/10th or less. What they didn't do was identify the bacteria. Are aquaria a monoculture? It seems they should be, closed system.

I'm still going back and forth on shutting my skimmer down.

I've been drafted into running my relative's house-farm-garden-zoo for 10 days so my tank will be very neglected. At least they have internet. :)

definitely learning
ivy

PS look at this! http://biopop.com/products/dino-pet A bioluminescent, dinoflagellate dinosaur. Says they used Pyrocystis fusiformis. Who is brave enough to order this and dump it into their tank??

[cal_stir]

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/18/5ea9a500c6d7d74a3523adf40040e3bd.jpg
This is if I leave it for about a week
I bet if you put that under the microscope you would see 90% diatoms and 10% dinos, you are close, you are at the stage where I started dosing pods+ from the algae barn and fresh phyto, which was the final nail in the dino coffin for me.

[Adrnalnrsh]

The skimmate I dumped in the system was the full content of the collection cup after a couple of weeks working. It was warm and not anoxic since it was on a working skimmer blowing humid air all the time.

I put a drop from the bottom of the cup under the microscope to find lots of nematodes, cilliates of diferentes kinds, heterotrophic dinoflagellates (oxyhrris marina) and tons of bacteria (spiros and cocos). There was a whole ecosystem teeming with life.



I've had my skimmer cup full for a few weeks with the skimmer off. Wonder if I should give it a try?!?!?!

[karimwassef]

UV + skimming = removed DOCs. It doesn't have to be a bacteria pump.

[34cygni]

The importance of dinoflagellates in aquatic communities is hard to overestimate. They are ubiquitous in marine and freshwater environments, where they constitute a large percentage of both the phytoplankton and the microzooplankton, and in benthic communities as interstitial flora and fauna or as symbionts in reef-building corals, other invertebrates and unicellular organisms (Taylor, 1987).

Emphasis mine. Translated from Science, that means both mixotrophic ("flora") and heterotrophic ("fauna") dinos like to live in the little gaps between sand grains. In all likelihood, Shimek's identification of the optimal size of sand grains to maximize biodiversity in DSBs and the subsequent adoption of "sugar sand" as a standard in the hobby means many of us are setting up ideal habitats for benthic dinos in our tanks.


4b. Trophic mode effect
The highest MGR [Maximum Growth Rate] of the HTDs [HeteroTrophic Dinoflagellates] is double the highest MGR of dinoflagellates growing autotrophically. Also, MGRs of small HTDs are much higher than those of similar sized ATDs [AutoTrophic Dinos]. Energy gain of small HTDs through feeding may be higher than that of small ATDs through photosynthesis. Also, enzymes involved in photosynthesis may lower MGRs of dinoflagellates and it is worthwhile exploring this topic. The range of MIRs [Maximum Ingestion Rates] of each HTD was 0.04-24.4 ng C per dinoflagellate per day, while that of each MTD [MixoTrophic Dinoflagellate] species was 0.03-7.0 ng C per dinoflagellate per day. Also, MIRs of HTDs were higher than those of similar sized MTDs (Fig. 5). Heterotrophic activity of HTDs (feeding and digestion) is likely to be higher than that of MTDs.

In other words, among planktonic species heterotrophic dinos eat more and grow faster than mixotrophic dinos. It's likely the same is true of benthic species. Perhaps we can recruit some to help us by providing them with a cryptic environment where they have the home court advantage.


Several of the cells followed in this study were likely to have been cysts. The various forms included: 1) non-motile vegetative-like cells, also called thecate cysts; 2) ecdysal cells with the same shape as vegetative cells, known as pellicle cysts; and 3) round to elongated thin-walled cysts. All of these forms were detected inside threads of mucous and were viable for more than 6 months after their formation, consistent with the suggestion that those cysts could constitute an overwintering population responsible for bloom recurrence. Interestingly, only the mucilage-covered cysts survived in the samples, suggesting that the mucilaginous matrix acts as a protective coat

Emphasis mine. This suggests that an environment rich in heterotrophic bacteria and microfauna would reduce the reproductive success of ostis depositing cysts there, as the protective mucous layer would be eaten away and the cysts exposed.

For solaris11 and anyone else at your wits' end, it's a simple idea that wouldn't be too difficult to investigate: dinos love sand, so can we use that to lure them to their death?


Molecular data and the evolutionary history of dinoflagellates
http://www3.botany.ubc.ca/keeling/PDF/04dinosJS.pdf

Growth, Feeding and Ecological Roles of the Mixotrophic and Heterotrophic Dinoflagellates in Marine Planktonic Food Webs
http://hosting03.snu.ac.kr/~hjjeong/Publication/OSJ%2045%2065.pdf

Life cycle stages of the benthic palytoxin-producing dinoflagellate Ostreopsis cf. ovata (Dinophyceae)
http://digital.csic.es/bitstream/10261/56377/1/HarAlg18_24_34_post_print.pdf



i actually just got another bloom yesterday and now it's become apparent that every time i've had a bloom, the only thing i did the night before was dose Acropower amino acids...this time was no exception, i dosed a half a cap of Acropower and sure enough the next day i had a bloom...i remember when i first got dinos in the old tank i was dosing vinegar, Acropower, using chemicals like chemiclean to get rid of cyano - a whole bunch of stuff...i stopped everything except Acropower which i dose seldomly and now it appears if i dose too much of it i get a bloom

Of course, you're well aware that vinegar is organic carbon -- bacteria chow -- but most hobbyists probably think of amino acids as a nitrogen supplement... In fact, amino acids are almost as small and easy for bacteria to absorb as sugar or vodka or vinegar. The difference is that while those are, as I said, basically french fries (high energy, low nutrition) amino acids are very nutritious french fries. Think of them as combining the energy of sugar with the nutrition of nitrogen (the "amino" in amino acids is derived from the same root as "ammonia").

The mental model we have is that dinos start out eating P-rich bacteria and use surplus P to recruit cyano, which provides the dinos with N. If dinos can absorb amino acids, little wonder dosing too much would trigger a low-level infestation to bloom -- you're basically doing cyano's job and saving the dinos the time and trouble of growing their own.

But as I said, I don't know for sure that dinos can absorb DOC from the water. I think it's a safe bet that they can absorb small DOC molecules including acetic acid, ethanol, and amino acids, as heterotrophic dinos can do that, and mixotrophic dinos evolved from heterotrophic dinos, and some mixotrophic dinos have evolved back into full-on heterotrophs. Strong circumstantial evidence, and your observations certainly add to it, PorkchopExpress. Thank you.


The skimmate I dumped in the system was the full content of the collection cup after a couple of weeks working. It was warm and not anoxic since it was on a working skimmer blowing humid air all the time.

I put a drop from the bottom of the cup under the microscope to find lots of nematodes, cilliates of diferentes kinds, heterotrophic dinoflagellates (oxyhrris marina) and tons of bacteria (spiros and cocos). There was a whole ecosystem teeming with life.

Glad to see you, Montireef, and thanks for this ingenious recycling tip!

So you dosed with fresh skimmate? Interesting. Some details must've gotten lost in the shuffle when I read through the thread, and somehow I got the impression that you had left it sitting for a week or two.

Can you confirm that you kept your skimmer off after you dosed your system? I really hope you did, as I have constructed a fairly elaborate theoretical structure on a foundation of black snail poop...


So you're theorizing that the 'dirty' method works not because the green algae outcompete dinos for nutrients, but because there's a concurrent bacterial or microfaunal bloom which outcompetes the farmed dino-bacteria for food?

I'm wondering if there's a synergy there that hobbyists can exploit. Ostis produce toxins to keep from getting eaten, and they ramp up their production of toxins to protect their bacteria farms as they begin to become victims of their own success and drown in the waste generated by their farms (many other dinos are sometimes toxic and sometimes not, so the idea that dinos modulate their toxin production to favor the growth and reproduction of their preferred food species might actually explain this strange variability seen in dino blooms both in the wild and in vitro). They're trying to hold off the effects of eutrophication, and the dirty method is all about eutrophy. Heavy feeding leads to the accumulation of decaying organic matter and rising nutrient levels -- that's almost a textbook definition of the phenomenon.

It's very tempting to make a connection between macro-scale eutrophication of an entire aquarium and the micro-scale eutrophication of dino mucilage. However, there's another dynamic at work here. Dinos evolved to have a competitive advantage in low nutrient conditions. Green algae evolved to have a competitive advantage when there's enough nitrogen available. That's why dosing inorganic nitrogen can tip a system from dinos to algae. The nitrogen generated by the dirty method should do the same thing.

And that's why I suggested to PorkchopExpress that he try the dirty method with his UVS off. If raising NO3 will tip a system from one type of primary production to another, will raising NO3 plus "dirt" (meaning organic detritus and all the associated microorganisms) tip it faster?


I wanted to set up a more complex ecosystem than is possible in freshwater, and learn Stuff. It's definitely been a learning experience, though mostly not a positive one.

That describes my entry point into the hobby very accurately, as well, though my subsequent learning experience has been on the whole more positive than not.


I think DNA may have the same situation I do; severe lack of biodiversity very low in the food chain. Perhaps lower than is usual with dinos? I look at a lot of algae posts on the newbie forum, and nobody with out of control algae seems to have dinos. (That said there was someone on Reef discussion today with suspicious dinos-or-cyano). Several people have had sucess adding pods, which may indicate that their infestation hasn't nuked all the organisms below pods.

Your intuition is correct, but to do that topic any sort of justice would require a long science lecture. Suffice to say that there's an unrecognized trophic level below the autotrophs -- the heterotrophic microbial detrivores -- that consists largely, though not entirely, of single-celled organisms that recycle nutrients from organic detritus. Without them, the photoautotrophs that we intuitively regard as the lowest level of the food chain would "starve to death" from lack of N, P, Fe, and other nutrients. This is why you sometimes hear organic gardeners talking about how they really grow soil, and the plants take care of themselves -- they're talking about feeding the detrivores in the soil that degrade organic materials and release nutrients for the plants.

The argument can be made that detritus is actually the very lowest trophic level on the food chain. Dead, inert organic matter from fish poo to driftwood. A certain fraction of biomass is made up of very large and complex proteins that resist degradation by enzymes -- which is basically how bacteria and fungi eat -- and this biomass is called "recalcitrant" organic carbon (...blackwater, and most minor discoloration of aquarium water in general, is recalcitrant organic carbon accumulating in the water, and at the opposite end of the spectrum are tiny, highly soluble, easily consumed molecules like sugars and amino acids that are called "labile" organic carbon). Dead biomass in general, and the recalcitrant fraction in particular, is generated faster than it can be recycled by the detrivores, with the excess being buried and processed geologically. This is the origin of fossil fuels, for example, and a 7000 year old deposit of "diatomaceous ooze" (mud consisting principally of the remains of dead diatoms) that accumulated at the bottom of an ancient freshwater lake in the Bodele Depression in Africa is the source of phosphorous-laden dust that sustains not only the Amazonian rainforest (http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100809/full/news.2010.396.html) once thought to the be "the lungs of the world" before research showed that most of the oxygen the trees produce by day is consumed at night by decaying detritus on the forest floor, but also cyanobacteria in the Atlantic Ocean that are the actual lungs of the world.

Okay, sorry -- I'm slipping into science lecture mode. I'll try to rein myself in. I know my posts are ridiculously lengthy, but the problem with trying to explain this stuff is that everything is connected to everything else. I can't explain any one thing without talking about how it fits together with other things because the very fact that it does fit together with other things is the reason why the one thing is worth talking about in the first place, and pretty much the entire world is connected to the oceans in profound ways stretching back billions of years, literally to the dawn of life itself. Moving on...

There's an ecological rule of thumb that as you move up the food chain, each trophic level has about 1/10 of the biomass as the one below it. But the very lowest levels -- the reservoir of detritus and the microbial detrivores feeding on it -- are even bigger than that because the transfer of nutrients up to the next trophic level isn't as efficient. Thus, though individually tiny, collectively the heterotrophic microbial detrivores represent more than an order of magnitude more biomass than Earth's autotrophs, and I believe them to be severely underrepresented in a typical aquarium.


My pods are actually doing well, I saw some of those snowflake hydroids and a couple of flatworms this morning.

Glad to hear your pods are hanging in there, but as I understand it, those snowflakes are actually part of the life cycle of small jellyfish -- I'm a pretend oceanographer, not a pretend marine biologist, so you'll have to ask somebody else for more information about them -- and of course flatworms are notorious pests in both FW and SW tanks. They're both indicators of a collapsed food web and a hypereutrophic environment. In other words, they're symptoms of how sick your tank is.


It was started with dead sand, when I started the tank (also with dead rock) but I got cups of sand from 3-4 people. Begged some spaghetti, hair, bristle worms too. CUC was bristleworms, nassarius, cerith, astrea snails, a serpent star (he's still in there!), 1 red reef hermit (still alive too), collonista snails, 3 sexy shrimp. No snails/shrimp have survived.

This is good news. I would have been worried if your dinos had killed a highly biodiverse, Shimek-compliant sand bed.

Since you have an interest in fostering diversity at the bottom of the food chain, I must tell you that you adopted the wrong approach to reach this goal. A Shimek-style sand bed is all about tiny creatures living in the sand and coming out at night to feed your corals, but it's compatible with only a very limited set of livestock in a DT, as other species will eat the tiny creatures. In order to get around this limitation and put sand beds in display tanks, hobbyists have adopted a set of larger creatures that physically stir up the sand with their movement. This approach is incompatible with Dr. Shimek's original vision, as these creatures -- stars are particular offenders -- eat the tiny creatures in the sand and destroy the biodiversity that DSBs were conceived to foster. The absence of tiny creatures and the relatively rapid and effective burial of organic detritus by infauna drives these sand beds towards hypereutrophy and a very high population of heterotrophic bacteria. And since it seems that having a bunch of heterotrophic bacteria around is how dino blooms get started...

Trends in the hobby seem to have converged to create systems that are tailor-made for dinos: ULN is their preferred competitive environment, we're providing what is probably the ideal sort of sand for organisms that love sand, and then we fill the sand up with detritus and bacteria. If you build it, they will come.

Though as Dfee's experience shows, dinos can thrive in coarser substrates with larger interstitial spaces, as well.


Do you suggest deliberately stirring it?

No. This is a bad idea in general -- it fixes nothing -- and you don't have a functioning CUC right now. Even skimmate dosing strikes me as potentially very risky with a tank as far gone as yours, but since the protists and nematodes in it are almost certainly bacteriovores and your sand is choked with bacteria and mucilage, it may be a risk worth taking. But remember what I said to DNA about the immune system of corals... The weaker your corals' symbiotes are, the weaker your corals' immune systems are.

If you wish to take action that's true to the original vision you had for your tank, consider converting to a Shimek-compliant sandbed. It could be your contribution to the thread: you've shown us dinos can kill a noncompliant shallow sand bed, but is the biodiversity of a proper Shimek sand bed a defense against them? Can you even get a diverse population of infauna established in a dino-infested tank with a sand bed that far gone? Those are interesting questions, and you can potentially answer both of them. Plus, it would be the perfect complement to what cal_stir is doing: he's working from the top down, trying to control dinos by increasing biodiversity in the water, while you'd be working from the bottom up, seeing if it's possible to control a dino outbreak from below with biodiversity in the sand.

Give it some thought.


I'm still going back and forth on shutting my skimmer down.

It's a carbon sink, so probably best to leave it on. And if those little snowflakes really are jellyfish, for sure best to leave it on. In fact, the skimmate you've collected may be contaminated with their remains, in which case you should pour it down the drain.


definitely learning

Me, too. That's largely the attraction the hobby holds for me -- I started out 5 or 6 years ago thinking DSBs and algae scrubbers were cool, and that was the beginning of a path that led me billions of years back in time. At this point, I even have a theory to explain the Ediacaran Fauna (http://austhrutime.com/ediacaran_fauna.htm) and the Cambrian Explosion (http://www.fossilmuseum.net/Paleobiology/CambrianExplosion.htm).

That's not particularly relevant to reefing (except for this possible survivor of the Ediacaran biota (http://www.microscopy-uk.org.uk/mag/artoct98/tricho.html)) but here's something that refeers should probably be aware of (https://www.sciencenews.org/article/tree-life-gets-makeover) given the bio-centric nature of the hobby.


I've had my skimmer cup full for a few weeks with the skimmer off. Wonder if I should give it a try?!?!?!

Montireef reported dosing 2 liters of skimmate into a 600 gallon system, one liter in the morning and the other at night. If my math is right, in imperial units that's the equivalent of 1 gallon of skimmate going into 1135.623 gallons of water, half a gallon in the morning and half a gallon in the evening, so call it a 1:1000 ratio and calculate your dosage accordingly. If you're uncertain, start with a smaller dose and see how everything reacts.

And everybody remember that we don't know if this works -- I may have constructed an elaborate, scientifically plausible theory to explain a one-off bit of random aquarium weirdness -- so if you try Montireef's probiotic anti-dino skimmate dosing, please report your results.

[Adrnalnrsh]

Montireef reported dosing 2 liters of skimmate into a 600 gallon system, one liter in the morning and the other at night. If my math is right, in imperial units that's the equivalent of 1 gallon of skimmate going into 1135.623 gallons of water, half a gallon in the morning and half a gallon in the evening, so call it a 1:1000 ratio and calculate your dosage accordingly. If you're uncertain, start with a smaller dose and see how everything reacts.

And everybody remember that we don't know if this works -- I may have constructed an elaborate, scientifically plausible theory to explain a one-off bit of random aquarium weirdness -- so if you try Montireef's probiotic anti-dino skimmate dosing, please report your results.




I should point out that I have drained some of my skimmer cup into a 12 oz water bottle and have been pouring a little bit of it every few days.


I also added 3 new fish about two weeks ago to increase my bioload - so far so good with them.

Also I've rebuilt most of my cleanup crew and so far only one snail death.

I have what appears to be diatoms and early stages of green algae all over my glass, frag racks and skeletal remains of corals were tissue is missing. Even on corals that are still alive.

Last but not least, many of my corals have started coloring up.

[DNA]

Dinos do like sand and you can use that to remove a lot of them.
The problem is that dinos will repopulate the sand in hours.
If you repeat this every day the end result will still always be as you did nothing at all.

I've taken cleaning to the edge twice and it will only add to the frustration.
Siphoning Ostreopsis out will not accomplish anything in the long term.
An exception could be with extreme blooms were dinos are smothering corals.

If you don't have any sandbed, dinos will simply settle on the rocks instead.
Don't forget that there are dinos in the water column as well.
It's just we see them so well on the sand and it's from there we estimate how they are doing.
Talking about illusions you can half or double you dinos by going from 5K>20K<5K Kelvin lights.

---

Here in Iceland are less than 50 reefers and I've heard none of them is able to keeps SPS healthy and they tend to end up dead.
From the photos they post it looks like almost all of them have dinos. The LFS included.
They are in denial or don't have a clue about what is going on. Same goes for the rest of the reefers in the world so it's normal.

There is only one exception, a reef on the opposite of the scale. An outgrown SPS tank where unicorns and rainbows live.
I imported seeded live rock from that tank earlier this year without success.

---

On saturday I'll give my skimmate another try.
I'll dump a week of collection back in over a few hours.
If the fish don't seem to mind I'll pour all of it in and keep the skimmer off.
More GAC will be used since I fear the toxic levels will raise.

[karimwassef]

Tell us about this rainbow and unicorn tank. What does he do differently from the rest of you?

[Adrnalnrsh]

Dinos do like sand and you can use that to remove a lot of them.
The problem is that dinos will repopulate the sand in hours.
If you repeat this every day the end result will still always be as you did nothing at all.

I've taken cleaning to the edge twice and it will only add to the frustration.
Siphoning Ostreopsis out will not accomplish anything in the long term.
An exception could be with extreme blooms were dinos are smothering corals.

If you don't have any sandbed, dinos will simply settle on the rocks instead.
Don't forget that there are dinos in the water column as well.
It's just we see them so well on the sand and it's from there we estimate how they are doing.
Talking about illusions you can half or double you dinos by going from 5K>20K<5K Kelvin lights.

---

Here in Iceland are less than 50 reefers and I've heard none of them is able to keeps SPS healthy and they tend to end up dead.
From the photos they post it looks like almost all of them have dinos. The LFS included.
They are in denial or don't have a clue about what is going on. Same goes for the rest of the reefers in the world so it's normal.

There is only one exception, a reef on the opposite of the scale. An outgrown SPS tank where unicorns and rainbows live.
I imported seeded live rock from that tank earlier this year without success.

---

On saturday I'll give my skimmate another try.
I'll dump a week of collection back in over a few hours.
If the fish don't seem to mind I'll pour all of it in and keep the skimmer off.
More GAC will be used since I fear the toxic levels will raise.


GAC, Prodibio (bio-clean) were some of the things i were running before my dinos exploded.

Haven't put back or used since.

[Adrnalnrsh]

Tell us about this rainbow and unicorn tank. What does he do differently from the rest of you?


I'd love to see pics too.....

[karimwassef]

I don't think GAC can contribute to the dino soup's health.

When I first got dinos, my LFS recommended I dump a couple of gallons of concentrated bacteria in there... I didn't take him seriously.

I figured he just wanted to sell me something.

[DNA]

What does he do differently from the rest of you?

No contact to local livestock.
I think that's it.

The rock he kept for me for two months that didn't help with my tank hints his tank does not have anything magical that controls dinos.

[Dfee]

This has been tried already right?: if I move all livestock to another tank and get new live rock, sand, and water, will that work? And put all livestock back in?
I gave my anemone to my lfs cause he kept moving around when I got Dino's. I told him about my Dino problem but he wasn't concerned cause he said it's the systems problem and wouldn't spread to his. That was two months ago
But I seem to remember someone trying this and they came back

[cal_stir]

I should point out that I have drained some of my skimmer cup into a 12 oz water bottle and have been pouring a little bit of it every few days.


I also added 3 new fish about two weeks ago to increase my bioload - so far so good with them.

Also I've rebuilt most of my cleanup crew and so far only one snail death.

I have what appears to be diatoms and early stages of green algae all over my glass, frag racks and skeletal remains of corals were tissue is missing. Even on corals that are still alive.

Last but not least, many of my corals have started coloring up.
Your results are very promising IMO, I believe the green algae actually out competes the dinos for space, my diatom bloom lasted about 5 weeks which was longer than when I originally cycled my tank.
I am 10 weeks dino free, dirty method, Ostreopsis Ovata.

[Adrnalnrsh]

I don't think GAC can contribute to the dino soup's health.

When I first got dinos, my LFS recommended I dump a couple of gallons of concentrated bacteria in there... I didn't take him seriously.

I figured he just wanted to sell me something.
I just basically refuse to do what I was doing before and GAC would be counter intuitive for me at this point for me.

[Adrnalnrsh]

Your results are very promising IMO, I believe the green algae actually out competes the dinos for space, my diatom bloom lasted about 5 weeks which was longer than when I originally cycled my tank.
I am 10 weeks dino free, dirty method, Ostreopsis Ovata.
Thanks I'm actually shocked to see a difference in my corals already.

You know what that's a great point about the diatoms lasting so long . Usually durong a cycle diatoms only lasts a week or so. Normally when I've cycled a tank it switches from diatoms to green algae in a week or two.

[karimwassef]

No contact to local livestock.
I think that's it.

The rock he kept for me for two months that didn't help with my tank hints his tank does not have anything magical that controls dinos.

So I think it is not a magical 'thing' in his system. It is his system.

If you take a dino infested rock and put it in his tank, they would starve and die. He wouldn't get sick because he has a healthy robust system - bacteria on up...

It's also why tank transplants don't work unless the new tank is biologically mature and ready to take the hit.

[Billybatz9]

I have read a lot on this thread and am battling dinos myself. It seems that there isn't much to do about this pest. If anything has worked for you? Do you mind sharing your thoughts for me please. I am at the last straw before I tear my tank down.

[Adrnalnrsh]

I have read a lot on this thread and am battling dinos myself. It seems that there isn't much to do about this pest. If anything has worked for you? Do you mind sharing your thoughts for me please. I am at the last straw before I tear my tank down.
The last 10-20 pages are pretty much the blueprint

[Billybatz9]

The last 10-20 pages are pretty much the blueprint

The only thing I pretty much got was too purify the water (super clean) or dirty it up (mass dosage of phyto daily with copepods). What did you do that worked?

[Quiet_Ivy]

Quick reply, as this computer is ridiculously outdated and the keyboard is how-you-say..fubared.

@ Cygnis: Interesting papers! 2 quotes:

Therefore, in MIRs and MCRs of the predators on MTDs,
the general sequence was copepods > large ciliates = the
larvae of benthos > small ciliates = HTDs.

Therefore, each MTD may have a different
ecological niche from that of other MTD species. These
different ecological niches..

-end quote


-People adding copepods are probably doing the right thing. They are the most efficient predator on dinos.
-Most (if not all) dinos are actually mixotrophic and can probably switch modes under stress like the aquarist turning the lights off
-Ostreopsis cysts can survive for 6 months! That is worse than ich
-Different species of dinos may occupy different ecological niches, so interventions may be targeting the wrong thing
-Many dinos feed on heterotrophic bacteria. (and cyano) But they also mention bacterial predation on dinos, especially Ostr cysts.

I also had the impression Montireef was saving skimmate in a separate bottle. Whoops! I did wonder about temperature.

Sand bed- I am away from my books but I am sure an Authority :) (Calfo or Fenner in Reef Inverts possibly) said dsb wouldnot work in a tank under 2 square feet. I originally decided against trying it because I do not have access to real live sand or detrivore kits or really good live rock and just dumping dry sand does not a dsb make. Thus the non dsb friendly livestock. Nobody local has a dsb (or they are keeping it a secret) Trend here is very very much Berlin style, ulns, biopellets type systems.

-The bacterial clumping is worrying. I have only euphyllia frags and a rock flower anemone in the tank; they should actually enjoy a bacterial snowstorm. Bristle worms are being lazy, they should be cleaning it up for me!

Eutrophication is actually my goal-many infauna have direct reproduction. Flatworms are the harmless acoel type, not planaria. Hydroids are jellies yes but not too worried about them. I am trying to reproduce what happens during the initial cycle without actually boosting ammonia. I hope to see a sucession of organisms, putting dinos in their place. I have undetectable N and P STILL.

I am feeding 5mL of phyto and 5 NLS teeny pellets daily, and a third frozen mysis weekly to the anemone.

better response when I am at a keyboard that actually works,
Ivy

[Quiet_Ivy]

This has been tried already right?: if I move all livestock to another tank and get new live rock, sand, and water, will that work? And put all livestock back in?
I gave my anemone to my lfs cause he kept moving around when I got Dino's. I told him about my Dino problem but he wasn't concerned cause he said it's the systems problem and wouldn't spread to his. That was two months ago
But I seem to remember someone trying this and they came back

If you do this, I would wait until your new system is very very well established. And not ulns, either. Some dinos can infect fish, and some make cysts which could travel in on an invert or coral. I suspect coral dips do not kill dinos.

hth
ivy

[karimwassef]

Here's my recipe
Get a UV sterilizer and run it slow whenever your tank is dark.
Run your skimmer 100% when dark.
Remove filter socks (they're breeding traps while they're free floating)
Start with three days light off.
Add pods and fresh live rock (in the dark).
Feed your fish more frequently, but don't add waste.
Add a refugium with a fast flow chaeto zone and a no flow cryptic zone. Seed with pods.
Refresh GAC

I also did other things that I don't think we're very effective...
Increased alkalinity.
Made water changes.
Removed them from the rock.
Used H2O2... This helped a little but the UV does the same.

Things I would stay away from...
Any chemicals that kill algae or bacteria in bulk.
Any heavy duty phosphate removers like Lanthanum Chloride.
Mixed on GFO- I'd take it offline.

[cal_stir]

I have read a lot on this thread and am battling dinos myself. It seems that there isn't much to do about this pest. If anything has worked for you? Do you mind sharing your thoughts for me please. I am at the last straw before I tear my tank down.
Sorry for the long post but...
First let me say I used algaeX to try to rid my bubble algae, HUGE mistake, it TOTALLY DECIMATED my micro fauna and brought on my dinos.
My params were stable, ca 420, alk 9 dkh, mag 1350, po4 and no3 undetectable.
Still have some bubble algae.
In the early days when infestation was heavy, I blew off corals and rocks daily and siphoned the sand bed through a 100 micron filter sock, ceased water changes, doubled my carbon, slowly raised alk to 12dkh, ran a turbo twist 12 36w uv (200 gal system) ran 100 uM socks on drains, supplemented bacteria(not sure if it helped), did 4 days lights out(did not help)did 4 days lights out and dosed h2o2 1ml/10g (did not help), reduced photo period(did not help), Skimmed heavy and wet, got a microscope and id'ed my dinos as Ostreopsis Ovata.
After @ 4 months and lots of research, I got 10uM filter socks for drains(ostreopsis @ 40uM), started siphoning sand and pumping water back in through a 5uM sediment filter, slowly put my photo period back to normal, stopped dosing bacteria(couldn't tell if it helped or hindered).
Was still blowing of rocks every couple days which by now was just a brown film that did not blow off well but could be wiped off, but corals were not really affected, mostly sand bed and brown film on glass that needed to be cleaned every few days.
After about 8 months, totally discouraged thinking I can't even give my livestock away with contaminating someone else system I stood over my sump in the next room with a bottle of bleach and contemplated getting out of the hobby for good.
I'm glad that I didn't do it.
After about 8 months I decided that since it likes the sand so much then the sand must go, I sucked it out over a 2 week period still filtering the water and still no water changes, I noticed that ca, alk and mag were rising all the time and by now I was dosing less than half as much alk, less than a quarter as much ca and had stopped dosing mag.
Continued blowing the rocks every other day and was having to clean the brown film on the glass daily.
The film on the sand and rocks was mainly dinos but the film on the glass was mainly diatoms with dinos.
My coraline algae was receding all the time.
I now decided I needed to rebuild my micro fauna as there was not so much as a single pod to be found. I decided to go "dirty" like the tank would have been when I first cycled it with real live rock and no shortage of diversity.
I shut off the uv, skimmer, gfo, carbon. Got 1200 amphipods pods from reef2go, got pods and phyto from the algae barn, copepods from get your pods, got crabs, snails, pods and pods+ from reef cleaners, got brittle stars, amphipods, spaghetti worms, bristle worms and sand activator Indo pacific sea farms.
I got phyto cultures from florida aqua farms and started culturing phyto, I got copepods from live aquaria and started culturing them, and I started culturing amphipods.
In the beginning there was attrition, I saw dead amphipods floating through the water column and lost some snails and crabs but don't know if it was the dinos. I started dosing phyto 200ml 4x a day. After about 3 weeks of no skimmer, carbon, gfo, uv, and feeding a little heavier green micro algae started to appear on the glass(still mostly brown but they did not occupy the same space) and hair algae on the back glass(which I let go for about a week then scraped off) and cyano on rocks and bottom, and now po4 @ .03 and no3 @ 3, I restarted my skimmer, started 1/2 carbon, started dosing lanthanum chloride to control po4 and dug my sulfur denitrator out of storage to control no3.
I continued this way for a few weeks and the brown film receded from the rocks and coraline algae started to grow, green micro algae had taken over the glass completely and was growing a crop daily, cyano was growing mats which I controlled by sucking it up with a turkey baster but always left some.
It's now about 6 to 8 weeks since I went dirty(should have kept a better log) and there are no signs of dinos, I decided to chemiclean the cyano away as per instructions.
Started doing regular water changes again and deemed myself dino free the first week of June.
Slowly installed a new sand bed (caribsea seafloor special) and lowered my alk back to 9 dkh, have been increasing my dosing and am back to pre dino levels.
Got some film showing up on new sand but only diatoms and algae present, I cut back the phyto to 100ml 4x a day.
Diatom bloom lasted about 6 weeks, coraline algae growing like a champ.
Tank looks beautiful and livestock well, still dosing copepods and amphipods from my cultures and running normal amount of carbon.
Po4 did increase from phyto to .05 but am slowly bringing it back down to .03, no3 is 4 ppm.
The diverse micro fauna/plankton was the key but the phytoplankton was the nail in the coffin IMO.

[34cygni]

Here in Iceland are less than 50 reefers and I've heard none of them is able to keeps SPS healthy and they tend to end up dead.
From the photos they post it looks like almost all of them have dinos. The LFS included.
They are in denial or don't have a clue about what is going on. Same goes for the rest of the reefers in the world so it's normal.

There is only one exception, a reef on the opposite of the scale. An outgrown SPS tank where unicorns and rainbows live.
I imported seeded live rock from that tank earlier this year without success.

So I think it is not a magical 'thing' in his system. It is his system.

Things I would stay away from...
Any heavy duty phosphate removers like Lanthanum Chloride.
Mixed on GFO- I'd take it offline.

After 6 months dealing with ostreopsis and amphidinium, here are my findings:
...
- They can be easily triggered by a drop in PO4, specially when rapid.
...
I have no doubt as well that the use of PO4 resins like Phosguard are one of the triggering factors when talking about dino blooms. Every time I have used it I have noticed an increase in ostreopsis and amphidinum.

11/24/2014, 06:15 PM #449
LelandF.
Ive been in this hobby a very long time, and I honestly can't remember many people having problems with, or having dinoflagellates at all in the past. What has changed to allow dinoflagellates to thrive in our tanks? GFO was not used then, and I'm wondering if using too much GFO and having ultra low nutrient levels in our tanks are giving the dinos everything they need to thrive, since there seems to be a very common problem with them in the last 10 years.

Trends in the hobby seem to have converged to create systems that are tailor-made for dinos: ULN is their preferred competitive environment, we're providing what is probably the ideal sort of sand for organisms that love sand, and then we fill the sand up with detritus and bacteria. If you build it, they will come.


So what do we do about this?


-People adding copepods are probably doing the right thing. They are the most efficient predator on dinos.
...
Eutrophication is actually my goal-many infauna have direct reproduction. Flatworms are the harmless acoel type, not planaria. Hydroids are jellies yes but not too worried about them. I am trying to reproduce what happens during the initial cycle without actually boosting ammonia. I hope to see a sucession of organisms, putting dinos in their place. I have undetectable N and P STILL.

04/14/2015, 01:29 PM #948
Montireef

I still have some ostreopsis visible only the microscope. I am fostering further biodiversity and getting a lot of micro critters by dosing big amounts of phytoplankton and aminoacids (copepods, snails, amphipods, tube-worms...). I dose 100 ml phytoplankton per day (nanochloropsis, Isochrysis and tetraselmis) with a peristaltic pumps in a very linear way (a squirt every hour).

The first days I got a little spike of dino-snot but now it seems to have come to a balanced situation and ostreopsis is clearly vanishing even in full sun light and doing WC.

Never got better results and so easily. I bet it is a matter of time to fully get rid of this pest.



04/20/2015, 02:11 PM #968
Montireef

Quote:
Originally Posted by yeldarbj
If you want a permanent solution, then I'd suggest nutrients, nutrients, nutrients. I've been skimmerless for 10 months now and dino free (ostreospsis) for 8 months. I run a small home made algae turf scrubber for filtration and have a full sps tank. Algae is your friend and the dino's enemy.

I agree, if I switch on my skimmer I get a dino bloom a few days later.
Now I am dosing KNO3 and everything looks better. I have no algae anyway, not even the smallest one, they just don't thrive although my big tank (600 gal) sits in the sun (it is outside the house).


04/22/2015, 01:41 AM #975
Montireef

After 6 months dealing with ostreopsis and amphidinium, here are my findings:

- Some dinos are almost always in our tanks, they just don't thrive (amphidinum). Others are caught.
- They can be easily triggered by a drop in PO4, specially when rapid.
- The best way to deal and get rid of them is competition. Foster other forms of life, specially algae that needs some PO4 to thrive. If you are lucky you can get other kind of dinoflagellates like oxyhrris marina and beat them very fast.
- Some kind of them form cysts and therefore are really difficult to get rid of. They can disappear for months and suddenly show up again if conditions are favorable.
- Stong flows help them spread and make the problem worse.
- Nutrient depletion slow them down but won't help on the long run. It is better to foul the water slowly increasing feedings and stopping waterchanges, this is food for dinos, but also for competitors that eventually will suffocate them.

As an example of this I am succesfully getting rid of ostreopsis by dosing large amounts of phytoplankton. No algae at all and water is pristine; NO3 and PO4 are still undetectable but high enough to permit other forms of life like copepods, worms, amphipods...



05/01/2015, 05:05 AM #1014
Montireef

I am sure now.
After six months and five ostreopsis blooms the best strategy to fight these dinos is just foster other living forms.

A month ago I started dosing phytoplankton gel on a 120 ml/day basis (split in 24 doses with a peristaltic pump to avoid nutrient peaks and maintain a constant amount over time). Two weeks later I started to see thousands of pods, little snails, worms...and no algae at all. NO3 and PO4 tests keep at undetectable levels thought the heavy phytoplankton feeding (because all the new critters keep up with it and nothing is being accumulated). These pods and snails ate ostreopsis clumps like crazy and now my 600 gal system is dino and algae free, thousands of copepods, red planaria, collonista snails...even trochus snails are breeding (I have seen some baby trochus).

Other thing that helped me a lot was switching off the skimmer.

I have no doubt as well that the use of PO4 resins like Phosguard are one of the triggering factors when talking about dino blooms. Every time I have used it I have noticed an increase in ostreopsis and amphidinum.

My tanks sit in the sun, in Spain. I was concerned about the increase of light and rise of temperatures now in spring time. But I still don't see any dinoflagellates anywhere.

I will keep dosing phytoplankton but I will lower down the dose to 80 ml/day

Po4 did increase from phyto to .05 but am slowly bringing it back down to .03, no3 is 4 ppm.
The diverse micro fauna/plankton was the key but the phytoplankton was the nail in the coffin IMO.


Meanwhile...

Trend here is very very much Berlin style, ulns, biopellets type systems.

Quelle surprise.

I know you guys started out looking for a fix for dinos, but has it occurred to any of you that you've basically concluded that ULNS reefing is a dead end?

[34cygni]

-People adding copepods are probably doing the right thing. They are the most efficient predator on dinos.

And you can't argue with success. But rather than culturing and dosing pods, in the long run wouldn't it be easier to build the capacity for generating pods into our systems? If biodiversity is the fix for dinos, we should be considering how to make our systems naturally more biodiverse, and since biodiversity is known to correlate with habitat diversity... Fuges, cryptic zones, Shimek-compliant RDSBs, even waterfall algae scrubbers are pod generators -- we have multiple ways to do this and at least one should be probably be incorporated into any system.

And corals eat pods, so this looks killing two really big, colorful birds with one stone.


-Most (if not all) dinos are actually mixotrophic and can probably switch modes under stress like the aquarist turning the lights off

Yes, this is something I avoided bringing up for fear of making my posts even longer. Scientists used to think some dinos were hetetrotrophs, some were mixos, and some were autos, but literally dozens of species believed to be autotrophs have been shown to be mixotrophic in the last 20 years, and now the consensus is that there's probably no such thing as an obligate photoautotrophic dinoflagellate, though of course it's a big ocean and one may yet turn up. And some hobbyists have reported success with blackouts -- it doesn't work with ostis, but other species may be more dependent on the autotrophic part of their metabolisms than they are -- so I didn't want to open that can of worms.

A lot of heterotrophic dinos have shown the ability to acquire plastids (the organelles in a cell where photosynthesis happens) from several different kinds of algae. But it's incorrect to say that all dinos are mixotrophic because of this -- heterotrophic species that evolved from mixotrophic dinos are known to be biologically unusual because they've jettisoned their plastids entirely (though as noted, they sometimes steal new ones from their prey). AFAIK, no other organism is known to have done this. Instead, the normal evolutionary path is for ex-mixotrophs to retain the tiny, withered, sometimes very difficult to identify remains of their plastids because they've been repurposed to serve some other biological function.

In any case, heterotrophic dinos that have acquired plastids are not truly mixotrophic. They're using the plastids to generate sugar to feed their still fully heterotropic metabolisms. As you said, they can switch modes under stress -- when food is scarce, acquiring plastids would be a logical survival strategy for a heterotrophic dino. When food is plentiful, they can eject or digest the plastids to save themselves the metabolic cost of maintaining them.


-Ostreopsis cysts can survive for 6 months! That is worse than ich

Glad you reported that and not me... I didn't want to be responsible for putting the idea out there that once you're past the six month mark, you're done with ostis. It's too good to be true.

That O. ovata doesn't make resting cysts capable of hatching and triggering a bloom years later seems like wishful thinking. Maybe it's true -- I hope so! -- but I wouldn't want to wager on it.


-Different species of dinos may occupy different ecological niches, so interventions may be targeting the wrong thing

Dinos have three known strategies for eating stuff: some of them ingest food, which limits their diet to stuff small enough to fit in their "mouths"; some of them have a sort of membrane that they exude and use to engulf prey larger than themselves, trapping prey organisms inside what amounts to an external stomach that fills up with digestive enzymes and dissolves them; and some of them jab a feeding tube into their prey and suck out their insides (some of these dinos are parasitic and can even attach themselves to fish).


-Many dinos feed on heterotrophic bacteria. (and cyano) But they also mention bacterial predation on dinos, especially Ostr cysts.

Pods eat dinos, but we need bacteria to eat their cysts -- perhaps that's the key to Montireef's and cal_stir's success stories. Phyto feeds pods, pods eat dinos; the dirty method (or skimmate dosing) feeds bacteria, bacteria eat dino cysts. That looks like an effective biological control strategy to me!

The risk of losing their cysts is doubtless another reason ostis use their toxins to prevent the growth of unwanted bacteria. I would wager that their preferred food bacteria rarely, if ever, attack their cysts, at least not while they're protected by a coat of mucilage.


After about 8 months, totally discouraged thinking I can't even give my livestock away with contaminating someone else system I stood over my sump in the next room with a bottle of bleach and contemplated getting out of the hobby for good.
I'm glad that I didn't do it

Dude -- I suspect the entire hobby is glad you didn't do it. They just don't know it yet.

[34cygni]

This is from back on page 62...

Corals keep their symbionts nitrogen-limited to force them to pump out sugar, and as much as half of this sugar goes towards making mucous -- which sounds a little disgusting until you consider that mucous is the front line of coral's immune system. They secrete mucous to lift bacteria off their surface, and then release the mucous into the water, and the bacteria drift harmlessly away.

I can't edit that post, so here's a correction in the interest of accuracy:

Corals keep their symbionts nitrogen-limited to force them to pump out sugar, and as much as half of this sugar goes towards making mucous -- which sounds a little disgusting until you consider that mucous is the front line of coral's immune system. They secrete mucous to lift bacteria off their surface, and the coral polyps (or sometimes the CUC) will eat the mucous to ingest the bacteria. If a coral is under serious threat, it can detach the mucous in hopes that the pathogenic bacteria will drift harmlessly away.

[karimwassef]

ULNS is terrible. It's torture on the life we keep.

I don't think anyone intentionally here started there...

[cal_stir]

ULNS is terrible. It's torture on the life we keep.

I don't think anyone intentionally here started there...
It was never my intention to be ULN, I inadvertently got there trying to get rid of bubble algae, it seems that most hobbyists these days believe po4 and no3 should be 0 and strive for that. I guess I got caught in it because whenever you talk algae you talk about too much nutrients and when you talk about too much nutrients you talk about po4 and no3.
The bubble algae I have left is slowly receding and my po4 .05 and no3 4 ppm, I attribute that to me carefully siphoning it out without breaking the bubbles and releasing the spores.
I wonder if the plankton is helping with the bubble algae, it could be feeding on the spores.
My goal is to maintain po4 @ .03 and no3 @ 1 to 2 ppm.

[DNA]

Pods eat dinos, but we need bacteria to eat their cysts -- perhaps that's the key to Montireef's and cal_stir's success stories.

I've never seen pods munching on my dinos, but there are plenty of them on the glass, eating green algae.


So what do we do about this?

Meanwhile...

Quelle surprise.
I know you guys started out looking for a fix for dinos, but has it occurred to any of you that you've basically concluded that ULNS reefing is a dead end?

So what is the reason for the apparent increase in donflagellates?

Dinos are stealthy and most of the time go unnoticed or are mistaken for diatoms.
My tank is very well documented with photographs so I can trace it's history back to 2001.
I first got dinos more than 10 years ago, but didn't have a clue back then.
One of the reasons could be that reefers are more aware of them now.

Live rock requires Cites permit now for importing.
The 80 pounds (40kg) I received a few weeks ago was so close to sterile I wonder if it's handled differntly now in order to make sure nothing illegal gets to hitchhike all the way to our reef tanks.
After more than 30 hours out of water it didn't have any smell to it. There was nothing dead to make any sort of smell.
After two hours searching I found a single grab, some purple coralline and algae that could fit on a stamp.
I watched my Copperband Butterfly spend 10 minutes on it not finding anything to pick on. You can't argue with the pros.
What I'm saying is that live rock may have poor bio diversity compared to what it used to.

ULNS may make a reef tank more susceptible for dinos, but we have not proven jet that increased micro fauna is the solution for dino problems.

[DNA]

Yesterday morning I started to add the content of my skimmer back to the tank after having sat there for a week.
I drained the wet part from the skimmer in 3 doses 3 hours apart to make sure it was not too much of a shock to the fish.
I can't say I like the smell of sulfur in the morning, but it didn't seem to have any effect on the fishes.

The skimmer was turned off and the water turned slightly less transparent with the 0.4gallon (1.5 litres) of skimate back in there.
I scraped the glass as well to add to the mix and added a bag of GAC to a high flow area.

Last night the dinos took off the sand bed for their nightly swim in the water column and today right after the lights come on they all returned so it looks identical to how it did yesterday.

If something happens in the next few days or not, you will be the first to know.

[cal_stir]

I've never seen pods munching on my dinos, but there are plenty of them on the glass, eating green algae.
Could be possible that they only eat them when they are in the water column.

[cal_stir]

Last night the dinos took off the sand bed for their nightly swim in the water column and today right after the lights come on they all returned so it looks identical to how it did yesterday.
Have you ever tried removing your sand bed?.
It made a huge difference in my case.

[DNA]

Adding live rock.

Some years ago I added new live rock and got about 3 months of good coral growth.
That was when I had no SPS coral growth, but was unaware of the effect that dinos have on coral health.

Last year I added live rock, reducing the dino population dramatically and there was an instant turn in coral health.

This year I add live rock, the dino numbers stay as before, but there is a big change in coral health.
SPS corals that have had zero growth for over half a year, suddenly start to grow and show some color.

This time there was no visible change for a week, so I added dead shrimps to raise nitrates.
That is the only other parameter change at the time. Anyone can give this a try with minimal effort.

Given my history of adding live rock while blooming dinos are ruling a tank, this can't be a coincidence.
Since the dinos stayed in place and there is nothing eating them or reducing their numbers it's not pods that are doing the trick.

I find it most likely that bacteria is reducing the toxic levels.
I think this is one of the keys on understanding how dinoflagellates affect coral health.

[DNA]

Giving my previous post more thought I have another theory on the improved coral health.
Since corals are showing a little color it could be that the corals are hosting a new type of dinos.

Does a fast growing coral, produce the hosting dinos or are they imported from the water column?

[dartier]

I believe they are imported from the water column. You can even buy products intended to help corals regain their symbiotic zooxanthellae (AlgaGen’s product PhycoPure Zooxanthellae).

In the Anemone forum, one of the techniques they use for treating bleached anemones is to do a zooxanthellae transplant. Basically injecting a piece of a healthy pureed tentacle into a bleached specimen. It has shown promise for saving nem's that otherwise tend to perish.

Dennis

[Adrnalnrsh]

More Zoox are a side effect of nutrient rich water and is what causes corals to Brown out

[DNA]

Yesterday morning I started to add the content of my skimmer back to the tank after having sat there for a week.
I drained the wet part from the skimmer in 3 doses 3 hours apart to make sure it was not too much of a shock to the fish.
I can't say I like the smell of sulfur in the morning, but it didn't seem to have any effect on the fishes.

The skimmer was turned off and the water turned slightly less transparent with the 0.4gallon (1.5 litres) of skimate back in there.
I scraped the glass as well to add to the mix and added a bag of GAC to a high flow area.

Last night the dinos took off the sand bed for their nightly swim in the water column and today right after the lights come on they all returned so it looks identical to how it did yesterday.

If something happens in the next few days or not, you will be the first to know.

After two days it's the same.
Dinos don't care.

[mathman7728]

i had small dino outbreak along with cyano....what worked for me was 1)added for life (fish, pods, snails, crabs, phyo, etc) 2) drier skimmate 3)killed the cyano with chemiclean....i think you need to kill the cyano first.....

[Adrnalnrsh]

i had small dino outbreak along with cyano....what worked for me was 1)added for life (fish, pods, snails, crabs, phyo, etc) 2) drier skimmate 3)killed the cyano with chemiclean....i think you need to kill the cyano first.....
That's exactly what I did and I killed the cyanobacteria first with chemiclean

[Billybatz9]

i had small dino outbreak along with cyano....what worked for me was 1)added for life (fish, pods, snails, crabs, phyo, etc) 2) drier skimmate 3)killed the cyano with chemiclean....i think you need to kill the cyano first.....

What kind of pods

[Montireef]

I didn't have any cianobacteria but used some amoxiciline to combat toxic ostreopsis (on the first of the five outbreaks). It didn't harm ostreopsis at all but killed all bacteria and ostreopsis turned non-toxic on the four following outbreaks.
It seems there is a relationship between toxicity and bacteria.

[DNA]

.....but killed all bacteria and ostreopsis turned non-toxic....


How could you tell that no toxins were produced?
How could you tell that all bacteria was dead?

[cal_stir]

i had small dino outbreak along with cyano....what worked for me was 1)added for life (fish, pods, snails, crabs, phyo, etc) 2) drier skimmate 3)killed the cyano with chemiclean....i think you need to kill the cyano first.....

That's exactly what I did and I killed the cyanobacteria first with chemiclean
Pretty much what I did except I chemicleaned the cynao last.

[cal_stir]

What kind of pods Amphipods, copepods and I added pods+ from reef cleaners

[Montireef]

How could you tell that no toxins were produced?
How could you tell that all bacteria was dead?
Because no snails or fish died on the 2nd to 5th outbreaks (before treatment with antibiotics.

It is a supposition, amoxiciline is very efficient killing bacteria, especially ciano. Erithromicin as well.

[Rickyrooz1]

DNA,
I am having a dino issue in my frag tank. I have two small fish (Banggai Cardinalfish and Tailspin Blenny) and a few snails. The tank is a 40 gallon breeder with a 30 gallon long sump/refugium with chaetomorpha algae. I feed the tank two or three times a week and the nitrates read 0.00 (clear) on the Salifert test kit and 0.04 on the Hanna Checker. The tank is barebottom and I use a 8 bulb TEK T5 fixture for lighting. I didn't have this problem until recently when the nitrates dropped. Do dino's appear when the phosphate level is higher than the nitrate level or is there no correlation? What causes the din's to appear and what is the method to correct the problem?

[Billybatz9]

Amphipods, copepods and I added pods+ from reef cleaners

What kind of copepods? Sorry I'm asking, but just wondering if this is the swimming or rock crawling ones

[Billybatz9]

I hate these damn dinos. My gfs tank has them now too. It was my fault. I put a coral in her tank from mine. Soo stupid.

If i were to restart a tank. How would I go about cleaning the rock? Do I dip in hydrogen peroxide, vinegar bath, leaving darkness for a month, etc...

And what to do with corals? I have maybe $200 in corals. How do I clean them?

[karimwassef]

If you infected her tank, I bet her system wasn't very mature either.
Dinos are in every system already at some level. The coral probably didn't help, but it was going to happen anyway.

[cal_stir]

What kind of copepods? Sorry I'm asking, but just wondering if this is the swimming or rock crawling ones
Benthic, bottom dwellers.

[DNA]

Do dino's appear when the phosphate level is higher than the nitrate level or is there no correlation? What causes the din's to appear and what is the method to correct the problem?

Dino infested tanks often get stuck at zero nitrates and phosphates.

Right now we are looking into plankton as a cure.
That mean we are adding to the bio diversity and lack there of goes the other way around.

[DNA]

Originally Posted by DNA View Post
Yesterday morning I started to add the content of my skimmer back to the tank after having sat there for a week.
I drained the wet part from the skimmer in 3 doses 3 hours apart to make sure it was not too much of a shock to the fish.
I can't say I like the smell of sulfur in the morning, but it didn't seem to have any effect on the fishes.

The skimmer was turned off and the water turned slightly less transparent with the 0.4gallon (1.5 litres) of skimate back in there.
I scraped the glass as well to add to the mix and added a bag of GAC to a high flow area.

Last night the dinos took off the sand bed for their nightly swim in the water column and today right after the lights come on they all returned so it looks identical to how it did yesterday.

If something happens in the next few days or not, you will be the first to know.



After two days it's the same.
Dinos don't care.


After three days it's the same.
Dinos don't care.

[Dfee]

Why do we think coralline recedes and turns white? Alk, mag, and ca all good. Dino's not necessarily on the parts that turn white

[Budman422]

I upped the amount of food in mine about 6 months ago and also started dripping kalk. My dinos are gone. The refugium started growing better it has calurpa and cheato. And the pod population exploded. I have had more coral growth in the last six months that was probably better than the previous 3 years. I believe my balance of the system was off and dinos will out compete everything. I have not had to stir the sand bed for over 5 months and I get just a little film algea on the glass.

[karimwassef]

Coralline needs nutrients too - phosphate especially.

[DNA]

Why do we think coralline recedes and turns white? Alk, mag, and ca all good. Dino's not necessarily on the parts that turn white

Calcification often stops in corals and they lose their color. Same goes for coralline.
Why this happens has not been proven yet but I find these causes to be likely:

Coralline repels dinos with their chemical defenses. If you place dry rock on top of the coralline, dinos will settle there.

The toxic soup can get to leathal levels. At lower levels I don't find it odd that life struggles.
I've had light gray M capricornis and elephant skin looking pale gray for months. You would swear they were dead. Same goes for the coralline. It's pale gray, not white and still alive.

Beneficial bacteria is kept down by the dinos.

[cal_stir]

Why do we think coralline recedes and turns white? Alk, mag, and ca all good. Dino's not necessarily on the parts that turn white
Yes, that's a really good question. It must be able to inhibit other organisms ability to uptake calcium, in my case after a year my doser was dialed back from 72ml/d ca, 62ml/d alk and 30ml/d mag to 30ml/d ca, 20ml/d alk and 0 ml/d mag and my mag got over 1500ppm. Coraline algae was receding and turning white and the couple sps corals I have weren't growing much.

[Quiet_Ivy]

Why do we think coralline recedes and turns white? Alk, mag, and ca all good. Dino's not necessarily on the parts that turn white

Mine's doing that too. Dinos cause weird alk swings in my tank, the worse they get, the wider the swings. Ca and Mg are fine in my tank. Just a guess.

hth
ivy

[Quiet_Ivy]

Drive by updates as I'm still house and garden sitting. There's nothing like garden veggies is there?

I misunderstood the Montireef protocol and had been saving skimmate in a jar (from various people). I put 30mL of it in Mon and today, anyway. No reaction.

Stirred up a small area of lumpy sand to see if anything dire happened. Interestingly the lumps are back today. Cygni must be right about it being bacterial.

Something I'm doing may be very bad:
Slightly panicky because I'm getting that ominous yellow haze from the sandbed up about 5cm. Previously that's been the warning sign for a massive dino bloom. It's covered with pods.

Ivy

[mathman7728]

What kind of pods

any will do (IMHO) the point is to add as much "new" life as possible. i used:
indo pacific sea: worms, pods, stars, etc.
reef to go:pods
algae barn: pods and phyto

i also added a few more fish from the LFS in Silverdale WA (which required more feeding of the fish), that combined with drier skimmate i think produced more "food" and out competed the dinos...

it worked for me (and i did try UltraX which didnt do anything for me)

[mathman7728]

Amphipods, copepods and I added pods+ from reef cleaners

oh yeah, i also used reef cleaners for tons of new snails and the fuzzy critons (strange looking things but kinda cool looking in a prehistoric way VERY VERY slow moving), limpits....

[karimwassef]

My urchins ate everything when I had dinos. My snails died but my urchins trudged on.

Ancient creatures designed to survive ancient enemies?

[DNA]

Saturday morning I started to add the content of my skimmer back to the tank after having sat there for a week.
I drained the wet part from the skimmer in 3 doses 3 hours apart to make sure it was not too much of a shock to the fish.
I can't say I like the smell of sulfur in the morning, but it didn't seem to have any effect on the fishes.

The skimmer was turned off and the water turned slightly less transparent with the 0.4gallon (1.5 litres) of skimate back in there.
I scraped the glass as well to add to the mix and added a bag of GAC to a high flow area.

Last night the dinos took off the sand bed for their nightly swim in the water column and today right after the lights come on they all returned so it looks identical to how it did yesterday.

If something happens in the next few days or not, you will be the first to know.


The results are in.
After 5 days the dinos are just going on with their daily lives as usual.
If fact I've got slightly more of them right now than last 12 months.

This means we can't say that recycled skimmate will help with a dino problem.
We also can't say it's useless until several others try this out.

[cal_stir]

12 weeks since I considered myself dino free, just finished putting samples of skimmate and sock collectings under the microscope and absolutely 0 dinos to be found, just lots of plankton that I never saw while I had dinos.
Wish I had looked at samples before I had dinos.
Bubble algae still disappearing to.:cool:

[Quiet_Ivy]

Day 3 adding week-old skimmate collected in a jar back to my tank.

Good news: Got here this morning and Whoah! 90% of the cyano is gone!

Bad news: big dino outbreak, I see the harder brown circular spots on the glass and some have developed strings since yesterday morning. Hermit crab is ok. Corals ok except for my hammer which sucked all its polyps in and looks very cranky.

hypothesis: dinos survive better in a jar than other bacteria? Or they consumed the bacteria. If I'm just re-culturing dinos this won't do much good. Really need to buy a decent microscope. Should also see if I can get a big cup of skimmate from someone who doesn't have dinos.

Dang.

Ivy

[DNA]

12 weeks since I considered myself dino free, just finished putting samples of skimmate and sock collectings under the microscope and absolutely 0 dinos to be found, just lots of plankton that I never saw while I had dinos.
Wish I had looked at samples before I had dinos.
Bubble algae still disappearing to.:cool:

That's a milestone alright.
It further strengthens what we have been saying about plankton and bio diversity.
There is no doubt we are going places in this thread.

If you could in a single post go through your case.
The type of dinos you had, how it affected your tank and what you did to correct the situation.

Something short, but enough for others to follow.

[Quiet_Ivy]

The results are in.
After 5 days the dinos are just going on with their daily lives as usual.
If fact I've got slightly more of them right now than last 12 months.

This means we can't say that recycled skimmate will help with a dino problem.
We also can't say it's useless until several others try this out.

I think we might be just culturing our own dinos, they probably get sucked into the skimmer and survive quite happily. Why'd it work for Monti and Cal? Maybe the predatory bacteria just aren't there in our tanks while they have them. Skimmate from someone else's tank would be interesting to try.


Ivy

[cal_stir]

I think we might be just culturing our own dinos, they probably get sucked into the skimmer and survive quite happily. Why'd it work for Monti and Cal? Maybe the predatory bacteria just aren't there in our tanks while they have them. Skimmate from someone else's tank would be interesting to try.


Ivy
I never put skimmate back into the tank.

[cal_stir]

That's a milestone alright.
It further strengthens what we have been saying about plankton and bio diversity.
There is no doubt we are going places in this thread.

If you could in a single post go through your case.
The type of dinos you had, how it affected your tank and what you did to correct the situation.

Something short, but enough for others to follow.
I tried to sum it all up in post 1589.

[Quiet_Ivy]

I never put skimmate back into the tank.

Whoops, sorry. I should have read back instead of going by memory.

Ivy

[Adrnalnrsh]

Here are two pics of the front of my glass through dirty glass (sorry).

Looks to be some green algae showing up and I think diatoms.

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/27/3d371eb3ad70731a1bc13338bc36d26f.jpg

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/27/df7c7e857ebeea46fc4f573fe57326df.jpg

[Adrnalnrsh]

My urchins ate everything when I had dinos. My snails died but my urchins trudged on.

Ancient creatures designed to survive ancient enemies?

Funny, I added an urchin when I added my new fish a few weeks ago and it's almost destroyed everything any algae I've had on my rocks and back wall.

Wait til it finds my front glass.

[Billybatz9]

I have dinos and would like to try to dose hydrogen peroxide as I have researched and read that this is one of the biggest ways to get rid of them. Does anyone know the specifics on how much to dose, when to dose, and if it's just regular hydrogen peroxide that they sell at Walmart that I dose?

Before
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2G0f9tpRN3M

After
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ENj_qkHpS0I

[Adrnalnrsh]

Whoops, sorry. I should have read back instead of going by memory.

Ivy

I've added skimmate as well however I've not seen dinos since I dose chemiclean and added pods/phyto. I added skimmate after that

[Adrnalnrsh]

I have dinos and would like to try to dose hydrogen peroxide as I have researched and read that this is one of the biggest ways to get rid of them. Does anyone know the specifics on how much to dose, when to dose, and if it's just regular hydrogen peroxide that they sell at Walmart that I dose?

Before
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2G0f9tpRN3M

After
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ENj_qkHpS0I

I tried Peroxide and yes its the normal store bought kind. I didn't see results.

[cal_stir]

No results with h2o2 here either.

[Billybatz9]

No results with h2o2 here either.

When did you apply it? At night or during the day?

[Adrnalnrsh]

lights out if I recall correctly.

[cal_stir]

When did you apply it? At night or during the day?
I did 1ml/10gal for 10 days with lights on and nothing, then I did another 5 days with 4 days lights out and still nothing, might have ****ed the dinos off a bit but didn't make a dent.

[cal_stir]

I did 1ml/10gal for 10 days with lights on and nothing, then I did another 5 days with 4 days lights out and still nothing, might have ****ed the dinos off a bit but didn't make a dent.
I did dose at night with my skimmer off.

[natas]

I have a question that I am very curious to hear a good answer to. My Dino disappear at night much like everyone else. My understanding here is that they go into the water column at night. How do we explain how they always end up in the same place the next morning? I literally have spots on the sand that show no Dino. The spots that are showing disappear at night and look the same (sometimes bigger) the next morning. And yet the spots that were clear the day before are still clear

[DNA]

I have a question that I am very curious to hear a good answer to. My Dino disappear at night much like everyone else. My understanding here is that they go into the water column at night. How do we explain how they always end up in the same place the next morning? I literally have spots on the sand that show no Dino. The spots that are showing disappear at night and look the same (sometimes bigger) the next morning. And yet the spots that were clear the day before are still clear


Natural habitat and chemical markers would be high on the list.

[natas]

Care to expand on that? Just really want to learn and understand these vial things

[cal_stir]

I would have agree with DNA, I tried changing the flow but they always found the same spots.

[cal_stir]

Things I did to beat Ostreopsis Ovata that worked or at least helped.
Somewhat in order.

-No water changes.
-Manual removal....blowing off rocks and corals and vacuuming.
-Got microscope to ID and verify progress.
-10uM filter socks.
-Removed sand bed.
-Dirtied up the water....raised po4 to .03ppm and no3 to 5ppm from 0.
-Allowed green algae and cyano to grow.
-Added many diverse forms of plankton and cleanup crew.... from 1/2 dozen different suppliers.
-Started culturing and dosing phytoplankton and copepods.
-After I couldn't find anymore dinos I used chemiclean to remove the cyano.
-Installed a new shallow sand bed....caribsea seaflor special.
-Began loving the hobby again.

NOTE1: early on I was dosing beneficial bacteria but stopped and haven't added any since.
NOTE2: I used algaex to try to rid bubble algae that decimated my ecosystem and brought on my dino bloom.

[Billybatz9]

Things I did to beat Ostreopsis Ovata that worked or at least helped.
Somewhat in order.

-No water changes.
-Manual removal....blowing off rocks and corals and vacuuming.
-Got microscope to ID and verify progress.
-10uM filter socks.
-Removed sand bed.
-Dirtied up the water....raised po4 to .03ppm and no3 to 5ppm from 0.
-Allowed green algae and cyano to grow.
-Added many diverse forms of plankton and cleanup crew.... from 1/2 dozen different suppliers.
-Started culturing and dosing phytoplankton and copepods.
-After I couldn't find anymore dinos I used chemiclean to remove the cyano.
-Installed a new shallow sand bed....caribsea seaflor special.
-Began loving the hobby again.

NOTE1: early on I was dosing beneficial bacteria but stopped and haven't added any since.
NOTE2: I used algaex to try to rid bubble algae that decimated my ecosystem and brought on my dino bloom.

The 10um filter socks will capture the dinos we can't see in the water?

[s2nhle]

Wow. Great. Thank you for sharing. My Dino was appeared since I started dosing voka. I then stopped the voka dosing and it faked away. I keep my routine water change biweekly. Currently, I am running GFO reactor and dosing vinegar mixed with voka and RODI water. So far so good.

[natas]

got a source for the 10um filter socks?

[cal_stir]

The 10um filter socks will capture the dinos we can't see in the water?
Yes, Ostreopsis is @ 40uM in size.
Some species a little smaller but 10uM should catch them all.

[Dfee]

Hmm. How quickly does a sock like that clog and overflow?

[cal_stir]

got a source for the 10um filter socks?
I got mine here.
http://www.filterbag.com/cart.php?m=product_custom_list&customListIds=5|42%2C6|48%2C8|69%2C7|74%2C&customListId[7]=74

[cal_stir]

Hmm. How quickly does a sock like that clog and overflow?
I get 2 days but I imagine it would be one day if you use the VSV method.

[Dfee]

Ahhhhhh crap. Was doing so good I thought. I was siphoning just a small dusting of them every two days or so. But yesterday I moved some rock work to create better flow throughout and BAM!! Huge Dino bloom. Looks like I'll try the small micron sock and get more pods. You guys been using algae barn, correct?http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/30/836e66c75cbe45b993acafb9f1c4b431.jpghttp://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/30/75df8ed846f3c31e4e41c10c210510dc.jpg

[cal_stir]

Ahhhhhh crap. Was doing so good I thought. I was siphoning just a small dusting of them every two days or so. But yesterday I moved some rock work to create better flow throughout and BAM!! Huge Dino bloom. Looks like I'll try the small micron sock and get more pods. You guys been using algae barn, correct?http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/30/836e66c75cbe45b993acafb9f1c4b431.jpghttp://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/30/75df8ed846f3c31e4e41c10c210510dc.jpg
Ya I used algae barn but I really liked reefcleaners pods and pods+
http://www.reefcleaners.org/aquarium-store/pods

[blcktitanium]

so is this dino on my rocks or diatom... I really can't tell the difference. Also, my tank just finished cycling and I have no livestock whatsoever in my tank. However, I will be receiving my cleanup crew via mail tomorrow and I heard dino will kill the snails....

I started running the lights like 4 days ago and thats when it starting showing up it started out with very little an one or two rocks now its on multiple rocks not on the sand or glass just the rocks.

[karimwassef]

Has anyone had dinos on rocks only with sand in the tank?

[Quiet_Ivy]

Has anyone had dinos on rocks only with sand in the tank?

I have them on the glass only, with sand and rocks.
(Now that I've said that, watch them spread to everything)
hth
Ivy

[Quiet_Ivy]

so is this dino on my rocks or diatom... I really can't tell the difference. Also, my tank just finished cycling and I have no livestock whatsoever in my tank. However, I will be receiving my cleanup crew via mail tomorrow and I heard dino will kill the snails....

I started running the lights like 4 days ago and thats when it starting showing up it started out with very little an one or two rocks now its on multiple rocks not on the sand or glass just the rocks.

Too blurry for me to tell, but you are at exactly the right time for a diatom bloom. It's normal, if not expected, to have a big diatom bloom as the cycle ends. Unless there's something really unusual about your rocks or sand, I'd bet on diatoms.

hth
Ivy

[blcktitanium]

nothing unusual about the rocks and sand that I know of its figi dry rock and tropic edens life reefflakes... Thanks for the help on the id....

[natas]

Ahhhhhh crap. Was doing so good I thought. I was siphoning just a small dusting of them every two days or so. But yesterday I moved some rock work to create better flow throughout and BAM!! Huge Dino bloom. Looks like I'll try the small micron sock and get more pods. You guys been using algae barn, correct?http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/30/836e66c75cbe45b993acafb9f1c4b431.jpghttp://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/30/75df8ed846f3c31e4e41c10c210510dc.jpg

Sorry to see this Dfree. Your Dino bloom looks identical the one I have fought. Do you know what type of Dino you have?

BTW my initial bloom started when I added a Diamond Goby to my tank. Once that started I could never get rid of the dino. I ended up breaking the tank down and starting over.

[Dfee]

Thanks for the encouraging words. Ha! I think mine started when I added two giant pieces of dry rock in my tank. What methods did you try before you gave up?

[natas]

I tried the following:

Lights out multiple times - Worked until lights came back on
H2O2 dosing with lights out - No difference
Daily sandbed cleaning - worked everytime for 2 hours lol
Cuprisorb - Worked at first but maybe my imagination
No water changes
Lots of water changes - Made them worse
GFO - made them worse

I need to actually explain my situation a little. I did actually defeat the dino before taking the tank down. The way I did this was turn off skimming and stop water changes. Basically I neglected my tank for 6 months. The only thing I did was feed the fish and topoff. The unfortunate outcome was a loss of all SPS corals.

I now have a new 260G tank that is around 3 months old. I re-used my rock and put new sand in it. Cycle was short. I now appear to have the same crap on my sand bed but I am hoping its because my phosphates are high (0.1). Right now I am not going to worry about it because its not that bad. Once I get my phosphates to a good range (0.05 - 0.02) and still have the issue I will worry. Right now I am waiting on a new skimmer that is properly sized. Once I get it I will run it along with Carbon dosing.

[Dfee]

And no I.d. No microscope

[PorkchopExpress]

Dfee, those kind of look like diatoms. Do they go away at night and return the next day after a few hours of light?

[Dfee]

Dfee, those kind of look like diatoms. Do they go away at night and return the next day after a few hours of light?


Some do, some don't. After removing skimmer, no water changes, and more feeding, I have gha, diatoms, Dino's, and cyano.

I decided to go to a place I haven't been before in Chicago to get some pods, so trying that method now

The guy there actually mentioned a Dino Filter you can buy. I'm trying to find it on the internet now . Never heard of it before.

The picture was taken just now about 1 hour before lights come on. I also did a siphoning 24 hrs before the pic was taken.

So what's the consensus on siphoning? Leave the Dino's alone or siphon into filter sock in sump like I've been doing?
http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/31/f73ee1d260149108496e8bfd7687c91f.jpg

[Dfee]

Also my reasoning for believe that at least some of the percentage of that rusty colored crap is dinos because;

horrible coralline even though good alk mag and ca

Deaths

Photosynthetic

If I don't siphon, it will get long and stringy

Zoas look horrible as you can see

[natas]

Those have to be the same strain as what I have/had. Mine look identical. I bet if you don't siphon them and leave them alone to grow more they will then start to form strings that rise up and get bubbles.

Mine do disappear at night and appear in the same exact spots almost every morning

[cal_stir]

Dfee, I was where you are at now, I removed the sand bed to get past it, siphoned it out slowly over a week or so. I found it was futile siphoning the sand.

[Quiet_Ivy]

Some do, some don't. After removing skimmer, no water changes, and more feeding, I have gha, diatoms, Dino's, and cyano.

Good grief! I guess I'll have to stop whinging about my tank issues now. That's unusual actually, most of us seem to have only dinos, or dinos and cyano. Do you have the typical 0 nitrates/phosphates?


The guy there actually mentioned a Dino Filter you can buy. I'm trying to find it on the internet now . Never heard of it before.

I don't see anything on a quick google. Maybe he meant diatom filter? Any 5 or 10 micron filter sock will catch dinos. They clog up within hours though. I've tried filter floss and it doesn't seem to help much. I use it and carbon when I'm scraping the glass to hopefully keep the toxins down.


So what's the consensus on siphoning? Leave the Dino's alone or siphon into filter sock in sump like I've been doing?


Can't hurt. Didn't seem to help me much. I agree with the people above who thought that not all dinos detach from the glass, and that they leave some kind of chemical marker/cyst to return to the same places. I looked at my tank in the dark and I still see dinos. There are definitely 'bad spots' where it's much worse. I tried changing the flow, too. No results. Probably species dependent.

What does seem to help in my tank:
-adding pods
-adding bacteria (ideally from someone else's sand, rock, skimmate. do NOT recycle your tank's skimmate. I'm looking to add a bunch of good sand too)
-feeding phyto heavily
-no water changes
-reduced skimming
-carbon when disturbing dinos

hth
Ivy

[Billybatz9]

Ya I used algae barn but I really liked reefcleaners pods and pods+
http://www.reefcleaners.org/aquarium-store/pods

Mine look just like that and its majority on my sand bed.

[Dfee]

Yes, my nitrate and phos read 0. Thought I was close to winning when I saw hair algae on rocks. Maybe my gha suggests I have mainly diatoms in those rusty patches?

Found what he was talking about. It is a diatom filter. Filled with diatomaceous earth . RC thread talking about it but no mention of Dino's: POLL Diatom Filters using Diatomaceous Earth

[cal_stir]

Yes, my nitrate and phos read 0. Thought I was close to winning when I saw hair algae on rocks. Maybe my gha suggests I have mainly diatoms in those rusty patches?

Found what he was talking about. It is a diatom filter. Filled with diatomaceous earth . RC thread talking about it but no mention of Dino's: POLL Diatom Filters using Diatomaceous Earth
Quite possibly diatoms harboring dinos, that is what I had at the end stages of the battle.

[karimwassef]

Hmmmm, a diatomaceous filter running in the dark as the main filter with high in-tank flow for several days should scrub the water pretty aggressively. Has anyone tried this?

[PorkchopExpress]

Some do, some don't. After removing skimmer, no water changes, and more feeding, I have gha, diatoms, Dino's, and cyano.

I decided to go to a place I haven't been before in Chicago to get some pods, so trying that method now

The guy there actually mentioned a Dino Filter you can buy. I'm trying to find it on the internet now . Never heard of it before.

The picture was taken just now about 1 hour before lights come on. I also did a siphoning 24 hrs before the pic was taken.

So what's the consensus on siphoning? Leave the Dino's alone or siphon into filter sock in sump like I've been doing?
http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/08/31/f73ee1d260149108496e8bfd7687c91f.jpg

Ah ok. Reason I ask is because I have similar looking stuff on my sand but they don't go away at night. They are just as ugly during the day. Tang eats it too and no snail deaths. But they do have bubbles occasionally.

Where in Chicago are you getting pods? I've just been getting em online at various places. Would be awesome to get some local.

[Dfee]

Stopped by old town aquarium for the first time. They had one of those copepod and phyto culture tanks going

[Billybatz9]

Is it true that dinoflagellates dies in fresh water? If so, I will be siphoning out my top layer of sand into a bucket with ro/di to rinse. Then re add to tank. Is this okay? Or nah?

[bertoni]

The dinoflagellates should die if exposed long enough to fresh water. I don't know what the time limit might be, though, and I'd expect a few to survive here and there. Rinsing the sand might remove some detritus. I'd be tempted, though, to soak the sand in RO/DI with a powerhead and check the phosphate level after twelve hours or so, to see whether the sand is leaching a significant amount of phosphate.

[cal_stir]

Is it true that dinoflagellates dies in fresh water? If so, I will be siphoning out my top layer of sand into a bucket with ro/di to rinse. Then re add to tank. Is this okay? Or nah?
I thought about cleaning my sand and reusing it but did not want to take the chance so I replaced the sand with new after dinos were gone. Dinos are resilient little buggers.

[Billybatz9]

I thought about cleaning my sand and reusing it but did not want to take the chance so I replaced the sand with new after dinos were gone. Dinos are resilient little buggers.

How did you get rid of them?

[Billybatz9]

I just did a water change. Way too much Dino on my sand bed. Going to do 3 days lights out now and will be dosing hydrogen peroxide every day. 3 ml each day for my 29 g biocube.

Switching filter floss and carbon pad out today as well.

[cal_stir]

How did you get rid of them?
Long version.....Post 1589
Short version.....Post 1651

[karimwassef]

Long version.....Post 1589
Short version.....Post 1651

:beer:

Hilarious

[Dfee]

If you're still fighting and haven't tried pods and phyto yet, do it!

Look at my posts and pics from the last week. Was going good then moved rock around and got a huge bloom. Two days ago I siphoned the bloom out from gravel, yesterday I added pods and phyto, get this... Today when I got home from work was the first time I didn't have to siphon gravel in a LONG TIME!!

http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/09/01/a9a9b301154a185d9f1b54a1038a4276.jpg

[cal_stir]

It's a GREAT feeling isn't it.

[Dfee]

It's a GREAT feeling isn't it.


Yes! You were the one that told me pods would be the nail in the coffin, correct?
Thanks
It's too early to tell if this will last but it's been the biggest improvement I've seen in months.
Now I'm paranoid to change anything. Should I switch out phosphate media or leave it? Put my skimmer back in or leAve it out? I dunno.
I'm thinking of starting a refugium since I already have a refugium sump that I only put a skimmer in. I'm thinking just adding one piece of live rock, light, and cheato

[cal_stir]

Yes! You were the one that told me pods would be the nail in the coffin, correct?
Thanks
It's too early to tell if this will last but it's been the biggest improvement I've seen in months.
Now I'm paranoid to change anything. Should I switch out phosphate media or leave it? Put my skimmer back in or leAve it out? I dunno.
I'm thinking of starting a refugium since I already have a refugium sump that I only put a skimmer in. I'm thinking just adding one piece of live rock, light, and cheato Yes that was me.
I would start the skimmer on the dry side but go easy on phosphate media, I would try to keep po4 @ .03 and continue with the phytoplankton, I'm not sure how much your dosing but I was dosing 100ml 4x a day in a 200gal system, after a couple weeks I noticed algae patches forming on the sand(I know it was only algae because I have a microscope) I then cut the dose in half and it cleared up in short order, I haven't vacuumed my sand for a couple weeks and it looks great and I do 15gal water change weekly and run half the carbon I use to. I'm still using the 10uM socks.
My po4 has been as hi as .06 and as low as .02 without issue.

[Billybatz9]

Yes that was me.
I would start the skimmer on the dry side but go easy on phosphate media, I would try to keep po4 @ .03 and continue with the phytoplankton, I'm not sure how much your dosing but I was dosing 100ml 4x a day in a 200gal system, after a couple weeks I noticed algae patches forming on the sand(I know it was only algae because I have a microscope) I then cut the dose in half and it cleared up in short order, I haven't vacuumed my sand for a couple weeks and it looks great and I do 15gal water change weekly and run half the carbon I use to. I'm still using the 10uM socks.
My po4 has been as hi as .06 and as low as .02 without issue.

How much phyto do you guys dose for a 30 gal? And any specific phyto? And do you just throw in thousands of pods at once?

[cal_stir]

How much phyto do you guys dose for a 30 gal? And any specific phyto? And do you just throw in thousands of pods at once?
I would dose 60ml a day and hundreds of pods in a 30 gal to start.
I dose tetraselmis and nannochloris

[Billybatz9]

I would dose 60ml a day and hundreds of pods in a 30 gal to start.
I dose tetraselmis and nannochloris

I dk if you know this or not, but what does dosing phytoplankton do?

[cal_stir]

I dk if you know this or not, but what does dosing phytoplankton do?
It feeds the plankton, micro fauna, critters, etc., the stuff that I believe keeps the dinos in check.

[Quiet_Ivy]

Yes! You were the one that told me pods would be the nail in the coffin, correct?
Thanks
It's too early to tell if this will last but it's been the biggest improvement I've seen in months.
Now I'm paranoid to change anything. Should I switch out phosphate media or leave it? Put my skimmer back in or leAve it out? I dunno.
I'm thinking of starting a refugium since I already have a refugium sump that I only put a skimmer in. I'm thinking just adding one piece of live rock, light, and cheato

Wow, looking good!
I'm paranoid, so I wouldn't touch a thing for at least a few months.

ivy

[Adrnalnrsh]

So the only brown stuff I see is mainly on my front and side glass.

Please help me ID

327718

At 250x
http://images.tapatalk-cdn.com/15/09/03/306b7433d176cd671cd58f77925b780c.jpg

[karimwassef]

That looks like bacteria?

[Adrnalnrsh]

That looks like bacteria?

according to this, the closest thing I could find was diatoms.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-12/feature/index.php

Its like a brown filamentous algae on my glass, near dust like. Depending on how thick it is, comes off like dust.

This also appeared a week after using chemi-clean. No trace of cyano anywhere.

Snails are all over it too

[DNA]

It looks like diatoms to me.

[cal_stir]

according to this, the closest thing I could find was diatoms.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-12/feature/index.php

Its like a brown filamentous algae on my glass, near dust like. Depending on how thick it is, comes off like dust.

This also appeared a week after using chemi-clean. No trace of cyano anywhere.

Snails are all over it too
+1 diatoms, I had them for about 8 weeks, for the first few weeks they were harboring some dinos. I let the green micro algae grow on the glass for 4 or 5 days at a time to out compete them.
IMO they are a very good sign that you are winning the battle.

[Adrnalnrsh]

+1 diatoms, I had them for about 8 weeks, for the first few weeks they were harboring some dinos. I let the green micro algae grow on the glass for 4 or 5 days at a time to out compete them.
IMO they are a very good sign that you are winning the battle.
Thanks for the confirmation everyone.

I feel I am winning the battle even with brown glass.

Sometimes I see a little green algae on the glass but it goes away quickly if I skip my NeoPhos dose.

I can't seem to keep phosphates in this tank.

My corals are doing excellent even when the bottom piles up with detritus.

Corals that have gone to complete **** have a little spark of life in them.

Should also mention my PH is staying up high even when my ATO reservoir was empty for 3-4 days. (contain kalkwasser)

[Adrnalnrsh]

This is from back on page 62...



I can't edit that post, so here's a correction in the interest of accuracy:

Corals keep their symbionts nitrogen-limited to force them to pump out sugar, and as much as half of this sugar goes towards making mucous -- which sounds a little disgusting until you consider that mucous is the front line of coral's immune system. They secrete mucous to lift bacteria off their surface, and the coral polyps (or sometimes the CUC) will eat the mucous to ingest the bacteria. If a coral is under serious threat, it can detach the mucous in hopes that the pathogenic bacteria will drift harmlessly away.



Just saw this and had to share. Looks to me like Dinos harbouring Bacteria

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/357617-nasty-algae-not-dinos-what-is-this-gunk/?p=4956666

[DNA]

.
A week after I added new live rock my tiny SPS corals started to grow at full speed.
This followed more than half a year of absolute zero growth.
I have repeated this three times now so it's a key element on how dinos affect coral health.
There has been no visual effect on the dinos or plankton and the usual reef tank parameters have not changed.

I don't think anyone has the facts on this so good theories are wanted.

[Billybatz9]

I would like to grow my biodiversity. What kind of supplements, pods, and etc.. should I add?

[cal_stir]

I would like to grow my biodiversity. What kind of supplements, pods, and etc.. should I add?
Copepods, amphipods and phytoplankton.
I like Reef cleaners Pods+
http://www.reefcleaners.org/aquarium-store/pods
A diverse assortment of crabs and snails as well.

[DNA]

Did one more of those wonderful and elaborate tests of mine.
I placed a square plastic on the sandbed and left it there for couple of days.

Yesterday I removed it and today I have a perfect square free of dinos, but edged by dense mat of dinos.

[karimwassef]

Pic? We're the edges buried in the sand or raised?

[DNA]

The plastic square was just sitting on top.
I have a pic, but no means to show it right now.

[karimwassef]

just based on description, it sounds like it's flow based. The edge would likely experience slower flow?

[DNA]

It's a square 3" by 3" totally free of dinos.

Almost all the dinos left the sandbed yesterday.
They could have resettled there today if they wanted, but it has an invisible barrier.

It's another piece in the puzzle. If I only had a savant to put them all in place.

[Billybatz9]

I am going to try to aiptasia-x the sandbed covered in dinos and see how that goes.

[cal_stir]

I am going to try to aiptasia-x the sandbed covered in dinos and see how that goes.
If the dinos are threatened they might encyst and come back later.

[cal_stir]

I did an experiment today, I vacuumed the surface layer of my sand bed into a 5 gal pail and pour the contents of the pail through a 10uM filter sock, squeezed a sample out and put it under the microscope. I found 0 dinos but
I did find a lot of critters in the form of pods, shrimps, etc., very small small in size. I found a dozen or so in a drop of water.
I think this is a key to eliminating dinos.

I would like others with microscopes to do the same type of sampling of their sand and skimmate and post their results.

[Billybatz9]

If the dinos are threatened they might encyst and come back later.

How, if they are covered in the white ooze? Wouldn't it kill a lot of them.

[Billybatz9]

I did an experiment today, I vacuumed the surface layer of my sand bed into a 5 gal pail and pour the contents of the pail through a 10uM filter sock, squeezed a sample out and put it under the microscope. I found 0 dinos but
I did find a lot of critters in the form of pods, shrimps, etc., very small small in size. I found a dozen or so in a drop of water.
I think this is a key to eliminating dinos.

I would like others with microscopes to do the same type of sampling of their sand and skimmate and post their results.

Where did you gt the 10um sock?

[DNA]

.
A week after I added new live rock my tiny SPS corals started to grow at full speed.
This followed more than half a year of absolute zero growth.
I have repeated this three times now so it's a key element on how dinos affect coral health.
There has been no visual effect on the dinos or plankton and the usual reef tank parameters have not changed.

I don't think anyone has the facts on this so good theories are wanted.

Since nobody seems to have a clue here are some of mine.

The live rock brought in Symbiodinum dinflagellates desperately needed for coral health and growth.
The dinos are not producing any toxins any more.
New bacteria brough in with the live rock is suppressing or neutralizing the dino toxins in the water column.

From my experience the current growth period will last around 3 months before everything will start to go downhill.

[Quiet_Ivy]

Since nobody seems to have a clue here are some of mine.

The live rock brought in Symbiodinum dinflagellates desperately needed for coral health and growth.
The dinos are not producing any toxins any more.
New bacteria brough in with the live rock is suppressing or neutralizing the dino toxins in the water column.

From my experience the current growth period will last around 3 months before everything will start to go downhill.

Too many possibilities.
Live rock was full of ciliate/bacterial predators that took a while to be poisoned off
Live rock had lots of decaying organics that the corals enjoyed
Decaying organics plus new bacteria unbalanced the scale from dinos

I am surprised the rock from the unicorn tank didn't work..I thought that was an excellent idea. Perhaps the rock has to be a certain percentage? EG 50% new rock, remove old. Certainly you can't do that with fish in the tank.

I'm 2 days into a 3 day blackout. Having a huge explosion of dinos, unsure why. I suspect something big and unseen has died. Could be the serpent star. Adding rock is the only thing left to try. STILL have 0 nitrates and phosphates. Pods have been a bust. Phyto isn't doing anything either.

Ivy

[Quiet_Ivy]

Did one more of those wonderful and elaborate tests of mine.
I placed a square plastic on the sandbed and left it there for couple of days.

Yesterday I removed it and today I have a perfect square free of dinos, but edged by dense mat of dinos.

Chemical signalling. Someone on another forum posted that their dinos would reform into a ball after being suctioned into a pail. Tried this myself, and fer gosshakes, they do. Mildly creepy actually.

I will bet you a Canadian 2-dollar coin that the square will get covered within a day or two.

ivy

[Quiet_Ivy]

I am going to try to aiptasia-x the sandbed covered in dinos and see how that goes.

Ooh I'm probably way late on this, but don't do it! Aiptasia x is supposed to act like a glue; you don't want to glue your sandbed. At best you'll make an unholy mess, at worst you'll nuke your tank chemistry and kill off your sandbed. If you absolutely have to please try a small section first..

hth
Ivy

[cal_stir]

Where did you gt the 10um sock?
http://www.filterbag.com/cart.php?m=product_custom_list&customListIds=5|42%2C6|48%2C8|69%2C7|74%2C&customListId[7]=74

[Billybatz9]

http://www.filterbag.com/cart.php?m=product_custom_list&customListIds=5|42%2C6|48%2C8|69%2C7|74%2C&customListId[7]=74

I need to by 25 of them. yikes.

[Billybatz9]

Ooh I'm probably way late on this, but don't do it! Aiptasia x is supposed to act like a glue; you don't want to glue your sandbed. At best you'll make an unholy mess, at worst you'll nuke your tank chemistry and kill off your sandbed. If you absolutely have to please try a small section first..

hth
Ivy

Quiet Ivy,
You are not late. I tried a little section on a rock first. Thank god you came in time. lol Will update on how that section is doing tomorrow. The dinos are getting out of hand.

[karimwassef]

In order...

Stop chemicals + stop carbon dosing = stop killing their competition
Lights off + slow flow high power UV + heavy skim ... Dead dinos + export dead dinos
Pods + Phyto + refugium = rebalanced nature
Feed more = healthy bacteria & algae reset.

[Adrnalnrsh]

in order...

Stop chemicals + stop carbon dosing = stop killing their competition
lights off + slow flow high power uv + heavy skim ... Dead dinos + export dead dinos
pods + phyto + refugium = rebalanced nature
feed more = healthy bacteria & algae reset.
+1

[DNA]

I will bet you a Canadian 2-dollar coin that the square will get covered within a day or two. ivy

Today the dinos have settled once more and the square is still there, just like yesterday, shining bright in contrast to the rusty surroundings.

---

Nice suggestions on the live rock by the way.

[Quiet_Ivy]

Today the dinos have settled once more and the square is still there, just like yesterday, shining bright in contrast to the rusty surroundings.


If you've invented dino-repelling plastic you can retire rich. :)

Hm, I wonder if I can tape some plastic to my glass.

Ivy

[Quiet_Ivy]

Just saw this and had to share. Looks to me like Dinos harbouring Bacteria

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/357617-nasty-algae-not-dinos-what-is-this-gunk/?p=4956666

Wow, that's some freaky..whatever that is. The margins are so clear and defined it looks like a sponge or other bigger organism, with dinos on top. I'd love to see that stuff under a microscope. Did you direct them to this thread?

My dinos look a bit similar (but way messier):
http://i1164.photobucket.com/albums/q561/Quiet_Ivy/28g%20Reef%20Tank/sunday%20tank%20001_zpsj3bvygwl.jpg (http://s1164.photobucket.com/user/Quiet_Ivy/media/28g%20Reef%20Tank/sunday%20tank%20001_zpsj3bvygwl.jpg.html)

Ivy

[Adrnalnrsh]

Wow, that's some freaky..whatever that is. The margins are so clear and defined it looks like a sponge or other bigger organism, with dinos on top. I'd love to see that stuff under a microscope. Did you direct them to this thread?

My dinos look a bit similar (but way messier):
http://i1164.photobucket.com/albums/q561/Quiet_Ivy/28g%20Reef%20Tank/sunday%20tank%20001_zpsj3bvygwl.jpg (http://s1164.photobucket.com/user/Quiet_Ivy/media/28g%20Reef%20Tank/sunday%20tank%20001_zpsj3bvygwl.jpg.html)

Ivy
Mine was very similar with but more dark.

I might of mentioned it.

[Billybatz9]

Is 3 days lights out sufficient or should I go for 4

[Quiet_Ivy]

Is 3 days lights out sufficient or should I go for 4

3 to start with, depending what else you have in there. Sk8r recommends not going 100% dark if you have fish. I'd also set your skimmer to run wet and possibly add carbon. If you can't find filter socks locally, the stuffing sold for plush animals works really well to catch everything. You will want to replace it pretty much daily if there's a huge die off.

Did the aiptasia x do anything good?

hth
ivy

[JAustin]

Maybe you folks on this thread can help me out. What algae is it that you can see when you shut all the pumps off and inject air bubbles? I can't see it with my eyes, but if I inject a bunch of microbubbles and shut the pumps off you can see the bubbles form strands.

Any help would be appreciated

v/r

Jason

[Quiet_Ivy]

Maybe you folks on this thread can help me out. What algae is it that you can see when you shut all the pumps off and inject air bubbles? I can't see it with my eyes, but if I inject a bunch of microbubbles and shut the pumps off you can see the bubbles form strands.

Any help would be appreciated

v/r

Jason

Well, I get a clear snot like formation with very short strands on my glass. It's NOT the usual yellow tinted stuff I have everywhere else and I can only see it when my skimmer's having conniptions and ejecting microbubbles. It's impossible to get a good picture of it and it doesn't really feel like anything.

That said, I don't know that it's dinoflagellates. Many types of green algae can be clear before they get going with the chlorophyll. Hydroids can be clear and have long filaments. It could even be a bacterial overgrowth (not likely in my tank but if you are carbon dosing perhaps in yours). Is it bothering any of the animals in your tank?

not too specific on a rainy, cold Labour Day
Ivy

[DNA]

.
The square is still there.

Last year I did jet another of my brilliant tests.
I siphoned off the top layer of sand into a bucket and let it dry out killing loads of dinos.
Some months later I dumped all the sand back into the tank, knowing there were lots of toxins going in with it.
A Royal Gramma and a pair of Mandarins died in the days that followed.
Much of the dino population disappeared as well.

The square test and the dead dino tests are virtually the same.
I'm theorizing that Ostreopsis dinoflagellates can't tolerate their own toxins.
This is the limiting factor on dino densities I've been looking for since day one.
In the ocean dino blooms get much denser than in reef tanks because the vast ocean carries and dilutes the toxins from the dead dinos.

Did we just reach another milestone?

[DNA]

Not convinced yet?

Many of us have seen their dinos bloom right after water changes.
The toxins got dilluted.

The dirty method: Turn off the skimmer and filters and let the toxins build up.
The clean method: Kill the dinos with UV and let the toxins build up.

[Billybatz9]

3 to start with, depending what else you have in there. Sk8r recommends not going 100% dark if you have fish. I'd also set your skimmer to run wet and possibly add carbon. If you can't find filter socks locally, the stuffing sold for plush animals works really well to catch everything. You will want to replace it pretty much daily if there's a huge die off.

Did the aiptasia x do anything good?

hth
ivy

Aiptasia X Killed the Dino sections that I treated.

[Billybatz9]

After 3 days lights out, sand bed is free of dinos. However, after 3 hours of lights on today, I am starting to notice bubbles on my rocks starting to form. It held them back a little, but they will come again.

[karimwassef]

They're opportunistic feeders. They live on light and killing other plankton or eating waste.

They can go without light indefinitely- certainly outlast anything you're trying to keep alive.

Lights out just forces them into the water column so you can take action on them.

What are you doing to extract them during the lights out?

[Billybatz9]

They're opportunistic feeders. They live on light and killing other plankton or eating waste.

They can go without light indefinitely- certainly outlast anything you're trying to keep alive.

Lights out just forces them into the water column so you can take action on them.

What are you doing to extract them during the lights out?

Skimmer and carbon..

Before I did lights on, I did a water change also.

I see brown formation on rocks now. No bubble. But drown formation, looks like diatoms. But I know it's not. It's the beginning of hell.

[karimwassef]

I don't think that's enough... Use UV or something else to kill them before the skimmer... Or use a large fine filter net. You need to break their critical mass long enough for other life to take their place.

[Quiet_Ivy]

UPdate.

bad:
Sucks to be me! 3 day blackout..actually made them *worse*. I see very suspicious brown stuff on my sandbed for the first time. Also there's some goo on a previously clean rock that needs attention. I think the blackouts are just providing a strong evolutionary pressure to go mixotrophic/non photosynthetic. The yellow haze didn't get knocked back at all.

good:
Sacrificial cowrie is still ok. (Got from someone who had a population explosion and thought they'd starve) Only been 5 days tho. Serpent star and hermit still hanging in there.

So tldr version..I've done all the inexpensive things. Reduced lights/blackouts, no filtration (except some carbon), overfeeding, using tap water for top offs (yes, really), adding skimmate from a tank with no dinos, dosing tiny amounts of ammonia, Phyto and pods have failed.

Spend close to 200$ on 6kg of live rock? I can't get real live sand. Spend about $30 on dinoX? It's a lot of money to spend on my empty tank that I can't even have animals in. I'm nearing the end of my patience I think. Brilliant ideas anyone?

blah,
Ivy

[Quiet_Ivy]

.
The square is still there.

Last year I did jet another of my brilliant tests.
I siphoned off the top layer of sand into a bucket and let it dry out killing loads of dinos.
Some months later I dumped all the sand back into the tank, knowing there were lots of toxins going in with it. A Royal Gramma and a pair of Mandarins died in the days that followed. Much of the dino population disappeared as well.

The square test and the dead dino tests are virtually the same.
I'm theorizing that Ostreopsis dinoflagellates can't tolerate their own toxins.
This is the limiting factor on dino densities I've been looking for since day one.

Did we just reach another milestone?


Most of the authors (Borneman, Calfo, Fenner) I've read on dinos say the bloom will burn itself out. That would be consistent with your toxin theory, and what happens in nature. Sure isn't happening in my tank though. Possibly 'burn out' doesn't happen until every living thing in there is dead and the nutrients are gone. Many natural dino blooms are seasonal- we may not have the cues, light or temp or whatever, that tells them to knock it off.

You lost fish that depend heavily/solely on pod population. Significant? Or were they just the smallest fish you had? I would have predicted worsening of dinos as the sand might have contained cysts.

Scraping and siphoning anything in my tank has been very dangerous; I've had animals die every time I got carried away with cleaning. You didn't have success with the recycled skimmate additions though, did you? I tried it on my tank and it made things much worse immediately.

The most frustrating thing is we just don't know if everyone on this thread is dealing with the same genus of dinos. Both of us seem to have more toxicity problems than 'usual' and measures others have had good success with aren't working. Do you know your dinos are Ostreopsis? I'm borrowing a scope Wed. with some luck I'll get some pics up for id.

Ivy on a rainy cold Labour day

[mathman7728]

thank you!!!

i've attached a photo from a microscope

[DNA]

These look like dinos to me.
It is late over here and I don't have the time now to look into it, but they don't look like the most common ones on Algaeid.com.

You can see the groves they have and those appear to be circular.

http://bio1151.nicerweb.com/Locked/media/ch28/28_10Dinoflagellate.jpg

[cal_stir]

thank you!!!

i've attached a photo from a microscope
I see what could be possibly 1 dino in that pic and I don't think it is, all I see is algae.

could be diatoms

[cal_stir]

UPdate.

bad:
Sucks to be me! 3 day blackout..actually made them *worse*. I see very suspicious brown stuff on my sandbed for the first time. Also there's some goo on a previously clean rock that needs attention. I think the blackouts are just providing a strong evolutionary pressure to go mixotrophic/non photosynthetic. The yellow haze didn't get knocked back at all.

good:
Sacrificial cowrie is still ok. (Got from someone who had a population explosion and thought they'd starve) Only been 5 days tho. Serpent star and hermit still hanging in there.

So tldr version..I've done all the inexpensive things. Reduced lights/blackouts, no filtration (except some carbon), overfeeding, using tap water for top offs (yes, really), adding skimmate from a tank with no dinos, dosing tiny amounts of ammonia, Phyto and pods have failed.

Spend close to 200$ on 6kg of live rock? I can't get real live sand. Spend about $30 on dinoX? It's a lot of money to spend on my empty tank that I can't even have animals in. I'm nearing the end of my patience I think. Brilliant ideas anyone?

blah,
Ivy Black out and reduced photo periods don't work.
Dinos love the sand so remove it, at least where the light shines on it.
Leave the skimmer, phos media off til green algae is growing on the glass.
Run a small amount of carbon.
10uM filter socks.
No water changes.
Run tank water through a 5uM sediment filter with a pump and change the filter every 5 days.
Keep dosing phyto.

[DDon]

Been awhile since I have posted any updates on my battle with dinos. Slow flow UV (57 watt aquaUV) did not kill them but does seem to help in controlling the populations. I have since tried dirty method no GFO, skimmer off for a period of time and then even tried dumping skim mate back in the tank as was suggested earlier in the thread and turning skimmer back off. Also utilize 3 day lights out periods as that knock them back for me and helps keep them in check. Have been feeding photo and have added pods as well. Tank does look better but has only been a week since the last lights out period and still have some dinos present especially on my (previously) large red dragon that I had to cut up due to stn/rtn.

So now I am getting ready to close on a house and do not have a good place for an 8 foot tank. I am going to use this move as an opportunity to do a reset. Am in the process of ordering a custom tank and stand. Plan to use all new live rock and sand from TBS so I don't just move dinos to the new tank and will have plenty of microfauna. I do want to keep my corals and fish. Any suggestions on ways to prevent dinos from hitching a ride into the new tank on my corals? I will have to move a few pieces of rock over that my few remaining larger corals are heavily encrusted on. Thanks in advance.

[karimwassef]

They will transfer. The only place your rock and corals can survive is a well established mature tank. Start a new tank with the rock you have and they will have a clean slate... And be back more powerful than ever.

[Quiet_Ivy]

thank you!!!

i've attached a photo from a microscope


That looks a whole lot like coral zooxanthellae (Symbiodinium iirc). Have you been annoying your corals? :)


Link (can't get this to paste in, sorry): Zooxanthellae (https://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Zooxanthellae)


Poking through planktonnet (fun for the whole family :) it also looks a bit like a Lepidodinium aka Gymnodinium spp.
Here's a pic: http://planktonnet.awi.de/repository/rawdata-PlanktonNet2/viewable/fjouenne_sbrbill0104w_20080227182801_small.jpg

Anyway does look like a dinoflagellate..

hth a bit,
Ivy