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Unread 11/24/2014, 07:41 PM   #451
LelandF.
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I have a kalkwasser reactor for my top off, and I don't have a problem with phosphates at all. I was worried that I might cause elevated phosphates from feeding the tank more to purposely increase the nitrates, so thats what prompted me to add the gfo again. I have mangroves and syringodium grass in my refugium, and it does grow much better when I don't use gfo, for obvious reasons.

Leland


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Unread 11/24/2014, 08:33 PM   #452
ewoolley
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I had dino's for about 5 months. I tried to lower nutrients, even though they were already low. I tried black out periods, hydrogen peroxide, and adding Kalk to increase ph. I'm not sure what effect any of this had but one day the dinos just started to disappear. They were gone in a week.

I think if you give it time they will go away on there own.


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Unread 11/25/2014, 01:29 AM   #453
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Leland. I bet we could find several ways to have less dinos, but keeping SPS corals healthy at the same time is the real problem.


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Unread 11/25/2014, 01:34 AM   #454
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IU fan. I can't tell for sure if those are dinos. You seem to have some red slime and gunk in it as well. If you post another photo with the flash on we could see the colors better.


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Unread 11/28/2014, 05:37 PM   #455
peterpion
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I've had a dino problem for quite some time now, and decided recently to start to tackle it. I took some footage through my microscope which you guys might be interested in, url is

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPj...kL-zqCaM6FkPtw

Theres 7 short vids of the stuff at up to 1000x magnification. Theres a couple of vids of weird slug / worm things, but mostly its the algae. What I don't get is that it dosent look like this is dinos now to me. Although I think I can see a few dinos, like in vid 3, the majority of the blobs don't seem to me moving and look too small to be dinos. Any opinions would be appreciated. I emailed the link to Pants - will see if he gets the time to look.

Background - this is a bit of the green slimey stuff from my rock, which is very fragile, can be blown off with a pump, rapidly comes back, and is very nutrient starved (phos reads 0 on hanna, not sure nitrate).

Cheers, Pete


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Unread 11/28/2014, 10:20 PM   #456
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ewoolley View Post
I had dino's for about 5 months. I tried to lower nutrients, even though they were already low. I tried black out periods, hydrogen peroxide, and adding Kalk to increase ph. I'm not sure what effect any of this had but one day the dinos just started to disappear. They were gone in a week.

I think if you give it time they will go away on there own.
I had the same experience. I had Dinoflagelates for several months and tried everything ultra algae x , blackout, vacuum the sand everyday, lower nutrients, increase nutrients, water changes , no water changes ect .
few days ago after no trying anything for a while( I kept vacuum the sand) and this week they just stating to die and today I could only see very little .
I hope they totally disappeare in 1 or 2 days.
I really don't know why this happen but I am very happy 😀


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Unread 11/29/2014, 02:36 AM   #457
DNA
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peterpion what is in video 3 is a dinoflagellate. I'd expect to find some in every tank.
You can see it move with it's flagellate and the grove they all have is also visible. It's not Ostreopsis.

I don't know what that much smaller plankton mass is.
I think it's for sure too small to be dinos and it's almost out of range for a light microscope.
Judging by the round form I'd not expect it to be bacteria either.

Do you have a picture of what it looks like on the rocks?


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Unread 11/29/2014, 04:06 AM   #458
DNA
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Montireef View Post
....rising nitrates from 0 to 25 ppm....
Rewinding back a few years when SPS did very poorly in my tank.
I remember the 2-3 months right after I added some new live rock and everything took off like a space rocket.
That was rocks from the local fish store and die off was next to none at all.
Earlier this year I did the same with imported rocks and die off was extensive so I assumed it was the raised nitrates causing the reduction in dinos.

Now I wonder if it was something else than the nitrates.
Perhaps introduced parasites, bacteria or competition.

Last year I asked a few local reefers with healthy tanks to keep a sterile dry rock in their tank for a while so I could sample their fauna and introduce it to my tank.
Regrettably they were not interested.

Over here we have limited resources and import is only fish and inverts every few months.
This year we got live rock and it don't know of any SPS for the last 5 years.

Many of the products for reef-keeping are not available.
I'm thinking live sand, bottled plankton or anything that will add to the tanks microfauna.

You get the idea.
If you give this a try please post your findings.


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Unread 11/29/2014, 06:14 AM   #459
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Here is my current status.

While the sand bed is covered in dinos and cyano my SPS are doing fine with decent growth and some color.

As soon as the blue lights turn on dinos flock to the shaded areas.
This is how the sand looks throughout the night. It's mostly cyano with lots of dinos entangled in it, hence the brown color.
I vacuumed the top layer last weekend, but in around two days it looked the same as before.







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Unread 11/29/2014, 08:23 AM   #460
peterpion
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Hi DNA,

Thats pretty interesting. Also that you have cyano with dinos entangled, I am wondering if I have similar, although I see very little filamentous, which I believe cyano is - do you know if its always filamentous?

I took a few pics today of the rocks, and also added a vid on youtube of the algae moving in the current, which I think gives a better idea of how it looks.

Not sure how to use the upload image function here yet, so here goes, if the images don't appear i'll try again.


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File Type: jpg IMG_0709.jpg (53.7 KB, 48 views)
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Unread 11/29/2014, 08:31 AM   #461
peterpion
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And another 2 hopefully...


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File Type: jpg IMG_0711b.jpg (84.0 KB, 46 views)
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Unread 11/29/2014, 08:43 AM   #462
Aquarist007
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Originally Posted by peterpion View Post
And another 2 hopefully...
That does not look like dinos to me but DNA would know best
I use this guide
http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/18673...e-algae-guide/


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Unread 11/29/2014, 08:44 AM   #463
peterpion
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As you can see in video 5, the vast majority of the blobs are not like the 2 that can be seen moving, which you say you think are dinos (and look that way to me too). That view is at 100x, so the field of view is about 1.8mm. It looks maybe even that the slime stuff might be mainly made up of something thats not even cellular, but is trapping some stuff in it. Maybe those smaller things exude some kind of slime for instance, which creates the bulk of the algae mass you can see in the photos. Its very fragile stuff and I can't pull sheets off like cyano can for instance. If I put the siphon tube up against the rock I can take a lot of it off in the flow, although not all of it.

Its quite confusing because a year or so ago I looked and had a similar looking problem, but under the scope there was vast numbers of the things that look like dinos. Since it all happened I have not done much to the tank, I almost gave up, so apart from the occasional brush of the rocks and siphon out the gunge, I have made little effort to clean up the tank. Now summers over I am going to tackle it aggressively, before restocking with some smaller frags and seeing how it goes. But I would like to identify this stuff and maybe try to actually go at it scientifically, so next time I (and others) are more prepared. I am thinking that by identifying these algaes properly maybe we can make some progress collectively against nucience algaes.

I think I'll take another sample today and look again, to see if the last sample was just not representitive of the bulk of the algae.


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Unread 11/29/2014, 09:12 AM   #464
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Thanks 007, I did take a look at that page just now but didn't see any that really looked like my algae apart from the cyano - and looking at microscope piccies of cyano, they all seem to be filaments. But I'm not sure about that.

I also found this page just now which is interesting

http://botany.si.edu/references/dinoflag/taxa.htm

If you click on each one, it pops up a window, and then you have to click the 'plates' link, and you get piccies of each dino. I didn't see any that look like mine, but the piccy I got of my dino was not that clear so I am not sure.


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Unread 11/29/2014, 10:25 AM   #465
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Originally Posted by peterpion View Post
Thanks 007, I did take a look at that page just now but didn't see any that really looked like my algae apart from the cyano - and looking at microscope piccies of cyano, they all seem to be filaments. But I'm not sure about that.

I also found this page just now which is interesting

http://botany.si.edu/references/dinoflag/taxa.htm

If you click on each one, it pops up a window, and then you have to click the 'plates' link, and you get piccies of each dino. I didn't see any that look like mine, but the piccy I got of my dino was not that clear so I am not sure.
Thanks for the link
Curious what the levels of nitrates and phosphates are in your tank


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Unread 11/29/2014, 10:31 AM   #466
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i don't have a nitrate test so am going to take a sample to the LFS today - I think they will test it for me. As for phosphates, zero on hanna... odd.

I did just take another slide and the plot thickens. Ill post the images later but in this one I see lots of very fine filaments, although almost all of them are clear. But theres one or two which are green and look very much like the piccies of cyano I have seen. Maybe the clear ones are dead cyano I am wondering. Ill post the images later but I want to rush to the LFS before the missus gets home and gives me other jobs to do :-)


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Unread 11/29/2014, 10:32 AM   #467
peterpion
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Oh theres also a shot of what looks like a dino, but its not moving, and it has clear filaments coming out of it. Theres a coupe of different ones like that. I did see on some page earlier a similar looking organisim but I don't remember what it was, ill have to search again later.


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Unread 11/29/2014, 10:45 AM   #468
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i don't have a nitrate test so am going to take a sample to the LFS today - I think they will test it for me. As for phosphates, zero on hanna... odd.

I did just take another slide and the plot thickens. Ill post the images later but in this one I see lots of very fine filaments, although almost all of them are clear. But theres one or two which are green and look very much like the piccies of cyano I have seen. Maybe the clear ones are dead cyano I am wondering. Ill post the images later but I want to rush to the LFS before the missus gets home and gives me other jobs to do :-)
Apologize for stupid request.algae is consuming the phosphates .. Duh
I'd try running a Gfo media in a reactor and see what happens.


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Unread 11/29/2014, 10:54 AM   #469
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IU fan. I can't tell for sure if those are dinos. You seem to have some red slime and gunk in it as well. If you post another photo with the flash on we could see the colors better.

I siphoned a bunch out today. My sump is the worst culprit for this stuff, it's full of it. DT only has a small amount, so think I need to switch to a different sump that has filter socks and less detritus traps.

This is it in the bucket. Does it look like dinos to you?

Viewer discretion advised! Looks like a bucket of dog puke. Horrible stuff







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Unread 11/29/2014, 10:55 AM   #470
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Not like dinoflagellates at all.


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Unread 11/29/2014, 11:51 AM   #471
peterpion
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To me that just looks like dead matter sludge - siphoned from a sump, it looks OK, if you havent got it in the DT.


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Unread 11/29/2014, 12:17 PM   #472
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I'd strip down the sump and clean it right out. Problems down the road with all that crud.


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Unread 11/29/2014, 12:22 PM   #473
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No it's in the DT too, it attaches to the side of the skimmer, the glass, the skimmer pump. In the DT it attaches to the underside of rocks and under ledge then is like a long strand drifting in the current


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Unread 11/29/2014, 01:45 PM   #474
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When I was dealing with dino's, it behaved like regular algae. The stuff was consuming nutrients extremely fast. When I did a three week lights out the nitrates spiked to over 50 in under a week. Nitrates and phosphates had previously tested at zero.

Here's an original pic from when it was really bad

WIN_20140807_123442.jpg

WIN_20140807_124511.jpg

WIN_20140807_124447.jpg

Daniel.


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Unread 11/29/2014, 02:34 PM   #475
Aquarist007
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No it's in the DT too, it attaches to the side of the skimmer, the glass, the skimmer pump. In the DT it attaches to the underside of rocks and under ledge then is like a long strand drifting in the current
The sump could be feeding the algae in the dt. You really should keep your sump squeaky clean


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