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04/22/2016, 12:49 PM | #3551 |
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Your local fish store should have some? If not, you can try live aquaria.
Bare bottom would be the easiest to keep under control IMO.
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04/22/2016, 01:50 PM | #3552 |
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04/22/2016, 03:19 PM | #3553 |
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Right the rocks were as dead as they can be, they were devoured with no life of any kind, but most of retailer like BRS are selling these instead of premium live rocks that we used to get 10 years ago.
So I should started tearing the tank apart then seeded with live rocks at this point right? |
04/22/2016, 05:23 PM | #3554 |
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I would. I would also clean the tank and run it with fresh water and vinegar to scrub the plumbing too.
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04/22/2016, 07:54 PM | #3555 |
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You could consider adding some live rock or small animal cultures, if breaking down the tank seems like a lot of work.
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04/23/2016, 04:07 AM | #3556 |
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.
There is a red thread going through here, with several leads, that points strongly at lack of bio diversity as a cause for outbreaks. I have mentioned it several times that my tanks health improves by adding to it, but I have a large tank, poor access and sky high livestock prices. I don't know if it's the norm, but American tanks seem to start off with loads of large corals in matter of weeks and look years old from very early on. That brown dusting on the sand that most new tank owners are told to be diatoms, could be dinos, but soon the livestock brought in changes the conditions towards a coral friendly one and hopefully they begin to thrive and maintain the situation. Those with small tanks and access to good live rock, sand, corals, plankton should go all in to get their tank on par with the ocean. I have always been conservative on corals and wanting to start with small frags to lessen the impact on natural reefs. That could be the worst thing to do if you are failing to recreate the natural environment properly in the process. We have not heard from Montireef for years, but he had a coral farm and good traffic of livestock going through I presume. Africangray is the lates example of the opposite with a really bad infestation. It's not something that someone else will do for you. If you have dinos, you need to act and these leads are the best ones available. |
04/23/2016, 08:44 AM | #3557 |
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Africangrey,
You could totally start over. Many would. But there's at least a small possibility you'll be fighting dinos after the reboot. I'm a little strange, but I'd try to beat them. Your reports have already been very educational (dead/dry everything+Zeo = scary), we'd all learn something if you went from the worst ostreopsis dino tank infestation the thread has seen to a healthy system. (Caution: you have a lot of ostis, which should be assumed to be very toxic. Eyes, skin, lungs all should be protected.) Here are the biggest issues (IMO) that need to be addressed in the system, and below that I'll lay out exactly what I would do in your system. Concerns
Here's exactly what I would do in your shoes: 1. Siphon out all the dinos you can: Replace water as needed with plain Instant Ocean salt mix (not reef crystals). Do it thoroughly, maybe it'll be the only time you have to do this. 2. Take a strip or two of filter floss or dense mesh netting or anything else with a lot of surface area and attach it right in the flow in front of a powerhead and under good lighting. It'll be an Osti magnet. Pull it out daily (or 2 or 3 times a day if you want) and rinse the brown dusting out under tap water, and replace the filter. 3. Get a UV (make that 2 UV's - 2nd one for later) slow flow is better. Hook up one UV so that the output of the UV dumps right at the skimmer intake. Run skimmer wet. Doesn't have to be fancy. petsmart carries a brand that should do the trick. 4. Run activated carbon, and replace every day for the first week. 5. Stop Zeo system, Coral snow, any other carbon dosing etc. Pull out GFO if any. 6. Set up an algae sump/fuge from scratch (if you have one already - nuke it with bleach/peroxide/whatever). Make certain that all water from the display that goes to the fuge goes through your slow flow UV + skimmer first before getting to the algae growing area. 7. Put up an Algae Turf Scrubber (ATS). See threads on the setups, but don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If you don't have the stuff to make it exactly to the recommended specifications, fine. Add flow and blast the fuge with several 100W LEDs at 2700k (warm white) for 18hr/day and then you can improve it to get it closer to recommended, but start the algae growth ASAP. 8. Get algae to throw in the fuge: Macroalgae of any kind, great, microalgae too. If you can get chaeto or caulerpa, or anything else green and fast growing, great. Buy locally, beg local reefers etc. Order if necessary. More is better. 9. Test N & P - don't let either get to undetectably low. Add the plainest least complex thing like NaNO3 or KNO3 and similar for P, or if not available - mysis frozen table shrimp etc. - as necessary to get measurable amounts of both. Avoid fancy fish foods that have all manner of vitamins and micronutrient enrichments. Personally, I'd aim for 5-10ppm NO3, .05-.10 PO4. Yes, I know that P level inhibits stony coral growth, but I guarantee you won't see any stony coral growth until dinos are gone anyway. ...all that should be done on day 1 if possible :-) 10. Try to acquire pods that you can dump in the tank on day 4. 11. Day 4: After 3 days (post-siphon) of using the filter floss dino magnet you should have significantly fewer dinos. Do a 3 day blackout in the tank. Run the fuge lights still at 18 or 20hrs/day. If your UV/wet skimmer are not doing their job, then algae and ATS in the fuge will get covered in dinos (bad). 12. At the start of the blackout, add pods to the display tank. If there's lots of pods in the algae fuge, you can suck or scrape some out and dump in as well. don't take algae from fuge and put it in the Display. It'll just die in darkness, and if you put it back in the fuge it'll bring dinos with it. 13. Make sure you are (carefully) cleaning the skimmer every day or two. Keep it running efficiently. ...To be continued (Post Blackout finishing touches) |
04/23/2016, 10:08 AM | #3558 |
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Thanks for the detailed instruction on how to combat the beautiful ostreopsis dino, can I just add huge # of microfauna at this point to seed the rock and sand hoping that they will out compete the available micro nutrient in the water column?
Biodiversity is the key I heard you, but is it too late to establish microfauna at given situation, without doing the drastic UV, black out and hydrogen peroxide route. If that doesn't work might as well transfer all the sps frags that I just acquired then suck out all the saltwater, dump fresh RO/DI to kill all the dinos then start all over with fresh live rock straight from Fiji if possible. |
04/23/2016, 10:24 AM | #3559 |
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there is also a thread about molybdenum being too high in most of dino infested tank. is there a truth to it, I have been using Aquavitro salt from the beginning and the level is 0.01meg/L inline with what is found in the ocean.
The thread is found here, but I think most of you have read this already. Still want to hear what daniloronchi have learn from his Triton analysis. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...2533634&page=4 |
04/23/2016, 10:57 AM | #3560 | |
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Quote:
Taricha, actually after implementing dyno scrubber, uv and daily small phyto doses, stony growth is really good. Still a ton of dynos, but tank looks very healthy. |
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04/23/2016, 03:29 PM | #3561 |
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I don't think micro fauna (zooplankton) have much to do with dinos. I think the microfloura like periphyton on live rock have more to do with what is controlling the dinos in an aged system. In my opinion you need to increase biodiversity with organisms that consume N & P other than dinos.
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04/23/2016, 06:00 PM | #3562 |
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If a trace element was a dino driver, then large water changes would resolve the issue - unless there's a continuous source leaching into the water.
I'm normally a fan of fighting, but in a new system with few corals, I'd remove the corals for their own safety and health... Then restart with a normal ecosystem.
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04/23/2016, 06:27 PM | #3563 | |
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Reduce them by 99+% then you can start to successfully outcompete them for nutrients. But don't let it be a fair fight. The algae/microfauna should outmass the dinos by 100 or 1000 times before you see success. The dinos have drastically changed the chemistry/biology in your tank to suit their needs. You have to make equally drastic changes to give healthy life a chance to chase out the dinos. |
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04/24/2016, 07:32 AM | #3564 | |
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Although you seem to be leaning toward starting over anyway (I don't blame you) I'll finish this up for completeness.
Quote:
14. Bring lights up however slowly you need to keep from shocking corals. 15. Add the 2nd UV right in the display tank. So you have one that circulates in the tank, and one that acts in combo with wet skimming to be a dino gate to keep them off your algae fuge/ATS. 16. Add a few plugs of macroalgae from the fuge (or get some more from somewhere) and place them directly on the sandbed. This is in part for more direct nutrient competition, but mostly to really ramp up the microfauna in the sand bed. Chaeto is my favorite for this. 17. If you have spots of cyanobacteria/red slime - cut the pumps off for a minute or two and squirt 1/2 ml to a ml of H2O2 through a tube right onto the trouble spots. Keep your total peroxide use under 1ml/20 gal per day and you should see no widespread effects. 18. At the end of week 2, if dinos are invisible in the tank - only showing up as brown dusting on the floss filter, and the ATS is getting good growth you can pull the macroalgae out of the display tank. You could occasionally dose phyto here to keep the microfauna going, but go easy with it. 19. You can reduce UV use to one unit run only at night. 20. If all goes well declare cautious victory. |
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04/25/2016, 11:36 PM | #3565 |
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Haven't done anything accept waiting for zeozym and biomate to arrive from BRS this Friday, as this will be my last approach before starting over. But from last Friday I've shut off all the red LED's, shorten photo period from 8 hr/day to 5 hr, decrease the intensity to 30% from the original 65% from Radion G3, continue daily dosing of 4mL Coral Snow and 4 drops of Zeobak. And things have improved as dino has subsided a bit. Will report back with photos after the addition of zeozym and zeomate. Last edited by africangrey; 04/26/2016 at 12:17 AM. Reason: [URL=http://s152.photobucket.com/user/spencerwu/media/Reef%20DIno/20160425_192302_zpswqb7kq8t.jpg.html][IMG]http://i152.photo |
04/26/2016, 06:47 PM | #3566 |
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Ran across something interesting. Seen it pointed out in this thread that it seems like some chemical treatments just select for one kind of dinos - frequently ostreopsis - over others.
In this paper they look at the effect of peroxide on 12 members of the phytoplankton community including green algae, diatoms, dinos, and a cocco. What they found was that there were a couple of major factors that determined susceptibility to hydrogen peroxide. And it proposes a mechanism for why H2O2 might not hit dinos as hard as we'd expect. 1. cell size or body volume of organism "Exposure of these species to H2O2 at 6.4 mg/L revealed cell size dependent species sensitivity. It was found that the smaller the cell size the more sensitive it is to H2O2." "...Likewise, Jeong et al. found log-log relationship between the mortality rate of aquatic organisms (red tide dinoflagellates, diatoms, ciliates, copepods, fin-fish, brine shrimp and shellfish) and organisms' bio-volume, when exposed to hypochlorite, another small molecule oxidizing biocide." 2. protective cell wall "the cellular structure, particularly the presence of rigid cell wall, may contribute to a species' H2O2 resistance. For example, the silica-mucilage cell wall of the diatoms may have given Sc and Tw their H2O2 resistance (diameter 6.6 and 11.05 μm respectively, not affected by 6.4 mg/L H2O2), as compared to the athecate dinoflagellate Ac of similar cell size (diameter 9 μm, but showed >90% inhibition by 6.4 mg/L H2O2)" "The rigid cell wall, if present, potentially provides a first layer of defense against H2O2 and HO·, and allowing them to be inactivated before reaching the more sensitive and biologically critical components of cell membrane and organelles." 3. cyanobacteria? "Cyanobacteria has been shown to be more sensitive than most eukaryotic phytoplankton, partly because of their prokaryotic photosynthetic apparatus. " "Cyanobacteria community could be most severely affected by H2O2 treatment, as was seen in the field work of Matthij et al. where 2 mg L−1 H2O2 eradicated cyanobacterial bloom of Planktothrix agardhii in the freshwater lake. However, cyanobacterial sensitivity to H2O2 also varied substantially among the species." (interestingly they report the most sensitive cyanobacteria is oscillatoria - a common aquarium red slime causer that was completely inhibited at 1mg H2O2 /L) They found that when the cell size got up to the dino prorocentrum micans (45 microns), the rate of inhibition was only 11%, but a small (9 micron) unarmoured dino was 96% inhibited at the same dose. So if the trend holds, the huge celled armored things in our tanks - ostreopsis - would be practically unaffected by peroxide doses that inhibit tons of other things. The dose required to hurt ostreopsis directly might be impractically huge. anecdotally: on my microscope slides with a few drops of ostis, 1 drop of distilled fresh water has more instant bang (30% of cells shed theca instantly) than 1 drop of H2O2. In fact, the cyano sensitivity coupled with the tight cyano/dino bond makes me wonder a couple things. first, is the improvement sometimes seen in dino infested tank appearance with peroxide actually just the killing of the associated cyano? Less pigment, looks better, possibly without really hurting the dinos. second, does H2O2 actually hurt dino's indirectly through the associated bacterial community? The paper talks a decent amount about how wildly differently bacterial groups react to H2O2 (34cygni alert). If true, this would argue for the usefulness of lower dose, longer treatment H2O2 option. Finally, the notion that the theca (armor) + cell size might protect vs peroxide leaves open the possibility that amphidinium in our tanks could be very susceptible. Our Amphidinium is not small (20 micron ballpark), but it's smaller, and it's very flat (high surface area/volume ratio). In fact, the small unarmored dino that was 96% inhibited was amphidinium carterae. But our amphidinium is twice as big in each dimension. |
04/27/2016, 09:52 AM | #3567 |
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Anything on susceptibility to UV?
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04/27/2016, 09:56 AM | #3568 |
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So - question on chemistry...
Why do cyano and dinos create bubbles while GHA or chaeto just exhale with dissolved gases? Maybe it's really simple... I just don't know the answer (my 9yr old asked and I couldn't give a straight answer - she can tell when I don't really know so I need my credibility back).
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04/27/2016, 11:27 AM | #3569 | |
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Quote:
If dinos want to bounce between the bottom and surface twice a day they must make sure they can control their buoyancy. A bubble is a fast trip to the surface and that can be a very long one for such a small animal. |
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04/27/2016, 12:26 PM | #3570 |
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So it's mobility? Really? Why would cyano have it?
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04/27/2016, 02:33 PM | #3571 |
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Cyano do a daily trip too. Orienting for better light. That's part of why it looks less bad at lights on than it does later. So maybe that sits have something to do with it.
I just thought it was structural, dino mucilage and cyano fibers tangled into a sheet both capture bubbles whereas algae fibers (usually parallel) don't. |
04/27/2016, 06:46 PM | #3572 |
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i have had dino problem but thanks to this thread i think the solution is 1)dirty method, turn off the skimmer, maybe UV at night initially but not needed long term, add phyto on a regular basis for several weeks, add more bio diversity. my dinos are nearly gone (4 months) and everything looks much better. i think the problems started because i was skimming too much and the water was too clean. i don't think we need chemicals to fix this problem...bio diversity and patience....
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05/02/2016, 11:08 AM | #3573 | |
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1. Do a water change and try to siphon as much dino as you can off the rocks. This will be your last water change for a while. 2. Stop skimming entirely. No skimming at all. 3. Start to dose MB7 and phyto heavily. I did 5-10mL/25gal MB7 daily to start and the phyto I did not measure. 4. Feed "heavily". Everyone will have a different amount depending on livestock, tank size, so this is just to say try to keep up with normal feeding and don't cut back. Obviously don't go crazy and overfeed, you don't want wasted food sitting in the tank uneaten ever. 5. Add a small amount of live sand (either from an established tank or purchased). I added a few cups. 6. Continue steps 2-4 for ~7 days (this is arbitrary, it just happens to be the length of time I did it). 7. Wrap your entire tank in black garbage bags or anything that will completely block out light. 8. Turn off your tank lights and leave them off for 10 days. 9. Continue steps 2-4 during this time. 10. Unwrap your tank after 10 days and reintroduce lights slowly. I did actinic only for the first few days and basically took a week to get to the normal photoperiod. I kept heavily dosing MB7 and phyto for close to a month total before cutting back to the MB7 maintenance schedule dosing off the bottle. I didn't lose any coral or fish doing this, but I do not keep SPS. LPS were absolutely fine. Obviously this is to be done at your own risk. I can only say what I did, and what worked for me. Anecdotal evidence only of course, but I think a lack of biodiversity combined with the low nutrient systems a lot of us run that is perfect for dino. I was vodka dosing and trying to eliminate some algae before dino became a problem. The algae is back, but I'd much live with that. I want to add that in Step 6, I would recommend either reducing your photoperiod or starting sooner (2-3 days vs ~7 days). It took me probably 5-6 days to move on to Step 7 due to work. At that point the dino was already pretty bad again. I wanted to be available in case anything went wrong so it took me a bit longer than I planned. It goes without saying, but if you are going to try anything like this I suggest monitoring your tank chemistry, temp, etc. closely. Also, always have emergency water made up for a water change in something goes wrong. Last edited by Stumped; 05/02/2016 at 11:19 AM. |
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05/03/2016, 06:53 AM | #3574 |
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I have a 20g fish/coral qt that started to get Dino's. I'm pulling the coral out and possibly the one fish as they have done there time. Let me know if anyone wants me to try anything specific. I've been dosing mb7, phyto, feeding more. Also running skimmer and UV only at night. I am just moving to turning the skimmer off completely. They seem to be declining but I wouldn't mind experimenting a little if anyone has ideas.
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05/03/2016, 04:41 PM | #3575 |
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Perfect tank size for a bio bomb.
I wrote about it a few pages back and it revolves around giving corals the upper hand in the species chemical war. |
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