dino experiment

[slow_leak]

I used an Algae Turf Scrubber for about 9 months on my reef tank. It worked great for about six months and then could not keep up with system. I added more flow and more light based on "recommendations".

When the Dino's settled in I used mixed carbon source with doser for about 3 months and issue was solved. It hung around and at 3 month mark it just vanished. I not just run GFO and wait for it to return. It's been about 3-4 months since it has been gone.

[sahin]

Many thanks for doing this work for us Pants. The fact that there are different species of Dinos explains the reason why the typical pH to 8.4 and lights out etc etc doesnt work for everyone.

Sme of these species must be more resilient than others.

Is there anything that can be done at all to target these things without harming corals?

[Pants]

The biggest problem with targeting these specifically is that your photosynthetic corals and anemones are a symbiotic relationship between an cnidarian animal (or in the case of giant clams a mollusk) and a dinoflagellate that lives inside the animals cells. Coral reefs would not exist without dinoflagellates. These symbiotic dinoflagellates are also found in the water column and on the rock and glass surfaces. Finding something that kills the harmful dinoflagellate but not the beneficial dinoflagellates would be difficult.

I can say that rapid changes in salinity will usually cause the cells to break open and die in very short order, so instituting freshwater dips of everything wet that goes in your tank could help prevent introduction of new dinoflagellates (pests and beneficials).

With the hydrogen peroxide treatment you are taking advantage of the extra protection that being inside the animal cell provides to the endosymbiont. The animal cell can break down the hydrogen peroxide and protect the symbionts— but you are still nuking your community of beneficial dinoflagellates (and other algae) that are not inside the corals.

Any other treatments will likely have to take advantage of this same protection conferred by the animal cells.

You also need to address the underlying cause of the blooms. It is unlikely you will ever kill 100% of the harmful dinoflagellates, so if you don't address the excess nutrients in your system then they are bound to come back given time.

If your dinoflagellate community is destroyed and there are still nutrients around something will fill that niche: recovering dinos, cyano, diatoms...

[Homeytwist]

Pants, I was under the impression that the dinos would grow well even in the absence of the nutrients usually responsible for nuisance algae, hence why they are so difficult to deal with (the usual nutrient control methods don't work). Is this the case or are they in fact dependant on the same nutrients as the usual nuiscance algae competitors; nitrate, phosphate, silicates etc. Is there a particular food source that the dino relies on or does it really depend on the particular species?

Somehow I doubt it's that simple, but I had to ask out of curiosity.

[bertoni]

Every organism requires carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Photosynthetic organisms can fix carbon dioxide from the air, so that leaves nitrogen and phosphorus as the usual control points for dinoflagellates. That said, dinoflagellates can be hard to control because we can't remove all the nutrients from the system...

Some dinoflagellates might require fair amounts of other elements, but that'll depend on the species.

[brandon429]

I was just thinking that.

It must be an unbelievable tightrope walk for those who strive to maintain these stripped nutrient profiles considering the bioload we keep in our tanks and the need for corals to have access to nutrients at all times as a required supplement to what photosynthetic machinery provides.


Across all nano reefs and pico reefs, which concentrate and amplify peroxide dosing details compared to larger tanks, we've seen no loss of beneficial dinoflagellates/benthic life impact the system negatively as is commonly stated.we'll make a thread with 500 before and after pics yet its still suspect of causing unseen harm. filter beds hold up unimpeded, per ammonia test kits-same can't be said of all reef treatments.

When used carefully and with a method we know works, the results are all positive.

We alter so many otherwise natural populations in our tanks with variances in care, why should peroxide be set aside.



Why is making ones tank an alcoholic to sustain unnatural microbe populations any less abnormal than peroxide being used to counter control them?

I find that there are many assumptions about what goes on behind the scenes with controlled peroxide use while we continue to compile post after post after post with pics showing no such loss of beneficial life and healthy, glowing corals.

That being said Pants i'm still reeeaaallly hoping you will make that video of a single cell lysing in motion it will be my fav clip 2012

[jrp1588]

I tried peroxide for my dino's. It didn't work in the slightest bit for me.

[bertoni]

Some people don't mind experimenting with their tanks. If so, trying hydrogen peroxide might be reasonable. There are a lot of dead corals from vodka and vinegar dosing experiments, and personally I'd rather learn from someone else's dead corals than my own. I can't in good conscience recommend hydrogen peroxide given the lack of information on how safe it is.

[brandon429]

What about the before and after pics though
Some of our threads are a year or more older now
Its definitely not formally reviewed though I don't blame anyone for taking a conservative stance with their tanks



http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...2082359&page=8

Jrp if you would have joined our thread I think we could have earned different results

[sahin]

Originally Posted by jrp1588

I tried peroxide for my dino's. It didn't work in the slightest bit for me.

I too tried it and it didnt work for me. I wish it had...I even overdosed but whilst it didnt kill the Dinos, it didnt harm my corals in any way.

Originally Posted by bertoni

Some people don't mind experimenting with their tanks. If so, trying hydrogen peroxide might be reasonable. There are a lot of dead corals from vodka and vinegar dosing experiments, and personally I'd rather learn from someone else's dead corals than my own. I can't in good conscience recommend hydrogen peroxide given the lack of information on how safe it is.

At the levels most people use in their reefs, I'd say its safe. I read numerous threads before using it. I had a tank full of SPS that I didnt want to lose.

If one told mainstream reefkeepers to dose vodka in thier reefs 20 years ago you'd been called crazy or something.

Originally Posted by brandon429

What about the before and after pics though Some of our threads are a year or more older now. Its definitely not formally reviewed though I don't blame anyone for taking a conservative stance with their tanks

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...2082359&page=8

Jrp if you would have joined our thread I think we could have earned different results

Brandon, I will take a look at the thread later, but from glancing at the thread some time back, I thought this method was for hair algae etc.

I'd love for peroxide to work against Dinos.

[brandon429]

We haven't found a reef pest a direct treatment wouldn't work on

The full tank dosings may or may not work but the spot treatments will
These are often really hard to do in a large tank compared to a nano...

[jrp1588]

I have a 75gal so pulling them all out would be a bit of a pain. haha

[Peter T]

I would like to try the peroxide method for my dinos, but I am unsure of the effect it would have on my stomatopod. If this 10 day blackout fails, I may end up putting my stomatopod in a different tank and doing a broadcast treatment of peroxide along with another blackout and elevated pH.

[brandon429]

I hope you can collect before and after pics, that will be a fun challenge to see if we can beat this plague

i'm curious to see how bad your infestation is

[Peter T]

Originally Posted by brandon429

I hope you can collect before and after pics, that will be a fun challenge to see if we can beat this plague

i'm curious to see how bad your infestation is

The first time it was so bad it backed up my overflow boxes and killed off all my SPS. I thought I beat it the first time with a 3 day blackout and elevated pH; it started coming back from the sand after a water change. I am seriously debating on going bare bottom because of this.

However, I'm already going on my 3rd day blackout of the 10 day blackout plus elevated pH. All the dinos appear to be gone already but that is how it looked last time when I thought I beat it so I will wait the full 10 days.

I didn't take any pictures because I was so embarrassed. If this fails and I try out peroxide dosing in conjunction with elevated pH and blackout, I will be sure to take before pictures.

[brandon429]

Man that's terrible if these guys ever hit my bowl i'm going to run for the hills screaming

In my opinion the battle does not lie in nutrient control it lies in direct control of the pest since these are obligate hitchhikers

That's one benefit of having an aged tank that is already fully stocked...no more additions means my pest wars will be centered around gha, cyano, things we can catch from the air. In the rare times I shoe horn in another frag i'm pre dipping the heck out of it as preventative (usually at least the frag plug base)

[burnah]

hey there, thanks for the read, good to hear that at least some of you managed to win the battle. ive lost it once, did a restart of the tank after 4 weeks of darkness...

now ive got them again, hopefully this time my tank is better in shape to cope with it and i will drive them away.

greetings

[Aquaman101]

Originally Posted by burnah

hey there, thanks for the read, good to hear that at least some of you managed to win the battle. ive lost it once, did a restart of the tank after 4 weeks of darkness...

now ive got them again, hopefully this time my tank is better in shape to cope with it and i will drive them away.

greetings

Can you give me an idea of how you restarted your tank? I've been considering trying to restart it, but I don't know what to do with all my corals, clams & other inhabitants.

[burnah]

well, some of my corals survived the long blackout. ive never thought this possible, but now i believe my green montipora digitata would even survive a nuclear catastrophe. i did not light the tank and then i put new corals and fish in it. it was not a total restart, as i kept my sand and rock.

hard to say how to do that with saving the corals. setting up a holding tank for the time of the blackout might be an idea. i am already starting to think about what to do as they get worse and worse and i do not want to do anything like that

[Pants]

sudden salinity changes are pretty bad for dinos so a freshwater dip of corals you remove to do your restart should lyse the dinos. I've lost some of the dinos in seconds of exposure to salinity differences of just ~5ppt.

[HighlandReefer]

Pants,

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Most of the pests that hobbyists are identifying (without the use of a microscope) as dinos may very well be cyanobacteria with some dinos mixed in (perhaps some algae as well).

Cyanobacteria are tough to get rid of in many cases. Lots of elbow grease, increased filtrations and keeping at it is the best way to erradicate any of these algalg, cyanobacgterial and dino pests IMHO. Keep the tank spick and span and you will eventually erradicate the pest, while maintaining low nutrient levels.

[HighlandReefer]

Be careful and properly quarantine any rock or organisms you introduce into a system. Use a good light to quarantine with to allow pests to grow. If pests show up in quarantine it is much easier to erradicate them in quarantine than in a reef tank with losts of organisms and live rock. Be careful to not overfeed your system and let the nutrient levels get out of hand. Keep the tank clean of debris including sand beds if not deep.

If you see a strange growth on rock, I would get rid of it quickly unless you are positive of what it is. Introduce new organisms slowly in number, adding to many at one time is asking for problems.

[HighlandReefer]

This is what natural reef rock looks like in the wild, covered with many organisms which you don't want in your tank. Then they clean up the rock because some of the growth dies off, but not all of it and then you put it into your tank where these organisms start growing again. The algae & cyanobacteria can survive quite harsh conditions. The dead and dieing things on & in the rock crevises will break down and drive nutrient levels up and the pests will feed on this material directly.

FWIW, algae & cyano can survive much better than most coral can & both algae and cyano produce some nasty toxins to keep other things away. Some of these toxins can cause problem with coral as well. The ocean is a dog eat dog world with chemical warfare allowed. GAC will help out with the chemical warfare, but these toxins have already done their damages with neighboring coral before they a cycled to the GAC. The same applied to the toxic dinos that may get into your tank.

[HighlandReefer]

Pants,

It's nice having aN expert like you in the Chem Forum.

[Pants]

Originally Posted by HighlandReefer

Pants,

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Most of the pests that hobbyists are identifying (without the use of a microscope) as dinos may very well be cyanobacteria with some dinos mixed in (perhaps some algae as well).

This is what I and my colleagues expected when I decided to get people to mail me their dino blooms. We were wrong. It seems hobbyists who respond to us (so these are people who probably spent time reading the various threads on online forums and related websites) are getting their ID right most of the time.

The really astonishing thing about this is that dinoflagellates are an incredibly diverse group of organisms (about half are photosynthetic, many are mixotrophic, many are predators or parasites, some are benthic others are planktonic, etc) and yet people are correctly identifying dinoflagellates with great accuracy. The dinoflagellates that people are identifying are in wildly different taxonomic groups with very different biology, and yet at the macroscopic scale they are growing similar enough to each other and different enough from other algae that hobbyists can identify them as dinoflagellates. My advisor is beside himself. He thought this whole exercise was going to be a huge waste of time and I think he is now growing excited about it.

The few samples where I can't identify the dino have all been samples that were badly damaged in transit, so it is hard to know if they were dinoflagellate blooms or something else. Every sample I have received in good condition has been a dinoflagellate and has been totally dominated by the one species of dinoflagellate (rather than a community of algae).

Originally Posted by HighlandReefer

It's nice having aN expert like you in the Chem Forum.

Thanks. My brother is a chemical oceanographer from Caltech so I can also pass on more chemistry related questions his way.