Dinoflagellates.

[Montireef]

They are 60x40um and I found that most of them are retained in a 50um filter bags.

Did you achieve to beat them? How? Did you find any good way to deal with them?

[cal_stir]

Originally Posted by Montireef

They are 60x40um and I found that most of them are retained in a 50um filter bags.

Did you achieve to beat them? How? Did you find any good way to deal with them?

Manual removal via blowing and vacuuming, 72 hr lights out with 7 days h202 and continuous UV, removal of sand bed except for under the rocks, no water changes for about 3 months now, except one accidental 5 gal.
I let my po4 rise to .06 ppm and no3 to 5ppm and doubled my carbon, I have micro algae starting to grow again, have to clean the glass every 3 days.
I find the odd one but they are small, look darker than normal and don't swim.

[Montireef]

Originally Posted by cal_stir

I find the odd one but they are small, look darker than normal and don't swim.

Which are you talking about? Maybe amphidinum or prorocentrum?

I also have amphidinum in my tank. This dino is a nuisance but quite easy to handle as it will go away with a 5 days black out and doesn't spread as quickly as ostreopsis.

[Montireef]

I will keep on running the 55W sterilizer on the return pump besides a 11W sterilizer in the sump. I will keep on vacuuming the nasty snot as needed (probably in the morning and in the evening). Let PO4 and NO3 rise a little bit (skimmer and Phosguard are off) to forest other microorganisms and seed the tank with bentonic copepods (Arcadia) and heterotrophic bacteria (biodigest and TheraP).

I will not perform any black-out as I don't want to directly attack ostreopsis and forest cyst forming.

There is a small critter (parvilucifera) that parasitizes ostreopsis (and many other dinos) and kills them. I am going to try get some and try this way simultaneously.

[cal_stir]

Originally Posted by Montireef

Which are you talking about? Maybe amphidinum or prorocentrum?

I also have amphidinum in my tank. This dino is a nuisance but quite easy to handle as it will go away with a 5 days black out and doesn't spread as quickly as ostreopsis.

I have this

[Montireef]

Looks like ostreopsis, same as me.

[glocklt4]

Originally Posted by Adrnalnrsh

90 gallon display/30g sump
SWC 160
Lots of Seachem Matrix (not carbon)
100 lbs of live rock roughly
7-8 small fish
MaxCap 180

Water Changes throughout this was 20% every 1-2 weeks.

I wanted to share with everyone my recent bout with Dino's.

So....

My Nitrates were finally down to <1ppm and phosphates ~0.04. My tank was previously overstocked and I had been running biopellets to help with the nutrients. However my PH was constantly low ~7.8 - barely ever making it over 8.0. My organics in my tank were high (obviously since the presence of cyano) and my corals weren't happy. I decided to add Rox Carbon (never ran GAC on this tank). After 24 hours of Rox carbon my tank started to look great - PH started to go into the 8.1/8.2 range as well. My Monti's appeared the worse and they started to actually repair themselves (encrusting monti's had tissue that receded in the middle of them) and color up. Of course the Rox carbon was a temporary fix as it exhausts in a short amount of time.

Right before I added Rox I removed a medium size hippo tang (4-5 inches) and a couple of smaller fish to help with lowering my organics. At this point I knew I just had to play the waiting game for things to get back to normal. (Had low Nitrates/Phosphate before this, but knew my DOC's were possibly a cause to my problems).


My T5's were all a year old (8x54w Tek Light) and I decided to replace 4 bulbs (out of 8). 2 Coral Plus, 1 Aquablue special and 1 Pure Actinic. This was a drastic coloration change as I replaced 1 fiji pink and 3 blue plus.

Shortly after, my Corals were getting better and cyano was manageable, but I started to notice "brown algae" growing on the upper back glass, powerheads, frag racks but not really on the bare bottom or the rocks. My nitrates were < 1 (0.2) and my phosphate at around 0.08. My first reaction was that my new T5's and their spectrum (much warmer) were the cause, so I cut back the amount of time I was running the two Coral+'s as well as raised my light a few more inches and it at first seemed to help slow the growth but my glass and frag racks were still getting covered. I had to clean my front,side and black glass a lot.

Once I realized it wasn't getting better and that my cyano was actually starting to get worse also (GAC most likely exhausted - this was the 30 day point), I knew GAC (Rox) wasn't going to compensate (unless I constantly changed it out) and that something else was the matter. I went ahead and replaced my GAC with a fresh 2 cups) and I decided to take my biopellets offline, as I figured at this point with the smaller amount of fish and their size that BP is probably overkill plus it could be increasing the amount of "ogranics" in the tank. After taking that offline my PH began to hang out around 8.3 with the lights on. Dino's were still a problem at this point, Cyano getting a bit better but still existent. I had also been dosing trace elements which I decided to stop.

So after a month and a half of all this I can see my corals are doing great but there was cyano and dino's present still. Just the corals on the frag racks were getting dino's growing on them.... At this point, I hadn't lost a coral so I never actually went into panic mode. I began to wonder, hmmm what else could be the matter, the dino's and cyano were not completely out of control, but ugly and annoying.

After a few days of just waiting. My wife comes to me and says, "ugh, the stupid water jugs take forever to fill up" (we make RO water for drinking). Use to take 30-45 minutes to fill up (5 gallon water jugs) and now its taking 1.5 to 2 hours. I think to myself, "uh, yeah that's bad". I go and look at my MaxCap 180 and notice my PSI is at 20'ish and should normally be up near 60psi. I bypass my sediment cartridge first and no luck. I bypass my carbon block and BAM the PSI goes back to normal. I check my TDS on my RO and DI's cartridges and I was pushing 4-5ppm TDS into my (RODI) reservoir which I used for my ATO buckets and my water change water.

Replaced all my filters for my Maxcap (mid March) accept for my RO membranes. Cleaned my ATO buckets as well as my Brute trashcan reservoir.
Anyhow, since then my dino's are just about gone (definitely not progressing) after a few water changes and scrubbing.

One thing I noticed was I didn't have any coraline algae growing for quite some time. Since then I am starting to see it in new places.

Well, I've been reading about dino's today for about 3-4 hours after about the same experience as you. I changed from PC lighting to LED actually about 2 months ago or more. I thought the LED's were amazing because they could be turned up so much brighter. I tried to turn them up slowly compared to what I had before, but maybe it was still too strong because shortly after my mushrooms were all white and bleached. Shortly after that a bunch of "brown algae" started to appear. I have been thinking that the change in light just caused a bunch of algae to appear, but now I'm thinking it's actually dinos. I added a GFO reactor today after testing water and getting .1 phosphates at LFS (to confirm my test). I have been doing extra water changes but it appears that I shouldn't have. On side note, my salinity has been high for quite a while because my spectrometer has been off by .005. It was at actual 1.030 when i thought it was 1.025. Now that is corrected and I'm down to 1.024 and spectrometer is fixed. I am wanting to see if things level off a bit before making any more changes, but looks like I have a challenge ahead of me. Oh joy...

[karimwassef]

Is there consensus that removing phosphates is not the right approach to dealing with dinos? GFO, water changes, etc?

[Montireef]

I have come to a conclusion that differs from what everybody claims:

If I stop the pumps and water movement, dinos also stop thriving and it is very easy to vacuum clean them. I have also found that the stronger the water is pumped the faster the dinos spread and go out of control.

I have also found that it is better to stop the skimmer and feed heavier.

[mfaso24]

I had Dino's about two weeks ago. I caught it really early before it got bad. I originally thought it was cyano but after a day or so realized it was Dino's. I immediately blacked out the tank for 72 hours and then ran only actinics for a week. After a week, I went back to my regular full lighting schedule. It's been like this for a week or a week and a half and still no sign of Dino's returning.

[Amphiprion]

Originally Posted by Montireef

I have come to a conclusion that differs from what everybody claims:

If I stop the pumps and water movement, dinos also stop thriving and it is very easy to vacuum clean them. I have also found that the stronger the water is pumped the faster the dinos spread and go out of control.

I have also found that it is better to stop the skimmer and feed heavier.

Less water movement/cessation of water movement led to more strand formation in my case. I can't say there were necessarily more, just slightly more visible. If left off for longer than about the 20 mins I had done, they may have possibly receded as you observed.

Beyond that, I'd have to say that your observations correlate well with mine so far.

Originally Posted by mfaso24

I had Dino's about two weeks ago. I caught it really early before it got bad. I originally thought it was cyano but after a day or so realized it was Dino's. I immediately blacked out the tank for 72 hours and then ran only actinics for a week. After a week, I went back to my regular full lighting schedule. It's been like this for a week or a week and a half and still no sign of Dino's returning.

Be cautiously optimistic. A week is a very short amount of time with this particular pest.

[IUfan]

FFS!!!! I think the Dino's are back!

Just looked in the sump, and think I spotted some attached to my skimmer.

Does this look like Dinos?

[cal_stir]

Originally Posted by IUfan

FFS!!!! I think the Dino's are back!

Just looked in the sump, and think I spotted some attached to my skimmer.

Does this look like Dinos?

Hard to tell from the pic, diatoms can form strings also.

[Montireef]

I bet they are dinos.
Diatoms are some kind of turf mat, never seen stringy diatoms.

[IUfan]

I'll try to get some better pics, didn't realize diatoms formed strings also

[IUfan]

Someone earlier in the thread said that I can take a sample and mail it somewhere and they test it to see what Dino they are? Anyone have that info?

[Montireef]

You can send it to Pants.

[PorkchopExpress]

they look white though? i've not seen pictures of white dinos before, always brown

[Montireef]

Whitish strings means that only mucilage is left and dinos (which are always brown/red) are dying.

[IUfan]

This is on one of my drains. Looks like dinos to me.

[Montireef]

I am sure those are dinos as I can even see some of them individually. No doubt they are big ones so I suspect they could be ostreopsis or a kind even bigger (not the usual prorocentrum or amphidinium)

[IUfan]

The whole theory on blackouts working must be complete BS, as there is zero light that gets to that part of the sump as you can see I had to use a flash light to show them, yet these started to grow there.

There's none in the DT, but I expect it's only a matter of time. :sadface

[Montireef]

If it is ostreopsis, blackouts don't work at all. They are mixotrophic rascals and don't care about the light, if it is dark they just feed on a minimum nitrogenous matter.

[Amphiprion]

A quick update:

So far, the dinoflagellates have stayed at bay, that is, up until yesterday when I started noticing some strings reappearing. It is very interesting how this works. When algal growth is active, dinoflagellates disappear, but when it wanes, they immediately pick up any sort of slack. The funny thing that is occurring now is that while nutrients are slightly elevated from increased feeding, etc., much of the filamentous algae has started to suddenly die off en masse. This immediately corresponded with an increase in dinoflagellates. I have no idea what the impetus for any of this was, as nutrient limitation should not be one. Something is being competitively used/exhausted in the process that is leading to most of the filamentous algae to suddenly die. This is the same kind of succession that occurred before prior to dinoflagellates exploding in population

[Budman422]

I think I maybe going through the same thing I had dinos not sure what kind. I have elevated my levels until cyno started to grow. I hope the dinos don't come back when I get rid of cyno .