Dinoflagellates.

[taricha]

Originally Posted by DNA

In addition, some species have ridges or crests -- especially members of the Dinophysiales, such as the one shown at right. In some, the crests may be hollow and house cyanobacteria which provide fixed nitrogen to the host. This is most common in nitrogen-poor waters. [/I]

Source: http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/protista/dinoflagmm.html

Here's another fun one that discusses what the cyano gets out of the deal.
They found dinos - some in very deep water - that hosted cyano in the armor and sometimes within the cell itself.
"We propose that heterotrophic dinoflagellate hosts may provide the cyanobacterial symbionts with the anaerobic microenvironment necessary for efficient N fixation. Thus, these self-supporting consortia increase in numbers during the long period of stratification and nitrogen limitation in the oligotrophic subtropical waters of the Gulf of Aqaba."

Detritus collects in my overflow box.
Today I took a sample from the bottom of it and at least 95% are these particles.
Of the rest I assume 4% to be the same particles broken up and 1% unknown.

I wonder if there's anything you could do to determine whether these are 'asleep' in their cysts or dead. Didn't you get reinvigorated blooms by adding Ca/Alk?
Could you pull these out into a container and simulate adding Ca/Alk to see if they 'wake up'?

[taricha]

Originally Posted by jason2459

I've definitely confirmed what I already knew and that dinos (not just the good kinds) still live in my tank. They just don't flourish or at least show that they do in my display tank.

And I have doubts that any tank that has shown dino issues in the past are ever truly pest dino free.

Agreed 100% and I suspect that most people with a dino outbreak have multiple species present, and I'll bet treatments that work in some tanks but "fail" in others are "failing" in that they reduce populations of some kinds, while another species increases.
It likely explains a lot of failures of "one method at a time" approaches.

[karimwassef]

I still think that nitrogen fixation was a key to this.. at least in my tank.

[DNA]

Oh dear.
I just spent a few hours looking at detritus in the wild and found some dinos hanging on the the particles from my previous post and realized I got my sense of scale wrong somewhere.
I still have to find out what they are.

[joti26]

Ok so although no visible signs of dino's for 10 days there are still some there when I take samples from filter sock and anything I siphon out. Maybe four or five here and there. However, thinking I had another bloom of them with brown areas developing and odd spots of bubbles I scraped some of the brown off and seems I now have a massive outbreak of diatoms! So any suggestions, should I leave them? Seems like some are feeding on dead dino's as well. Not sure what to do now?

[DNA]

Anyone recognizes these particles?
Hardly visible with the naked eye and a bit larger than dinos.

Particles
Sinks from the siphon tube

[taricha]

Diatoms don't "feed" on dinos. But they will take advantage of nutrients made available by dino deaths.
If you don't want dinos, you need to replace them with something, diatoms have volunteered for the job!
Speaking of diatoms, DNA, scale is a headache, and in a pinch, I've used groups of diatoms as scale bars.
For instance, in joti's post the pigmented part of those diatoms is about 20 microns I think.

Dunno how flawed that method is, but maybe it gets within +-50%

[joti26]

Originally Posted by taricha

Diatoms don't "feed" on dinos. But they will take advantage of nutrients made available by dino deaths.
If you don't want dinos, you need to replace them with something, diatoms have volunteered for the job!
Speaking of diatoms, DNA, scale is a headache, and in a pinch, I've used groups of diatoms as scale bars.
For instance, in joti's post the pigmented part of those diatoms is about 20 microns I think.

Dunno how flawed that method is, but maybe it gets within +-50%

I was going to get a scale slide until I saw how much they cost :O So any suggestions as to how to get rid of the diatoms now?

[34cygni]

Originally Posted by taricha

dirty method+light+no skimming+trace elements

Three out of four make sense to me...

Originally Posted by 34cygni

Other researchers compared the requirements for the trace elements Fe, Mn, Zn, Cu, Co, and Cd in what I'm guessing were eight common laboratory strains of coccolithophores, diatoms, and dinos -- the three dominant primary producers in the modern oceans -- and found that the dinos had relatively high quotas for all six metals. The diatoms, interestingly, had very low requirements for all six of these micronutrients (though some planktonic diatoms are known to have high requirements for Fe, possibly because they host cyanobacterial endosymbionts) while the cocos had high quotas for Mn, Co, and Cd, but low requirements for iron, zinc, and copper.

Dinos' high requirements for trace elements would explain and confirm these and a number of similar observations over the life of this thread...

As for other primary producers, diazotrophic cyano hearts iron because those species need Fe to make nitrogenase, the enzyme they need to fix nitrogen. Green algaes need iron, zinc, and copper; red algaes have higher requirements for Mn, Co, and Cd and lower quotas than greens for Fe, Zn, and Cu.

But if dosing trace is good for dinos, it never looked to me like the flipside of that -- drawing down trace elements -- could be used against them. Even if trace metals are depleted in the water column, the bacterial decay of organic matter in the sand is constantly releasing more (as well as N and P) into the interstitial water, not to mention that mixotrophic dinos can eat the bacteria themselves. To outcompete dinos for trace nutrients would thus require a change of management in the microphytobenthos so the dinos lose control of their source of trace metals.

Originally Posted by taricha

Chaeto and Caulerpa grew well, many many more pods, worms, and general critters took up residence in the sandbed. Dinos directly under the chaeto started to disappear. Maybe it was chemical competition, or predation from the critters living in the chaeto, or reduced light under chaeto, or a combination. Other than directly below chaeto, cyano and dinos continued to grow, even right next to the macros. ...

From what I've seen with the macros in my tank - having looked through the microscope at the sandbed for hours before and after the macroalgae was dropped in. To say there's 10x more benthic fauna of 5x as many species as without the macro likely severely understates the case. And I was going "dirty method" before the macros went in. ...

And the locations of dinos/cyano retreat and reappearance says that proximity to algae is a strong factor.

This sounds like the "DDAM + dinos" model I proposed on page 101 in action. That is, the DDAM model describes competition between corals and algae, ecosystem engineers that shape the composition and function of the reef ecosystem from the bottom up, starting with the bacteria population, and I proposed that dinos fight for the same goal and on the same terms, using organic carbon (and when necessary, their toxins) to recruit and maintain an army of friendly bacteria much as algae and corals do.

Originally Posted by 34cygni

Just as coral-friendly bacteria reinforce conditions amenable to coral and algae-friendly bacteria help algae take over reefs, dino-friendly bacteria want to remake the ecosystem to suit dinos.

But while I thought about the possibility of outcompeting benthic dinos for trace and it seemed unlikely to succeed, I didn't turn it around and think about dinos (which as noted have high trace requirements) and their bacteria farms (which also need a lot of trace) outcompeting the rest of the system for trace elements.

To me, taricha, what your report suggests is that dinos don't like to let nutrients pass up the food chain. I mean, yes, the argument can be made that dinos would naturally want to kill off any potential predators, and by so doing, it happens that they sever the trophic link between the world of single-celled organisms and the macro world of multicellular life... But the counterpoint is that the dinoflagellate holobiont is pretty much a biological desert even after more than 200 million years and several mass extinctions which afforded dinos plenty of opportunities to recruit and build up their team, so it would seem that sharing simply isn't compatible with their way of life (...which may explain why they appear to be declining on a long-term, evolutionary time scale -- dinos, appropriately enough, peaked when dinosaurs ruled the world). Recall that dinos are predators that acquired the ability to photosynthesize, not autotrophs that learned to hunt, so I suspect that in their heart of hearts, they want to be on top of the food chain. To that end, dinos try to sequester important nutrients in the microbial loop -- or, to put it another way, in their bacteria farms: when a dino dies, its decay feeds bacteria, and the bacteria and the nutrients released by the decay process feed the dinos.

Because the microphytobenthos -- the primary producers living in the uppermost couple of millimeters of sand where enough light penetrates to support photosynthesis -- can absorb both nutrients in the water column diffusing into the sand and also nutrients in the interstitial water diffusing up out of the sand, organisms occupying this ecological niche largely regulate the exchange of nutrients between the water and the sediment. As most nutrient cycles can only be closed by anaerobes living in the sand and rock, this puts dinos in the catbird seat. Changing the benthic bacteria population and by so doing, changing the flux of nutrients coming out of the sediments, is fundamental to the fight between corals and algae for dominance in a reef environment: corals want the benthic community to release food as particulate, ideally living, organic carbon and produce net surplus O2 over the course of a day; algae want the benthic environment to be dominated by heterotrophs, in oxygen deficit, and releasing mineralized nutrients.

Dinos live in the ecological sweet spot that corals and algae are trying to manipulate for their own benefit, so naturally dinos manipulate it for theirs. Rather than liberating nutrients for the benefit of macroscopic forms of life, apparently dinos make a point of trying to lock up nitrogen (they can even store surplus N internally as urea) and trace metals in the microbial loop, no doubt because these elements are vital for protein synthesis. Phosphorous, on the other hand, they don't seem so worried about, perhaps because they need surplus P to recruit and farm cyano, and perhaps also because P is primarily consumed during the synthesis of ribosomes and genetic material, which is generally associated with reproduction, which other forms of life won't be doing a lot of if the dinos are hoarding N and trace in the microbial loop.

Originally Posted by taricha

If I had to guess which trace element is responsible, I'd lean towards Iron

Iron is the only micronutrient known to limit primary producers in the wild, so that would be the place the start. If I were a dino, I'd want to lock down the local iron supply because iron-limiting other phototrophs would be the natural "backup system" to turn to if I lost control of the nitrogen supply.

Originally Posted by taricha

It could be any number of other things, there's nothing I've observed that excludes, for instance the Cobalt-B12-Cyano-Dino connection.

Given that dinos have high requirements for trace elements on top of the requirements of the bacteria they depend on, directly or indirectly, to obtain nutrients, it could well be that dinos not only "know" where all the crucial choke points are (like vitamin B-12) but have evolved ways of cornering the market on any micronutrient that potential competitors would need, and can prioritize which element(s) they should invest their energy in monopolizing on the basis of what nutrients are available and which competitors are growing fastest at any given moment.

Originally Posted by taricha

For two days I didn't have time to look at the tank or dose N or P. Just throw in a pinch of food.

Don't overlook the dog that didn't bark. This non-event -- stopping nutrient inputs -- may have factored into the dinos' collapse.

Originally Posted by taricha

So thinking back on it, my dino species count from my tank is 5...

I seriously doubt my tank is all that special. It's not like I scooped up sand samples from 10 different coasts and poured them in my tank. I would be shocked if most plagued tanks don't have at least a couple of different species active at the same time.

Co-occurrence of multiple benthic dinoflagellate species has been observed in the wild, and it's common for pelagic dinoflagellate blooms to go through multiple species successions. As each bloom fades and the dinos decay, another species gets going -- apparently by eating the resulting bacteria bloom.

I previously mentioned that I assumed the presence of multiple species of heterotrophic dinos in hobby systems; ditto for mixos, which is why I added a line to Quiet_Ivy's FAQ about the risk of ending up with tougher, more toxic dinos if you knock an infestation back but don't follow through. And IIRC, Montireef reported getting amphidinium after he knocked back his ostis, so it can potentially go in the other direction, too.

Originally Posted by taricha

Saw some slight brown strings from the exposed "roots" of my caulerpa

And under the scope, dinos!

Interesting that they showed up on the part of the algae that grows underground, as epiphytic typically refers to organisms growing on the "leaves" (...and from what I read, epiphytic dinos will also grow on seagrass, which actually does have leaves). Your caulerpa kept growing prior to the dinos' collapse, IIRC -- it was the exception you reported to several observations suggesting Fe limitation... And you reported spots free of dinos developing under your chaeto, but not the caulerpa...? And, of course, caulerpa is freakishly robust and toxic... I wonder if caulerpa could have "defected" from Team Green Algae and made friends with some of the bacteria in the dino holobiont -- maybe that's how it was able to get iron (or B-12 or whatever) when it was in short supply.

--

Originally Posted by DNA

I just spent some time on google looking at images of dino infested tanks looking for similarities.
What stood out and most seem to have in common is that they are sparsely populated with corals.

Hmm... Maybe I was wrong about this...

Originally Posted by 34cygni

The tale about the changing bacteria on the corals taken from the Red Sea, kept in fishbowls, and then put back where they came from was meant in part to address this. Corals will rebuild healthy and diverse bacteria populations all by themselves if they get the chance, so rather than adding new corals, we should be concentrating on saving and building up the ones we have.

That crossed my mind when I was looking at PorkchopExpress' very pretty tank some weeks ago. The DDAM model suggests that adding macro would shift a system towards the algae holobiont, and adding corals should tend to favor the population of coral-friendly bacteria and benthic primary producers at the base of a system's food web.

But while adding more corals might help against entrenched dinos, taricha's approach apparently actually did help, and it looks safer, cheaper, and easier for others to play around with (...excepting the 3 hours of sunlight -- I expect most folks won't be able to implement that, while the minority report will be something along the lines of, "Three hours? Why only three hours?"). If by some miracle it works with your ostis, DNA, you can always shift the tank towards coral dominance afterwards.

Originally Posted by DNA

That led me to think about the natural chemical warfare in reef ecosystems.
A local friend has ostis, but his tank has always looked better than mine and he's got much more coral density than I have had since dinos showed up.
I had a hard time finding the dinos, but they were there. Then he built a connected frag tank and it got covered, in the empty tanks, with dinos right away.

While the chemical warfare is real, the DDAM model says it's mostly about biological warfare -- that is, recruiting bacteria to do your dirty work. It makes sense, if you think about it: bacteria (and archaea) are the real experts on chemical warfare as they've been doing it for 4 billion years and they reproduce and evolve considerably more quickly than multicellular organisms, so standard operating practice is to recruit mercenaries from this population to fight for you. Multicellular organisms have to recruit friendly bacteria just to survive in a world full of bacteria that want to kill and eat us, so it's just a hop, skip, and a jump from there to paying single-celled Hessians to occupy territory and even attack on our behalf.

Originally Posted by DNA

In addition, some species have ridges or crests -- especially members of the Dinophysiales, such as the one shown at right. In some, the crests may be hollow and house cyanobacteria which provide fixed nitrogen to the host. This is most common in nitrogen-poor waters.

Originally Posted by taricha

Here's another fun one that discusses what the cyano gets out of the deal.
They found dinos - some in very deep water - that hosted cyano in the armor and sometimes within the cell itself.
"We propose that heterotrophic dinoflagellate hosts may provide the cyanobacterial symbionts with the anaerobic microenvironment necessary for efficient N fixation. Thus, these self-supporting consortia increase in numbers during the long period of stratification and nitrogen limitation in the oligotrophic subtropical waters of the Gulf of Aqaba."

That may tie into this...

Originally Posted by Microbial photosynthesis in coral reef sediments (Heron Reef, Australia)

We investigated microphytobenthic photosynthesis at four stations in the coral reef sediments at Heron Reef, Australia. The microphytobenthos was dominated by diatoms, dinoflagellates and cyanobacteria, as indicated by biomarker pigment analysis. Conspicuous algae firmly attached to the sand grains (ca. 100 um in diameter, surrounded by a hard transparent wall) [...note that this sounds a bit like what Quiet_Ivy described as "harder brown circular spots on the glass"] were rich in peridinin, a marker pigment for dinoflagellates, but also showed a high diversity based on cyanobacterial 16S rDNA gene sequence analysis.

If some planktonic dinos find it so worthwhile to have symbiotic cyano around that they evolved little bay windows in their armor to give cyanobacteria a home, it seems perfectly reasonable that some benthic dinos could have evolved a way to build greenhouses for their cyano in the sand. They'd be able to grow a lot more cyano that way. And I've been wondering for months if those spots on Quiet_Ivy's glass were palatial versions of microhabitats that dinos normally build on the surface of sand grains... IIRC, Quiet_Ivy reported dino goo growing from the spots on her glass when things got bad in her tank, so they were clearly important to the ostis.

Originally Posted by DNA

Oh dear.
I just spent a few hours looking at detritus in the wild and found some dinos hanging on the the particles from my previous post and realized I got my sense of scale wrong somewhere.
I still have to find out what they are.

I'm still pulling for forams. Have you been comparing your mystery calcifiers to foraminifera?

--

Originally Posted by karimwassef

It's a philosophy in keeping reefs for me. Everything in my tank replicates a function in nature. I have only two exceptions... Carbon and GFO. Everything else mimics a natural system

Pursuant to that thought, did you keep the cryptic zone you added to your sump? After stumbling across the sponge loop, I'm wondering if you have an opinion on whether or not that was worthwhile on any level.

Originally Posted by karimwassef

who cleans their socks daily?

Physically removing dinos by changing out 10 um filter socks daily (later every other day) was part of cal_stir's routine. He checked his dino population by looking to see what and how many got filtered out when he swapped in a clean one.

05/25/2015, 08:42 PM #1123
cal_stir

I use 10uM filter socks on my drains which I change every 2 days. Looking at the tank I can't tell I have dinos but under the microscope I still see a few in my skimmate and socks but they seem deformed and are weak swimmers, I've started culturing phyto to rebuild the micro fauna and critters that were destroyed by FM algaeX (trying to get rid of bubble algae) which I believe are what keep the dinos in check.

--

Originally Posted by bertoni

No, their shells are not soluble at the pressure levels in our tanks. They will dissolve deeper in the ocean.

What's your source on this? You're thinking of CaCO3, I suspect.

In the wild, > 50% of biogenic silica formed in the marine environment dissolves at a depth of < 100 m, and 97% of biogenic silica is recycled in surface waters and on the seafloor, both of which are environments present in comparative abundance in aquaria.

--

Originally Posted by Dfee

Well, I haven't had long brown snotty dinos in about a year. So if they are indeed diatoms, how have they not consumed all their food (silicates) and died out by now?

Do you have dissolved Si in your tap water? Tap water topoffs or a RODI rig with an old/clogged/damaged filter could be putting silicates into your tank.

A lengthy transitional diatom period has been reported by some after knocking down their dinos with the dirty method, so a diatom phase is probably a normal part of a tank's ecology rebuilding itself after the dinopocalypse much as a diatom phase is a normal part of a tank's birth process -- but a year is ridiculous... If you really have been stuck with diatoms for a year and you've ruled out any external source of Si that's keeping them going, you may be able to short-circuit the silicon cycle by introducing aluminum (in the form of powdered basalt or kaolinite) into the substrate to see if you can trigger the formation of aluminosilicate minerals and sequester the Si in the sand. This is very common geochemistry in the wild, but since aluminum is toxic and presumably nobody puts it in their tank, this sink may be inactive in hobby systems.

The interaction between aluminum and the silicon cycle is something I picked up from a book, but the basic idea -- aluminum reduces the release of silicic acid (H4SiO4) from benthic sediments -- is in this abstract. Apparently, replacing about 1 in every 75 atoms of Si in biogenic silica with an atom of Al reduces the silica's solubility by 25%, substantially reducing the efficiency of Si recycling. And while some diatoms are toxic, the edibility of diatoms generally has an inverse relationship to the thickness (and in some species also spikiness) of their silica armor, so lowering the availability of Si by a modest amount may make a big difference to your CUC.

[DNA]

34cygni:
Good job at connecting the dots.

My particles are not calcium based. I proved that with vinegar.
Given the amounts of them, dino related is all I can think of at the moment.

Here are the calcium based ones I found on my overflow sides recently.
Foraminifera

I measured my calcium at 400 yesterday and that is the highest for a very long time without adding chemicals on top to my calcium reactor and kalkwasser.
The frequent siphoning could have produced this result.

[nvladik]

Originally Posted by DNA

Detritus collects in my overflow box.
Today I took a sample from the bottom of it and at least 95% are these particles.
Of the rest I assume 4% to be the same particles broken up and 1% unknown.

A quick conclusion could be that 99% of the drifting ditritus in my tank is dino related.

---

Now turn on your brains and think for a while. I see this as another milestone.

.

Hi DNA. Did you consider trying Automatic Roller Mat filtration as opposed to filter socks to permanently remove the particles from the tank or is it simply not enough and dyno's will go right through it?

[nvladik]

DNA, can't seem to load your photo's posted on google, keep getting 404s.

[DNA]

Here are the images again. They worked for me. It's a free Google service, but the lack of hotlinking makes it no good..

Particles
Sinks from the siphon tube
Foraminifera

[nvladik]

Originally Posted by DNA

Here are the images again. They worked for me. It's a free Google service, but the lack of hotlinking makes it no good..

Particles
Sinks from the siphon tube
Foraminifera

Hmmm not sure what's going on but none of them work for me. Can anyone else see them?

[karimwassef]

34cygni - yes. I've maintained my cryptic zone. It's so cryptic that a couple of fish have gotten in there and I have no way to get them out without tearing it apart.

They've lived there for 6 months now. Eating whatever pods they find, I assume.

The sponge-coral mucus loop is interesting. I have two Jebao propeller pumps that are on near continuous fast pulse mode, except at night... They continue to jam because of sponges that grow inside the pump against the intake slots. As they swell, they eventually grip the impeller. I have to scrape them out and dump them into the cryptic zone. Those tend be dark sponges - no idea where they came from.

I also have bright yellow sponges that grow on my concrete man made rock. They pop up all over the place. Those may be tunicates though. I have no idea what else is living in my cryptic zone since it's very hard to see in there. It's deep and dark. The acrylic front gets covered up with tiny featherdusters and coralline (that won't grow in my DT). I think the acrylic acts like an optic fiber carrying just a little light down its depth. That small amount of light is what the coralline uses to grow against the plastic in the dark. That makes the cryptic zone even darker, of course.

When I rip it up, I'll have to document my findings.

My corals do produce a tremendous amount of mucus. It's not bad. They expand their polyps and I think they sometimes use it to trap food since the polyps are out while the mucus is blowing. I thought it had to do with my massive surge that creates an intense flowrate against the polyps. I should take a video of that too. It's a little 'violent' but they grow fast in it.

so I have cryptic zone, surge, lots of food, lots of coral, lots of mucus and sponges that pop up wherever there is flow. My biggest pests are featherdusters though. They encroach on all my corals and rocks.

[Fish Keeper82]

I have not read though this entire thread but i have been following for half a year or so, forgive me if this has already been mentioned.
Its been kicked around in the local reef club of trying some technology used over seas using nano micro bubbles to produce a skimming effect in the tank.These nano micro bubbles is thought to be so small that they can get multipe bubbles under contaminants and lift them for skimming which would include Dinos. Micro bubbles would be too big or this to work it would have to be nano bubbles. So bubble size is very important.
This is mainly being used in some aquariums as a trial method to help corals grow by giving them a "cleaning" with these nano bubbles every night while the lights are off. I've read this might remove Dinos and Cyano as well. I came across this link http://www.nabas.us/ that explains how it works in detail and even shows its effects on red tides.
Its been suggested that using a nano bubbler (wooden air stone)in the return section of the tank will get best results since bubbles will be further chopped by the return pump.

Someone mentioned on here a while back (I belive it was DNA but cant remember or find the post)they thought Dinos would not have a chance if they made it inside any decent skimmer well this would turn your whole tank into a skimmer for a few hours a night.
In the link is shows how nano bubbles do not pop but rather disapate so it wont increase salt creep if the bubbles are indeed small enough.
As soon as i can get my hands on a wooden air stone im trying this out.
In my case i would have to do it during peak daylight since my Amphidinium Dinos are only out on the sand during light and retreat into the sand at night.
As mentioned before some people are trying this already for other reasons but it's been suggested to work on Dinos.

Could it really be this simple?
Ideas on low cost nano bubble generators?
Thoughts?

[karimwassef]

I see a lot of theory, but no data.

My skimmer creates a thick cloud of very fine bubbles using very high pressure through a penductor (two of those). The bubbles are not individually visible. The water just turns solid white. As they mix with the reverse flowing dirty water, the bubbles coalesce and eventually (12 ft up) create a thick layer of dark foam and brown liquid.

Some bubbles are so small that they don't rise. They flow with the downward water flow instead and exit the skimmer. They don't pop. They also don't seem to float well. They look more like particulates. In the complete absence of water motion, they will eventually rise.

I'm open to all plausible theories. Just need data.

[nvladik]

Update on the crubber guys... deff still have dynos, but I don't see any on rock/coral, I know they are in the water. Every day when I take out the scrubber I can smell them within seconds.

I modified my Refugium light schedule to be more in sync with tank lights. I figured my UV wasn't working to it's best and lights were on in Refugium at night any I am sure some dyno's were there sticking to macro algae. So now refugium and tank light schedules overlap by 6 hours, and UV gets about 8 hours of total tank darkness.

I have a theory on how to confirm/deny if tank is almost completely dyno free and would love it if someone could confirm my theories. In my tank, Anthelia sp is very unhappy when dynos are present. This was actually my first sign they were back, one of the anthelias I have stopped opening up. Now, it's finally coming back and opening again, which makes me think I might be slowly winning the battle. Can anyone else confirm that?

[taricha]

Update on a few different things I've been looking at.
1. I tried growing dense benthic ciliate cultures in beakers 3 times. Once by published rotifer recipe grew huge uronychia ciliates that can ingest big (dino sized) particles stopped growing after 6 or 7 days then declined, once on pure yeast (a paper said with euplotes they achieved 10/ml to 5000/ml in 6 days on just yeast) mine never got really rolling - hard to estimate right amount of food, one attempt on yeast enriched with skimmate, vitamins etc, never got very far. I guess first one was best. uronychia culture got a liter at about 100-200 per ml. I'll try again later, maybe sooner if I run across any good info for culturing large ciliates on particles instead of bacteria. Some kinds grow well on bacteria and different kinds on larger particles.

2. Have been growing dinos in beakers of sand and tank water with added trace elements. worked well. Got one healthy gallon culture of amphidinium from my tank, got one developing of ostreopsis from robertifly (yay). Should be able to do some experiments on them.

3. Robertifly also sent me some of the Sea Veggies dried seaweed to check for dino connection. Couple people have reported dino blooms coinciding with feeding the stuff. The veggies themselves are clean as expected. No dino cysts. Now to see if I can figure which nutrients in it are fueling growth.
The two species of seaweed are porphyra yezoensis and palmaria palmata.

4. The thin brown dino strings I saw growing from roots of caulerpa, saw the same growing from tips of urchin spines.

Under the scope, dinos (ostreopsis)!


Which makes me think that they really just grab on to whatever isn't mucous protected (no sign on my softies) that sits in high flow, just like the netting used earlier by nvladik. So I put a strip of filter floss in front of pump yesterday

Today, quite brown!

Wrung brown out into a dish
Big ol' Osti party.


5. I also pulled the few dinos out of my tank and split into beakers. Mix of small amounts of both amphidinium and ostreopsis The population in my tank is small but stable at the time I pulled it out. One beaker got nothing added, one got iron, one b12. Hoping for dramatic growth in one of the treatments indicating a limitation.

[DNA]

Those and similar, but more elaborate experiments should be funded.
In fact the whole dino problem should have been researched to hell and back years ago.

I'm very interested in what the iron will do.

[nvladik]

Guys I am thinking of joining the experiment party. Any recommendations on a microscope that won't break the bank?

[taricha]

Originally Posted by nvladik

Guys I am thinking of joining the experiment party. Any recommendations on a microscope that won't break the bank?

One like this http://www.amscope.com/student-micro...e-20x-40x.html
...is super helpful when looking for something through large amounts of material like several ml of water/substrate. Binocular makes it very 3d. Brain can get much more info out of perspective images with both eyes. I've also ripped it off the base and put it up to the tank glass to watch benthic fauna behavior in the tank as opposed to on a slide.
For most everything else, IDing, cell counts, pictures/video (through phone) something very much like this is my go to. If I only had access to one, this would be it. http://www.amscope.com/student-micro...icroscope.html

[tankaddict]

Hi all, been following this thread for quite a long time but have not seen anyone with this particular species of dinoflagellates except for a user on Reef 2 Reef by the name of DeeBee. This particular strain does not exhibit motility. Here are the pictures taken under 40x. They very much look like zooxanthellae. Any help would be appreciated.

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[taricha]

Originally Posted by taricha

5. I also pulled the few dinos out of my tank and split into beakers. Mix of small amounts of both amphidinium and ostreopsis The population in my tank is small but stable at the time I pulled it out. One beaker got nothing added, one got iron, one b12. Hoping for dramatic growth in one of the treatments indicating a limitation.

Some results. Interesting, perplexing, and not a slam dunk.
100ml in each beaker, the iron treatment was 2 drops of a solution containing 0.10% Fe edta (and 3% K - but my tank already gets dosed a ton of K so it's definitely not limiting). About 100mcg Fe (3mg K).
The B12 dose was 1/10 by mass of a ground up 1000mcg B12 pill. About 100mcg B12. Placed in bright window.
Remember all these are taken out of my tank which I'm keeping at high N and P (20 and 0.50ppm respectively) so micronutrient effects can be seen.

So after 1 day, there were a ton of bubbles in the B12 treatment indicating increased photosynthesis. No other obvious differences to naked eye. Under scope the cell counts were different but not enough to be sure of anything. After 2 days same story about bubbling. this is what they looked like
Iron


Control


B12 note bubbles


I would have assumed massive dino increase in B12 and little change in others from bubbles and sample coloration. But it's a good reminder don't presume what you didn't actually observe.
Cell counts under scope. All beakers got equal mixing, sample sizes, magnification etc. Largest number of dinos in a single 40x field of view for each sample was:

• Control: 3 dinos
• B12: 28 dinos
• Fe: 61 dinos

Make of that data what you will. I'll watch same beakers a couple more days to follow progress, and I started the experiment again to see if results are repeatable.
Here's my take. Control population seems to have decreased in the 48 hours in the beaker. likely division was slower than predation. Probably due to trace element limitation. Matches the small steady population in my tank. Just enough micro nutrients trickle to it to through fish food to keep it a light dusting.
B12 definitely increased photosynthetic output, and also seems to have juiced cell division somewhat.
Fe showed greatest increase in dino numbers, clear response.
If I'm hypothesizing, it seems like the B12 increased photosynthetic metabolism so to speak, but I can't help but feel like this would be short lived and cell division would soon slow unless the Fe limitation shown from the other beaker was addressed.

[taricha]

Originally Posted by tankaddict

This particular strain does not exhibit motility. Here are the pictures taken under 40x. They very much look like zooxanthellae. Any help would be appreciated.

All I can add is that the description sounds a lot like...

Originally Posted by Pants

If your resolution is really poor on your scope, try paying attention to movement instead of shape. If they are spinning around like a tether ball then it is Ostreopsis. If they are scooting along the surface its probably Amphidinium. If they are really really tiny and just sit suspended in mucous with the odd one swimming in circles then its the tiny guy who looks like symbiodinium that I don't have a name for yet.