Keys to beating dinoflagellates

[TheReefKeeper]

So the conclusion of sugar dosing is that it does work with some other measures such as lights cut back and water changes?
Their's absolutely nothing that will eat this stuff if its poison I'm assuming not?

[spazthecat]

Good information in this thread and sadly I think I may have to put it to good use

This week I had about 3/4 of my snail population up and die for no apparent reason. I do have some hair algae issues but today there are bubbles trapped in the algae on my rock and some brown stringy stuff forming on the back tank wall. I have pics here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/spazthecat/Dinoflagellates

They are not great pictures but a couple are OK.

Opinions? Does it sound like dino?

Thanks,

Andy

[jnarowe]

pics seem good enough. first ones are strange but I have a theory about that. My snail population took a total nosedive as well and I blamed the heat wave for taking out 50 Mexcian turbos, and then shortly thereafter I lost 5000+ other small snails. Then after that calamity I started noticing the dinos.

Could have been dinos all alng I suppose too. About the whitish looking mats in your first two pics: When I dosed sugar, my dinos seemed to turn white, and I am not sure whether that was the dinos themselves dying, or perhaps a bacterial or other algal bloom. To this day there is still some detritus looking material on many rocks, but it does not blow off. Perhaps the white colored stuff is dying dinos, excreting dinos, or another type of bloom?

[spazthecat]

Interesting you mention heat and sugar dosing. Last week I got a new thermometer. I got new lights from hellolights.com and they sent a free digital thermometer with my order. I popped it in my sump and noticed it read about 10 degrees higher than the glass floating type thermometer I had been using. So, my tank has been running somewhere around 88-90 degrees for months now. Assuming the digital is correct and the glass one is wrong. I believe this is the case. I took them both out of the tank and let them sit at room temp for 30 minutes. The digital thermometer matched my digital thermostat and the glass one was about 10 degrees off from both of them.

I also have recently started to dose sugar to help with the hair algae (I'm in the process of building a new, larger skimmer).

The "white" mat is actually more tan/light brown but it just got washed out in the picture.

Luckily, I also just finished building a Kalk reactor and will hook it up tomorrow.

Thanks,

Andy

[jnarowe]

yeah, and I found out last that week my temp. probe was completely encrusted so I have no idea what the proper temp. was.

[ezcompany]

bump

[Zoom]

Originally posted by shred5
Possible you are keeping nutrients too low with the skimmer and ozone and limiting the growth of the cheato. That was my hole point of my post. There is something that promotes the growth of dino’s but it still has to compete with other types of algae for… The fact that there are so many tanks in my area with Dino’s.. Iron maybe the nutrient that causes dyno’s to grow so fast. There is so much iron in our water it is not funny. Iron is also in some two part additives.

As far as dino’s being introduced, they were probably already there. Like I said zooxanthellae are Dino’s plus if you have any live rock or fish they probably came in a long time ago. Dinoflagellates are a very common algae. Red tides are dinoflagellates. Dt’s also has dinoflagellates in I believe now. My Dino’s would not be there for 6 month and bam the hole tank would be covered with them and I would not have added anything.

Have you tested your make up water?

I know they are frustrating and I feel your pain with them. They are also poisonous and can kill fish, crabs and snails.

Well i try a different smaller skimmer Deltec Ap851 and i still running this skimmer on this tank right now, i feed my fish three times a day and like i said i harvest the chaeto almost every week or it will start to grow out of the refuge
I still don't think nutrients has anything to do with dino's at all .
Zooxanthellae are Dino’s that is why they die about 95% when the lights are off for more than three days, they feed on good old lighting
I'm not frustrated at all, i have the dinos almost down to nothing they do grow after a month some but lights off for three days will kill most of them for another month. We have no Iron in are water supply at all and after goes thru my five stage RODI system is nothing there at all .I stop using GFO because it does nothing at all my PO4 Is never above this # i don't think is to high.



And here is my tumbling chaeto refuge .

[shred5]

I agree phosphate levels seem to have little to do with dino's. One thing though with algae growing in your tank your phosphate levels could be allot higher. The algae is just consumming the rest. Also test kits only test for orthophosphate so phosphate levels you read are inaccurate anyway. Not even worth testing for them except makeup water in my opinion.

What additives do you add? Iron is in additives too...

Dave

[Zoom]

Originally posted by shred5
I agree phosphate levels seem to have little to do with dino's. One thing though with algae growing in your tank your phosphate levels could be allot higher. The algae is just consumming the rest. Also test kits only test for orthophosphate so phosphate levels you read are inaccurate anyway. Not even worth testing for them except makeup water in my opinion.

What additives do you add? Iron is in additives too...

Dave

That is correct my chaeto in my refuge consume all the
PO4 and NO3 . I Agreed with the PO4 test kit .
No additives just Deltec 601 calcium reactor .
I'm also trying to see if it makes any different with the two part dosing, i have now dose two part with a LM3 for a month but so far it make no difference on the dino growth but like i say it is not much at all any more is now been two week from my last light out period , so far no dinos Like i say i will find the cure for the dinos in my tank eventually but looks like is not going to be long before they completely gone.

[mfp4073]

fighting them too, in all three tanks. Just tagging along for the ride. Maybe we need to start a support group.....

[ezcompany]

i'm about to start my battle.
30% water change tonight
lights out for 2 days
and no feeding for 2 days....(not sure on this one yet)

[jnarowe]

I would skip the water change.

[Zoom]

Originally posted by ezcompany
i'm about to start my battle.
30% water change tonight
lights out for 2 days
and no feeding for 2 days....(not sure on this one yet)

I would skip the water change and go with three days lights out.

[tmz]

Persistent daily export has worked for me in the past. I just patiently sucked them up with a turkey baster once a day for about 10 days.

[ryan_paskadi]

I got rid of mine rather by accident. Got a frag with red cyano and hair algae that took over and outcompeted the dinos. The dinos are gone now and I had to by a herd of snails to eat the cyano and hair algae.

[Zoom]

Originally posted by tmz
Persistent daily export has worked for me in the past. I just patiently sucked them up with a turkey baster once a day for about 10 days.

I never stop the Persistent daily export, also...... but my dinos always comes back in a different spot.

Originally posted by ryan_paskadi
I got rid of mine rather by accident. Got a frag with red cyano and hair algae that took over and outcompeted the dinos. The dinos are gone now and I had to by a herd of snails to eat the cyano and hair algae.

My dinos grows right over the top of the Hair algae and cyno but i don't have much of any of the two, i can just stop the skimmer for a week and see the outcome.

[ezcompany]

well guys here's my late update.
after around 40 hours of everything i did, i noticed my dinos gone.
in my opinion, the lights out definitely hit the dinos strong. what was little left of the dinos was apparently eliminated by either two things:
1. the water change, increased pH via kalk
2. the elimination of built up detritus, the cleaning of my chiller using vinegar, or the elimination of feeding for this 40 hour period.

its been 6 days with no sign of dinos yet. lights are back on, feeding back on schedule, everything is back normal.

[jnarowe]

GREAT JOB!!

[ezcompany]

i forgot to mention that during the lights out period, i purposely let the temperature drop to 75 degrees. maybe this cold helped kill the dinos during the lights out period as well.

[eaglesrx]

just found this thread. I've been fighting dino's for about a week now.

I have recently installed a more powerful skimmer, did #2 20% water changes and went lights out for 24 hours. It seemed to have killed most of the dinos. However, there's still a little bit left.

I just installed a phosphate reactor. I'm currently running a reduced light schedule on my MH. After reading through this thread, I'm think doing the lights out for more than 24 hours is the most effective. However, I'm worried about my SPS bleaching out. One of my club members did #2 sessions of 24 hours of darkness in a 1 week period. Anyone else see this strategy work?

One other thing, a rep from Tropic Marin gave a talk to my club stating that dino's are due to silicates. Any input on this? Not sure how true this is. If true, I'm hoping my phosphate reactor with the combinatio of my skimmer, and maybe another 24 hour darkness session will eliminate them.

Let me know,

[shred5]

Originally posted by eaglesrx



One other thing, a rep from Tropic Marin gave a talk to my club stating that dino's are due to silicates. Any input on this? Not sure how true this is. If true, I'm hoping my phosphate reactor with the combinatio of my skimmer, and maybe another 24 hour darkness session will eliminate them.

Let me know,

Not true... I think he meant diatoms.... some people also mistake diatoms for dino's because they can be slimmy and ussually a golden brown...

Dave

[eaglesrx]

Originally posted by shred5
Not true... I think he meant diatoms.... some people also mistake diatoms for dino's because they can be slimmy and ussually a golden brown...

Dave

Okay, that makes more sense. i'm surprised nobody in my club called him out on it.

I guess I may have to go with the extended darkness period. We'll see.

Thanks

[shred5]

Originally posted by eaglesrx
Okay, that makes more sense. i'm surprised nobody in my club called him out on it.

I guess I may have to go with the extended darkness period. We'll see.

Thanks

Be carefull with this darkness thing... zooxanthallae are dinoflagellates. To me darkness is not the way to kill them if it even can.

Dave

[Homeytwist]

Cool, another thread on the snot plague.... I had them bad, for about 8 months. Didn't try the elevated PH but what did work for me was complete black out for 10 days. Yes, 10. Tank was spotless, dino's gone, for about 6 months that is. Since then it's been a slowly increasing amount of nuiscance algae, cyano, diatoms, and most recently dinos. It may be a coincidence but I was dosing Lugol's both times that things took a turn for the worse.

Since then I've also started dosing Kalk in the makeup water so that in itself should be increasing my PH which doesn't seem to have much effect. Like someone else in this thread mentioned the dinos are growing right over top of other algae including my Chaeto so nutrient export via algae is not an option for me. I think it's gonna be lights out for me again. Then when the tank's clear and there's no algae in site it'll be a full barage of tests again to figure out where the hell the pests are getting their nutrients as I'm checking all the boxes in preventing nuiscane algaes etc. My only thought is that something in the system is leaching the nutrients that these things need. I'm using primarily BRS reefsaver rock in my system, wondering if something's leaching from those...

[Allmost]

I have an emperor angel that eats this stuff !! lol

recently battled it myself, what I did was lights out for 1 day, then the second day I did a large water change siophoning the sand, renew GAC.

every night after, at night before the lights go out, I would siphon out the dino, then run filter sock and move sand around. all dino gets caught in the sock.

took a week, and they havent came back yet. treatment was done 2 weeks ago.