Another Problem

[Manny]

Ok so what I thought could be cyanobacteria has turned out to be dinoflagellates. I mentioned this to a friend and he corrected me on what it was. After some research I agree with him it is dinoflagellates. My coral are hating this stuff and I am already starting to see two of my birdsnest colonies die off, two finger leathers, and ALL of my zoas. So what is the next step for me? I run a very overrated skimmer, I reduced my lighting intensity, I am feeding every other day, and I just changed out my GFO. What else can I do to combat this menace?

[Elizzy]

I found this - http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1620464 Is that what it looks like? I've never experienced it, but I am curious to hear what everyone says.

[Timfish]

Looking at the link Elizy posted I have seen it a few times. I get rid of it by syphoning it off weekly and after 2-3 months months it disappears on it's own. (Actually I run the water through a 7" 50 micron polyfilter sock set in a bucket and return most of the water to the tank.) I have not had a problem with so called "SPS" with it. I would worry you may have been to aggressive with your GFO and dropped the phosphates too low. While I have no problem with much higher phosphates than is typically reccomended by many "Gurus" and am pefectly happy with phosphate levels in the .1 to 1.0 ppm range I do advise people not to let phosphates drop below .05. Sprung reccomends discontinuing water changes, letting it run it's course and boosting alkalinity, "Algae, A Problem Solver Guide" pg 69.

[Manny]

Looking at the link Elizy posted I have seen it a few times. I get rid of it by syphoning it off weekly and after 2-3 months months it disappears on it's own. (Actually I run the water through a 7" 50 micron polyfilter sock set in a bucket and return most of the water to the tank.) I have not had a problem with so called "SPS" with it. I would worry you may have been to aggressive with your GFO and dropped the phosphates too low. While I have no problem with much higher phosphates than is typically reccomended by many "Gurus" and am pefectly happy with phosphate levels in the .1 to 1.0 ppm range I do advise people not to let phosphates drop below .05. Sprung reccomends discontinuing water changes, letting it run it's course and boosting alkalinity, "Algae, A Problem Solver Guide" pg 69.

Actually I have my phosphates at .09 ppm currently.

[Manny]

I found this - http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1620464 Is that what it looks like? I've never experienced it, but I am curious to hear what everyone says.

Thanks Elizzy. That is what it looks like. My snails are very lethargic at the moment. I wonder why they are affected.

[Bpb]

Anecdotal trials on the web are actually that this particular pest Dino hates higher nitrates and loves fresh trace elements present in salt mixes, so big frequent water changes have actually made the problem worse for many. Stopping water changes actually helped when I was battling it. Multi pronged attack. I can't verify scientifically if the peroxide dosing did anything (beyond make my anemones act really strange), but I had a bad system wide Dino infestation that lasted about 3 months and came on hard immediately after a 3 day lights out I did to clear up some cyano. I think the momentary cyano death paved the way for a Dino outbreak.

I stopped water changes

used filter sponges and socks during this time to sift them out daily.

Blasted off the rocks and corals with turkey baster daily

Dosed hydrogen peroxide systemically daily

Skimmed wet

Reduced my photoperiod

Eventually they just disappeared (just like every pest algae or bacteria I've encountered). Can't say what single thing did it, as if was likely a combination.

I also noticed it was nearly non existant in the dark, and after about two hours of lights coming on, would coat every surface. I read that in the dark they take on a more free swimming behavior, and when there's light they'll form slimy mats on surfaces. That could also be complete nonsense. I read it and observed it. No real science to back it up

[FarmerTy]

Dinos are tough to get rid of and toxic... so your fish, coral, and clean-up crew are going to have a tough time with it.

I'd do everything Bpb recommended. Blasting directly with hydrogen peroxide helped immensely when I was battling it, as well as days of darkness. I would stay away from the water changes too, as he recommended.

I never ran filter socks but with the right micron filter size, I've heard it helps with the removal.

It is definitely one of the most difficult things I fought in my tank but just be diligent and you'll overcome it.

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[+KimP]

Everyone's giving great advice. Something additional that really helped when I had them was to do a water change with water from a friend's healthy tank. It was most likely just a coincidence but two days after doing that water change they were all of a sudden completely gone. Haven't had any since, thank goodness. I'd agree with not doing water changes with fresh saltwater though. Good luck, just keep after it and you'll beat it!

[Manny]

Great advice from everyone. Thank you for that. I have been implementing many of the techniques and coupled with the fact that i jumped on the issue right away, I believe I have it under control. I still see a little bit of dino's along the glass and on some coral but I have been blowing it off the coral, siphoning it out, and just did a 3 day blackout which all seem to be helping. I am dosing 10ml of H2O2 each day but not really sure how to know if that is working or not. Hope to get rid of this soon. I do plan on purchasing some coral at the frag swap. Is this going to cause an issue?

[Mo'sMyName]

I recently went through about a 4-5 month battle with dino's. Tried the 2 separate sessions of 3 days darkness, H2O2 dosing, raising pH, siphoning it out, running just blues, etc... didn't work at all. Always came back.

The only thing that has worked for me was changing the photo period. Went from 10 hours total light to 4 hours at my normal intensity. I'll be slowly ramping the time back up to see if they come back.

I've been adding new additions to the tank the entire time, mostly to replace what was lost during the worst of it. Haven't replenished any snails that died, because there wasn't really any algae for them to eat anyway.

[Manny]

So my lights came back on Monday. Of course with dinoflagellates being photosynthetic the assumption was that they would be diminished, and they were. I have been dosing 10ml of H2O2 every day and have only had to blow them off some zoas once this whole week. I know its too soon to claim victory but I feel that perhaps rapid action was able to be effective in preventing the outbreak from fully developing. I do not see hardly anymore of it in my tank but nonetheless some damage has been done. I see some STN on some acros, half of my screaming green birds nest colony is gone, 1/3 of my birds of paradise seems gone, and almost all of my snails died. Not too concerned. All of that can be easily replaced and nothing too expensive was lost. Funny thing is that through it all my red planet seemed unaffected. I will update again when things change.

[something to reef on]

So my lights came back on Monday. Of course with dinoflagellates being photosynthetic the assumption was that they would be diminished, and they were. I have been dosing 10ml of H2O2 every day and have only had to blow them off some zoas once this whole week. I know its too soon to claim victory but I feel that perhaps rapid action was able to be effective in preventing the outbreak from fully developing. I do not see hardly anymore of it in my tank but nonetheless some damage has been done. I see some STN on some acros, half of my screaming green birds nest colony is gone, 1/3 of my birds of paradise seems gone, and almost all of my snails died. Not too concerned. All of that can be easily replaced and nothing too expensive was lost. Funny thing is that through it all my red planet seemed unaffected. I will update again when things change.

Wondering how this turned out.

I just started noticing a small amount of what I think are dinos in my tank. I reduced the photoperiod just today, tommorrow I am going to give everything a good blasting with h2o2 and a turkey baster, scrape everything, let the filter catch it, and then go lights out for a few days.

I'm hoping that since I caught it before it was everywhere that this will work.

[FarmerTy]

So my lights came back on Monday. Of course with dinoflagellates being photosynthetic the assumption was that they would be diminished, and they were. I have been dosing 10ml of H2O2 every day and have only had to blow them off some zoas once this whole week. I know its too soon to claim victory but I feel that perhaps rapid action was able to be effective in preventing the outbreak from fully developing. I do not see hardly anymore of it in my tank but nonetheless some damage has been done. I see some STN on some acros, half of my screaming green birds nest colony is gone, 1/3 of my birds of paradise seems gone, and almost all of my snails died. Not too concerned. All of that can be easily replaced and nothing too expensive was lost. Funny thing is that through it all my red planet seemed unaffected. I will update again when things change.

Wondering how this turned out.

I just started noticing a small amount of what I think are dinos in my tank. I reduced the photoperiod just today, tommorrow I am going to give everything a good blasting with h2o2 and a turkey baster, scrape everything, let the filter catch it, and then go lights out for a few days.

I'm hoping that since I caught it before it was everywhere that this will work.

I'd snap a photo for verification if possible. At least a good way to confirm what you're really fighting to make sure your methods are appropriate for what you may have.

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[Manny]

So my lights came back on Monday. Of course with dinoflagellates being photosynthetic the assumption was that they would be diminished, and they were. I have been dosing 10ml of H2O2 every day and have only had to blow them off some zoas once this whole week. I know its too soon to claim victory but I feel that perhaps rapid action was able to be effective in preventing the outbreak from fully developing. I do not see hardly anymore of it in my tank but nonetheless some damage has been done. I see some STN on some acros, half of my screaming green birds nest colony is gone, 1/3 of my birds of paradise seems gone, and almost all of my snails died. Not too concerned. All of that can be easily replaced and nothing too expensive was lost. Funny thing is that through it all my red planet seemed unaffected. I will update again when things change.

Wondering how this turned out.

I just started noticing a small amount of what I think are dinos in my tank. I reduced the photoperiod just today, tommorrow I am going to give everything a good blasting with h2o2 and a turkey baster, scrape everything, let the filter catch it, and then go lights out for a few days.

I'm hoping that since I caught it before it was everywhere that this will work.

Actually it has all turned out well. I think you have taken a giant step in the right path by early identification (if it truly is dino) and are ready to take action. From what I have read, I was pretty fortunate not to have this battle go on for a long time as others have. I read about some hobbyists battling this for two years and then getting out of the hobby. I did take early action. Maybe I was a bit aggressive ( not sure) but nonetheless, I defeated the issue.

I started off by doing a 3 day blackout. Usually coral are fine after 3 days. They look a bit upset but bounce back after a few days or weeks. At this time I also started dosing 10ml of peroxide. My total volume is about 90 gallons. I cannot positively say if this had any effect or not but my dino problem definitely did not last long. I did this for about two weeks. I also blew off any dino on the coral itself twice a day with a turkey baster. The part where I think I might have been aggressive in was that only one week later I did another black out for 3 days. When my lights came back on, I had STN on my screaming green birdsnest and some RTN on a stuber stag mini colony I had glued to a frag plug. I chopped that guy up and only lost one of three frags. Im ok with that. I have plenty of stuber stag anyways. My screaming green birdsnest is slowly recovering. The complete white tips are turning brown and regaining their polyps once again. O and I totally forgot about my birds of paradise colony. That one took the hardest hit. I did not cut this one up and did believe I had lost it completely. About 2/3 of it no longer had any color or polyp extension. However, I was looking at it today and realized that it has regained a ton of color and about 80% of it has polyp extension now. It's not 100% recovered yet but I have no doubt in my mind that it will recover fully.

One thing to note is that a blackout is not a total guarantee to defeating dinoflagellates. While we all believe that this helps reduce them due to them being photosynthetic, dinoflagellates are actually mixotrophic. Depending on exactly what strand you have, they do not necessarily need light to be able to survive. The following can be found in the Pearson tenth edition of "Campbell Biology"

". . . Although the group is thought to have originated by secondary endosymbiosis, roughly half of all dinoflagellates are now purely heterotrophic. Others are important species of phytoplankton (photosynthetic plankton, which include photosynthetic bacteria as well as algae); many photosynthetic dinoflagellates are mixotrophic."

I did seem to be able to defeat the majority of mine with the two blackout periods but I would not recommend doing two of them within one week of each other.

After about a month of still seeing them, I decided to just give up and let them take their course. They seemed to center themselves around the birds of paradise colony and only there. Slowly they started disappearing on their own. Today, I do not see any more in my tank and I think everything is well on it's way to recovery.

I hope this helps somewhat.

[something to reef on]

hair algae? dinos?

It's growing on rocks, corals, glass. Seems to of come out of no where. There are some really long strands of it. What do you think? These were the best pictures I could get, shown growing on chaeto, red titan algae, and a nepthea.

[Manny]

Looks like dino to me.

[something to reef on]

Yeah, thats what I thought. Going to try to stomp it out.

At least water changes aren't part of the process.

[Manny]

Yeah, thats what I thought. Going to try to stomp it out.

At least water changes aren't part of the process.

Any update for us? Is this under control?

As for me, I absolutely do not have an issue anymore.

[something to reef on]

I did a 72 hour period without lights and covered the tank. After that I noticed most of it was gone but not all of it. What remained Iremoved manually as best I could.

After that 72 hour period I started dosing 1 ml of h2o2 / 10 gal of water. Today will be day 6 I beleive, and I am planning to do 8-10 days.

For the first few days after the blackout period I had to manually remove trace amounts of it.

The last two days I have not seen any. I won't claim that it's gone, but I think it's now under control.

I also reduced my photoperiod, started feeding every other day, and stopped dosing trace elements, all will be increased slowly startimg this weekend.

I measured my Phosphorus levels the first day of the blackout to be 30 ppb, and they have fallen to 10 ppb when I checked them last night, Hanna checker.Nitrates always measure 0.

I think the multi-facet approch has worked, along with recognizing it early, and lowering phosphorus levels.

I have not lost anything due to the h2o2 dosing, just makes the skimmer go a little crazy.

My hope is that maintaining low nutrient levels will prevent it from breaking out again.

[FarmerTy]

Great to hear you're winning the battle! I'm sure you're doing it but I just wanted to double check, you're converting your phosporus meter results to ppm of phosphate, correct? If not, just multiply by 3.066 and divide by 1000 to convert (i.e., 10 ppb of phosphorus is 0.03 ppm of phosphate, 30 ppb is 0.09 ppm of phosphate). Ignore me if you're already doing that.

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[something to reef on]

Yep, I want to get and keep them at about half of what they are at currently.