Uh-oh, Dinos.
 

So since the fish started going back in the tank, I've been feeding more (obviously). The tank hit a nice ULNS with the small amount I was feeding while it was fallow for 4 months, and the water, rocks, and glass we crystal clear. I've been monitoring N and P closely since the fish started going back in, and the levels have consistently stayed in the undetectable to trace range, but I was noticing a teeny tiny patch of what I thought was cyano in one corner.

over a week the patch kept getting bigger and bigger, and then I started noticing what I thought was a diatom bloom on my sand and on my rocks. The 'diatoms' and cyano also happened to coincide with a melt down of my RO membrane, so I assumed the water was getting an influx of garbage from Calgary tap water.

Cleaned, bleached, and fixed my RO unit, drained, cleaned, and refilled my RO reservoir, and did two back to back 50 gallon water changes over the course of two days, and the problem didn't improve. Not one to let something get out of hand, I turned off my skimmer and phosphate reactor, and dosed chemi-clean as per instructions yesterday. One teeny tiny little spot of cyano (not the big patch that caused the initial concern) died in a few hours, but today, oh man. The sand bed has almost disappeared under a carpet of brown, stringy, bubble entrapping goo, and the rocks look like snotty brown cobwebs have draped themselves all over everything. It's starting to look to me like I don't have cyano after all, and what I'm dealing with is in fact Dinoflagellates. A quick search online says that chemo-clean might actually make dinos worse.

I'm getting conflicting information on how to deal with this. Some accounts say total blackout for three days, lots of siphoning and water changes, activated carbon, phosphate media, and raised pH. Some say no water changes at all and to just let the bloom run it's course.

nutrient levels still test undetectable, and there's no other nuisance algae in the tank. What have you all done to beat this?

ETA: spelling and auto-correct fails

Wow...dinos scare me as there doesn't seem to be any specific fix. My best understanding is that silicates can be a big contributor.

After fighting dinos for 6 months one our local reefers who was previously a TOTM threw in the towel on his reef.

I would go dark and do water changes together.

Sorry, I feel your pain. I fought the dyno and won, but it was a long bloody war. Low nutrients, high nutrients, one thing after the other, nothing worked. The only remedy for me was total blackout, and I mean total. Complete blockage of light on all five sides of the tank, transparent plumbing, sump, everything. And not for three days, I'm talking 7-10 days. I did 10 days on my mixed reef with no casualties other than the dyno (and algae). Granted I did not have an advanced SPS reef, but I did have various inverts, LPS, a couple hardier SPS colonies, a couple softies.

If you're up for a read have a look at this thread: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=1962886

The big blackout was the recomendation from my LFS and was ultimately what worked for me. Sucks for sure, but the dyno is a tough one to deal with. Good luck

Did you dose peroxide?

I should add, I don't know if I could do a 10 day blackout. A couple Gs in SPS in there, I don't think they'd do well with 10 days no light

Just read through that entire reef central thread. I'm going to try a lights out period starting tomorrow and dose peroxide. I'm going away for 16 days next friday. good lord why do these things always have to happen when I'm not going to be here to stay on top of it?

No, no peroxide no fooling with SG, just pure darkness. It seems there are different strains which react differently to certain treatments, maybe you will get lucky. For me a few days wasn't enough so I had to go to extremes. But at that point I was so fed up I was open to extreme measures and risking some livestock for the short term.

Can you post a pic

Are snails dying or appear sick? Most dino's are toxic to snails.

I have had Dino's and they almost drove me to quit this hobby. I read a lot and learned a lot. First off there are several types of Dino's. So raising ph may work on one type but not another. Likewise a period of darkness may work or may not depending on the strain but more than 3 days will stress corals. Tried peroxide and it did nothing but it apparently works for some.

My tank was ulns and that was the trigger. After trying everything what worked was:

1. Stop carbon dosing
2. Increase bacteria (mb7, zeobac, ect)
3. Let nitrate and po4 rise. Actually try and grow hair algae. C'mon I know you can do it. Dino's in a ulns system can use sulphate (in salt mix) as a food source.
4. After all this I ended up breaking all my sps of the rockwork and removing my sanded. Scrubbed every rock in the sink with a toothbrush, rinsed in old tank water and put no rocks back in tank(rocks in sump). All sps went on eggcrates.
5. With the higher nutrient levels, clean rocks and no sand I never saw them again.

In hindsight i would siphon out as many as you can and try a period of darkness (total blackout) for 3 days. Stop carbon dosing. If this doesn't work I would remove your sandbed and scrub the rock daily wih a toothbrush. Hopefully you do not have to break he corals off.

Good luck.

Well today it was as bad as it's been. I got married in my house today so I wasn't allowed to put garbage bags over the tank until everyone left, but I'm starting a blackout period now. Thankfully it's really easy, as the tank is fully enclosed in a cabinet, so I just need to cover the two exposed panes of glass.

I'm also going to try dosing hydrogen peroxide at the same time, and keep the tank blacked out for 4 full days. My dinos aren't nearly as bad as some of the images I've seen on line, but today was the first day I really saw them starting to coat corals. I'm leaving town for 2 weeks on Friday, so I'm hoping that if this doesn't work, it at least slows it down enough so that it doesn't overwhelm my tank when I'm not here to do anything about it. If there's still dinos when I get home I'll try a longer blackout period, and will start looking in to making pH adjustments, as that's the other thing online that people have said works.

Question for people who've done black-outs - did you have to adjust the rate at which you dose calcium and alk? I would think that the absorption rate would bottom out with the lights off.

That's a good point which I did not consider during my blackout. That being said my dosing consisted of periodic measurements and the appropriate top up on params, nothing structured enough that I would notice a change in consumption. What I did do though was to add some sheet seaweed on a vegie clip a couple times near the end to feed my herbivorous inverts. After 2-3 days algae quickly began dying off, and with it went their food source.

Congrats on the wedding BTW!

I just abandoned dosing during the lights-off when I had dinos. You can always get your params back in check afterwards.

Yah I think i'll turn my auto doser off.

This morning my filter sock was overlfowing, and there were long, stringy strands of brown goo clinging to the fabric on the outside. I can only assume that means the tank was in the process of blooming, as the lights were on normally all day yesterday, I put the garbage bags up and unplugged my lights right before the normal lights out period.

I read through the entire massive thread on peroxide dosing on R2R, and there was a guy doing his PhD on dinos who was getting people to send him samples. he said that most people who sent him samples were actually dealing with cyano or diatoms, but that the ones who did have dinos all had different kinds, and he hypothesized that the reason peroxide worked for some people and not for others might be due to which species it was.

I'm going to give it a try, I'm hoping I caught it early enough that it won't become an entrenched problem. I've got a week to try and deal with it, then two weeks of me being away for it to do whatever it's going to do. Fingers crossed that I'll come home from the US to a sparkling and healthy tank.

I have my first outbreak of dinos and have had it for about a year now. I've ordered Fauna Marin Ultra AlgeaX and plan to give it a try as soon as I receive it. I understand there are always risks but at this point, I'm ready to try it.

First, you should id the stuff under a microscope because the key to the treatment is to correctly identify the culprit.

I had 100% success killing dino with higher PH. Worked like a charm and it never returned, ever.

I used Seachem OH to raise the PH to 8.5 for a week.

http://www.aquavitro.com/products/balance.html

I took a sample of the stuff before and looked at it with the microscope before to make sure what I was dealing with and it was positive id for dino.

Diatom won't react to the same treatment, neither cyano so ID is important.

Yah I need to buy a pH probe for my Apex, and a microscope. Sigh. So much for the tank sticking to it's budget this month.

Find an XS Cargo...they usually carry some low cost microscopes that aren't children's toys.

I found one online that seems like a good deal:
http://www.microscopenet.com/40x2000...ra-p-9110.html

half off makes me a little nervous, but it's got an attachment for a digital camera. I think I'm going to have to end up sending the images to someone who knows better than me, as it's been about 10 years since i looked at anything through a microscope.

I'm going to try and sell that as a birthday present to myself.

:surprise: Okay, so you and i were talking different things...I was thinking $49.99 and you were thinking about adding a zero...

hehe, I've actually been wanting to get a microscope for the tank for a while, there's so many problems that can happen with a tank that are easier to solve if you can identify the problem. I can also justify getting it for school/work, so I figured I might get something pretty good. Compared to the professional biological microscopes out there though, that's a pretty cheap scope. I found a Canadian vendor who's bargain model started at 500, and their standard model started at $2500, before any of the add ons.

call your local high school and ask to speak with the biology teacher. Offer to make a donation to the school if you can use their microscope for ten minutes after school or during lunch one day.

doubt you'll EVER get even $200 worth of microscope use for just reef tank use and im sure the school could use the donation.

I've always wanted one to try and identify the culprit responsible for mystery zoa melting. Adam I might give you a call one of these days to stop by and power up that bad boy.

Alright, I checked with the UofC and they don't have any surplus scopes available for sale at the moment, the bio department just cleared all their old stuff out a couple of months ago. I just placed the order for the microscope I linked to earlier. I'm headed to the US on Friday until the end of the month, so it should be waiting for me when I get home.

I'm crossing my fingers that I'm going to come home to a tank that's magically fixed it's own brown slime problem, but now that I'll be able to look at it under a scope, I'm also sort of hoping it's still there. Someone came by to buy a pump off me last night and they think what I have is diatoms, which might make sense considering that this started both after my R/O membrane melted down and I started adding fish, but none of my snails will eat them, not even my mexican turbos, and they eat everything.

Levi, you are more than welcome to come by and use it. This scope comes with a USB camera so we should be able to take pictures of anything we can't ID ourselves and send them to experts if that's what needs to happen. If the USB camera ends up being useful, I'll probably upgrade to the higher rez model. Also it will give ma chance to buy some frags from you, I've recently been bitten by the zoa bug, and I need more.

I've also been toying with the idea of setting up my own mini C. irrritans study, I read all the published work on it, and the protocol for getting enough of it to study isn't that complicated, and could be easily accomplished with the equipment I already have. The other first order of business once I get this thing is going to be to start testing the bacterial cultures you can buy for your tank, such as Zeobak, Stability, etc. I've read in more than a few places that unless a bacterial culture is refrigerated, they're basically going to be dead by the time you get them. I've always been really curious to see if there is actually anything living in those very expensive supplements, and how long they stay alive in their bottles after you buy them.

Anyway, one way or another I'm going to get a correct ID one what it is that I'm dealing with.

My microscope was cheap, around 130$ or so, but it does the job. No need to have an expensive microscope. Sure it is better than mine, and I cannot see baterias because mine does not reach that level, but I can ID fish parasites like ick or velvet, and I can ID diatome and dino easily.

It was cool to see the black bugs (ok not so cool) to ID it and do the treatment with Advantage...

Here I took a video with my small kodak video cam..wish I had a microscope attachement because I did this handheld...not so easy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGJu0DitJXk

but I am very tempted to buy that microscope you posted in the link... It's in my shopping cart...hmmm...pressing the checkout button....hmmm...

I beat Dinos, I slowly raised alk to 10dkh, lights out for 4 days(ambient light 15 min a day to feed fish), reduced flow( it spreads it around), NO water changes ( don't know why but I know 10% daily did not help), temp 80 degrees, change socks daily(if you don't have them get them), after 4 days, blow off the rocks and vacuum the substrate.

the first time I did it I did lights out for 3 days, dino began to rear its ugly head again after a couple days, I then did a second lights out for 4 days, the dinos never reappeared (been 3 years now), I think I would have beat it the first time if I did the lights out for 4 days.

Good luck

Hmmm, i just noticed my doliatus rabbitfish going to town on this stuff. I'm starting to lean away from dinos

Don't know if anyone had said this but apparently Fauna Marin algae x says in their description that it removes dinoflagellates. Hope this helps

http://www.canadacorals.com/collecti...-ultra-algae-x

i'm sad to say i'm effected too

oooh, i didn't know you could get that in Canada directly. That's a good tool to have in one's bag of tricks. I'd use it as a last resort sort of thing if looking at it under a scope confirms that they are in fact dinos.

Yup. I've started using it to treat dinos.

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...852#post789852

So my microscope was waiting for me when I got home!

1. My roomate and her boyfriend did a spectacular job with my tank. The corals grew more in the 17 days they were taking care of it then in the past 2 months!

2. The brown slime is significantly reduced, but it's not gone. By 3:30 today (right now basically), there's a light dusting on the rocks that had it worst.

3. Only one coral seems like it's being damaged by the slime, but it was never really doing that well to begin with. ANd when I say slime, I really mean a super fine dusting that you have to look closely to notice.

Anyway, I grabbed some of the brown slime and took a picture with my microscope's camera. Forgive the teeny tiny file, the driver that came with the camera won't work, so I had to get a freeware version and I have no idea how to work it yet:

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps996c1ac6.jpg

Thing is, they move. A lot. These things that form these brown sticky mats are in fact million and millions of tiny watermelon seed shaped swimming cells. that pic is at 10X mag, but at 40X you can actually see the little skirt of... something. It looks like a skirt of cilia as they go all the way around them. Does anyone know if these are in fact dinos? I took a short video too, I'll try and figure out how to upload it in a bit

Here's one at 40X

http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3f5bf4ae.jpg

Maybe Prorocentrum?

http://starcentral.mbl.edu/microscop...t&imageid=4187

http://starcentral.mbl.edu/microscop...&imageid=24154

that looks pretty close to what I've got. There's a few different species *from that genus* that could be what I have actually. *sigh* Well, they're not doing much harm at the moment, so I think I'm going to end up leaving them be. I have experienced cures that were worse that the disease in this tank before, so unless they start to really damage other life, I'm not going to do anything about them.

ETA: **

Great to hear Adam, how are you liking the microscope so far? I per-say "bandwagoned" and purchased the exact same one after you posted the link, still waiting for it in the mail.

^^^ That being said your still welcome to some frags :razz:. We will have to do a mini tank tour, I really want to see your beasty in action.

Yah man, you should come by this weekend if you've got a chance. And the scope is great, I shopped around a lot and for the feature set I don't think there was a better deal. I've seen the camera that comes with it sold separately on a couple of sites for almost as much as I payed for the whole package. However, the driver CD that came with the scope camera kept failing to install, it would tell me that I needed an X86 chip, which I'm almost 100% certain my computer does have, so I'm thinking the driver software might only work on 32 bit computers. I ended up having to download a different generic video capture app called AMCap to get the camera to work. The free version works well enough, but it was developed by one independent guy so I paid for it anyway.

I dunno, I've had one for years and it's my favorite reef toy :) I think next frag swap I host, I'll put it out for people to play with!

????????????????????????

You're not invited...

sorry.. I should read the thread from start to finish rather than the other way around...

I'd love one of those! Wonder if you can get one with a camera/sensor commercially ?