My battle with dinoflagellates

[Dash]

I love my tuxedo urchin. Spike is a nice small fellow & doesn’t cause too much trouble (I tried a beautiful white urchin that grew enormous in a couple of months & he disrupted things so much that I took him back to JL). Sometimes I move him onto a rock that needs cleaning and he’ll do it haha. He’s also been with me since the beginning so around 3 years old now at least. I don’t have big long clumps of HA though, just small patches here & there. He scrapes rock clean, leaving a white trail

[Frogger]

I have a tuxedo urchin you could have for a reasonable amount. Not much algae left in my tank and he loves putting things on his back, snails, small corals ect. Kind of want to get rid of him.

[Llorgon]

Originally Posted by Dash

I love my tuxedo urchin. Spike is a nice small fellow & doesn’t cause too much trouble (I tried a beautiful white urchin that grew enormous in a couple of months & he disrupted things so much that I took him back to JL). Sometimes I move him onto a rock that needs cleaning and he’ll do it haha. He’s also been with me since the beginning so around 3 years old now at least. I don’t have big long clumps of HA though, just small patches here & there. He scrapes rock clean, leaving a white trail

I'm impressed with your ability to keep things alive for so long. I would hope it would eat the hair algae. I have a yellow tang that ignores it so I don't want more things that won't touch it.

Originally Posted by Frogger

I have a tuxedo urchin you could have for a reasonable amount. Not much algae left in my tank and he loves putting things on his back, snails, small corals ect. Kind of want to get rid of him.

I will probably take you up on that. I need to get my nitrates down a bit first. They are at 15-20ppm and from a quick google about them it seems they can be sensitive to nitrates.

[Razor Ramon]

strawberry snails your tank is smallish you might only need one of these beasts just put it on the rock you want cleaned ,after mine mine cleaned my tank it lived in my sump for a couple years. But there like a bull in a china store lol
Great value for $7.50

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[MitchM]

I've been involved with freshwater ponding for a while and some people there are also having problems with dinoflagellates.
The common theme between fw and sw seems to be aquatic environments where people are trying to micromanage water quality, which usually ends up in an unhealthy and unsustainable aquatic environment.

Our reef keeping hobby is subject to micromanaging by it's nature, so that makes it pretty susceptible to dinoflagellates..

In freshwater ponds, some people are using a copper ionizer which kills off populations of algae. Dinoflagellates increase in population as a result because the main nutrient nitrogen remains.

Local oxidation will temporarily kill off dinos because they are organic, but the long term solution seems to be increasing the diversity of various algae.

[Frogger]

Originally Posted by MitchM

I've been involved with freshwater ponding for a while and some people there are also having problems with dinoflagellates.
The common theme between fw and sw seems to be aquatic environments where people are trying to micromanage water quality, which usually ends up in an unhealthy and unsustainable aquatic environment.

Our reef keeping hobby is subject to micromanaging by it's nature, so that makes it pretty susceptible to dinoflagellates..

In freshwater ponds, some people are using a copper ionizer which kills off populations of algae. Dinoflagellates increase in population as a result because the main nutrient nitrogen remains.

Local oxidation will temporarily kill off dinos because they are organic, but the long term solution seems to be increasing the diversity of various algae.

Mitch you make a lot of sense. The coral reefs in the oceans and the old growth forests have thrived for hundreds and thousands of years because of immense unmatched biodiversity. One teaspoon of soil in an old growth forest has 50 billion microbes in it. I would guess that the biodiversity in an "old growth" coral reef would match that.

There is so much that we don't fully understand in this hobby. Once we think we get one thing figured out it just leads to a dozen other ones that we don't know or can't control.

[Llorgon]

Originally Posted by Razor Ramon

strawberry snails your tank is smallish you might only need one of these beasts just put it on the rock you want cleaned ,after mine mine cleaned my tank it lived in my sump for a couple years. But there like a bull in a china store lol
Great value for $7.50

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Damn. Those are huge snails. I would definitely only need one. I am hesitant about adding snails though. I don't have much luck with them.

Originally Posted by MitchM

I've been involved with freshwater ponding for a while and some people there are also having problems with dinoflagellates.
The common theme between fw and sw seems to be aquatic environments where people are trying to micromanage water quality, which usually ends up in an unhealthy and unsustainable aquatic environment.

Our reef keeping hobby is subject to micromanaging by it's nature, so that makes it pretty susceptible to dinoflagellates..

In freshwater ponds, some people are using a copper ionizer which kills off populations of algae. Dinoflagellates increase in population as a result because the main nutrient nitrogen remains.

Local oxidation will temporarily kill off dinos because they are organic, but the long term solution seems to be increasing the diversity of various algae.

I don't feel like I was micromanaging the water quality( I probably was). It is a new tank with only 3 small fish and N&P hit 0 for awhile.

I agree that having more algae helps. I only seem to have hair algae on the rocks and hair algae and some really tough green algae on the glass. It doesn't even scrape off easily. But the algae theory makes sense since making the water "dirty" and increasing algae growth seem to be the most effective way in battling dinos. I got some chaeto from Dash last night. So we will see if that helps things at all.

Right now the sand and glass is dino free and anywhere that gha isn't growing on the rocks is dino free, but there is still some dinos on the gha itself. It's quite annoying.

[Llorgon]

update:

Added some new corals over the last week. Everything seems to be doing pretty well so far. It's nice to finally be able to add corals again!


I also picked up some cheato from Dash and it seems to be doing well so far. I have the refugium light come on opposite the display tank lights.

Still working on getting the gha under control. I added a few more snails including 1 turbo snail and an urchin I got from Frogger. The urchin has finally started to climb on the rocks. Hopefully it will take a liking to the gha.


I have been attaching a toothbrush to my python hose and scrubbing the rocks in the tank while doing water changes which has made a big improvement on the level of gha.

My nitrates seem to have dropped and read 0. Should I bring them up to 5ppm? I assume the 0 reading isn't truly 0 since I have so much algae.

[DKoKoMan]

I wouldn’t bring up anything at this time until you notice the algae in the display to be minimal. With what you have been describing, it is appropriate to assume your nutrient levels are still high.