Dinoflagellates ... is there an end to this nightmare

[Delphinus]

Has anyone here had a dinoflagellate bloom in their tank, and lived to tell the tale?

I thought I've lived through the worst cyano blooms, but this is far worse. It clogs my powerheads, shuts down my calcium reactor, and clogs my overflow to the point that the tank ... well, almost overflows.

I thought I was having this because maybe my pH was too low, but pH is 8.3 during the day, dips down to 8.1 at night. That doesn't seem very low to me ... ?

What else can I look for?

NO3=0.0, PO4=0.1 ...

[pocilipora]

According to Sprung & Delbeek, keeping your PH at atleast 8.4 or higher with a Dkh of 12 for a week using Kalk will cause the bloom to crash.

[Delphinus]

Dinoflagellisticexpihalidocious .... this is really quite atrocious....

:cry: :( :x

[EmilyB]

Well, obviously they suck...what do they look like Tony? Can we help?

[EmilyB]

How do you know they are dino's? I've only ever heard of them.

Likely you found this already, but hope it might help:

http://www.reefs.org/library/article/t_crail.html

[Delphinus]

I don't think I could photograph it very well. It looks an awful lot like cyano, but cyano has more cohesiveness. This, basically, is brown stringy "snot." Like cyano, it creates an awful lot of bubbles. It covers everything (and I mean everything ....even fish fins are not immune!) It builds up to the point it breaks off, then it floats and creates a thick mat atr the surface, which gums up the strainer on the overflow).

The annoying part is, you siphon it all out, and within hours it's back again. At least with cyano it gives you a day or two. Yesterday, I siphoned my tank clean three times.

I can't pronounce the word "dinoflagellates." Hence, my late night delerium ode to Mary Poppins...

I'm trying the kalk right now. My first attempt, I obviously didn't do enough, so now I've replaced all my topoff with kalk and we'll see what this does.


(DI-no-FLA-gel-ITS? Hmmmm)

Not much to do, but muddle my way through this like with any kind of bloom, and hope it peaks (and ebbs) soon....

[MitchM]

Tony, which tank is it in? ...and are you sure that you're getting a positive reading for phosphate? (especially with the bloom, the reading should be 0) Have you made any maintenance changes to the tank lately?

Mitch

[christyf5]

Hi Tony,
I feel your pain. I had this problem at the beginning of October and my tank looked like hell. This stuff is nasty. I upgraded the pump on my skimmer and increased my alkalinity and slowly won the war. One morning I woke up and it was gone. It was like Christmas in October!
Good luck!

Christy :)

[Aquattro]

Tony, Christy has a good point. What is your alk at?

[Delphinus]

Just tested the alk; it's 3.8 meq/l which is, I think, about 10.6 dKH...

[Canadian Man]

Tony I don't think it's directly a ph problem.
I just got my moniter calibrated and such and here is my results.
tank ph=8.15
reactor ph=6.58
I suppose it could be a low ph + something else but I don't think it just has to do with low ph.

Hope this helps in some way

[rossb]

I thought that dinoflatulence disappeared with the dinosaurs :lol: :lol: :lol:

[clintyiu]

Been there. It was a horrible messy end to my skimmerless SPS experience. The corals were doing great until I vacuumed the substrate with a closed loop micron filter and the dinoflags... started. You can actually see particles of it multiplying within seconds!

Use carbon, phosphate remover, clean out your skimmer but don't change the water and filter out some of the lighting. It will dissappear.

Clint

[Canadian Man]

Tony,
Drawing from what Clint said I think it may have been caused by the disturbance of your sand bed when you took out all the calurpa.

I think we found it watson! :roll: :shock: :D

[Delphinus]

It does seem to be a smoking gun, doesn't it. There were two major things that just preceded the start of this goo, 1) I switched to ARM in the reactor (seems an unlikely cause since many people use ARM without problems) and 2) I started removing caulerpa, and some of it is quite disruptive into the sand bed.

Since dosing kalk with the topup, the pH has been down to 8.18 (which I hope is close enough to 8.2) at night, and 8.38 during the day (which I hope is close enough to 8.4). We'll see if this helps.

If anything, it doesn't seem to getting worse, not significantly anyways (KNOCK ON WOOD!!!!)

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions and words of encouragement!

[Canadian Man]

It's kinda weird Tony,
I checked the moniter a few times today( I am doing a daily up and down)
and it's at 8.45 as of last night and this morning and all day.

[AJ_77]

It looks an awful lot like cyano, but cyano has more cohesiveness. This, basically, is brown stringy "snot." Like cyano, it creates an awful lot of bubbles. It covers everything...
Ummm, don't know if you would consider it, Tony, but Chemi-Clean kicks cyano @ss. Worked like a charm here, and for other discreet persons who don't want to mention it (persecution, you know). I think the stuff has a bad rep, plus it's expensive. But if it would work, you'll be glad for it afterwards I think.

Just a thought, if all else is failing.

:D

[Bob I]

I think the stuff has a bad rep, plus it's expensive. But if it would work, you'll be glad for it afterwards I think.

Just a thought, if all else is failing.

:D

It has a bad rap only among those who are unaware of its fine qualities. It has a good reputation among some very experienced reefers. One of the moderators on Aquariacentral has said some very good things about it. It is well worth giving it a shot. My opinion of course. :wink:

[christyf5]

What is chemi-clean and what does it do? Is it like chemi-pure??

Christy :)

[AJ_77]

Hard to say exactly what the stuff is - maybe some sort of trade secret...
Check out the website: http://www.boydenterprisesonline.com/chemiclean.html
Not a lot of information.
:?
But the stuff takes out cyano, and the dinoflagellistic plague might be closely related??

Alan

[Bob I]

What is chemi-clean and what does it do? Is it like chemi-pure??

Christy :)

Chemiclean - Formula by John Nobles
Exclusive with Boyd Enterprises.

That is what the package says, so it is marketed by Dick Boyd, the owner of Chemipure.

I have used it a number of times with great success on Cyano. Two days and it is gone.

[Delphinus]

Where would you recommend a person pick up some of the Chemiclean?

Might be worth pursuing...

[AJ_77]

Pisces claimed to have a bottle hiding behind the parts counter somewhere ($27.95), but I picked mine up at Wai's ($29.95). He had a few hanging there up behind his till.

Alan :D

[Bob I]

Where would you recommend a person pick up some of the Chemiclean?

Might be worth pursuing...

I got mine from MOPS, but I no longer see it listed (I paid less than $15.00 for it) Maybe I will email Dan about getting more.

I don't have enough left to let you try mine. :( :(

[Bob I]

The product is still available from MOPS (www.mops.ca). You will find it under( Water Treatments, subcategory "water clarifiers, and algae control") The cost is $13.49, and if you order nothing else, you pay about $7.00 shipping, which is still less than at the local merchants' prices.
Bob

[Delphinus]

Update. (This is what, approximately 3 weeks since my original post..)

I did try some Chemi-Clean, and although it had an odd effect on the dinoflagellates, in the end it did not reduce the plague at all. It somehow made the bubbles bubblier (the tank foamed and frothed for 2 days ... it was REALLY gross). So .... um ... don't try Chemi-clean, I guess, to rid yourself of dinoflagellates. They may look similar to cyano, but they're totally different.

The one worry I have about anything that will specifically target dinoflagellates, is, well, zooxanthellae are dinoflagellates. So you definitely do not want to be adding anything that is toxic.

What I did try, which (TOUCH WOOD) seems to have worked, is, I turned my tank lights off for as long as I could stand. I had originally tried one day, and it made an impact, but it wasn't enough and the stuff came back. So I tried a second time, this time was to be "as long as I could stand it" which ended up being three days. It seems to have disappeared. This was about a week ago, and I have been slowly ramping my photoperiod back, 1/2 hour a day ever since (started at 1/2 hour on, and I started off making the increments actually 1/4 hour a day for fear I'd go too fast and burn something, then switched to 1/2 hour a day after I reached 1.5 hours).

Only thing is, as I kind of feared would happen, there were casualties. My purple cap, which is a weak coral I have been trying to save for many months now, suffered some bleaching. No tissue loss luckily, just a small bleached spot. Also I had a lettuce sea slug and I have not seen it in two weeks now (since just before the lights-out period). I know these guys are photosynthetic .... and now I am wishing I had pulled it out into another tank. :( Of course, I do not know what the survivability of these guys are at the best of times, or possibily another variable to consider that it ate some dinos which turned out to be toxic (it is, after all, a form of "red tide" which we know can be potentially toxic to some).

So my advice to anyone else who ever gets dinoflagellates infesting their tank: go straight to a lights-out period, it needs to be more than 1 day, but proceed carefully, watch out for bleaching and other deleterious effects from a lack of photosynthesis..

So, it's been almost two months in all since the crap started. Nothing short of the drastic measures of turning the lights off ever had an impact on the stuff. But I'm cautiously optimistic that maybe the worst has now passed. Here's hoping anyways!!