Dinoflagellates!!!!!!

I have a crocea clam, how will it react to the black out ? I'm just trying to cover all bases.
And also will my ph decline ?

 

Yeah your pH will likely decline with the lights out. I skimmed that article you linked and from what it said, I would think you would want to keep your pH stable and elevated if you can. Again, just skimmed the article. I would wait for a second opinion on that one.

Coralline - you seem to be pretty knowledgeable about this stuff. I've seen you post on a few threads now about it. Any advice on how to prevent an outbreak of this stuff in the first place? This will be useful to the OP in the future. It will also be useful to me ;D I'm not familiar with the stuff (luckily).

 

HI Gabby,

No one knows the exact cause of the outbreak. I have read that some believe it may come in on corals and when the conditions are right the Dino becomes invasive.

Since are tanks are already full of Dinoflagellates found within our corals some say an out break may be related to our corals dumping their Dino.

Initially with my out break I tried cleaning all the substrate, water changes until the cow came home. Replacing the Purigen and Chemipure elite over and over. It only got worse.

This is also one of those situations when what works for one person may not work for some one else tank. I do believe that the black out, discontinuing of water changes and elevating the pH are routine measures though in treating Dino.

As for the clam, I believe I would try to re-home the clam if possible. I did not and my clams fared fine.

 

Hey thats not what I wanted to hear!! Lol. Well I suppose I will just hope for the best then. Now that I know what they look like, I suppose I will be able to catch it early if it ever happens, and take immediate action (aka nip it at the bud)

 

I've also read in another article that running Actinics only took care of it for some people. So far I've been siphoning it out of the tank. I just wanna do a smart approach and do it this weekend when I'm home so I can monitor PH. I cut my lighting schedule back from 12 hours to 9 hrs.

Should I be running carbon? And if so, what kind of carbon?
My snails have been dying little by little so far and one of my blue reef chromis is
Missing.

I found an interesting article on someone who beat Dino's fairly easy.

Reefs.org: Where Reefkeeping Begins on the Internet - Treating Those Darn Dinoflagellates

 

I would try corallines approach first, because its the easiest and worked for her. I would assume that you will know fairly quickly whether it worked or not. If it does not work, I would try some of the other methods you referenced. However, keep in mind that it may not be the best idea to try all these methods simultaneously, as you do not want to shock your corals and stress them even further.

Don't forget to let us know which method ends up working for you in the end!

 

Dinoflalagettes !!!!!

Corailline, what is the best way to keep my PH up?
I assuming I have to dose something to keep it up my PH is at 8.4 usually and does not fluctuate much. And should I add carbon to my system??

 

I'm just curious. Are you running phosphate media like GFO?

 

Yes I started to run BRS High Capacity GFO in a phosban 150 3 days ago.

 

I take it it is having no effect? Its not always easy telling dino from diatoms. My wife had an outbreak we were sure was bad news (I had an outbreak of dino earlier, so we were shellshocked from the stuff). We decided we had the ID wrong on her tank, tried to treat for diatoms, and cleared the problem. Until then, it looked a lot like yours, bubbles and all.

It turns out a lot of stuff gets bubbles trapped in it, including diatoms in some circumstances.

If its dino, my primary advice is to hammer it hard and early. Trying one thing at a time in series is a recipe for killing your tank. Do the full blackout Corraline recommends, maintain the high pH, avoid the water changes, bring the lights back up slowly etc., but do it all to overkill.

The lights out won't hurt your stuff unless it drags on (if the first session fails and you have to do it again, its not ideal, if you're doing it a third time, your corals are going to have issues).

Give the silicate stripping a chance to show a effect first. Even if its a small chance, if its diatoms, you're going to be a lot happier.