Dinoflagellates

Hey all,

I'm having a small outbreak of dinoflagellates. Not sure if this is the right forum for this since they aren't an algae but whatever. My tank is about two months old. So maybe I'm still going through the uglies? I'm still concerned though because I hear they can spread rapidly and I want to nip it in the bud.

Parameters

ammonia 0
nitrite 0
nitrate 5
phos 0
alk 9
cal 440
mg 1400
sg 1.024
ph is between 7.97 and 8.2

Any thoughts on how to deal with them would be great.

 

I'm currently dealing with it on my 60 gal. I'm doing a 4-6 day blackout. My tank is currently wrapped in towels to prevent any light. I am skimming heavy, and bought a large portion of chaeto to take up an excess nutrients. Raising your pH to 8.4-8.5 has 50/50 results. I am also doing this. I'm doing everything i can to rid the tank of it. My girlfriend decided she needed a new aquascape after a year. She didn't realize what she was doing. Oh well.

Oh yea we are also running gfo/carbon

 

Let me know how that works out for you. I was reading that not doing water changes is another method. I also read that doing a massive water change following the blackout can help of course this is contradictory of the no water change theory. Another thing that I read was that letting your nitrates get up to around 3ppm will speed up the rate that they uptake whatever they feed off of faster. It seems like a lot of mystery surrounding them.

 

Just my .02....I don't believe that dinos are a natural part of the uglies of a new tank. From what I've read, treating it is what you need to do and it sounds like you've searched the forum to read up on methods.

 

+1, they are not to be expected like diatoms and green hair algae. Do some research on here and definitely try to eradicate it ASAP.

 

right now the dinos are contained to a few rocks on the top half of my system, with none on the glass or sand or supporting structural rocks. Would it be effective to remove the effected rocks and do the blackout in a rubber made container? Could that cause a recycle in my tank? or would i not experience much die off?

 

Need an image to ID the culprit.

I know there are tons of different approaches, which makes me think that Dino may die out when it dies out, no more no less.

What I did and what worked after 3 months of interventions.

1. Raised pH to 8.2-8.4 24/7.
2. No water changes, wc just seemed to feed it.
3. Complete and absolute blackout of 4 days.
4. Very slow introduction to photoperiod. Initially if Dino started to come back in 3 hours the lights went off. No corals suffered from this.
5. Daily cleaning of Dino from all rock work and sand and once that settled cleaning of all mechanical filtration.
6. Halt of introduction of all additives except buffer.

Dino looks like small strings of lights, bubbles. Once the strings started to grow with the formation of bubbles I repeated the steps above. Dino grows very very fast. If you are not seeing this you may not have Dino.

 

Heres a photo. Not really a great time of day for a photo due to white balance issues.



Im fairly certain that they are dinos.

How would you guys recommend safely raising my ph that much?

 

Yeah that does look a lot like dino.

What corals do you have and how old is the tank?

 

2 torches, 2 hammers, a clove polyp, a goniopora, a goniastera, a Duncan and a trumpet. All are doing great and showing nice growth. The tank is two months old.