Poll: Nitrates and Dinoflagellates.

Just wandering some things about others and dinos.

If you don't mind sharing any info about whether they came and went with a certain level of nitrate and/or urea.
For example they got worse after adding fish which would be more fish pee and had zero nitrates.
For example started carbon dosing dinos appeared while nitrate suspected to be too low... corals whitened.
Also interested if you dosed potassium nitrate or other nitrate and if it killed them.

 

Had a nasty 3 month outbreak after dosing Amino Acids. Nitrates were roughly 10. Before I knew better I was doing huge water changes so there were probably periods were the nitrates were non existent.

 

Did you dinos appear to get better or worse after water changes?

 

Worse. I was sure I would get Dino under control by doing water changes, heavy skimming, running Chemipure and changing it out frequently, running Purigen, yeah no.
Raising pH via Kalk, complete black out of 4 days and then reduction of lighting period there after for a couple weeks, and manual removal with turkey baster and then cleaning the sponge daily.
I suppose the Dino could have burned its' self out, but that is what I did, and that is how I would proceed again.

 

Bump.. Only four votes?

 

The only dinos I've dealt with was when I bought a choral from an infected tank. I have it a good dip in revive but the Dino's got into the tank anyway. I got two emerald crabs and they took care of it.

 

Not to be argumentative, but if emerald crabs took care of it, I don't think it was dinoflagellates. I've had these three times and each time it required wrapping the tank for days then keeping the lights low for weeks to get ride of them.

For what it's worth, several folks have noticed that killing off red slime can lead to a dino bloom. There is a relationship between the two. There is also, I think, a relationship to phosphate and nitrate, but I think it's complex. If healthy bacteria are keeping both low, you get neither cyano nor dino. If you have too much of both or too much nitrate and low phosphate, I suspect you'll see cyano. If on the other hand you have low nitrate and too much phosphate, I hypothesize dino may bloom.

 

Thanks for the input servillus. Im fairly sure it was Dino's from what I've seen on pics and from what the lfs told me it was. The emeralds went to work on it immediately and there was only a small patch. I'm of the opinion that i didn't get rid of them, more like suppressed them. Any bacteria are so numerous in a closed environment that many pathogenic are alive and well. Just may not be overwhelming in population.

 

Billme, that just does not sound like Dino to me either. Bryopsis perhaps but not Dino. Hobbyist have been fighting Dino for decades it just not that easy to kill. I have never seen it limited to one area, most Dino is toxic, basically it will kill anything that eats it and some animals that do not eat it. Dino is stringy and snotty looking with air bubbles.

 

Interesting article:
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/blog/how-i-beat-dinoflagellates-and-the-lessons-i-learned

I would love to hear from someone that used Hydrogen Peroxide as a treatment.