Dinoflagellates HELP!

I'm not saying stopping water changes isn't effective, it is well documented that it can be. The theory is that they run out of some, unknown trace element, although, no one knows which trace element(s). However, there are lots and lots of species, and it is also well documented that water changes can help with some. Certainly that has been the case with the ones I have encountered. Remember dinos are a HUGE range of organisms, ranging from the zoox in corals to Amyloodinium ocellatum (aka "Marine Velvel").

You can not make a general statement that high pH and no water changes will help all dinos. This will help in many cases, that is certainly well documented. However, there are exceptions and stopping water changes, when you have a potentially toxic organism in your water, that can release potentially hydrophillic toxins, seems like it should be tried after other things fail, not as a first attempt IMO. If dinos get worse with water changes, then certainly try stopping them. However, if it seems to help, for example, why would you stop?

 

Thanks so much for all the help!!!! You guys are great.

I'm having a hard time figuring out if it is dino or not. But the color is definitely more brown than red.

All my snails seem fine, and I read dino will kill snails quickly?

 

I think just the toxic dinos will. While other strains will be fine with snails...
Does it look like snot with bubbles that grow on it?

 

It's not on the sand or glass..but on a few rocks and a part of my mesh lid that is touching the top of the water (so it's stagnant there).

I can't tell if it's long, fine hair algae with a bit of cyano on top, or if it's dinos.

There are lots of big bubbles, but those could just be accumulated bubbles.

 

Pretty much what we did, except no blackout. We just cut the light cycle to 4 hours. Took longer, but we didn't lose anything at all.

 

Is it black?

 

No, it's a light brown.

 

My statement was "this is what worked for me," in my first post. For awhile I thought maybe it was the IO salt mix, something about the mixture was feeding it, this proved to be not true, I was extremely frustrated.

Dino was a nightmare for me, I got ride of 2 tanks, they did not even have it, but I was soooo frustrated I just wanted to quite.

Three months, I cleaned the sump, the sand, every crevice and nothing worked. It covered my chaeto, grow off the tips of my sps, and killed off a large colony of zoanthids and some lps.

 

I don't doubt it Cheryl just trying to point out, there are lots of dinos, that all require specific treatments. I just think it's best to start with the least invasive and move to more aggressive based on the results. Certainly agree that many dinos are treated with the method you describe.


Here is one that dosn't.


Here is the rock in my main display. This tank gets fed 5-7 times per day and 15% water changes weekly. You can look hard, there is no significant nuisance algae, dinos, cyano etc...





This tank below was set up a few months ago, using rock and everything else from the above tank. Nothing came from anywhere else. I have done 1 water change since it was set up and really do not feed it. Just a small piece of krill for the BTA every few weeks. As expected, it quickly developed cyano and then dinos. I plan to do some more experiments with this tank and the dinos, but needless to say, the no-water change experiment has failed miserably however. This is just one type of dinos, I certainly don't expect these results apply to all.... Trial and error is key with dinos IMO and IME.

 

Let's remember this is the OP's thread and dinos...