Cyanobacteria or Dinoflagelettes?

[tfp]

well, its been a few months and this algae continues to haunt me! i just can't seem to get rid of it. i know of a few others in our reef club that can't get rid of it either.

i've done a couple more tank blackouts and chemi clean treatments and it would continue to appear within 2-5 days. i tried dosing vodka for awhile but some of my corals started to bleach so i stopped. tried a few diff. brands of carbon and it just laughed at me added 4 small fighting conchs and they cant keep up.

nitrates are between 2-5ppm (salifert) and phos around .010 (salifert). silicates are undetectable (salifert) and i always measure 0-1 TDS on my RODI. i'm using UV, 750ml of rowa, 3 cups of carbon and ozone stays at 390-400mv. water is extremely clear.

this scourge is capable of growing in ambient room light and i'm running a 3.5hr max MH photoperiod. have enuf flow that the ssb gets kicked around some but that won't stop it.

so i'm resorting to a little deeper sandbed of 3" vs 1.5" and plan to reaquascape and change out most of my arag. man-made rock for real LR to aid in the nitrification process. something is fueling this stuff and i can't find the source.

i don't have enuf room to run a fuge. and if the deeper sandbed and additional LR don't help within 6-9months...

i'm considering a zeovit or prodibio route.

[Unarce]

deleted

[mkawayoshi]

I know going a couple months without lights is probably out of the question for you since you have corals. It's the only thing that worked for me. I tried so many things and lights out the only thing that worked after six months or so of battling dino.

[tekknoschtev]

I don't understand what the issue is then. We only did lights out for a week, I dont think month(s) would be necessary to treat this. Really the lights werent to "treat" the problem, but rather to get it under control while the problem was treated with other methods.

My first thing to suggest would be to stop the chem-clean. I've dealt with cyano chemically before, but its important to note that dinoflagellets is not cyanobacteria, and in fact, despite being similar, is treated a little differently.

When you say you do a tank blackout - describe that. We actually wrapped ours with a black blanket in order to make sure as little light entered the tank as possible. But again, this was only to treat the symptoms not the problem. After the week of blackout - if we exposed it back to a complete photoperiod, the stuff would have come back because a week isnt enough time to remove the nutrients from the system.

I recieved a PM this afternoon from someone else encountering the problem, and I feel as though a rundown of everything we did is in order - though what I did I dont claim to work in anyone elses situation, though the half a dozen people who have used my method so far have made mention to me that it worked perfectly.

- we did the blackout to treat the symptoms and help keep the dinoflagellets from smothering the few corals that remained in the system.
- we then began the process of reducing the amount of nutrients in the system. This included skimming wetter than normal, as well as the addition of more macro algaes to the fuge. Water changes though seemed to make the problem worse, so instead of doing water changes, we put filter floss between the baffles of the sump and began blowing the rocks off with a turkey baster. The floss would capture the particles as they flowed through the baffles of the sump and be mechanically removed.
- we did use carbon, though I dont know if it did anything. Generally we always use carbon but change every other week, during the battle we changed it every day.
- We dramatically upped the flow in the tank which brought it up to the 20x turnover mark that you should be shooting for minimum.
- We also severly cut down out feeding regiment which, having used the new method for such a long period of time leads me to question what in the heck we actually were thinking feeding that much...

As stated earlier, the outbreak is symptomatic of an underlying problem, just like cyano, and if treating chemically does the trick, you still have to alter your habbits with the tank or you likely will have another outbreak.

Disclaimer: My methods worked for me. I guarantee nothing I also do not want to come off as harsh, because that is not like me, and definately not my intent. I know that this battle can be won through dilligence without chemicals, and thats how I feel it should be done. Using chemicals is a personal choice that we've made before to treat symptoms in other tanks, however, for the 150, the only "chemical" we use is Joes Juice for treating aiptasia, and we really have never regretted doing that method.

As for the zeo or probidio, I dont know if either of those will fix the problem, however, if you are looking to "start over" I would say they ight be worth looking into. Hopefully you can find what's fueling it, but my reccomendation is to stop the chem-clean treatments as they can affect other things too.

[tfp]

let me apologize in advance for this long post...

mkawayoshi, yep...a couple months w/o light would be like starting over

tekknoschtev, your post doesn't come off harsh to me one bit...we all want a solution to this stuff! whats scares me is that you also had a fuge at the time the scourge took over. i hope adding chaeto does something to starve it out. what other macros are you using?

all 3 tank blackouts included covering the entire tank (sides and top) with dark blankets/sheets/sleeping bags for 30hrs. i mean absolutely NO light was able to get in. my family hated that process bc the tank looked like a huge coffin!! perhaps that wasn't long enough and i should shoot for a 48hrs next?

after 5-7 days (slowly ramped up lighting in 30min increments), a light dusting would start to reappear on the sb. at that point i backed off the lighting, but it didn't matter bc this stuff grows in ambient room lighting.

so i resorted to the chemiclean process when the stuff really built up. each chemi-clean treatment did work to loosen/breakup the heavier growths but after a few days, the dusting reappeared. and once the dusting was there...i felt defeated.

during the last 7 months i've been rotating 100micron filter socks 2-3times a week. been changing out 3 cups of carbon weekly. i skim wet with a pair of euro 8-2's and keep ozone at 390-400mv. i can't get much more flow as the sand gets kicked around already at times. i don't have a heavy fish load. the water is crystal clear. the sps corals are colorful and encrusting.

so now i'm trying to use a somewhat more natural attack of a deeper (3") sb and macros. i'll be adding some kind of sandbed critters too...anyone got some recommendations?

regarding the zeo/prodibio route...practically every system i've seen is spotless of algae (except coralline) but the zeo costs too much for me based on 300g of water.

[tekknoschtev]

wow, all of that and you still have it... I'm pretty much at a loss. Yes, we had, well still have, a fuge with about a 6-8" DSB. At the time we didnt have much for macros other than the grape caulerpa that we didnt want in the display and a few small wads of chaetomorpha in the fuge. Since then we've pretty much gotten rid of the grape caulerpa and added halimeda to the fuge. I dont think that had any impact on the dinoflagellets but it might be something worth checking.

I guess I'm at a complete and total loss given everything you have (UV, ozone, phosphate removers, skimmers, carbon, etc.). That really has me baffled because I know we didnt jump through those hoops and solved it. I dont have much left to offer other than my wishes of good luck and hopes that it gets taken care of. Hopefully adding some sand and sand critters will help.

[ostrow]

I can't find in the post where you said what phosphate remover you are using? I stopped using phosban and I can also say that the nasty microalgae problems I had are disappearing. I switched from that stuff to carbon when I did the lights-out regimen. Perhaps that's something to look into?

[Jecco]

I have just read through this entire post and thought I would chime my 3 cents in. I have just fought the Dino's for an entire year. I tried every possible solution. No sooner I would see an improvement, it would come back full force. Nitrate and Phos. were undetectable on the Sailfert test kit. I was running Allgone, Chemi-clean, carbon, phosban, skimming wet, black-out, and dripping Kalk like a mad man. Nothing worked. I realized that my sandbed was probably holding all the nutrients but was afraid to disturb it to much, because everything in the tank was alive except for the snails. The last advice was to raise Ph to at least 8.4 during the day and not letting it drop below 8.2 at night. Do you know what kind of task that was. I too got the same advice about not changeing the water because the new water would just add more stuff to fuel the Dino's. Then the miracle happened, and I say that lightly. Becuase I was dosing so much Kalk to keep the pH up the Ca precip stated building up on all my pumps. I had a pump explode. Corals started dying within 12 hours. I didn't notice that the pump exploded until I saw the corals suffering. So, I took everything out of the tank. I scrubbed and washed all my rock, snails, crabs in freshwater. I put them in a rubber maid tub with fresh SW and 2 power heads in the garage with the lid on. I soaked all my pumps in vinegar. I put all my fish in another tub with a skimmer and fresh SW. I vacuumed all my sand from my tank. I filled the tank up with tab water and about 1/2 a cup of chlorox and let the tank run for 48 hours. I then drained and filed again with tap water and dechlorinator for another 48 hours. I then drained and filled with Fresh SW made from RO/DI and Bio-spira. Put new sand in and ran it with lights on about 24 hours. Then I started putting the rocks back in after washing and scrubbing them again with freshwater. Next came the animals. Now they are extremely happy and the tank looks great with no Dino's. I know there are people out there that have really had succes with these fixes for the Dino problem. I believe I tried everyone of them. It's hard to believe that something so small, and simple can cause this amount of fustration. Once you've had Dino's you will do anything not to get them again. It's also kind of hard to find info on the problem. And like this post there's so many different remedies. Some work for some while other do nothing at all. However, I do think the key is nutrient exportation.

[theyeg2]

First let me say that I have not read the entire thread. When I had a similar problem a few months ago, I was asked how old my lights were, my TDS reading on RO water and about my clean-up crew. A dozen additional red legged hermit crabs in my 75 gallon tank made an immediate impact on my problems (after upgrading my RO/DI system and replaced my VHO lighting with new tubes). Just a few thoughts to consider if not mentioned previously.

[tfp]

ostrow, i'm using Rowa in a deltec 509 fluid reactor with slow flow. phos and silicates didn't even register on salifert kits.

i've been rotating 3 cups of kent reef carbon every 3-4 days w/o results

jecco, i'm sorry to hear about your restart...but often its a blessing in disguise!

theyeg2, MH's are almost 1year old but i only run them 2-3hrs/day. i change the vhos (6hrs/day) every 8months and the T5s yearly.

i'm currently blacking out the tank for at least 60hrs. then will do a 20% water change and am going to try a product called AZ NO3 to lower my nitrates from the current 5-10ppm. after the blackout, will slowly ramp lighting up in .5hr increments every other day.

[theyeg2]

Good luck with your changes. I will be following the string.

[ostrow]

IMO/IME the iron-based phosphate removers cause more problems than they solve. Other ways and better ways to kick phosphates (continuous kalk drip for one)...

[traumaninja]

I have fought this same problem for 6 months and have tried everything!! I just read this post and I am going to try and turn my lights out for 24hrs. I have corals and am really nervous but I am at the end of my rope with this problem. My tank looks exactly like the pics posted. I have taken tons of advice from several fish shops and tried several remedies so I hope this works. Thanks for all who have posted your sucess stories it gives me a little more piece of mind. I dont have anywhere to put my corals so I am going to have to John Wayne it!!

[ostrow]

Your corals can go 4 days easily with no light. Think of it as hurricane season, a big storm coming through.

[traumaninja]

My lights have been off for over 36 hours and the brown stuff is still sitting on the rock and covering the gravel!! I have a few questions.
1. Keep the lights off??
2. I have a tunze should I use it to blow the brown stuff into the "air" and let the skimmer get it?
3. Leave it be?
4. I need to do a water change its been two weeks now, I have heard doing a water change could pollute my tank worse. I just bought a new RO/DI unit and my water has no trace of Phosphate in my tank. My tds reads 0 from my machine(RoDI)
5.WAit to do water change in a few days? I am on pins and needles!! Also my water looks kinda yellow! What the heck?

Someone help

[ostrow]

It should scrape off easily. Might try a filter sock to catch it off the overflow.

Why do you "need" to do a water change every 2 weeks? Just asking, don't want to open a can of worms here. I'd just top off as needed or better, get a kalk drip going for topoff.

[traumaninja]

I water change once a week!! My calcium is around 320 I ordered a calcium suppliment because I didnt want to mess with kalwasser. Other than that I have always done once a week water changes. Sometimes twice a week. Thats why I dont understand how I have this alge and bacteria.