calcium carbonate fuels dinoflagellates?

[wasp9166]

check this out

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=341260&highlight=silicates


im currently battling dinos and i cant figure out whats fueling them , i run phosban , my chaeto wont grow in my fuge, i was thinking maybe silicates are the culprit but havent tested yet, then i found this link, the guy says calcium carbonate fuels them? can this be? isnt this the after product of dosing limewater?, which is what im doing to combat low ph.......... was wondering



i might add i also have 4.5" of southdown in tank..........with low ph perhaps this is a problem as well..........:(

[MCsaxmaster]

Two things:

1. Dinoflagellates don't need calcium or carbonate more than any other soft bodied organism. As such, he's really not correct. He may be thinking of coccolithophorids which are another majore class of algae. Indeed these do build calcium carbonate shells. Dinoflagellates may or may not build shells out of, cellulose I want to say?

2. Saying that calcium and carbonate are needed in seawater is like saying that the organism needs oxygen, or sodium, or...water. There is so much of these substances that they cannot possibly be limiting nutrients. They do not in nature nor do they in a tank EVER limit the growth of an algae unless under highly artificial conditions.

Cheers,

-Chris

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I agree. I posted this there:

"While I don't claim to be an expert on dinoflagellates, I've not heard that they use silica at all, nor that they have any special need for calcium or carbonate. "

[Boomer]

Yes both Randy and Chris are right. And yes Chris it is cellulose. The "armored" ones produce some very thick plates called theca. These theca are more or less sutured together. Most of the others just have a thin celluose wall.

All you want to know here

http://www.projectlinks.org/dinoflagellates/

[Boomer]

Maybe they are getting confused with Diatoms which use Silica or Cyano, which can dissolve CaCO3 and suck CO2 out of it by conversion. Some of my algae texts get quite heavy into the subject and there is no mention at all, what so ever, about silica or calcium carbonate for dino's

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Thanks for digging, Boom!

[Boomer]

:thumbsup:

[wasp9166]

so at this point whats my next step? i put in purigen today, the only way i dont have them is to leave the tank pitch black which is what i did for 2 days and yet they still grow........are they some type of uber algae that doesnt need something to feed off of in water? im stumped at this point , and frustrated.........

[Bomber]

They need phosphates. Figure out where they are getting them and eliminate that.

[wasp9166]

my phos are 0, i run phosban,all my readings were 0 b4 i blacked the tank out for 2 days, i think a bunch of em dieing raised my readings, now my trites are 0.1 my trates are 2.5 and amm is still 0..........i do have alot less tho........im thinking the purigen may take care of it, well im hoping..........should i test for silica?

[MCsaxmaster]

If nitrites are detectable (indicating a pretty severe disruption of the tank) then algae growth is the least of your worries. I would in fact encourage rapid algae growth. It is better to bind these substances than to let them remain in the water. As long as you aren't adding tons of nutrients to the system and there are other things that can eventually compete with the algae (like coralline species) it will eventually go away. Tanks go through algae cycles after a disturbance--it's natural and it's fine.

Boomer, thanks for the backing :thumbsup: . I thought it was cellulose, but couldn't recall precisely.

Best,

-Chris

[wasp9166]

i stopped feeding everyday and now am feeding every 3 days, so i dont think im adding excess nutrients.....so money on a silica test kit would be a waste at this point?

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Yes. I don't have any good answers for dinos except that a silica test will not help.

[wasp9166]

i was told im having problems cause of low ph, could upping the mag help bring the ph up? i do add bionic everyday but have never tested for mag............even with dosing kalk my ph is 7.9s at night and 8.1s during the day..........

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I've certainly heard that high pH helps, but I've never had dinos, so I do not know for sure.

There are a bunch of threads on high pH for dinos if you search for them.

[wasp9166]

i understand but what i meant towards you was , do you think bringing the mag up would bring the ph up without messing with the alk/ph balance............sorry

[Boomer]

You can show 0 NO3 and 0 PO4 and still get them. Yes they do thrive better at lower pH. You need to raise it to 8.6 for a couple of weeks, by using kalk. And before you do that, suck all of them out you can. This often works but is not a 100 %guarantee. Finally, what makes you think they are dino's and not cyano ?

[wasp9166]

they are brown with bubbles on the end of em.........i can never get my ph above 8.2 with kalk..............i only dose 2 gallons a day for top off, should i try scooping out some tank water , stirring in kalk , and returning it? you say even with 0 trates n 0 phates you can still have them? what is fueling them?

[wasp9166]

couple of pics to see what im dealing with in gallery

[rsman]

you have a source, but its being consumed dinos are good at eating phosphate and nitrate so somehow you have more of both going in than going out, they are just eating it, you cant test for whats been eaten only whats there to eat.

[wasp9166]

well my membrane and di are both 8 months old but they still seem to be working, water b4 unit is 45 tds , after membrane is 1 tds and after di is 0, is it possible that something is getting thru even tho im showing 0 tds? i never thought of it but perhaps i should test my mix and ro water b4 tank for phosphates? they both sit in 44 gal brute cans for at least a month b4 use......i figured if it read 0 its good to go

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

i understand but what i meant towards you was , do you think bringing the mag up would bring the ph up without messing with the alk/ph balance............sorry

No. Raising magnesium will not appreciably raise pH. If you want to raise pH, limewater or a lime slurry is the answer.

[wasp9166]

what about an additional air pump with air stone in my sump with hose run outside............

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Whether that raises or lowers pH depends on the pH and the alkalinity. If the pH is below 8.1, and the alkalinity is at least 2.5 meq/l (7 dKH), it will tend to raise it.

[wasp9166]

well that was my next question, my ph is 8.15 or so during day, 7.9s at night, my alk is 4.5 meq/l which you said is ok with low ph, if i were to introduce more outside air and raise the ph what would happen to alk? would it lower on its own? oh , i just reread your reply, are you saying that if ph is above 8.10 that it will not automatically raise it by adding more air from outside?

[wasp9166]

well that didnt work anyways, i pumped air from outside for an hour and my ph didnt budge. i added a slurry like you said, 2 tspn per cup of tank water, i did this 3 times and my ph is now holding at 8.4, however my alk is still 4.4 meq............should i add just the calcium part of bionic for a day or so to bring alk down?

[foxstop]

Have you tested your RO/DI water for silicates?
Even though TDS reads 1 that doesn't mean you don't have silicates getting through.
Even if silicates don't aid Dinos, it could be something in the water that is. At the very least I would change the membrane and all other cartridges.

Brian

[wasp9166]

well i was wondering that, i thought the tds meter lets you know when to change filters? my tds reads 0, but i havent tested for silicates no

[foxstop]

Can't hurt to test.
I may be wrong so hopefully others will chime in here, but TDS is a measure of the solids coming through the RO/DI.
You could still have some silicates, ammonia, nitrates, phosphates, etc. Like I said though that's how I understand it. Some others here should be able to say for sure, but it couldn't hurt to do a full range of tests on the water coming out of your RO/DI.

Hope it works out.

Brian

[wasp9166]

welp a phos test on my ro/di is 0, i dont have a silicate test kit , cant find one locally, have to wait till next month for silicate as i order tank stuff once a month, oh well................RANDY, i noticed in 5 hours time the ph drops down to about 8.3, is it ok to keep adding a slurry of kalk to bring it back up? or is too much lime bad for tank chemistry and tank inhabitants? cuz my rbta sucked into his hole and hasnt come out all day, boy this is some soap opera huh? :)

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

TDS is a measure of ionic species, which will, to some extent, detect silicate. It is primarily a measure of whether the Di is spent and if it reads zero, then you need not worry about most impurities (ammonia, nitrate, phosphate, etc) getting by.

Nevertheless, I thought we decided that silicate did not drive dinos anyway.

If you want to raise pH more, I'd stick with the lime slurry. If the pH is not too high, then you need not worry about too much lime, IMO.

[rsman]

i grow a few species of dino's intentionally (in seperate systems) ive never added silicates I use a RO unit that helps remove silicates and a DI unit that im sure removes some, and I dont do a ton of waterchanges, only topoffs I feed a silicate free food. if they needed it they would have consumed it along time ago, as Ive seen when I feed my silicate demanding algae my non silicate containing food as they get the same makeup water and the same food except the added silicates which I add when I mix the food. somehow you have nitrogen or phosphate in your tank, either from overfeeding or under exporting(i guess something cuda died but ida hoped you would have mentoned that ? ), raising the pH will help by killing off the dino's

id keep track of the pH but I wouldnt worry about adding kalk 2x a day as a slury. as long as you dont go to far.

[wasp9166]

nope nothing died that i can see, anemone is acting weird but alive , all fish are ok......maybe a snail or two kicked it but that's about it, like i said b4 i have no phos in my tank or make up water.............how im approaching it now is when i see the ph is below 8.2 after lights come on i add a slurry, it gets up to about 8.4 and slowly drops back down,when it gets to 8.2 i add another slurry , it goes to 8.6 and drops down to about 8.3 for remainder of day, pia, and eating up Mrs wages like crazy but ill take that trade off not to have a brown tank................one thing i noticed randy is small chunks of lime in the bottom of my sump , i mix it well, will these dissipate over time?

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

If the chunks are lime or magnesium hydroxide, they will likely dissolve. If they are mostly calcium carbonate, they won't.

[wasp9166]

well , yet more problems it seems, i have to dose a slurry about 6 times a day to keep my ph above 8.2, thats about 12 tspns, ive done this for the last 2 days..........today b4 i did anything i decided to check calc and alk, b4 i started dosing it was 430 calc and 4.5 alk..............well today my calc was 385 , i dosed turbo calc and brought it back up to 430 then checked alk, alk is now 2.97................why is this ? i thought kalk wouldnt effect these much? these little brown buggers are making think its time to pack up my $6000 hobby after only 7 months =(

[wasp9166]

in 2 hours time my calc dropped down to 385 again, ph is holding steady at 7.94.............i didnt bother to check alk,i added more turbo calc..........i suspect those calcium carbonate chunks in my sump have something to do with this............im no longer dosing slurry

[wasp9166]

"The vast majority of alkalinity depletion in most tanks also comes about by the precipitation of calcium carbonate, as described above. In this process, as alkalinity is depleted by 1 meq/L, calcium will be depleted by 20 ppm. "


i read that in one of your articles, so i understand why my alk dropped by about 2 and my calc dropped by about 40 , but why did calcium carbonate precipitate in the first place? should i remove those chunks in my sump or will they no longer pull things out of the water?

[wasp9166]

"A second situation where precipitation takes place is if the supersaturation is pushed to unusually high levels. This can be caused by a rise in pH, a rise in temperature (discussed below), or more obviously, by a rise in either calcium or carbonate."

got that from one of your other articles, so if i understand all of this correctly, by me dosing slurry of kalk it brought up the ph, which in turn started calcium carbonate precipitation which in turn brought my calc and alk down.........how can i stop it at this point? or will it stop on its own

[wasp9166]

well i did some further reading on calcium carbonate on your forum and found that i was dosing the kalk slurry all wrong, i was mixing it with tank water and dumping it right in..........apparently i should mix with fresh and let settle, however i thought with the amount of times i had to do it , it would drop my salinity........

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Yes, sorry. Use fresh water. For the slurry, there's no need to dissolve it. Add all that you can via settled limewater to replace evaporation, but then if you want to raise pH more, use a slurry of lime in a small amount of fresh water.

[wasp9166]

ok , ill try it the right way , this shouldnt cause more precipitation even if the ph goes up? when i dose it gets to about 8.64 then starts to drop back into range.............funny thing tho, now my alk is 2.97 which is what it should be when all along it was 4.5......:p

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

If the pH is below 8.5, it won't cause too much more precipitation. As the pH goes higher, it will. The fact that alkalinity is not rising is due to the abiotic precipitation of CaCO3, and is why except for pH, folks can't really overdose limewater with respect to calcium and alkalinity.

[wasp9166]

ok , thanx for your help randy, ill let ya know how it goes, not sure how long it should take to show any kind of effect on these things but in 3 days time i see no change, i even turned off my aquablues..................im leaning towards ozone if it will get rid of them, ive run out of tricks

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

OK, keep us posted. :)

[wasp9166]

well , i think this is doing more harm than good, i had to dose about 7 times yest to keep it in the 8.2-8.3 range, and it doesnt seem to be making a dent in them............one thing i found is that my ph is lower now than it was b4 i started this slurry dosing.........it used to be in the 7.9s at night and 8.1s during the day, today i didnt dose anything and it was 7.84 all night and 7.95 during the day, could this be from the calcium carbonate precipitation that occured, or from low magnesium from it?


at this point i guess im just going to add more macro to my fuge and do weekly water changes and siphon rock , dr shimek says its going to take about 2 months of this =(

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=494927

[rsman]

whatcha using to test pH ???

[added after post]
also it isnt going to be instant just because the pH is high, it still takes time

[wasp9166]

pinpoint meter, calibrated monthly

[rsman]

any chance you have tested the pH of your kalk ???

[wasp9166]

no i havent, there is probably a set ph for that , im sure randy knows it i dont off hand, at this point its such a pia to dose a slurry 7 or 8 times a day , plus then i have to keep up with the salinity as im adding fresh water to do it..............

[rsman]

well my thinking is that in a 120 you shouldnt have to do the slury 7 or 8 times a day, 2 should be more than enough.

so test it and post, i know randy knows the number i know its somewhere near 12, and if you post what you find then maybe we can help out the long way!

[wasp9166]

dude, i have to do it 7-8 times a day to keep my ph up as i have a tight house a co2 drives it back down.........i dose when ph is 8.2, it goes up to 8.6 and in the course of 2 hours is back down to 8.2........

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

could this be from the calcium carbonate precipitation that occured, or from low magnesium from it?

How is the alkalinity? If it is lower now, then the pH may drop lower. Also, did you replace something with the slurry?

The pH of a slurry of lime (or saturated limewater) is about 12.5.

[wasp9166]

the alk was 2.97, which is ok but with low ph i wana bring it up a bit plus bring my calc down a bit, i dosed just the alk part of bionic for past 2 days, its now 3.15..........calc still 440............what do you mean replace something? you mean as far as my attempt to bring ph up? no , ive just discontinued dosing, im going to do weekly instead of monthly 25% changes , get some more plants for fuge and keep it lit 24/7..........plus get some xenia, not too crazy about that coral but dr shimek says its a vacuum for nutrients.........

[fish100]

Anything over a pH of 8.4X is as far as we understand unwanted. The sea averages around 8.2 which is fine. 8.6 is probably harmful to any animals in a reef tank.


A ph of 8.6 is unnatural, and that's the reason it falls to 8.2 because you are having some husbandry. If it didn't equalize at around 8.0-8.4, you wouldn't be doing your job.

[wasp9166]

well i was aiming for 8.4 , the high end, i understand, i didnt want it to stay at 8.6

[Boomer]

8.6 is probably harmful to any animals in a reef tank.

No it is not. For decades we have done this to try and drive off dino's.

A ph of 8.6 is unnatural, and that's the reason it falls to 8.2 because you are having some husbandry

That is not the reason at all. It is quite easy to keep it at 8.6. It is usually excessive room air that drives it down over an overloaded system.

But it is best to keep in at more natural levels 8.1-8.3

[fish100]

Wow. I guess getting rid of the dinoflagellates sometimes occurred (or part of the solution). Thanks for keeping my mind open and not limited. :D

No fear, I won't try and raise my pH to 9. :d

[Boomer]

But Fish I forgot, once the dino's are gone or if they do not disappear, bring it back down to more accepted natural levels.

[wasp9166]

well im not sure how long i would have to do it but 7-8 times a day is too much of a pia, plus im not even home during the day, i was off a few days so i tried it, probably not long enuff but i didnt notice any change except my salinity went down ......

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

There is no evidence that I have seen that sugests any problem to animals at pH up to about 8.6. It is low pH that is more clearly a problem. As the pH rises to that point and above, the abiotic precipitation of CaCO3 gets faster and faster, and that is reason enough to not normally exceed a pH of about 8.5. As a treatment for a problem, it is fine to go higher for short periods, although I do not know that it is beneficial.

what do you mean replace something? you mean as far as my attempt to bring ph up?

I just meant that when you started the lime slurry, did you stop something else supplying alkalinity, like B-ionic or a CaCO3/CO2 reactor? It may just be the increased abiotic precipitation that has lowered the alkalinity.

[wasp9166]

no i didnt........

[fish100]

Haha, you guys are great! Got a good laugh, or two, and learned more new stuff in the process. Thanks, and Happy New Years!

[wasp9166]

when i started this thread that was my goal, guys like randy and boomer for knowledge and me for the jokes ,=)

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

when i started this thread that was my goal, guys like randy and boomer for knowledge and me for the jokes

So you made up the whole story about dinos? :lol:

[wasp9166]

no , these things are no joke , haha

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Well, hopefully 2005 will be a bad year for them. Good luck and let us know what ends up working. :)