Dinoflagellates

[Europhyllia]

I've been running my125g tank for about 8 months now. Part of this tank was actually from my old 30g.
I always have a little bit of green algae. For me it's just part of the course. I like non-photosynthetic corals and judging by how well they do (sun coral is growing over adjacent rock, etc.) it's going well.
I decided even before I started the tank that this would be the tank for mandarins (which also prefer a snack several times a day over a bigger meal).
Acropopa would probably turn brown in disgust looking at my tank before it even got out of the shipping bag ;) - which is why I don't even bother.
So I'm cool with a little algae - in fact it's great for the pods and when it kept decreasing I was actually starting to wonder how I will feed my armada of snails and urchins.
This last week however I got something new and I hate it:
Dinoflaggelates!
That brown stuff on the sand is gross. It gets on corals and even my green algae.
It started pretty much overnight. I want to get rid of it.
The things leading up to it were:

a few weeks ago I was still using the under-the sink RO system for my aquarium water and a filter/membrane was going bad. I noticed a significant increase in hair algae then and actually ordered a RODI system and have been using that for the past 2 weeks or so.

Then last week I needed more frozen food and they were out of Hikari Mysis so I got a different brand. I still drained the waste water away but within a day of starting that different brand I had that gunk on the sand/rocks. Could it have been the additives in the new food?

The only other thing I did was get a few new frags.

Wait now I can think of a couple more things:
the skimmer had been going a little crazy since I got my new sump and since it bubbled over so much I got less actual skimmate to throw out.
Also my poly filter had changed colors and needed replacing so filtration was down I assume.

Hm. I guess writing all of this down sort of answered my own question:
potential new contaminants and much reduced filtration. Rats.

So now how do I get rid of the dinos?

The skimmer is back to normal and I got a new poly filter from reefs2u yesterday. I read elevated pH would help so I increased kalk a little.
Anything else?

PS: I LOVE my poly filters. If anybody wants to do a group order I am in.

[corruption]

Just water changes and time -- sounds like the thick brown diatom mats that can form to me.. The food may have contained some phosphate or similar that helped fuel it, but given the age of the tank, I'd say theres also a possibility of typical algae cycles here...I'd just manually remove as much as possible often -- small and frequent water changes may help -- to the tune of 5-10 gals (less than 10% of total volume -- mostly enough to suck out the gunk and replace with fresh)

I'm with you on Poly Filter -- adore the stuff :) I'd be down for a group buy of some sort as well :D

-Corruption

[Wryknow]

Granular ferric oxide is my weapon of choice for dino. I run some in an old e-heim canister filter along with some carbon and fine filter floss. It goes away fast once the phosphates are removed. I will also vacuum up the film in my water changes to speed up the export. Getting the new RO/DI unit should help a lot as that is frequently a contributor IMPE. Flake and pellet ood is the other big one.

[Ping]

Cleaner water from the new RO/DI should eliminate the silicates that tend to be the cause of diatom outbreaks.

[Europhyllia]

How do I know if it's diatoms or Dinos?
It's a little stringy/slimey rather than powdery. That's why I assumed it was dinos rather than diatoms.

[Ping]

Sorry, I misread your post. The cleaner water works for both.

[corruption]

diatoms can become thick enough that they have the dinoflagellate appearance -- stringier, and or thicker -- its usually in the presence of high silica content that it happens. Ping's correct though -- the solution for both is improving water quality :)

Most nuisance algaes don't do well in highly oxygenated, high flow environments -- these two factors, plus clean water, will stave most algal blooms off. :)

-Corruption

[hobogato]

like peter said, they both require very similar things to thrive, so if you have one, you probably have the other. it may be part of the natural algae cycle that you can expect when there is a disruption to your biofilter, like adding a new sump or redoing your rockwork.

[edit - darnit, beat me to it j[/edit]

[corruption]

Very good point, Ace -- I had forgotten about the fact that she just swapped out her wet/dry for a sump a few weeks back... that would definitely be enough to spur on another algae cycle..

-Corruption

[Europhyllia]

I hadn't thought of that! Yup that's probably it then :)
It already seems to be a lot milder than it was just two days ago. It will pass...

[Ben Broyles]

Thought I'd put my 2 cents in here. I have a monster case of Dino in my tank so I'm following advice from this thread and from other stuff that I've read. I killed all my lights for ...today is day 3....and tried to get my pH up to 8.6+. I checked it yesterday and it looked like it was at about 8.1 so I was kinda ticked. I dosed Kalk again and got it back up. I have been manually scrubbing the rocks, glass and power heads with a toothbrush then doing a 5-10 gallon water change (90G tank) every weekend so suck out some of the crap from the sandbed and water. We will see how it looks when I hit the lights again today but from what I can tell, my rocks look good as ever and there isnt crap building up on the powerheads anymore. I was thinking about leaving the lights off for 5 days but I know my corals are hating life and I like to see my fish so I'm gonna get em back in the light today.

[CoryDude]

I wouldn't do any water changes, and only scrub the rocks outside of the tank.

The best trick that worked for me with minimal work was dosing the kalk like your doing and keeping the ph between 8.3-8.4. I didn't do any water changes, and did not scrub the rocks. I also kept the lights off for 3 days at a time, then would let them run for 3 days. My acros did fine, and the dinos were gone after the 3rd on/off cycle (about 2.5 weeks total).

[Ben Broyles]

Thanks for the input Cory. Question for you... why not do water changes? I've read that too along with vacuuming out the junk when you scrape it off to get rid of it. I could certainly stand to not do water "changes" but just add water weekly like I normally do to compensate for evaporation, but I was wondering what the reasoning is behind it.

[CoryDude]

No problem dude! I know everyone has their little tricks, so this is just one approach that worked for me.

The dinos start to deplete whatever trace elements they need, so if you're changing water, the new salt mix is adding those trace elements back into the tank. You're basically trying to starve out the dinos by limiting their food source, ie trace elements and light.

Also, if you're blowing the dinos off the rocks and vacuuming it up, you're not removing every bit you blasted off. So the dinos start to grow again where ever they land, which just spreads the problem to new areas. As we've both seen these devils grow very fast. If you're going to scrape or use a turkey baster on the rocks, do it outside of the tank in a separate bucket so you won't reintroduce them back into the tank.

[kkiel02]

With diatoms and dino I have had good success by removing silicates and phosphates from the water column. I think GFO will do the trick but read the label first to make sure it will pull the silicates out. This will get them out of you display unless you reintroduce them. If you start seeing them again after you have gotten rid of them, you are somehow adding the silicates back into your system somehow. I would then check your water filter or possibly your salt.