Look what I've got

[Floyd R Turbo]

Am I the only one that sees nothing but dinos in those pics? These are not a sub product of any animal. These are dinoflagellates, I have a hard time understanding how they could be interpreted as anything else, it's pretty obvious. I've had outbreaks of these in the past. Usually high nutrients, can be food related, they are like cyanobacteria in the way that they grow fast and are generally a pain, and can smother corals and have toxic effects.

You need to siphon them out several times a day. I do this using a piece of airline tubing, you can go through your whole tank and only siphon out about 1 gallon of water if you pinch the hose when not sucking the dinos off. Restrict feeding to a minimum, and only right before lights out. Increase flow if you can. Raise pH to 8.4 and try to keep it there (especially at night) - this is the hard to do, but it is supposed to work.

If you google dinoflagellatesm, you will get articles that tell you to black out the tank and not feed for like 3 days. IMO this is not ideal because it it hard on your corals. SM told me to try the opposite on the lighting, that is, to run the lights longer while restricting feeding. The idea being that you allow photosynthesis (symbiotic azooxanthellate) to take out the nutrients that the dinos are feeding on. This, in combination with manual removal seemed to work.

Bottom line is that something is out of balance, and the dinos take advantage of this, and you basically have to let it run it's course. Hard to say what is out of balance. There are so many things we cannot test for.

At least, that's my take.

[Garf]

Looks like some type of dino's. Means there's dino food in the water
What's your pH Kotlec?

[Nick28]

I've tried all of the above none worked

bulb change worked for me

and they absolutely were dinos not diatoms or cyano

if you siphon out dinos and look at them they are bunch of brown dots in a mucilage


give my method a few days

[kotlec]

My ph is on low side. I was rambling about that a week ago. What is best way to rise it at current situation ?

Problem with siphoning is that they dont want to separate easily. Only longest hair is siphoned but not the body. I remove hair using tooth brush or paint brush in tight spots.

I let it go with minimal feeding and blue light only for two more days. If not success , then Floyds method next with not feeding and stronger photosynthesis.

But ph is better to rise anyways. Would be good to know why its dropping first of all...

[Garf]

I've known for a while that whilst running a scrubber with a pH of 7.8 to 8.0 (on my tank) grows dino's. Increasing this to a steady 8.1 to 8.2 tends to eliminate them. I've also recently discovered that wildly varying pH seems to encourage its growth (Photosynthetically Induced Phosphate Precipitation experiment). Not saying this is what's happening with your tank, just an observation of my own, fixed by aeration to stabilise pH.

[SantaMonica]

I was talking about the threads strung between the branches.

[rleahaines]

The Ph of the tank seems to have dropped to between 7.8 and 8.0 since I installed a UAS.

I wonder why. I would think that the bubbles from the constant airstone in the UAS would actually help to stabilize Ph to higher than 8.0.

Any ideas?

[kotlec]

Not saying this is what's happening with your tank, just an observation of my own, fixed by aeration to stabilise pH.

I run small skimmer to keep aeration goin on last few months. Why this not helping then ? Possibly skimmer introduces too many co2 ?

Just measured ph again . Its down to 7.6 Alarm ! Possibly due to only blue lights ?- No idea how to fix it...

[Garf]

Not sure how your skimmer cup is situated with regard to the sump but you need to put a vent line from the top of the skimmer cup to the outside of the sump and lower than the sump (Co2 is heavier than air alone). If the air is coming out of the skimmer cup back onto the surface of the sump, it gets reintroduced. In the short term, put a small fan blowing over the surface of the sump to cause air turbulence, and leave the sump doors open if necessary.

Edit - Rleahaines. Sorry, only just read your post. The same applies to UAS. If the UAS air is allowed to sit on the surface of the water, any aeration advantage is lost, you could try a similar corrective method as large bubbles do aerate the water (mainly from atomisation of the bubbles bursting), but not as effectively as small skimmer size bubbles.

[kotlec]

Ok , I'll try that.



Screen is growing nicely those days. VLGH (very long hair algae ) No bubbles trapped inside green. But some inside yellowish alien . Something to thing about for you great theoretic.