Peroxide saves my Tank! With pics to Prove It!

[brandon429]

this looks like a variation on cyano bacteria with golden symbionts much much easier to beat, and actually, i wouldnt use peroxide on cyano

 

 

 

so now Ive officially made it known im not purely peroxide biased

 

if we can get others to chime in, test our ID, im thinking GFO might help really.

[brandon429]

but ill repeat the trick from ~8 pages ago we did on that really bad dino tank from Polars tank, oversized UV

 

you really ought to consider just borrowing from a pond owner, someone from local lfs, friend, any type of uv and get creative and hook it up to that tiny tank for a week see what that does, your invader albeit not fully ID'd yet has a water transitory phase i can tell by its sheeting morphology and its not stringy bubble death dinos im about 99x9 sure

 

golden variants of moneran bacterial mats are nearly always red in marine tanks, red cyano, but they can present as blue green like in FW and in goldens for sure. and oranges.

[seabass]

I'd say that cyano is a good guess. Nutrients and organics are usually the first places to look for a cause. Check the phosphate and nitrate levels (keeping in mind that once a bloom has begun, it tends to consume the available nutrients to support itself). If nutrients, over feeding, or over stocking isn't a problem, what about detritus or dissolved organics? Fresh activated carbon and/or a good protein skimmer can help remove dissolved organics. Then I'd look at water flow (turnover and flow patterns/dead spots). Once you rule all these out I'd manually remove as much as you can and use a product like Chemiclean to knock it out.

[hwk7072]

Who ID'd this as invasive dinoflagellates, i dont think it is, and thats good for you imo

 

When it was bad, it was identical to the the pictures via search. This one in particular. Characteristics that I thought distinguished it from cyano, or diatoms

1. It disintegrates when touched
2. Bubbles in raised structures (see attached - this is from an image search, not my tank, but looked exactly like it)
3. Looks like a wheat field blowing in the wind, but impossible to grab, just falls apart
4. Not on the glass, mainly on sand and corals, not as much on rocks

[hwk7072]

I'd say that cyano is a good guess. Nutrients and organics are usually the first places to look for a cause. Check the phosphate and nitrate levels (keeping in mind that once a bloom has begun, it tends to consume the available nutrients to support itself). If nutrients, over feeding, or over stocking isn't a problem, what about detritus or dissolved organics? Fresh activated carbon and/or a good protein skimmer can help remove dissolved organics. Then I'd look at water flow (turnover and flow patterns/dead spots). Once you rule all these out I'd manually remove as much as you can and use a product like Chemiclean to knock it out.

 

There was a ton of detritus before I cleaned the sand bed and changed the water. That certainly was the problem. I started leaning toward dino when the Red Slime Remover didn't work, and seemed to make it worse. 90% of the reviews out there say it got rid of it. I did two doses.

 

That said, I do hope it is cyano.

[seabass]

That last pic doesn't look like cyano, and the fact that it didn't respond to Red Slime Remover concerns me.

[hwk7072]

Coincidentally, my neighbor is a molecular biologist who specializes in algae. He's got a substantial lab at the university and is pretty well known for his work in algae research.

 

http://www.bio.indiana.edu/faculty/directory/profile.php?person=dkehoe

 

I just wrote to him to see if I can he can ID it for me. I brought a couple samples in a while back. He put it in the spectrometer, but the sample was too contaminated to get a good ID. Now that we know what we're looking for, I'm sure he'll be able to.

 

Just for kicks, here's the output from those two samples, one that looked like red hair algae, and the other was green. The high readings on the lower end of the spectrum of each were the problem. Too much gunk in the samples. But we were just messing around as I was in there for something else, so he didn't isolate it.

 

 

 

[hwk7072]

but ill repeat the trick from ~8 pages ago we did on that really bad dino tank from Polars tank, oversized UV

 

you really ought to consider just borrowing from a pond owner, someone from local lfs, friend, any type of uv and get creative and hook it up to that tiny tank for a week see what that does,

 

 

I happen to be a pond owner and hooked up a UV about a week ago. Maybe I'll give that a shot. It came with a bunch of adapters. Not sure if I'm into trying to hook it up through the return pump and all. But hey, if it does the trick.

 

I hate to confound the variables here, but I started dosing Microbacter7 today. It says to turn of UV, but for only 4 hours, so that's probably OK.

[wrassegauche17]

Brandon what uv sterilizer you suggest for 60g?

[hwk7072]

Found a picture of my actual tank when it was bad, one little corner

 

 

 

[brandon429]

We did 55 watts sustained plus hand removal on polars tank I think it was 19 gallons, we grossly oversize. one poster from reefcentral just ran two units if you don't have a single large one, cant hurt. Since sterilization as an intercept for cells stirred up by hand removal or during diurnal phases doesn't harm the functioning filter bed, you can get away with overdoing and should overdo in my opinion

 

we want the quick clean after pics as another reason, I really celebrate overdone uv purely for the results they have such a fix history for me in the threads.

 

I think if you did light gfo in a good flow area and any temporary arrangement of power uv you'd just zap it out as a secondary approach should a 9 day run on just one booster not work

 

Good solid detritus cleanup for the tank while you roast the targets then take any crutches offline in 2 weeks see how we are. focused hand removal imo is the Hallmark of all tank control imo

 

to me its ok if your recent cleaning fueled them temporarily, I believe two weeks of any focused work with a booster beyond hand removal will win and if not we can zip a little peroxide or gfo as an addition to oversize uv.

 

I'd love to see lab analysis fed back here what a wonderful contribution to our thread thanks!

 

agreed your other pics look like dinos all I could remark is the lower lying morphs initial didn't to me, but if we were at a card table my chips are behind oversized uv if you can temporarily plumb it in for tester~

[hwk7072]

My pond UV is only 9 watts. Says it's rated for 1500 gallons, but for a different type of algae and flow conditions. Maybe Dr. Kehoe has a powerful one sitting around in his lab. He's got rooms and rooms of algae sitting under different wavelengths, temperatures, etc. Pretty cool.

 

Think it would do any good to crank up the UV channels on my AI primes? I'm running at about 50% at 20k right now.

[brandon429]

I don't think it will be focused enough out of the fixture to be germicidal

 

that uv is fine to try! perhaps its dwell time is adjusted for large volumes and it should be powerful here after a good manual cleaning pre install

[brandon429]

Today we get to see in macro detail what my reef rock looks like after nearly ten yrs running and with 5 yrs of heavy, documented and constant 35% peroxide testing. today im killing off those red mushrooms that invaded my tank.

 

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/362241-last-fts-before-the-cleaning-and-removal-of-sps-from-the-glass-9-yr-1-gal/

 

spot killing using peroxide has no lasting negative effects on any system in our captive reefs, I stopped having to spot treat long ago after burning out the offending biomass, so I was algae free even though my system has imperfect nutrient balances since I use a deep sand bed. red cyano was the indicator of when id been lazy with tank cleaning...cyano gets in all the time from various contamination/vectoring pathways. (but not gelidium for example, it comes in strictly on marine animals or substrates as a requisite hitchhiker)

 

The live rock I show couldn't be more packed with benthic growths and one of the old school claims against peroxide is that it will kill the microsystems.

 

From my tank cleaning we can relate to this thread by:

 

seeing the effects of inaccessible rock stacks, invaders can get in where you can't easily get them

 

we can see the living micro creature details on live rock that is shown in my system that has had more testing/peroxide input than any tank ive seen, and it was all 35% use whereas 3% action comprises most of this thread.

https://imageshack.com/i/id90IpCDj

We are seeing a living rebuild, a tank takedown to access an invader (red mushrooms) that someone here may be contemplating doing to their tank to access an algae type... This is how you can preserve the entire system and have no recycle or mini cycle

 

even red mushrooms follow the rule of obligate hitchhikers, they are dependent on import and run independent of minor nutrient variances in any setting in which they are imported, the vast majority of all tank invaders on this thread follow that descriptive

 

here is vid of one of my 35% spot kill vids, showing how many animals can tolerate a drain and treat done right

[hwk7072]

brandon429, my friend is going to sequence the DNA of the sample that I brought him. May have it this week. But it's getting worse, and though it's mainly on the sandbed, it's getting long and wavy enough that I don't want it to eat my coral, which are doing really well.

 

So I want to H2O2 these, and I am pretty confident that they are dino. But even if it is some other algae, it will still have a positive effect, right? It's definitely not cyano.

 

What do I do? The tank is 32g with a 10g sump. Should I get 35% or 3%? How do I dose the tank?

[brandon429]

regarding the id also consider just a micro scope pic

 

you don't need a photographer lens I did these 100x pics just by angling a 2 mp phone right above the ocular of a 1960 microscope! Show us the cells if poss at any good resolution

 

 

(to this day nobody has id'd that, not even Dr Ron Shimek per his online forum at marine depot)

 

I do not blame you one bit for wanting action and your corals are among those we see tolerate anywhere from 1-3 mils 3% peroxide as a full tank additive

 

but

 

 

 

that mode is last resort, we should choose predictably effective ones first and your fts shows a nice detail

 

brainstorm w me before dosing tell me if we might instead:

 

remove corals put them in a heated holding bucket about day or two (I'm doing this right now on my 14 yr old corals) leaving only your sand, that target, and tank water, and we power zap that stuff? You won't kill your bacteria with a 5:10 dose and I'd sure like to attack nuclear!

 

more brainstorming against the normal grain of add peroxide to whole tank which is a decent last resort:

 

run this system sans sandbed for a while. having one is never as clean as not having one, and since this emergence was kind of timed with increased feeding and possibly sinking Im envisioning a system where your corals are simply cleaned off of this hitchhiker, and put back in a tank that had a 100% wchange and no sand, so we can evaluate the locus of this invader, what if both it and its fuel are in the sand?

 

i couldnt normally recommend this to a 100 g tank with seventeen tangs, but you have the rare variable of total access and I want to work that angle to our advantage.

 

I know you prob want a sandbedded reef, mine as well. im just talking interim test period. with a potential quick change to total bare bottom, and you remove any filter material clogged with this attacker and replace it w clean material, im really curious to see how quickly this mass w rebound with a real true 100% export of it.

 

it very well may not rebound so quick. any peroxide added has much less target mass to work on.

 

For sure we can dump some in your tank, but my way was a much stronger attack on your target at the expense of more elbow grease work vs just adding it. adding it touches the nontarget corals so for the sake of consistency in the thread we like to recommend that last. 90% of people do it first lol its ok either way.

 

my goal is a clean tank. score some GFO and run on this bad boy, ill go back to re read if you arent already doing that

B

 

if this is straight dinos, adding h202 has simply a hit and miss outcome. massive threads on dinos and peroxide exist, and if we read 4 of them you'd see the typical mix (test me, try it) of:

-1:10 wiped out all my dinos i loved it and i lost no corals.

-1:10 did nothing and the dinos got worse

and everything in between. lots of times people were combining peroxide with total blackouts, another nice angle of housing your corals elsewhere while we attack the main system (and they didnt have to be in the dark) so I still see some other attack options and if you did elect to try a straight dosing, it sounds reasonably safe.

 

if these are dinos they have a real re import potential off your corals, so indeed they may need to be part of the treatment if so. did you ever get that 9 w uv put on ? really need to, it can help with either of these invaders for sure.

[hwk7072]

brandon429, I think we're on the same wavelength. My initial post has a picture of my previously retired EcoPico 5g that I set up about three weeks to mess around with, maybe macro algae, inverts, mushrooms. However, it looks like it's going to be re-purposed to a hospital/transition tank (to my new Nuvo 30L build). I am thinking that I'll remove the coral from their rocks, dip them, and into the hospital tank until the 30L is cycled. I have some ReVive coral cleaner, but not sure if that would do anything. Suggestions on dip?

 

I'm not going to keep any rocks or sand from the current 32g, so if I can clean my coral and give it a good (relatively crowded) hospital stay for a few weeks, I'll be good.

 

So the question is, what to transition-dip?

[brandon429]

I have no probs trying that dinoxal stuff ya'll have been mentioning, theres a rather large thread for it in the reefcentral chem forum, or its predecessor chem but its the same ya'll arementioning, and it has a decent following. I was going to still try peroxide on a coral-in-the-holding-tank setup (not on the coral, in the tank where they came from with the invader in it) if applicable simply because its cheap and readily avail and you can attack a system much harder w no bacterial issues when there's no coral in the pathway. that dinofix or algae fix stuff mentioned in the other thread has a decent following, its a few yrs old now and only recently discovered handy against dinos in some cases.

 

It has the typical mix of pros and cons we'd expect, however its at least a new pro lol

[hwk7072]

Funny you mention dino-x. I didn't . But I did order some to see if I can clear the main tank. What I mentioned was the Two Little Fishies ReVive, which is based on plant extracts. Just a cleansing sort of coral dip.

 

So, to get to the meat of it, what proportions and time would you suggest for the H2O2 dip between the main tank and the hospital tank? 35%? 3%?

[jedimasterben]

FYI, if the Dinoxal actually worked in your display tank, all of your corals would be dead due to their dinoflagellates being killed.

[brandon429]

For the transition dip above if we were going to try peroxide just because its cheap and readily avail i would actually not do corals first. id move them to a holding bucket that gets nothing, scrub em off good before you put in the hotel.

 

this leaves only the tank with this low level but agreeably constant level of either cyano variants or good contender dinos, one of the two.

 

we can now zap this whole tank running full with large amnts of peroxide, im not even sure any reasonable large amount would have any effect on your filter other than giving aerobes competing for dissolved oxygen a boost of, oxygen. diluted further than 3% its just not that dangerous as previously thought.

 

we know in many sps tanks with hard invasions and desperate keepers they posted several times where they dosed 4 mils per 10 gallons of tank water. thats stiff compared to 1:10 which comprises 90% of the results on this thread.

 

so, if your corals are held and safe we should blast that thing man with a good 5 mils to 10 gals once or twice a day 12 hrs apart just as a test to see if they respond. if not, you've eliminated a cheap possibility and you've isolated your corals anyway from it.

 

no biofilter harmed, prediction.

 

I simply wouldnt dip your corals at this point in any dilution of peroxide. id totally go anothe route first before doing that. but if you must, you can dip them in 1:10 for a couple mins and that has shown resounding safe in tanks. sure there are losses reported, same with kalk overdoses or heater sticking etc, the stat constant is safe but its also everyones go to method without trying increased work on the targets first and i think we miss out on some tank cures like that.

[hwk7072]

Right, but I assume the folks who make this stuff know the differences among species of dinos. Would be kind of silly to sell a product that kills the coral with the pest. "Take this before a flight and you won't get a cold, but you'll be dead, so no refund. Ha ha!"

[brandon429]

i think the coral tissue might isolate the helpful symbionts

 

the active ingredient is a psycho chem though lol sure cant compare simpleton h202 we can at least pronounce lol

 

dont recall what its active ingredient was but its multisyllabic in the very least ~ we had remarked about it in the big rc thread

 

you can tell some chemists cooked it up good. it probably takes something that mean to get a handle on dinos, stuff is mean ill agree. id choose another gelidium invasion or red mushrooms which can be zapped as opposed to dinos that are hit and miss.

 

 

hey were you able to use a basic microscope to get us pics man

 

I never mind using competing methods or competing chems on this thread, even with before and after pics by other methods. we just want what works best, and if there are things better than peroxide it should be known, truth is about strengths and weaknesses and the strength of peroxide is we can make a bad tank look pretty when dealing with a huge range (but not all) invaders so she's holding up pretty well ~

 

ATS users routinely get verifiable good results and they even claim dinoflagellate cures which cant be discounted. by extrapolation thats nutrient restrictions though, gfo should accomplish the same as the ATS crew are sequestering the excess nutrients fueling dinos in their plants. their challenge in becoming a dominant anti Dino method though is the same as the rest of us, consistency. no method attains it yet. various forms of allelopathic chemicals against the dinos might also be a hidden benefit of the ATS route

 

if i had to pick the single method that got the most cures of dinos across web forums its blackouts. and the method id like to see more of evolving in the hobby is giant nuclear UV use against them

[hwk7072]

 

 

hey were you able to use a basic microscope to get us pics man

 

I never mind using competing methods or competing chems on this thread, even with before and after pics by other methods. we just want what works best, and if there are things better than peroxide it should be known, truth is about strengths and weaknesses and the strength of peroxide is we can make a bad tank look pretty when dealing with a huge range (but not all) invaders so she's holding up pretty well ~

 

 

Haven't heard back yet on the DNA sequence. I put it on my daughters 40x and didn't get anything that matched the "beasties" of dinos on the INTERNET. He's having a grad student do it, and you know how that goes. She's probably figuring out how to get a dissertation out of it. Then she'll patent Dino-B-Gone and we'll get acknowldgements. In the meantime, I'll ask if he can snap a high mag photo. Not sure if he does EM.

[hwk7072]

So from hardiest to least, here's my dipping and hospitalization reverse triage

 

1. Toadstool
2. Candy cane
3. Ricordea
4. Tubastrea
5. Acans (on racks). My favorites, and growing and doing well
6. Euphyllia, one torch that's doing well, and one hammer that's just surviving, rarely puffs up any more
7. Two lovely blastos that are thriving

A couple Xenias and a GSP, I might put through THE TREATMENT in the main tank, merely because they're a bit too large for the hospital tank.

 

I'll take pictures. Say no more.

nudge nudge