Stressed corals and Dino bloom

[klmt]

Long story short, I left town for two weeks leaving my girlfriend in charge of feeding my tank and returned home to long stringy brown filaments all over everything that I believe to be dinoflagellates.

My Tank: 5 months old

32 Biocube

Filtration: Purigen, Chemipure Elite, filter floss

Fish: 2 Ocellaris Clowns, a Royal Gramma and a Six-Lined Wrasse

Corals/Inverts: 1 Bubbletip anemone, 1 hammer coral, 1 leptoseris, zoas, pulsating Xenia and 1 Favia. A few dozen various snails (astrea and bumblebee) and blue and red claw hermits.

 

All of the soft corals, and anemone are now closed up mostly, the lepto looks a little washed out and the favia looks about normal. What can I do to get things back to normal? So far I have done a water change, and daily removal/scrubbing to dislodge the dinos. I replace the filter floss daily, and replaced the other filter media. Feeding normally, the fish are acting fine. I also began dosing with 1mL:10gal. of H2O2 daily. Thank you. 

 

Water Params:

Temp 78

pH 8.2

Ammonia 0

Nitrite 0 

Nitrate 0

Salinity 1.025

Alkalinity 10.1

Calcium 400

Magnesium 1380

[Clown79]

Waterchanges, any media that reduces nutrient levels, and over cleaning is not the way to get rid of dino's.

 

Dino's are always in our tanks but become a problem when the tank has no nutrients and lacks biodiversity.

 

The purigen and elite is most likely stripping your nitrates and phosphates.

 

Your nitrate at 0 is not good. What is your phosphates at?

 

The only media that should be used during dino's is filter floss(which will need more frequent changing) and small amounts of activated carbon changed weekly. (You got to bag your own using like 2 tablespoons of carbon and change weekly)

 

Peroxide is also known to make dino's worse as it can kill off micro life and competing algaes

[klmt]

Thank you, for the prompt reply. I am a new reef keeper, and initially thought it was cyanobacteria which is why I took the steps I did. Now that I am more aware of what causes the Dino explosion (essentially lack of nutrients and biodiversity) I will be changing my approach. I'll remove the chemipure and purigen and stop the hydrogen peroxide dosing. I will continue with the floss and add a bit of carbon. I have increased feeding the past few days to try and pump up my nutrients. I have a suspicion that they were not getting adequate amounts of food while I was gone and this may have led us to where we are. I had a nice crop of algae for my cleanup crew to graze prior to leaving, now I hardly see any. I do not have a phosphate test kit (I will get one).

[Seadragon]

8 minutes ago, klmt said:

I have a suspicion that they were not getting adequate amounts of food while I was gone and this may have led us to where we are.

 

In the event that you find out that your tank sitter was actually overfeeding rather than underfeeding or not feeding, let me know, I'll chime in because I had almost the exact same scenario (2 weeks on vacation) and came back to brown, stringy snot (Dino's) on my Xenia and I was able to eliminate it within a week all documented in my journal.  But, I used some similar steps that you're now doing (remove the chemipure, purigen, and stop hydrogen peroxide dosing) and some additional steps.  There's about 1,555 species of free-living marine dinoflagellates and in case you have a different type than what I had, I'll just observe if you're able to get rid of it in the end and how long it takes.

[klmt]

4 minutes ago, Seadragon said:

 

In the event that you find out that your tank sitter was actually overfeeding rather than underfeeding or not feeding, let me know, I'll chime in because I had almost the exact same scenario (2 weeks on vacation) and came back to brown, stringy snot (Dino's) on my Xenia and I was able to eliminate it within a week all documented in my journal.  But, I used some similar steps that you're now doing (remove the chemipure, purigen, and stop hydrogen peroxide dosing) and some additional steps.  There's about 1,555 species of free-living marine dinoflagellates and in case you have a different type than what I had, I'll just observe if you're able to get rid of it in the end and how long it takes.

I'll be sure to update. Despite not initially taking the right steps the tank is still overall looking better each day. A small bit of green algae is becoming present in the corners of the glass but definitely not out of the woods yet. The corals are still grumpy. 

[Inspgadget]

On 8/25/2021 at 4:14 PM, Clown79 said:

 

 

The only media that should be used during dino's is filter floss(which will need more frequent changing) and small amounts of activated carbon changed weekly. (You got to bag your own using like 2 tablespoons of carbon and change weekly)

 

Peroxide is also known to make dino's worse as it can kill off micro life and competing algaes

Why activadet carbon? 

[Clown79]

2 hours ago, Inspgadget said:

Why activadet carbon? 

There are many brands. I used Seachem matrix 

[Orangutran]

2 hours ago, Inspgadget said:

Why activadet carbon? 

Some forms of dinos releases toxins that will kill inverts, so we run carbon during a dino outbreak to remove it.

[Clown79]

3 hours ago, Inspgadget said:

Why activadet carbon? 

Because some dino's can produce toxins. Carbon helps with the removal of toxins preventing issues with the livestock

[Tony Bologna]

If your problem persists, Check out DrTims website. I used refresh and waste away as directed to reverse a major dino outbreak in my nano reef. 

[banasophia]

I think it’s helpful to post pics to be more certain the problem is correctly diagnosed and that you are treating the right thing. Can you post a pic? 

[filefishfinatic]

On 8/25/2021 at 10:01 AM, klmt said:

Long story short, I left town for two weeks leaving my girlfriend in charge of feeding my tank and returned home to long stringy brown filaments all over everything that I believe to be dinoflagellates.

My Tank: 5 months old

32 Biocube

Filtration: Purigen, Chemipure Elite, filter floss

Fish: 2 Ocellaris Clowns, a Royal Gramma and a Six-Lined Wrasse

Corals/Inverts: 1 Bubbletip anemone, 1 hammer coral, 1 leptoseris, zoas, pulsating Xenia and 1 Favia. A few dozen various snails (astrea and bumblebee) and blue and red claw hermits.

 

All of the soft corals, and anemone are now closed up mostly, the lepto looks a little washed out and the favia looks about normal. What can I do to get things back to normal? So far I have done a water change, and daily removal/scrubbing to dislodge the dinos. I replace the filter floss daily, and replaced the other filter media. Feeding normally, the fish are acting fine. I also began dosing with 1mL:10gal. of H2O2 daily. Thank you. 

 

Water Params:

Temp 78

pH 8.2

Ammonia 0

Nitrite 0 

Nitrate 0

Salinity 1.025

Alkalinity 10.1

Calcium 400

Magnesium 1380

slow flow dont dose dont water change dont scrub raise temp to 82 and add live rock outcompete, dont erradicate. i have been through dino (A TON) then i had briopsis which i cured and they leave very quicly if you do what i mentioned 

[klmt]

I wanted to check back in. Over a month later and the dino bloom has passed. I beat it by removing the chemi pure and purigen and only running filter floss and some activated charcoal. I increased feeding to boost my nitrates and try and promote algal growth to compete with the dinos. I also cut down on my lighting a lot. Changing the filter floss every day or every other day for the first week and scrubbing multiple times a day was key in really knocking it back. All of the corals and other inverts are happy and healthy now with no losses. 

[Orangutran]

12 hours ago, klmt said:

I wanted to check back in. Over a month later and the dino bloom has passed. I beat it by removing the chemi pure and purigen and only running filter floss and some activated charcoal. I increased feeding to boost my nitrates and try and promote algal growth to compete with the dinos. I also cut down on my lighting a lot. Changing the filter floss every day or every other day for the first week and scrubbing multiple times a day was key in really knocking it back. All of the corals and other inverts are happy and healthy now with no losses. 

Great! Simple is best!

[mcarroll]

BTW, how did you actually confirm that what you had was dino's?  (vs diatoms, cyano or other things that can look pretty similar)

 

Just curious.