Algae ID: cyano, dinos, diatoms, other?
- Thread starter richiev
- Start date
I've seen that argument, but I don't get that either for the same reason. They definitely would also be competing for the same nutrients, but if you're not bottoming out nutrients then you're still feeding the dinos.
Said differently, if dinos can grow quickly when levels are effectively 0, then they should be able to grow even quicker when levels are greater than zero. Even if I add 5 billion things that consume the same nutrients, unless I bottom things out again I still have food in that tank the dinos can eat and grow from.
I feel there must either be something killing the dinos directly, or preventing them from reproducing, or consuming all of some other resource. Or a combination of those things. Or I'm just completely thinking about it wrong. Or it's just a correlation and a myth.
If it's true that they're good at recreating even in a low nutrient situation, that makes me think it must be something to do with losing access to the rock/sand/surfaces because other things are living there and fighting offb the bacteria. Or something actively kills dinos at higher nutrient levels.
Maybe the answer is carbon. Maybe when you have other bacteria gain a foothold, they all are competing for carbon with the dinos. When you bottom out, now the dinos can continue procreating while everything else stagnates and eventually dies back. Then dinos can proliferate, exacerbating the cycle.
That'd imply going heavy on the UV, getting levels elevated, doing manual removal, doing a water change, and then tossing in some other bacteria sources (possibly in combo with night time UV) could be a good plan.
Maybe also the reason these show up in new tanks versus old tanks is coralline algae.
Take my argument with a grain of salt, since - to my knowledge - this is not substantiated by research. However, I've seen a pretty sizable number of people who complain about dinos have zeroed out phosphates at the time of the breakout (nitrates is much more hit-or-miss). I myself am 3 for 3 on this being the case with my own outbreaks.
Your perspective of 'rabbits and foxes' is, I think, generally correct. Microorganisms compete against each other all the time and, eventually, the system stabilizes at X "foxes" to Y "rabbits". However, the system - and the equilibrium it achieves - is dynamic and may not be self-correcting.
My (again, unsubstantiated) hypothesis is that dinos outcompete other microorganisms under limiting nutrient conditions. Phosphates are extremely low, dinos are better at scavenging in these conditions, they outcompete other microorganisms, and you get an outbreak. After that point, in my experience, it doesn't seem to matter too much if you raise nutrients: they already outnumber/are outcompeting other microorganisms, so feeding more and raising numbers doesn't help resolve dinos in and of itself.
Under this framework, feeding more/raising nutrient levels doesn't hurt the dinos directly, but it does provide conditions that enable other microorganisms to thrive while you knock back the dinos (UV sterilizer, blackout since dinos are photosynthetic and bacteria aren't, dosing bacteria to help them overwhelm the dino monoculture).
I will say, however, that the biggest difference-maker to me for treating dinoflagellates has been adding a UV sterilizer and doing a short blackout to try and drive as many of them into the water column as I can. This would not work for large-cell amphidinium dinos (and I'm fortunate to have never had an outbreak of them), but it's been effective in conjunction with the other methods I've used.
Qwiv
Supporting Member
you know when you plant a garden and you have all you pretty little plants spaced out, you then notice all the weeds that grow between your new plants. You can agrue with yourself all day about why the weeds grew, or you can just pull them out and let the plants grow. seams like it all just works itself out in the end As long as the corals and fish are happy
I am aligned with your statements, the last part though still is the one that gets me. Particularly combined with "the equilibrium it achieves - is dynamic and may not be self-correcting". For an equilibrium to be reached, there must be a limiter in the system that multiple things are competing over. That limiter can't be phosphate and nitrate if the solution to minimizing dynos is get/keep those elevated.
Maybe it's something that'd need to be someone's PhD thesis, and no one's determined it yet.
As someone who grew up on a vegetable farm, I'm all over that reference. On a farm you'd do all those things. You'd argue over what the source was, and you'd likely manually pull the weeds, and you'd spray herbicide/fungicide (if you're an organic farm you'd spray with the bottled labeled organic frequently, or a normal farm you'd spray with the other bottle less frequently).
Also in this case a possibly better reference would be plant diseases versus weeds. The problematic plant diseases (both viral and bacterial) are soil borne, meaning they embed into the soil and are not curable. You try and rotate your crops such that you don't put plants that are susceptible in plots that are known infected. You also hope it stays dry enough that the diseases can't get in, grown, and spread. You also, if you're super anal and probably just small time, try and have people harvest in such a way that they won't spread it more once it's visible (or you just abandon that section).
Also also, pulling all the weeds is a very modern, western, not worried about long-term sustainability solution. It leads to even more erosion of topsoil, which is a non-renewable resource and being lost at an incredibly unsustainable rate.
/me ends his aside
It’s true that photosynthetic organsims like algae don’t rely on added carbon in the water because the process of photosynthesis creates organic carbon (from CO2). But dinos are photosynthetic too, so I doubt there is a real difference there you can take advantage of. Excess carbon dosing definitely can lead to pathologic imbalances though.
Maybe it has already been mentioned but I didn’t see it at a glance- One of the main things surface-based microorganisms in our tanks are competing for is surface space. Not just nutrients like C/N/P. So if you can boost competing nonpathologic microorganisms they can crowd out the pathologic ones even when there are still nutrients to be had.
One of the reasons we can’t just go nuclear and kill all dinos is that the symbiotic zooxanthellae that our corals need to survive are a type of dino as well. So it’s a balancing act.
My argument was that phosphate/nitrate can be the limiter in regards to causing the initial outbreak. Say, for instance, if dinos are more efficient at scavenging/faster at replicating under limiting nutrient conditions/etc. Once the equilibrium has been reached at those specific conditions (limiting nutrients), raising nutrients wouldn't fix it because there's so many dinos that they're able to maintain their advantage.
The solution is not delimiting nitrate/phosphate. The solution is tweaking the environment so that other microorganisms are allowed to flourish, which includes killing dinos (UV sterilizer), adding competition (adding bacteria), and ensuring the initial cause of the situation (limited nutrients) isn't still present, which could start the whole thing over again.
Coral reefer
Past President
Dinos are more efficient at using nitrates than algae is the theory, so when they are super low the Dino’s use them up and the algae and corals don’t have any left over to useI did another round and I saw them moving this time. They definitely were spinning at times during movement.
Reefer 170 which in theory is up to 43gallons, but I have no idea if they calculate that based on actual water levels of the sump and tank or by doing it based on theoretical max volume. Let's just say 40gal erring on the high side.
The UV I got is an in tank, with filter, unit. An aqua top, rated at 7w. I'm currently running it at it's lowest flow to maximize time under light, and it's in my display looking ugly AF. My intention was to run it until things stabilized, then move it into the sump, then eventually turn it off.
AQUATOP SP7-UV 126 GPH Internal Filter w/ 7W UV Sterilizer
Check out the deal on AQUATOP SP7-UV 126 GPH Internal Filter w/ 7W UV Sterilizer at Aquatopwww.aquatop.com
Nitrates and phosphates are quite low. I've killed my fuge and have phosphate and nitrates being dosed through my ATO water to try and slowly raise things up.
I'll be honest though, as much as I have myself trumpeted the "feed more", "raise numbers" mantra, I've been starting to really have trouble buying it. The logic doesn't make sense to me when I try and really think it through.
In my head I'm thinking of that rabbits and foxes differential equations problem. More rabbits lead to more foxes because they get eaten, more foxes lead to less rabbits because they eat more. Eventually the system stabilizes. That seems like the theory behind feed more.
However, that doesn't make sense to me here, because that theoretical balance point would seemingly be at nutrient levels going to 0. If the nutrient levels are non zero, or increasing because you're feeding more, you're feeding all those things including the dinos, so it should make dinos worse. It's not a zero sum situation, it's one where everything should be getting worse.
More simply, if algae and dinos both consume the same things, and those things aren't 0, why wouldn't both continue multiplying? Is there a theory that algae are eating the dinos, or something else is? Thoughts?
However along these lines I am trying to reduce my carbon additions to my tank, under the assumption dinos consume carbon but algae don't (I read that somewhere). Because of that I'm currently switching off All For Reef over to 2-part, and that's why I'm dosing nitrates and phosphates versus overfeeding.
Coral reefer
Past President
The last part is your answer imo. Competition for space
BAYMAC
Supporting Member
I've worked on 2 different organic farms.... we never once sprayed any herbicide/fungicide for weeds. Weeds just got turned over in the soil for control, if anything was done. Certain weeds we pulled due to their seeding nature, and growth strategy.
I feel there's a direct causation vs indirect vs pure correlation gap in the outbreak part as well.
If the limiter is phosphate and nitrates AND dinos are better at eating them than other things, then I agree if nitrates/phosphates bottom out then you'd end up having more dinos than anything else. However, I don't think the opposite is true.
If you have any dinos in the tank AND dinos are great at eating whatever levels are in there AND nitrates/phosphates are the limiter then it shouldn't matter what else is in the tank. You'd always have dino outbreaks.
Said differently, using made up numbers, if dinos grow from 10k to 1M with low levels of phosphate/nitrates, then if you have high levels they should grow at least that much. That's true regardless of your base state. If you add 10k dinos to a tank with phosphate and nitrates it shouldn't matter what else is in there, you should always end up with at least 1M dinos. Even if you add those dinos into a fully established tank.
I feel there must be something else to this story. There must be a different resource that is being limited and fought over, or there must be predation going on, or both.
The counter to this is dinos go into the water column at night, so that seems like it'd counteract that. However, maybe this actually could be the real reason why lights out and using established rock minimize dinos. If you get the dinos off the rock, and allow other things to gain a foothold, maybe they can't reestablish themselves.
An interesting test, which I might do because I have extra rock, is put some live rock from a different tank in and see what happens. I wonder if the dinos would not gain a foothold on that rock, despite being elsewhere. That almost might be an interesting way to approach dinos. Dose the crap out of bacteria on rocks in a container outside the tank, and then swap them in.
Coral reefer
Past President
I’ve had good success with getting rocks covered in bacteria in my sump with no light and adding them to new or existing tanks and they get less of the brown and green uglies ime
Matthew Meyer
Supporting Member
I have some DinoX if you want it.
I'm thinking of doing an experiment. I have easy access to copious amounts of dinos, and I have a currently unused fluval light along with various water containers/tanks. I'm thinking I could siphon out a bunch of dinos, and then just see if I can grow them out in my garage. If I can reliably grow them, then I could try and kill them.
Maybe I'll put them in @JVU 's place actually, right next to his aptasia tank(s). It can be the little aquariums of horrors collection.
I wouldn't have a full scientific, double blind, blah blah setup, but it'd be interesting to see if I can get different growths using nitrate&phosphate dosing, versus those + a carbon source, and then see if dosing bottled bacteria and other things cause a change.
It'd be pretty easy to accidentally contaminate it, but maybe it could prove/disprove something.
Maybe I'll put them in @JVU 's place actually, right next to his aptasia tank(s). It can be the little aquariums of horrors collection.
I wouldn't have a full scientific, double blind, blah blah setup, but it'd be interesting to see if I can get different growths using nitrate&phosphate dosing, versus those + a carbon source, and then see if dosing bottled bacteria and other things cause a change.
It'd be pretty easy to accidentally contaminate it, but maybe it could prove/disprove something.