High Tide Aquatics

Diatoms or Dino

bonarjoseph

bonarjoseph

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I’ve been battling with what I assume is dinoflagellates and I feel like I am loosing but I am also suspecting I’m loosing due to the fact I am using a method for Dino to treat something else possibly,
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I have pics and water parameters. This happened about a month back when I went on a trip to Hawaii and left my tank in a relatives care. I am starting to assume the carbon went bad during the break but I already replaced it and added some phosphate and silicate absorber l.
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The algae is not visable at night and the first hour of turning on the lights but after that it shows back up again


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First, you are pushing your Alk+CA rather high. But nothing to do with the algae.

Looks like a random mix of algae and Cyano, but picture is very unclear.

You culprit likely is Phosphates.
You say you added phosphate absorber, yet you still have high levels, so it may be
worse than you think.


My suggestions:
  • Don't over feed. Make sure it is quality food, not high in phosphates.
  • Increase Water changes a bit
  • Consider more GFO or similar in a media to get phosphates down a bit. (But watch for Alk drop)
  • Get a few more snails.
  • Perhaps increase flow a bit
 
rygh said:
First, you are pushing your Alk+CA rather high. But nothing to do with the algae.

Looks like a random mix of algae and Cyano, but picture is very unclear.

You culprit likely is Phosphates.
You say you added phosphate absorber, yet you still have high levels, so it may be
worse than you think.


My suggestions:
  • Don't over feed. Make sure it is quality food, not high in phosphates.
  • Increase Water changes a bit
  • Consider more GFO or similar in a media to get phosphates down a bit. (But watch for Alk drop)
  • Get a few more snails.
  • Perhaps increase flow a bit
Click to expand...
Will do


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Is phosphate at .5 normal? When was the last time you checked before that reading? What’s your water change volume and frequency like?
 
Coral reefer said:
Is phosphate at .5 normal? When was the last time you checked before that reading? What’s your water change volume and frequency like?
Click to expand...
No it’s not the norm, I try to do a water change and test every week but recently I have been very busy , last time I checked it was lower ( don’t remember the exact number) planning on logging this stuff in a note book.


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rygh said:
First, you are pushing your Alk+CA rather high. But nothing to do with the algae.

Looks like a random mix of algae and Cyano, but picture is very unclear.

You culprit likely is Phosphates.
You say you added phosphate absorber, yet you still have high levels, so it may be
worse than you think.


My suggestions:
  • Don't over feed. Make sure it is quality food, not high in phosphates.
  • Increase Water changes a bit
  • Consider more GFO or similar in a media to get phosphates down a bit. (But watch for Alk drop)
  • Get a few more snails.
  • Perhaps increase flow a bit
Click to expand...
Sorry that’s on me the test was before I replaced my carbon and added phosphate and silicate absorber but I think your right , it seems like diatoms and cyano


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It’s very common to have other people who are watching the tank to over feed so the increase in po4 isn’t much of a surprise. Also, how mature is the tank? If it’s less than a year old much of this is to be expected. Whatever course you take do it gradually. Nothing good comes quickly in this hobby.
 
Flagg37 said:
It’s very common to have other people who are watching the tank to over feed so the increase in po4 isn’t much of a surprise. Also, how mature is the tank? If it’s less than a year old much of this is to be expected. Whatever course you take do it gradually. Nothing good comes quickly in this hobby.
Click to expand...
It’s about 3 years old and 1.5 years with coral


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At 3 years, unlikely to be diatoms.

When did you last fully clean the sand bed? Deep-Siphoning crud out.
At 3 years, you may have accumulated a lot of detritus in there.
When that happens, it is almost impossible to get rid of cyano growing on sand bed.
Stir it a bit - does a big brown mess come out?
 
I'm battling dino in my tank as well... going on 6 months now. At first I tried treating it as cyano with chemiclean.. when that did nothing I was left with two possibilities, either dino or diatoms. I ruled out diatoms because the stuff in my sandbed would sometimes get really thick during the day and recede to almost nothing when the lights go out. I also can't seem to keep snails alive in my tank which is a good indicator since some strains of dino are known to be toxic. I tried lights out for 4 days, syphoning the sand daily, but nothing seemed to work. About a month ago i stumbled upon Reefdudes video on dino eradication (
). It's a looong video but well worth the listen if you're desperate like me. He shares a one week treatment that supposedly works quite well. The system basically encourages you to create a mini bacteria bloom in your tank to outcompete with the dino strain. You dose your tank with ATM colony and Waste Away bacteria for a week (watch video for full instruction). The first round that i tried of this treatment i kinda half-assed. Did not follow the instruction to the tee.. would miss dosing some days but despite my laziness after a week I noticed a significant regression of the dino on my sand. So i gave my tank a week to rest then tried the treatment again. Unfortunately, a family thing came up and again i wasn't able to follow thru with the one week treatment. Last friday I started the treatment again and yesterday when i got home from work, with the tank lights still at full blast, my sand was white as snow! I'm trying not to get excited just yet. I will finish this treatment without skipping a beat and we'll see if my sand stays clean after a week of so. If it does, I will make sure to post step by step what I did to win this battle *cross fingers*
 
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jepoy said:
I'm battling dino in my tank as well... going on 6 months now. At first I tried treating it as cyano with chemiclean.. when that did nothing I was left with two possibilities, either dino or diatoms. I ruled out diatoms because the stuff in my sandbed would sometimes get really thick during the day and recede to almost nothing when the lights go out. I also can't seem to keep snails alive in my tank which is a good indicator since some strains of dino are known to be toxic. I tried lights out for 4 days, syphoning the sand daily, but nothing seemed to work. About a month ago i stumbled upon Reefdudes video on dino eradication (
). It's a looong video but well worth the listen if you're desperate like me. He shares a one week treatment that supposedly works quite well. The system basically encourages you to create a mini bacteria bloom in your tank to outcompete with the dino strain. You dose your tank with ATM colony and Waste Away bacteria for a week (watch video for full instruction). The first round that i tried of this treatment i kinda half-assed. Did not follow the instruction to the tee.. would miss dosing some days but despite my laziness after a week I noticed a significant regression of the dino on my sand. So i gave my tank a week to rest then tried the treatment again. Unfortunately, a family thing came up and again i wasn't able to follow thru with the one week treatment. Last friday I started the treatment again and yesterday when i got home from work, with the tank lights still at full blast, my sand was white as snow! I'm trying not to get excited just yet. I will finish this treatment without skipping a beat and we'll see if my sand stays clean after a week of so. If it does, I will make sure to post step by step what I did to win this battle *cross fingers*
Click to expand...
I hope it turns out fine, I think I’m dealing with diatoms at one point it was stringy like snot but it isn’t anymore


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rygh said:
At 3 years, unlikely to be diatoms.

When did you last fully clean the sand bed? Deep-Siphoning crud out.
At 3 years, you may have accumulated a lot of detritus in there.
When that happens, it is almost impossible to get rid of cyano growing on sand bed.
Stir it a bit - does a big brown mess come out?
Click to expand...
I think it’s been at least a year, when I do a water change and vacuum the sand bed I go around the rock work but when the weekend rolls around I’ll move it and vacuum



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Been there, done that - most likely dino amphidium. It sticks to sand and hides at night.
Do you see it on the sand only? Siphon it out - sand is cheap!


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Eugene said:
Been there, done that - most likely dino amphidium. It sticks to sand and hides at night.
Do you see it on the sand only? Siphon it out - sand is cheap!


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Click to expand...
It’s doing better now I think it was diatoms and cyano , it looked stringy but didn’t have bubbles. The tank is doing way better now


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The amphidium strain doesn’t bubble - looks very similar to cyano or diatoms. Only microscope will tell exactly what it is.


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Eugene said:
The amphidium strain doesn’t bubble - looks very similar to cyano or diatoms. Only microscope will tell exactly what it is.


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Click to expand...
Thank you for the help it turned out to be a mix of cyano and diatoms my tank is looking way better


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