Neptune Aquatics

IOWL's 20g IM Nuvo Fusion 20

I know this is super common in the hobby. I know it's their nature.

But that doesn't change the fact it's the first time I've had it happen, and so I was grinning for half an hour straight last night when I saw the first time the clownfish decided to host its nem.

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It is really cool! We waited for weeks and were so thrilled.

I know, right? We got to see the moment it happened (we were watching TV, tank is near the TV, and I saw the clownfish start to go for it), and dropped what we were doing to watch.

After about ten minutes I was still super pumped and my wife laughed, shook her head, and jokingly said, "I married a five year old."
 
I know, right? We got to see the moment it happened (we were watching TV, tank is near the TV, and I saw the clownfish start to go for it), and dropped what we were doing to watch.

After about ten minutes I was still super pumped and my wife laughed, shook her head, and jokingly said, "I married a five year old."

comparable to birth of a your first child
 
Another unfun update for 6/18/20:

What I'd thought was cyano, turned out to be dinoflagellates. My wife's coworker gave me a microscope, I took a peek at the brown gunk, and...(expletive deleted).

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The bad news: that's definitely dinos.

The good news: they haven't been killing anything, even as gross as the tank has looked.

So, given the rabbit hole of dino treatments: what will I do?

First step
(aside from asking for input here): figure out exactly what I'm dealing with. 'Dinoflagellates' is an imprecise term that refers to a number of different species, each of which has unique characteristics. I found a nifty little PDF to help identify what type of dinos you may run into, and I've attached it here. (Note: I also have a microscope available to loan to the club; check out my thread on that if you want to borrow it.)

I initially thought I had amphidinium dinos. After more thorough analysis, I'm more convinced that I have Prorocentrum dinos. While this sucks, because they can be a toxic species, it *does* mean they go into the water column at night—meaning a UV sterilizer should have an effect.

Second step: nutrients. Thanks to fighting what I thought was a cyano bloom, I was aware that my phosphates and nitrates had been undetectable for some time. I've been feeding heavier for the past few days to counteract this and, while I've seen an uptick in phosphates (0.07 ppm as of my last measurement), my nitrates haven't budged. Given this, I've opted to dose nitrates until they reach a detectable level (and to dose to maintain them). Consensus seems to be that no phosphate or nitrate predisposes tanks to a dino bloom; my money on the 'why' is that dinos are more effective at out-competing other organisms with limiting nutrients.

Third step: competition. I started with dry rock, bagged live sand, and bottle bacteria. I've added frags from other people's tanks, but I'm willing to bet that my biodiversity is still woefully inadequate. Dinos are a monoculture, and they've outcompeted everything else, so my goal is to knock them back while giving other things a chance to scavenge for nutrients before the little bastards can get to them. @ofzakaria was kind enough to offer me a piece of live rock for my tank, so I'll be further seeding my tank with all those goodies in the hopes it'll provide further competition for the dinos.

Fourth step: UV sterilizer. Hello, old friend; I've missed you from cell culture experiments in the lab. Since I ID'd my dinos as entering the water column, a UV sterilizer sounds like an excellent tool to help kill these (and other parasites) off. @bfirecat was kind enough to offer me his as a loaner, but I like the peace of mind I'll have in the future, so I snagged one from Neptune.

Fifth step: 3-day blackout. Prorocentrum seem to enter the water column only after a blackout. Bacterial competitors don't need to photosynthesize. Bye-bye pretty reef tank for a few days.

Sixth step: activated carbon. Dinos often have toxins. The point of all this is to kill the dinos. Dying things release toxins. Toxins kill non-dinothings. I do not wish non-dino things to be killed, so I am running more carbon.

Seventh step: manual removal. There was brown crap all over the sand, and some (what I think might *actually* be cyano) on the rocks. I blew off all the rocks with a turkey baster, siphoned all the brown gunk I could off the sand, and just removed as much as I could from the tank to make the rest of the steps more effective.

Edit, 6/19/20: In the interest of more complete data, I'm also noting that I'm still running my skimmer as normal. My rationale for this is that it will help remove dead/dying dinos, and any incidental loss of bacteria is made up for by the fact I'm dosing more every day.

Wish me luck!
 

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Did you use Chemiclean by any chance?

I did not. That was on the agenda when I thought I had cyano, but I confirmed it was dinos prior to purchasing/dosing it.

Anecdotally: someone at an LFS commented to me yesterday they'd dosed Chemiclean, then experienced a massive dino bloom. This echoes some other anecdotes I've seen online, and seems like it would support the 'biodiversity/competition' hypothesis of treating dinos, but I'm emphasizing that the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data', haha.
 
Blackout began 6/18/20 at 3 PM. At that time, nitrates were undetectable using an API saltwater master test kit. Noting that, prior to measuring, I had dosed enough nitrate to bring it up 1.5 ppm.

Phosphate was not tested, but was tested the prior day at 0.07 ppm (6/17/20).

6/19/20, 3 PM

Time elapsed under blackout:
24 hours
NO3: ~5 ppm (tested using API Saltwater Master test kit)
PO4: 0.08 ppm (tested using Hanna Phosphate ULR checker)
Notes: RBTA is moving a little bit, but everything else looks reasonably normal. Have not yet dosed bacteria for the day. Going to try disturbing the sand this evening (~7 PM) with a turkey baster to encourage more dino movement into the water column, then—when I dose bacteria for the day—'inject' it into the sand where I'd previously seen dino patches to encourage more competition.
 
6/20/20, 11 AM

Me: "Man, I hope there's a reduction in dinos after my 3-day blackout! I really can't wait to see if all this worked!"

Also me: "...you have a microscope and can take samples of the sand, you idiot."

Keeping in mind this is not quantitative (I don't have a hemocytometer to count dinos per unit of water), it looks like the measures are working so far. For comparison:

6/18:

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6/20:


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Both images are at the same magnification. Black orbs/shapes are all grains of sand, the gunky crap is either detritus or dino mucus + detritus, and the red circles in the second images are dinos. It could be bias from the location I took the sample (the first image was when I'd sucked up sand directly under that patch of gunk, the second was "bare" sand where I'd seen patches before), but it seems like a promising start.

An additional observation that I forgot to note, but could be significant:

On 6/18, I installed the UV sterilizer, dosed bacteria, vacuumed everything up, and started the blackout. The next morning, I realized my skimmer (eShopps Nano skimmer) had gone nuts overnight; it was empty immediately prior to the blackout, and was about 80% full after ~18 hours of blackout. I'm kicking myself hard for not taking a sample of the skimmate, because my (unsubstantiated) hypothesis is that the dinos entering the water column and dying contributed significantly to that.

Additional tank testing parameters to come later today when I have some time.

EDIT: Tank parameters were 4 ppm nitrates, 0.07 ppm phosphates.
 
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6/22/20, 12 PM

My 72-hour blackout turned into a 90-hour blackout due to some unexpected business yesterday. That being said, lights came on at 10 AM this morning, and so far, so good:

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Well, aside from the nem deciding to take a bit of a stroll, that is.

Prior to treatment, at this point there would've already been brown patches of gunk on the substrate, and reddish-brown patches of gunk on the rock. So far, this jibes with the marked reduction in dinos I saw between 6/18 and 6/20. I still have the UV sterilizer running, and I'm still going to be dosing the tank with beneficial bacteria until I finish off the bottle, but I'll take pictures every 12 hours or so.
 
6/22/20, 1 PM

An update that's both good and bad news, though I'd say it's landing more heavily on the 'good' at this point:

After leaving the lights on for ~3.5 hours, I saw a small patch of brown junk towards the back of the tank. Area circled in the picture from earlier:

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I took a sample, looked at it under the microscope, and it's dinos. So why is that not simply 'bad news'?

1. The rest of the sand was pristine, so it seemed localized to this one patch.

2. The pristine patches of sand included some of the heaviest dino-gunked areas, and these patches showed no signs of gunk at the same time period.

3. That patch was one of the areas I hadn't vacuumed/turkey basted as thoroughly as others (due to difficulty reaching it), and was also one of the only areas I hadn't used the turkey baster to 'inject' beneficial bacteria into the sand.

4. Qualitatively, there still seemed to be MUCH less dinos in this 'gunky' area than there were on 6/18 when my infestation was at its zenith.

To prevent this area from regaining a foothold and re-seeding the tank, I immediately turned the lights off, vacuumed the dinos up, added today's dose of beneficial bacteria (and injected it into the sand/surrounding sand), and will turn lights on again tomorrow morning.

Rationale: this represents a comparatively large population of dinos. Removing the majority of them and adding beneficial bacteria, coupled with the immediate blackout, will (hopefully) remove enough of them to let the bacteria get a good foothold there and out-compete them before lights-on tomorrow morning.
 
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6/23/20, 12 PM

So, I lied. I was impatient yesterday, and let curiosity get the better of me. I siphoned the dinos off from that spot on the sand, turkey basted the sand for good measure (to try and drive the dinos into the water column), injected the beneficial bacteria into the sand at that spot (and surrounding area), and turned the lights off...for only two hours. Then I turned them back on. (I reasoned that, if nothing else, that dino patch of sand would continue to serve as a 'control' due to it being an area I knew had higher-than-elsewhere dino concentrations).

I didn't see any gunky patches yesterday (lights on for a total of ~9 hours or so), and kept my fingers crossed overnight. The lights have been on for about 4 hours today, and - so far - everything still looks great. Well, with the exception of my torch, which isn't extending nearly as far as it did pre-blackout...but a small price to pay. I'm sure it'll perk up again soon.

Picture, roughly ~48 hours post-blackout:

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I'll edit this post later with nitrate and phosphate readings.
 
6/24/2020, 6:30 PM

Tank parameters as of 6 PM (got busy yesterday and didn't update it):

Nitrate: ~8 ppm
Phosphate: 0.08 ppm

I'm sure I'm inviting Murphy's wrath by saying this, but...I think I did it, guys.

Lights have been on their normal schedule for a full 3 days now, and...well...

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I don't know why the shading on the sandbed in the side-tank shots is always so bad (and makes it look like the sand is dirty), but the top down shoes a clear picture: the sand is still clean. I'm still running my UV sterilizer 24/7, and still dosing bacteria for a few more days (just not directly into the sand), but...yeah. I can't be assed to haul out my microscope and check just yet, but I'll check either tomorrow or Friday to determine if I can see any in the sand.

However, if this continues to hold: what do I win for setting the landspeed record in "shortest time from diagnosis to eradication of dinos" with only four months of reefkeeping experience? :)

EDIT I LIED AGAIN! AND I DID IT! HAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA! (And tagging @bfirecat since he responded as I was editing this)

I got curious, pulled out the microscope, and took a sample of sand from what had been the heaviest-infested area. And saw...nothing (except a nematode).

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I hunted around the rest of the slide, and then I found it:

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A single, solitary, prorocentrum dino, that was dead as a doornail. Didn't move, unlike the mass of them I had last week. Didn't even *twitch*.

HAHA!!!!
 
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