Kessil

What are these brown strings that are killing my corals?

rdriggett

rdriggett

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Hi all, I have been struggling with this unknown brown snotty slime that has killed several gonis for over a month. It seems to grow on frag racks/rocks then grow over dead coral until it envelopes it. It’s a bit demoralizing having a year old talk go downhill despite mostly stable Alk/Calc/Mag.

Does anyone know what this crap is? How can I fight it? I can get a microscope ID today.
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Dinos. Make sure you run a bunch of carbon. I'm not clear that dinos themselves hurt things, but dead dinos for sure do. I believe I read recently to toxin they are producing actually is palytoxin, oddly enough. Given that I'm also now pretty careful when dealing with dinos, because I believe I've had negative reactions to them (metallic mouth taste for one).
 
Dino’s!!! Ahhhh I just went through this. Try a black out, check to make sure your nitrate/phos levels didn’t get too low, 3 day black out, blow it off the corals daily, get a uv sterilizer. Microbacter7 can’t hurt and some healthy algae supplement like phytofeast. Good luck!
 
H2OPlayar said:
Feed more. Stir it up with your hand, and have a sock catch all of the loose gunk. Then pull the sock out and keep feeding more.
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Why feed more? Is that for the coral to survive while he deals with the dinos? Or does high nutrients affect dinos negatively?

V
 
CaseyP said:
The good news is you don't have dinos. The bad news is u have chryosphytes. What got rid of them for me was time, daily siphoning, and Dr. Tim's Waste Away.
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You can tell by looking at the scope? Nice eye!
Can you explain a bit more about what you think the waste away does/did to help get rid of these guys?
I’m guessing eliminate their food source?
 
Vincerama2 said:
Why feed more? Is that for the coral to survive while he deals with the dinos? Or does high nutrients affect dinos negatively?

V
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the weird theory is that dinos are bad at higher nutrient levels, which doesn't make sense. The somewhat more reasonable theory is that dinos get outcompeted by feeding more to let other things outcompete them for N+P, which also seems like a weird theory. The least weird (IMO) theory is that raising nutrients helps other things grow which then fight the dinos or lead to some other thing getting outcompeted for.

Generally I think no one knows, outside of the fact that dinos can live at low N+P while other things can't so it starts a bad chain of events.
 
Coral reefer said:
You can tell by looking at the scope? Nice eye!
Can you explain a bit more about what you think the waste away does/did to help get rid of these guys?
I’m guessing eliminate their food source?
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Familiar with them cus I had the same "wtf are those" moment when looking at a sample and not seeing anything that resembling common dinos.

When I had the outbreak my nitrate was at 3 and phosphate at 0.1. Tried the usual dino tricks like UV, raising nitrates to 10, and sucking them out, but they came back to the same proportions within days. No progress after over a month. 90% of them grew in lower flow areas and sand which is also where gunk and detritus tend to accumulate more. Read some folks having some success with Dr. Tim's Waste Away so gave it a shot. I'm not usually one to go straight to bottled cures. Heck I'm not even sure that was the cure, maybe it was time for the tank to rebalance. But two weeks after dosing and continuing daily siphoning, they grew back less and less until gone.

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Vincerama2 said:
Why feed more? Is that for the coral to survive while he deals with the dinos? Or does high nutrients affect dinos negatively?

V
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Dino's pop up when one of the nutrients gets low. High levels of food help combat that.

Also, barely anyone feeds enough. If there is enough microfauna, it outcompetes/eats the dinos
 
richiev said:
the weird theory is that dinos are bad at higher nutrient levels, which doesn't make sense. The somewhat more reasonable theory is that dinos get outcompeted by feeding more to let other things outcompete them for N+P, which also seems like a weird theory. The least weird (IMO) theory is that raising nutrients helps other things grow which then fight the dinos or lead to some other thing getting outcompeted for.

Generally I think no one knows, outside of the fact that dinos can live at low N+P while other things can't so it starts a bad chain of events.
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During my near decade (few months shy) I had the pleasure of working with Dr Eric Herny, a Phycologist with numerous postdocs. He loved to tell me a store of a researcher that was having dinos bloom in a solution that had zero silicate. He finally figured out they were getting a source from the glass itself.
 
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