Dinoflagellates - dinos a possible cure!? Follow along and see!

[The Opinionated Reefer]

This is probably after the fact but can you get a vet to prescribe it?

Highly unlikely any vet would prescribe this for a fish tank in the UK. Certainly, not a family vet that usually deals with Dogs and pets like that.

The aquarium industry is completely overlooked in the UK, not a single thought was given about how Brexit or the current insanely high energy prices would affect it.

 

[Reefer911]

Highly unlikely any vet would prescribe this for a fish tank in the UK. Certainly, not a family vet that usually deals with Dogs and pets like that.

The aquarium industry is completely overlooked in the UK, not a single thought was given about how Brexit or the current insanely high energy prices would affect it.

The Pharma industry is highly over regulated IMO

Did Brexit actually happen? Seems like everyone would want the UK to control the UK rather than Brussels.

 

[The Opinionated Reefer]

The Pharma industry is highly over regulated IMO

Did Brexit actually happen? Seems like everyone would want the UK to control the UK rather than Brussels.

It happened and our trade with the EU has been severely restricted, prices on everything went up. We can no longer buy fish or corals or live rock from the EU. Before we could order corals direct from Germany as they have much better stock than us. We cant get corals from the USA either and attempting to bring them in would be a serious offense.

 

[Reefer911]

It happened and our trade with the EU has been severely restricted, prices on everything went up. We can no longer buy fish or corals or live rock from the EU. Before we could order corals direct from Germany as they have much better stock than us. We cant get corals from the USA either and attempting to bring them in would be a serious offense.

As unfortunate as that is, I'd still choose sovereignty, that is, if its actually being practiced.
Hope things work out for y'all in the hobby. I'm sure theres an underground trade but obviously, that isn't ideal.

 

[The Opinionated Reefer]

As unfortunate as that is, I'd still choose sovereignty, that is, if its actually being practiced.
Hope things work out for y'all in the hobby. I'm sure theres an underground trade but obviously, that isn't ideal.

Yeah, we always had sovereignty, it was just all about trade rules and regulations.

 

[ikeb30]

Hi, new to Reef2Reef but I have a question about dosing the metroplex in a reef tank, I currently have a 60 gallon cube and on a few of my fish I have a pest break out. I am just wondering from those who have had success dosing metro with corals in the tank if it will treat ich/velvet/brook? I ordered it off of Amazon and it should be delivering tomorrow. Honestly really bummed because the coral/ fish that I got new is from a trusted LFS that usually quarantines.

 

[Moe K]

THIS THREAD IS INSANE. I have read nearly 200 pages of it.

There is a story here and I think I might make a whole new thread after my findings are complete. This truly is like a snap shot in reefing history imo.

This is kind of how it went.

1. Dosing metro - Found to knock back dinos but mainly put them in a cyst state. They come back.

2. Dosing H2O2 - Works for a short term but can mess up your microbiome and is harsh on corals.

3. Micro Dosing Bleach - IMO this where the gold is at because it worked in quite a few tanks permanently. I also tried it myself so I will admit to being biased because it worked like a charm so far. It starts on page 70. Starting in 2016 until about 2018 people were arguing about its risks and effectiveness because it appeared to be super effective at killing dinos but high risk to fish. I have personally done the "safe" dose recommended here and I literally watch ostreo dinos lift and nearly melt away only seconds after my first dose. PLEASE DON'T DO THIS. There are fine details that need to be worked out to get this as safe as possible first. This method is what sparked my interest to see why this never went mainstream other than "bleach scary!". And make no mistake it is kind of scary.

4. Dosing Vibrant - People first started learning about vibrant and little did they know it was all a lie and now known to be an algaecide. Everyone thought it was some type of super aggressive bacteria that would magically clean your tank. It also caused a lot of problems and steered people more away from micro dosing bleach. They just kept getting dinos. Similar to metro it seemed to put them in a cyst state.

5. Dosing Dino X - It was the new product out there and claimed to be just for eliminating dinos. There appeared to be coral losses. It's effectiveness was not seen to be long term but that could be by not being diligent in following up with post treatments to feed the microbiome. It is also an algaecide. From my understanding it is hard to get algaecide chems out of your tank. - I could be wrong there.

6. Increasing Biodiversity and Nutrient Control - This is where they started learning that one of the safest methods was to just leave it alone and try to add pods, increase/decrease no3 or po4 (there was a debate on which way). Not much mention on phyto or diatoms as we do today. It worked for some but was a looooooong process as it still is today.

Close to the end of it they looped back to debating about the bleach method. Its highly effective but the risks are scary. High risk for fish and possibly nems but a lot of that was missing details. I only saw one person mention using the "safe" dose and his fish died. Later he confessed his nitrates and po4 were sky high and I suspect so was his ammonia but we will never know.
Also other questions that need answering still. Was it the brand of bleach or the rapid die off dino toxins and the recommendation of not running carbon at the start of dosing.
Some were getting triggered just by just mentioning it and spread more fear.

#6. Is the closest thing to what I see being the definitive method to beating dinos and in the safest way. It works (eventually). You can get this method from the dino facebook group with great support. The problem is you never know how long it will take. Ostreo involves expensive UV sterilizers fine tuning the flow and amphidinium involve pods, phyto, and diatom dosing to try and induce diatom blooms. I have seen people take a couple weeks to literally a couple years. That doesnt sound too appealing especially if you see no progress going on months and corals are dying.

There was so many mistakes page after page. So many details left out. Not one person thought to ask what brand bleach, whats on the label, are their additives? The only people that I saw that it did not work for were people that used the wrong recommended "safe" dose, those that used it for very short periods (only 1 to 3 days), and those very near the end of this thread who I am not even sure had dinos as barely anyone used a microscope to identify what they had. Could have been trying to kill diatoms mistaken as amphidinium?

I am not recommending bleach (yet) but stating from this thread it appeared to be the most effective treatment. I really want to make my own thread solely about the bleach treatment as I have just gone through it but it is something very scary to recommend as a new reefer could easily wipe out their tanks. Especially people who do not pay close attention to details. For me personally it has not affected (possibly improved) my microbiome. I have been monitoring my sand with a scope and soon to send aquabiomics tests. I used bleach disinfected 7.5% which also has chloromax with no issues.

There is so much we didn't know when they were experimenting with bleach. My driving factor to read through so much of this looooong thread was to see where it went wrong. Really it seems to be a bit of fear mongering, lack of data and details, miscommunication, misleading fraudulent products (VIBRANT!) and then just burn out. Also the OP has disappeared long ago and hope they are OK.

This was a total soap opera.

 

[taricha]

From my perspective, I can't recommend bleach under any circumstance when there are other oxidizers with much less risk that have almost the same upside.
I'm interested in your observations from a curiosity perspective, and we can talk about what bleach reacts with in saltwater and in what order.

 

[Moe K]

From my perspective, I can't recommend bleach under any circumstance when there are other oxidizers with much less risk that have almost the same upside.
I'm interested in your observations from a curiosity perspective, and we can talk about what bleach reacts with in saltwater and in what order.

I will link some videos and photos as I documented lots of the progress. Today marks 7 days exactly since my first dose. I am still in the fight against amphidinium but it looks like the diatoms are out competing it. This seems to have a been very controversial method and I am still even now hesitant to recommend it or even make this reply. For all I know one day it could all turn around go south again real fast. 7 days is a short time frame in a dino fight but it appears a lot has happened. I can see why Twilliard did not want to give a recommended dose and did it at his own risk. He never recommended it but I think it merits further investigation. It can be a fine line between too much and too little.

80g Mixed reef with 40g breeder diy sump. Mainly Torch Corals and Acropora.
Alk 8.5
Cal 400
Mag 1400
Nitrate ~ 10ppm
Po4 ~ 0.10ppm
Ph ~ 8.3 day / 8.05 night

Dosing All for Reef and Kalkwasser. No macro algae. Red Sea filter roller. Curve 7 skimmer. Lots of maxspect biospheres and siporax in the sump. Custom 3d printed frag scape along with a couple pieces of dry rock and special grade dry sand.

My issue with dinos first started appearing a couple of weeks after dosing brightwell Razor in an attempt to fight bubble algae.

This is what it looked like at its worst and the day I decided to chance it. Dinos started to appear on corals and couldnt stand for that. Also a wrasse had strings stuck to him. The first dose was half the recommended safe dose just to see if there is any issues with fish. With in seconds I noticed the dinos lifting and entering the water column. My reef mat started going on overtime.


Here you can see the extent of the dinos better throughout the display. I then started bubble scrubbing as I was freaking out about all the dinos flying everywhere.


Then on the 2nd day I figured I should probably just do a water change and suck out as much dinos as possible to reduce the risk of toxins. It was just a light skim of the sand. I did not clean the scape at all. It looked like I went through a 3 day black out. All fish were fine the entire time. Photo was next day after wc.

Now I am on the 7th day of everyday dosing bleach. The first day I did half the "safe" dose. The first 3 days I ran skimmer and 2 bags of carbon just in case. By the 4th day I figured I can let the bleach dig in a little harder and turned my skimmer off for several hours after dosing and I removed the carbon fully. I did notice then my flame tang freak out a little after the dose but is back out and grazing in minutes.

Here you can see during the first 4 days my reef mat was pulling double time and by the 5th day back to normal.

Honestly the coral have never looked better. Polyp extension appears to be at its peak. I will mention I have been dosing nightly (more than recommended) prodibio biodigest. I also dosed pods a few days before I started the bleach and also dosing a little bit of live phyto nightly (dinos were still getting worse during that time). Another thing I did was dose heavy some silicates in my ATO to give a constant feed of it to induce a diatom bloom to fight the amphidinium.

Here is a photo of the tank today as I let the glass get dirty and the diatoms run loose. I have been checking the sand under a scope. Still amphidinium but a lot more diverse in other organisms too.

Here is what a sample of my sand looked like under the scope taken from the darkest areas. Still LCA but diatoms are moving in which is good news. I plan to continue this route until I can find near zero LCA on a slide.


Lastly here is just a clip of what my baby acros look like 30 minutes to an hour after dosing bleach.


This is just my tank and obviously many members did not have the same results. What makes my tank different? Of course my scape is different so could it be less detritus is safer and if in that case premeasures can be taken to reduce that before treatments. Was it the brand of bleach? Was it my dosing methods? My water chemistry? Ph? These are just some of the questions that need investigations. What I do know is if I just had ostreo than this fight may have been near over. It ripped that stuff a new A hole. The microbiome seems unaffected as far as I can tell and really looks like it improved quite a bit. I even monitored ammonia with no change. As far as I can tell dinos just hate bleach and at the right dose can give a chance for all the other micro-organisms to make a come back.

I can keep you updated here as I also know how this hobby goes and I may be excited for nothing. That would be sad. Im just hoping that this gave the best edge in clearing the slate to implemented the new methods to finish off the harder to get rid of amphidinium.

 

[Lasse]

As @taricha mentioned before - bleach (active chlorine or similar species) works through oxidation in the acute "killing" phase. When the discussion about using bleach for whatever use bump back now and when - its always the acute toxicity that the discussion focus on.

However - In addition to acute toxicity - there are other factors that must be taken into account in the assessments of whether it is dangerous or harmless to use substances containing active chlorine in one form or another in an aquatic environment.

Back in the days - one of Sweden´s most important industries - the pulp mills use bleach in order to archive white pulp use bleach in huge quantities. This bleach was produced mostly with help of mercury that create huge damage in the aquatic environment (the Minamata catastrophe back in 1956 ) - and also in agriculture through the use of mercury treated seed (Iraq in the early 1970:ties). The mercury used to treat seed with was a special form - methylmercury and a group of swedish scientists succeed 1967 to prove that the mercury used in the production of bleach (by the way - inorganic and not harmful for animals) was converted into dangerous organic methylmercury by aerobic bacteria in both fresh and salt water (Minimata).

Because that methylmercury is an organic form of mercury (fat soluble) it will be stored in fat in an attempt to detoxify the compound but it will also be bioaccumulated.

Why this on mercury - its chlorine we talking about here - but they are connected in at least two ways - when active chlorine (bleach) oxidize organic matter - organochlorines are formed and in an aquatic environment - bacteria (in this case mostly anaerobic bacteria) will form metabolites that can be very toxic.

Back around 1940 a new insecticide was developed - DDT - and it is an organic chlorine product - and in 1962 the public gets informed how dangerous this was in the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

Back in the 80:ties It was clear that even if the bleach used in the swedish pulp industry was not produced with help of mercury - it was showed that very toxic substances of organochlorines origin was found in the sewage from Swedish paper mills with chlorine bleaching and also a metabolite forming in the the fiber banks outside many Swedish paper mills, This studies lead to a development of chlorine free bleaching of pulp in the swedish paper industry. These studies was done with help of Zebra fish and their fry development.

There is also some fish disease with link to total content of organic chlorine - the M74 syndrome in the Baltic and the Swim-up syndrome of salmonids in the Great Lakes. In both these "diseases" treatment with vitamin B1 "cure" the disease and some authors have linked this disease to low vitamin B1 content in their prey. But vitamin B1 is also an antioxidant and it has been showed that residue chlorine in the cooking water can cleave vitamin B1.

As I said before - organochlorine bounds to the fat and if bounded fat is consumed (as in the yolk sac) the bounded organochlorines will be released and they are active radicals

My concern with using chlorine based bleach has not with acute toxic to do - it has with bioaccumulation in fats to do and the total load of organochlorines to do

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Moe K]

Please correct me if I am wrong. From what I understand you are saying is that organochlorines can build up in the bacteria. When they die this can be a problem later down the road as they release them back into the water later. Is that correct?

If so than the difference may still have been a dosing error on many of the users in that possibly they either had a much higher turn over rate of their beneficial bacteria or they steadily dosed until they hit a tipping point and killed off much of the bacteria by the bleach dosing itself.
Then releasing a higher toxic form of chlorines --->organochlorines?

Again if my understanding is right would carbon filtration alone not be able to absorb any released organochlorines? Especially with such small doses considering this stuff is used in washing machines at much larger doses then dumped into the drain.

Thank your for your reply.

 

[Lasse]

Please correct me if I am wrong. From what I understand you are saying is that organochlorines can build up in the bacteria. When they die this can be a problem later down the road as they release them back into the water later. Is that correct?

If so than the difference may still have been a dosing error on many of the users in that possibly they either had a much higher turn over rate of their beneficial bacteria or they steadily dosed until they hit a tipping point and killed off much of the bacteria by the bleach dosing itself.
Then releasing a higher toxic form of chlorines --->organochlorines?

Again if my understanding is right would carbon filtration alone not be able to absorb any released organochlorines? Especially with such small doses considering this stuff is used in washing machines at much larger doses then dumped into the drain.

Thank your for your reply.

Sorry - if I was unclear

Because that organochlorines are fat soluble and fat loving (they are"Lipophilic") they will concentrate and and penetrate into fat tissue (fish, birds, bacteria and all other organic forms) They will concentrate in the most fattest part of an organism there they normally do no harm but released in huge numbers if the fat is consumed. However - different organisms react different to different organochlorines and if as an example a bacteria meet an organochlorine that is very toxic for the bacteria itself - it can try to convert this organochlorine to a lesser toxic substance for that bacteria - a metabolite. This metabolite may be less toxic for this bacteria but more toxic for another organism. Hence the example with mercury. Pure mercury is rather untoxic for us but highly toxic for many bacteria and mold. However some bacteria has the ability to process the metallic mercury into Methylmercury. Methylmercury is very toxic to us and it is also lipophilic which means that it seek itself int fat and concentrate in the fat. Fish eat copepods containing tiny amount of methylmercury - can´t release back that methylmercury - instead is stored in the fat of the fish. a fat fish like herring eat a lot of small copepods and can store high amount of methylmercury and when a salmon eat that herring - the concentration gets higher in the salmon and we eat the salmon and it concentrate further on.

Its the same with organochlorines - fish store them, we store them but bacteria both store them and some bacteria can transform them into other organochlorines that can be much more toxic for other organisms like fish or us. When you have get an organochlorine compound into you aquarium - you will not get rid of it - it will follow the food chain and concentrate in your organisms and there is also a risk that world champions of adaption (bacteria) can transform them to a more toxic form for other organism than themselves.

For safety reasons - I try to avoid all forms of active chlorine into my aquarium

Sincerely Lasse

 

[taricha]

Back in the days...

Lasse I didn't know where you were going with this, but nice story and helpful explanation.

 

[Lasse]

Lasse I didn't know where you were going with this, but nice story and helpful explanation.

I hope it can explain some concern about the hazard with organochlorines in the environment and aquariums

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Moe K]

Thank you.

I could see the argument against it for a scenario where it is recommended as a permanent maintenance dose but as a single treatment I still think it should be further investigated. More as a last resort for when dinos get to a point that livestock is at risk. I see the point that chlorine dosing has the risk of producing organochlorines but you are guaranteed to have more toxins produced by rapid growth of certain dino.

I still don't see why the method should be completely dismissed because of a few reasons.
1. My results in one week have shown that it is possible to near eliminate ostreo type at a rapid rate.
2. Monitoring my ammonia, nitrate, an po4 it appears my nitrogen cycle is unchanged hinting that my biofiltration is still in tact near original levels. I did forget to mention I still need to continually dose nitrate and po4 to maintain elevated numbers.
3. Uptake of of calcium, alk, mag is still at a steady rate along with signs of continuing coral growth on both lps and sps. In observation in less than an hour after dosing polyp extension is increased.
4. I continue to see build up of biofilms on the glass and substrate. All clean up crew is actually more active and I am also monitoring at night my pod population and it does appear to be continuing to grow.
5. There is at least one person in this thread that claimed to have dosed for well over 3 months consistently without the loss of any animals.

Again the key here is finding the right dose and the right product. Then finding ways to reduce the risks and potential fatalities that others have witnessed. We have also recently been moving rapidly in better understanding our microbiome and trying to find new way to manipulate it to our benefit. IMO opinion this is as good as a time as any to revisit this possible treatment and try to better understand the risks or rewards.

Another argument is if chlorine is so dangerous (which I am sure it is at high amounts) how are we being let to practically bathe in the stuff. I am unfortunate enough to live in the area where the city water is treated with chlorine/chloramines. I can literally smell it coming out of the kitchen sink. Because of this I had to install a chloramine carbon filter. The chloramine filter on my rodi unit could or could not matter in the key to this whole issue but should be noted sorry I forgot to mention. Again along with practically bathing in this stuff we are also dumping bleach products in mass down our drains. I am not arguing this is Ok at all but how are we allowed to release so much chlorine into the environment without huge ecological devastation beyond what we see today. Here we are talking about micro dosing near only drops in 10s of gallons in a closed system that could also be removed or neutralized by mechanical filtration or h2o2.

Here is another old thread from reefcentral and it appears they were debating its use on pathogens. They seemed to be debating it as a long term dosing alternative. The mention of Bob Stark the owner of ESV seems to have investigated this method with positive results. I am not sure if he is in here but maybe he could chime in and possibly found more long term negative effects. https://www.reefcentral.com/forums/...skWtn4WUCRLyLOfYO0LoxD2VoTkUD_a2#post25176422

 

[taricha]

@Moe K here's some things I know and some things I don't know that make me not a fan of bleach in saltwater.
There are things that bleach reacts with quickly: ammonia instantly, amino acids in seconds, proteins a little slower. Other organics would be slower. Direct killing of cells, decoloring yellowing compounds all would be slower.

You can quantify how much chlorine gets used up in say ~5 min in the water. This is a measure called chlorine demand, and it can be used in some contexts to quantify water quality. This number varies in my tank during a day depending on when and how much I feed, or how recently I changed GAC.

So what happens if the amount of bleach dosed to one tank "a safe dose" is dosed to a different tank with lower levels of ammonia/ amines/ proteins?
It'll stick around as active chlorine until it finds another target.
(Even experiencing a little bit of chlorine gas in a room makes me hesitant to subject fish/livestock to any level of reactive chlorine in water - "safe dose" or not)
So unknowns...
I know what happens to bleach +ammonia, chloramines are well understood in modern water treatment, but chlorinated amines and chlorinated proteins start going more into the complicated areas that @Lasse posts are about.
Other unknowns: how can we estimate the chlorine demand in your tank when you are also adding phyto and bacterial products. Also All For Reef - is formate reactive with bleach? I think it is.
And this is part of my gripe with bleach. The universe of stuff it can react with is so broad that it makes predictions and thus "safe effective doses" really hard to predict.

 

[Lasse]

I have in person seen the damage caused to Zebra fish larvae and fry when they parents was exposed to waste water from a paper pulp industry during only a couple of weeks before spawning. Also from organochlorine metabolites produced from fiber banks outside one of the largest pulp industries in Sweden. I was working for more than half a year at the end of the eighties as a fish keeper and laboratory assistant in a large-scale investigation on reproduction disturbances in connection with emissions from ta pulp industry that used chlorine bleaching. That experience was enough for me and I decided to never use active chlorine in any form in my household.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Moe K]

Well I guess I will leave it at that and just accept I avoided a disaster.

Still think it should be further investigated.

 

[taricha]

Well I guess I will leave it at that and just accept I avoided a disaster.

Still think it should be further investigated.

I'm not trying to shut you down. I want too know if bleach works for you against your sandbed nuisances, but not because I think bleach is a potential hobby-wide tool.
Here's my perspective.
I'd like to see if you eventually knock out the sandbed dinos with this bleach regimen, and then can we trade out the bleach for a less nasty oxidizer and get similar results?
Ozone? Peroxide (that road is well- traveled. If it were a high percentage play, we'd already know by now.) Lasse uses an oxydator that is peroxide based and might disagree that it's actually a game changer for nuisance algae. Permanganate?
Anyway,
If you measured the ORP that you get from your bleach regimen, and matched that with O3, or another oxidizer (not h2o2) would you get similar result?
Is the nastiness of bleach actually required for the positive results, or can we trade out and get similar results with a more forgiving oxidizer?

 

[Moe K]

I can not find any trace of the stringy ostreo dinos. That was virtually all gone by the 3rd day which I would think is pretty impressive itself.

LCA is nasty stuff and it appears to be hanging in there as I see darker and darker spots in the sand bed. I keep pulling sample expecting to be over run with LCA but am continuing to see more diatoms out compete them yet they do appear lively.

My process now is to continue dosing bleach carefully twice a day. Continue to put silicates in my top off water to continue a steady supply for the diatoms. Phyto about every other night into the sump. I am waiting on larger amphipods to get delivered some time this week hopefully.

I am just not sure how to gauge the progress on the sand as I have no experience watching diatoms out compete dinos before this.

I have 2 issues with ozone and h2o2. First ozone being very costly to set up. Also from what I have read ozone can deplete rapidly and can not stay in the water column nearly as long as bleach. I read in another thread that bleach can have near the same effects on orp as ozone. Unfortunately I do not have an orp meter. H202 I like to stay away from as I have always had issues with it and coral. It just seems harsh on them especially sps. The bleach I am witnessing the opposite effect on the corals. There may be something to the part about it can suppress the gram negative bacteria ?