Dinos and SPS - unhappiness

[Jason Scalise]

Hello,
I am looking for some feedback on SPS corals (and tank in general) after battling a dino outbreak.
1 year old tank (112 gallon)....full parameters below.
Had a substantial dino outbreak/plague. Humbling but rolled with the punches as I knew that, being new to the hobby, there would be many punches.

source of outbreak was too low nutrients, I suspect..as they went to zero. Too aggressive hobbyist .
Dino's identified on microscope (Wife is PhD in plant diseases and teaches high school biology...so having a microscope around is 2nd nature here).
I was having trouble with Alk stability too....as new to the hobby. I think got my arms around that now.
treated dino outbreak with combination of elbow grease, increasing nutrients, reducing photo period, H202, adding competing bacteria, adding UV and also chemical warfare (DinoX).
It has been about a month now of dino free (or perhaps 98% free).

prior to dino outbreak, sps and other corals would encrust quickly and would grow with reasonable PE....but dino outbreak made tank awful and was getting worse despite trying to let it run its course and adding competition.

now with dino's essentially gone, corals took a nose dive starting a week after treatment and one by one were affected.
those include various bird nests, frog spawn, zoanth, ....nothing too complicated.
Also lost a conch, sand sifter starfish and brittle star and all snails.
I realize the chemical attack on the dinos could hinder/harm corals but, I followed instructions, did water changes after, ran (still run) carbon, etc.

I added one bird nest frag about a week ago just as a test and it did fine for 6 days. today when I looked at it, it was stone dead white.
I have no coral eater critters in my tank that I know of. 4 fish, snails and hermits.
I assumed that with the new frag die-off plus the other sps

I guess my question is: With a large dino outbreak and subsequent removal, do I have dino toxin in the tank that I can't detect? Am I missing something subtle or obvious?
I am ok to be patient but not sure what I should be looking for in terms of signs to reinstitute a frag addition campaign.

Thanks
Jason

Parameters:
1 year old 112G tank (Reefer 425max).
salinity 1.026 and very stable.
Alk fluctuates between 8.0-8.3 on Hanna reader.
Ca 480 and stable
Mag 1500+ (no dosing)
PO4 0.1 ppm (hanna)
Nitrate 4+ (Red Sea kit)
Dosing 2 part (ESV)
running carbon
do NOT run GFO
automatic water change about 1% per day.
RO/DI 0TDS
temp 78-79deg
par levels 75-150 depending on position in tank.
photo period 8 hours
very sufficient flow
standard sand bed
refugium in sump with macro algae and rubble.
quite reasonable pod production

 

[andrewey]

Hey Jason- couple of questions. Which species of Dino did you have? I saw you said you were running carbon- what is your schedule like for changing it out and how much were/are you using? I'll also page @taricha to the thread, he's one of the forum's experts on dinos

 

[Jason Scalise]

Hey Jason- couple of questions. Which species of Dino did you have? I saw you said you were running carbon- what is your schedule like for changing it out and how much were/are you using? I'll also page @taricha to the thread, he's one of the forum's experts on dinos

thanks for the reply.
Running about 1.25 cups of carbon (BRS Rox.0.8). Spilt between a reactor and some in a filter sock.
I change it every week.

2 species of dino's I believe: Ostreopsis (microscope ID) and I believe amphidinium on the sand bed. the amphididiun is/was small patches that look like cyano to naked eye but I believe it is not cyano. The ostreopsis was the largest culprit by volume at the worst of the outbreak.

 

[andrewey]

Are they both still present or were you able to reduce/eliminate the osteoporosis completely?

 

[Jason Scalise]

Are they both still present or were you able to reduce/eliminate the osteoporosis completely?

Ostreopsis appears to be 100% gone.

 

[dadnjesse]

Be careful with the Rox Carbon it's extra strong and can strip your nutrients.

 

[Jason Scalise]

for what it is worth, here is a pic of the dino that I was battling. I believed this to be ostreopsis

 

[Jason Scalise]

thanks for the warning.
chemically however, how does carbon strip (bind to) things like PO4 or Nitrates? I was not aware that it has that properties.
binds to larger proteins, toxins, etc.
but does it really strip out basic nutrients like PO4?

 

[dadnjesse]

I have run it in my tank without problems, however the LFS that I buy from warned me about it's strength.

 

[Dallascowboys16]

thanks for the warning.
chemically however, how does carbon strip (bind to) things like PO4 or Nitrates? I was not aware that it has that properties.
binds to larger proteins, toxins, etc.
but does it really strip out basic nutrients like PO4?

In my experience, carbon is capable of lowering PO4 levels, but typically doesn't totally strip it from the water. That's why people run GFO to handle phosphates rather than carbon. In my experience battling dinoflagellates, nothing helped more than halting water changes. It took a month or two of no water changes, but eventually it did the trick. I don't understand the exact mechanics, but I think it could be a dual cause since a lack of water changes drives the nitrates up a little bit which is known to help kill off dinoflagellates in low concentrations and it prevents the addition of more trace elements/silicates that Dinos seem to thrive on.

 

[Jason Scalise]

thanks.
Any thoughts on the coral reactions after the dino subsidence?
due to treatment? left over dino toxins? other factors?
I believe my parameters to be fine for coral growth.

 

[Beardo]

Hi Jason, I also battled dinos, though it took me a lot longer to defeat them. I found the dino-x to be very hard on the corals, especially sps, so you may be dealing with the aftermath of that.
I also experience a bout of declining coral health after defeating them as well. Something that helped me out was doing a couple of very large water changes. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 - 50% a couple days apart. Never really identified the cause, but the water changes helped turn things around.

 

[Johniejumbo]

I’m not a Dino expert. If you feel comfortable that the Dino are under control I would just give it a couple weeks and let the tank kinda balance out. Also just curious here but how is your coraline algae growth? I use coraline algae as an indicator for stony corals. If the coraline is growing great I feel comfortable adding stony corals.

 

[Jason Scalise]

Thanks. I agree on letting it settle down. That’s my main plan.

just thought that if perhaps an overload of “toxins”, that may have been why my bird nest frag died in less than a week (canary).
plus, all the corals were receding but thought perhaps they had just been zapped by the medication and were doomed. but the new addition made me concerned I was missing something.

my coraline was doing fine during Dino outbreak. But now has not returned. Perhaps too early

 

[taricha]

now with dino's essentially gone, corals took a nose dive starting a week after treatment and one by one were affected.
those include various bird nests, frog spawn, zoanth, ....nothing too complicated.
Also lost a conch, sand sifter starfish and brittle star and all snails.
I realize the chemical attack on the dinos could hinder/harm corals but, I followed instructions, did water changes after, ran (still run) carbon, etc.

I added one bird nest frag about a week ago just as a test and it did fine for 6 days. today when I looked at it, it was stone dead white.

This to me is the biggest ongoing problem to solve regarding dinos. We're pretty decent at getting rid of dinos, but we're pretty bad at protecting corals while doing so. Here's a few ideas on what might be going on generally - though some won't apply to your system specifically.

• Nutrient imbalance: because it's easier for many hobbyists to get their hands on NO3 source than PO4 - often they'll raise NO3 while PO4 stays zeroed (waiting on order to arrive etc). This type of imbalance is stressful for corals, and they don't handle it well.
• Similarly, a low PO4 reading is hard to budge upward (aragonite binding - luxury uptake by dinos etc), but a low NO3 is easy to raise. So even if adding both simultaneously, a harmful Low PO4/High NO3 can still occur. For this reason, I try to tell people to push up PO4 first, before adding very much NO3.
• Dino toxins in water: dead snails tell us that your outbreak was clearly toxic, but why doesn't running GAC work? It's been shown to absorb palytoxin-like compounds, which ostreopsis toxin is closely related to.
• Dino Toxins by contact: if dino cells - even a small number - are attaching directly to corals, then their mucus is too, and since both the cells and mucus are toxin-carriers, then GAC pulling toxins from the water may not do enough to protect the corals.
• "Dino"-X: there's nothing remotely dino-specific about dinoX. It's a strong algacide that even the product description implies may harm corals if they aren't protected by darkness during the application of the product.
  "Dino X should always be dosed in the evening or 1 hour AFTER main lighting has shut off. Photosynthesis of Zooanthellae algae is discontinued, ultimately allowing for optimal effect of Dino X Main lighting phase should be no longer than 6 hours daily."

This by beardo, if it can be done without allowing dinos to re-surge is probably a good move.

I also experience a bout of declining coral health after defeating them as well. Something that helped me out was doing a couple of very large water changes. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 - 50% a couple days apart. Never really identified the cause, but the water changes helped turn things around.

 

[Jason Scalise]

Thanks for your reply. The information is helpful.
In my case, I think simply stay in the course right now and following standard measures is about all I can do.
The only thing that perhaps I could have done in retrospect was a much larger water change (50-75% instead of my 25%)
The reason I did not do so was I was concerned that such massive changes would possibly give more ammunition to a resurgence of the dinos.

yes, I dosed the medication only in darkness and kept photo period To about three hours a day during that time.

I also have on hand supplemental liquid phosphate as yes, I did not want it to bottom out but it never seem to so I did not need to use.

I’ve since gone heavy on reintroducing beneficial bacteria so as to add competition and have been watching basic nutrients.

Not looking for a quick fix as I figured it would take several weeks to stabilize. All the same, also wanted to know if there’s something lurking in the water that I should be extracting my toxins.

thanks for your feedback as I think that’s helpful. I added a new cleanup crew last week and will be monitoring their health and feeding them specifically as I think the tank is pretty darn clean now. They may have little to clean up!

I might as well ask… You are not aware of a test (or how to test) for Dino toxins in the water, are you?

 

[taricha]

I might as well ask… You are not aware of a test (or how to test) for Dino toxins in the water, are you?

Not without a mass spectrometer. And one time we had a hobbyist with access to one and they didn't detect any.
A lot of times they just use mortality of inverts like brine shrimp as a measure of toxicity, so dead snails is actually almost as good a marker as what people report in published papers.

 

[xmjxflipx]

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