Dinoflagellates

[Green Lantern]

I've been searching various board's archives for information on dinoflagellates. I've been battling this for about four months. Very sketchy information out there regarding cause and containment practice. Up until recently I've had no success. I've tried maintaining a pH of 8.4 or higher (difficult in the evening), MANY water changes/siphoning (neighbourhood of 400gal in two months) and fairly aggressive carbon use. What did work was turning the lights off but obviously this is not met with much approval from the rest of the photosynthetic critters. I've finally beat the chocking, smothering layer I've had and now just deal with a couple of small patches but am still running a reduced photo period (8 hours of 250W MH [Iwasaki]). I actually shut the lights off completely for five or six days and then slowly ramped them back up. I guess I'm looking for the experience of experienced hobbyists and what has worked for them.

155gal full reef
90gal sump
bullet 3 skimmer
2x250 Iwasaki 8 hours a day (usually 10)
4x110W IceCap off right now (usually 12hrs)
Mak 4 return
Ampmaster 3000 closed loop

Ca 390 to 410
Alk 11dKh
phosphates unreadable (but you know what that's worth)
78 - 82 F
.026
Tank is 1.25 years old


Any help would be appreciated

 

[Anonymous]

Turning the lights off did the trick for me, but not as long. A couple days was enough. A time or two they started to come back, and one day without lights was enough to discourage them.

 

[Anonymous]

I don't see it mentioned, so I have to ask: what is your water source?

 

[Anonymous]

how about feedings? could that possibly have anything to do with it? did you add any new livestock that may have caused an increased in the bioload and perhaps contributed to the outbreak?

 

[Green Lantern]

Dan, water source is Kent RO/DI HiS60GPD and all of the filters have been replaced recently (even the RO membrane).


CS, there have been no new additions to throw off the natural biological levels. Feedings are 1/2 cube of frozen and a pinch of flake daily. I've cut even this back to about half during the outbreak. Fish: yellow tang, coral beauty, orchid dottyback, pair of percs, pair of bangaii cardinals, pair of green chromis (Chromis virdis).

It's really amazing how resilient these sessile inverts are. At the worst point my carpet had lost all use of its nematocysts and was deflated almost completely. After the five days without lights it bleached almost 100% but within a day had regained it's nematocysts and began excepting food again. It's now expanding almost like normal. One zoanthid colony kept multiplying right through the worst of the outbreak while the others in the tank were barely surviving.

Thanks for your thoughts.