Dinoflagellates in Reef Aquariums: Identify and Rectify YOUR Tank's Problem!

what's going on reefers Blaine here as you can see back in the farm and today we're going to be discussing an issue we see in the reef hobby all across the nation all across the world we're going to be talking about dulet these are an issue that we see a ton of reef creepers actually get out of the hobby du to we're going to also be talking about how there's a ton of different ones that you need to be able to identify and then you can Rectify this is a huge issue in our reef tanks and we want to do what we do here at topshelf Aquatics by building you up helping you out and teaching in you ways you can help your reef tank become a successful reef at home we're going to get right into things get all about into dinos let's dive in to get where we are now where we're actually talking about dinos we need to understand the root of the problem how did we get there in the first place how did we get dinos into our reef tank and how can we help identify them and figure out how we can f fix them of course we need to identify what was the root cause of this problem some of the main contributing factors that can play into Dino outbreaks are the following new tank syndrome potentially an immature or lacking biodiversity in your new tank nutrient reduction tools such as organic carbon dosing excess biomedia in a tank algae filtration and gfo rarely is it ever going to be just one of these things that I just mentioned but I wanted to let you know excess nutrient control is really going to be one of the biggest reasons why we're going to see dyo outbreaks occur in our tanks obviously we've talked about the idea of being able to identify these dinos and that way you can get to the root of your issues obviously not every single one of us at home is going to have a microscope that we can utilize to be able to see exactly what species of dyo we're dealing with I want to let you know if you guys don't have the access to this kind of equipment if you're just trying to figure out how you can fix your dyo situation the best thing is not wait don't wait at all get right to it and what can you start do is you can start throwing everything at the wall with these dinos right you can start focusing on a blackout maybe utilization of UV phyto doing there's a lot of different things that you can do just by throwing it at the wall and trying to combat these problems before you're able to maybe identify them with a microscope or things like that obviously not every single one of us is going to have a farm set up like this going to have the ability to have access to all these smartmind Reef Keepers or just the ability to have access to a lot of high technology equipment now if you don't have the access to all those things what you can do though is be proactive and get right into the problem and don't wait all right we are here with Corey our farm manager here at topshelf Aquatics I want to say thank you Corey for hopping on with us absolutely talking about dinos as as I mentioned earlier you know talk a lot about the idea of you know misconception misidentification right and Cory's been someone that really has hammered this a lot in the farm and has told me a lot too you know that's the biggest thing with dinos that a lot of people aren't understanding is understanding there's so many you know genuses and different things that people are going to run into that you know if you don't really identify it's going to be hard to be able to understand and go through your problem right even make the problem worse right so what we're going to be doing is we're going to break them down we've got five that we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about the first one ustri opsis which is probably the most common in the aquarium hobby let's talk a little bit about that some of the ways you can identify it you know I've told everybody before you know having a microscope if you have the ability to get to that utilizing one of those what can you see to be able to identify them and what's some ways that we can kind of combat that right with ostreopsis it's definitely the one we see most commonly um it's also one of the easiest to identify under the microscope because it has a teardrop shaped shell to it um and they also have a specific type of movement that would almost looks like something spinning um when you look at them under the scope um unfortunately they're one of the more toxic varieties so some people do experience some big issues with that which is why when treating o ostreopsis it's always recommended to have carbon running on the system with whatever treatment you decide to go with and the most effective by far for this genus is using a UVC sterilizer I always recommend at least using a UV sterilizer that's at least one watt per 3 gallons of system volume um however the bigger the better and the bigger the quicker you're going to see that problem be eliminated some people do recommend actually Plumbing directly in and out of the actual affected display um while is this does definitely speed up the results you're going to get and eliminate the problem faster it's not absolutely needed um I know you mentioned it was toxic too in nature is that going to affect also your Cleanup Crew I know this is that is one of the things that um with Cleanup Crew it could you're definitely going to see snails be affected by it um some people even go as far as as soon as they have identified that ostreopsis that they'll go ahead and pull their Cleanup Crew um temporarily just to kind of save on any snail dusts obviously you don't want a bunch of snails dying in tank sure yeah absolutely okay well we'll keep on moving forward and we'll move on to our next Su let's start talking about proo Centrum proo Centrum love the name kind of an easier name to say I know we've been talking about all these names all week long I've been butchering them I'll probably continue to butcher them Cory's going to help me out with that but let's talk about Pros Centrum proo Centrum um so under microscope this Dino flaget almost looks like a coffee bean in a way um it shell has a kind of an indentation right on the top of it and a lot of times you'll actually see the nucleus of the cell depending on what stage it's in um and this one is a little trickier than ostreopsis to get rid of uh there's a lot of different methods people can use um a lot of people seem to experience this one as being one of the more nutrient sensitive ones okay it's one of the ones that'll typically show up when you get bottomed out nutrients and that's where people experience them so again with this one raising your nutrient levels as well as maybe even dosing a silicate based uh additive such as uh Spong Excel by bright wild Aquatics is a great one that way you encourage a competing Daton Bloom that'll help eliminate and out compete this uh this Dino flatulate okay and then you know we're just going to keep it rolling we've got them going the next one on our list it's two in part right we have the large and the small cell I'm going to go for it idium amphidinium there it is right there amphidinium yeah latin's fun it is and so you said the large cells the more common more common you're experience but the small cell is obviously one Dyno that we will see in some aquarium situations but it's the large cell is definitely the more of the common of the yes definitely more common um the small cell can sometimes be a little trickier to treat however what we've seen with the large cell um amphidinium it's really good to come at it with a multi-prong approach um UVC sterilizer can maybe help a little bit but it's not going to be an instant cure all like it would be with ostreopsis um really recommend um in addition to doing things like raising nutrient levels and dosing maybe a silicate to create a a competing Daton Bloom one of the things we've noticed in these past couple years um that people have really good luck with raising the temperature of their reef tank a tiny bit however this needs to be done very carefully and obviously with a a really trusted means of measuring temperature as many of the cheaper digital thermostats and things like that can be quite a few degrees off um we recommend don't going any higher than 83 and obviously doing this very slowly and watching all your tanks inhabitants and looking out for signs of stress most people see good effects when they hold a sustained temperature of 82 with getting rid of of the large cell and fibid denum gotcha and then would you recommend maybe like a degree a day kind of increase or over the and I I should have thrown this in there um that's identifying this one under the scope is a they have a somewhat a close shape to uh to proo Centum is the Coffee Bean however what you want to look for with this one a distinguishing feature is the opening of the flagella of this Dino flatulate some people say almost looks like a beak okay of a bird um and when you look at it from one angle and from the side you can almost see distinguished um I almost want to call it a Pac-Man um Pac-Man with a closed mouth um those are the identifying traits for the uh for Infinium gotcha and then we've worked our way through we're on our last one now kolia is the last one we're going to talk about I think it's not one that's super common but it's not as commonly experienced you know in the hobby I've only seen it a handful of times um it is a spherical-shaped dof flatulate so under a microscope its shell shape is you know very circular as opposed to ostreopsis which is more of a teardrop however when treating kolia uh it's really best to try to mirror uh the same treatment protocol as you would for uh ostreopsis which in UVC sterilizers are going to be your biggest asset in treating Kola um again bacterial supplements can help as well um but again with any dof Flaga it's important in my opinion to come at it with a multi-prong approach um we've always had good success with not just doing one thing it's always great to do two or three things at once to try to get rid of the problem where we see success for sure well Cory thank you so much you know OB ly being the farm manager here everyone watching from at home you know I know they appreciate everything you do for the hobby bringing all this amazing corals to us but want to say thank you again thanks for jumping on absolutely talking dinos and I'll let you get to it dinos can be an extremely interesting topic in our Reef aquariums and like I said earlier this is one of the biggest problems in the reef aquarium hobby that makes most people shut down their tanks here at topshelf Aquatics we want to provide you the proper knowledge and ways of treatment so you guys can maintain your reef tanks for long durations of a Time thank you again to Corey and everyone else here in the farm for helping out on the videos dropping in a bunch of information and being able to take care of these amazing corals that we provide to the entire United States I want to say thank you guys so much for tuning in if you guys have any extra questions regarding dinos drop them down in the comments below and we'll try to head you in the right direction if you have done so already be sure to like subscribe and hit the Bell notification so you don't miss out on any future uploads a [Music]