Fighting Dinoflagellates in 2020 🤓 (Amphidinium Dinoflagellates) 

Amphidinium Dinoflagellates, that is what I have. In order to beat this stubborn specie of dino, I am taking the following steps: Raise NO3 to 10 - 20 ppm, maintain PO4 to .1 - .15 ppm, dose Silica, Bacteria blend (Microbacter7), and Phytoplankton (Reef Nutrition Phyto Feast Live). IMHO those are probably making the most impact, on the side I do run Green Killing Machine UV once in awhile, pull skimmer cup whenever I cannot maintain the higher nutrient level (but keep running the skimmer for aeration, huge thanks Daniel for this tip among others ones, I was just shutting the skimmer off), pulled Chaeto from refugium (also to maintain higher nutrient level), run a 1 Micron filter sock, and adding Reef Enhance. The main regiment has been going on for 3-4 weeks, things seems to be going in the right direction - tune in for the next few weeks to see if this is the right way to go. I am currently contemplating a 5 days black out, slightly skeptical due to the nature of Amphidinium but it does not hurt to try and weaken the dino. If I end up going this route, you will see it in a future video with the result. Here are some fantastic sources for battling the different types of dino, like Amphidinium, Ostreopsis, Prorocentrum... etc: First, huge thanks to Daniel (@dnyceli on Instagram), he has been an invaluable reference during my current battle with Dino, I learned a lot in regards to different treatments as well as overall tank husbandry, thank you! 🙏 Dinoflagellate Identification Guide on R2R (Excellent guide by Jonathan Begnaud [taricha]) www.reef2reef.com/threads/dinoflagellate-identification-guide.671466/ Dinoflagellates - Are You Tired Of Battling Altogether? (~500 pages Dino fighting thread on R2R:) www.reef2reef.com/threads/dinoflagellates-%E2%80%93-are-you-tired-of-battling-altogether.293318/ Amphidinium Dinoflagellate Treatment Methods on R2R: www.reef2reef.com/threads/amphidinium-dinoflagellate-treatment-methods.365850/ Dinoflagellates in the Reef Tank - What, Why, and How? (A Transgenic World by Chris) atransgenicworld.blogspot.com/2018/05/dinoflagellates-in-reef-tank-what-why.html Timestamps: 0:00 TL;DR on what I am doing to fight Amphidinium Dinoflagellate 3:53 Identifying dino under a microscope (Amphidinium) 5:38 Treatment plan for Amphidinium dinoflagellate in my reef tank 9:59 20% off Merch Sales! 12:15 Dosing Phytoplankton for bio diversity (Reef Nutrition Phyto Feast Live) 14:36 Dosing Silica to induce diatom bloom (Brightwell SpongExcel) 19:44 Trying out Reef Enhance 21:48 Two weeks update - Cyano, Diatom coming in 27:13 KiZHXlo Monocular Microscope 40X-1600X 28:29 Lyretail Anthias transitioned to male, and got super mean! 30:17 4 weeks update - Slow but steady wins the race? Everything in the Inappropriate Reefer teespring store (teespring.com/stores/inappropriatereefer) is 20% off for the next 6 days, use the code "XMAS2020" for the discount - thank you for supporting the channel! Items used in this video on Amazon: Carson MicroFlip 100x-250x Pocket Microscope (amzn.to/3auXxcD) KiZHXlo Monocular Microscope 40X-1600X (amzn.to/2WK9mUB) Brightwell NeoNitro for Nitrate Dosing (amzn.to/2LTHbAh) Brightwell MicroBacter7 (amzn.to/2WtIgRr) Brightwell SpongExcel for Silica Dosing (amzn.to/37y68JW) Long Gloves - 26" (amzn.to/3mFeVxU) Innovative Marine Minimax Pro Series Media Reactor for GFO (amzn.to/34rzFCT) - Public Domain Music by various artists from SoundCloud, many thanks! - Instagram: @inappropriatereefer Email: inappropriatereefer@gmail.com

I love your energy, and the good things you're doing for the hobby, half the battle is knowledge and it's people like you putting their experiences out there that help other people gain the knowledge they need. Much love!

Man its nice to be able to watch these videos

A nice long video! Thanks IR!

Emily is so funny and that shirt design is so awesome!

Great video as always!

Never seen someone so happy to see algae ;) That fish transformation is impressive! That was a good video, a lot of documentation, well done!

Heyy man all your videos inspire me to be the best reefer that I can and you have taught me so much in this hobby thx man :)

Now my Sunday is complete! 👍🏽

you two are the best

Dino flatulence?! Haha jk this is entertaining

Not sure which strain of dyno was in my tank but I had great success dosing Vibrant. Good luck! Love the content... keep it up!

Hi, I'm from Singapore. I have been watching your video every since last year before I embarking to reef hobbyists till now. I am great that I'm not alone fighting this reef COVID alone.I have the same Amphidinium & Ostreopsis dinoflagellates outbreak for 4weeks now. I have raise no3 to 10ppm and po4 1.0 a raised temperature to 82 degrees for the first 1week. the huge Amphidinium Dinoflaggellates deceased * Ostreopsis and I believed it releasing toxin to killed all my invert, fishes and a huge amount of corals are gone! I would recommend putting more of carbon to prevent the dino from releasing the toxin after they die off. I cant wait for your next video!

I battled dinos a few months ago and I don’t envy you. Looks like you’ve got on top of it though And I’m sure you will kick its ass!

What a way to end 2020 🙈🤣 and possible start 2021🙈 wish you good success 💪

Love the reef squad tee shirt and love your channel

Everytime you said Dino flatulence I took a shot. Now I’m in the ER waiting for the doctor to pump my stomach...

Welcome to the fight! Me and amph large cell have been friends for 9 months. They disappeared after I pulled sand from my nano but when I transferred to an upgrade with sand they came right back. They are always there just waiting for the right conditions. I have come to terms that it may just be a matter of time and vigilance for stable parameters.

pinky filter pad waving on a clip in the display plus no water change for a month worked wonders for me, that's all it took!

Great video Great family i also had the same problem at one point, I finally beat it took me about 2months did pretty much the same thing but I did vacuum the sand bed , not sure if it helped, change my water change schedule from weekly to by weekly and did them in the afternoon when the dyno was at the suffice good luck happy reefing

How oddly appropriate. I am currently battling Dino (and an Aiptasia outbreak, get more Aiptasia X today or tomorrow in mail, and get Berghia's either first week of January or second week of January) as well. And I have a pretty good idea of what caused it. Last time I changed my water (prior to last Friday when I did a water change and cleaning due to all this Dino outbreak), I added Chemipure Blue. Unfortunately, I think I added too much, cause my nitrates and phosphates (which were normally around 5 to 10 ppm for Nitrate, and around .1ppm for Phospate) plummeted to zero causing the outbreak. I have now taken out the Chemipure Blue and am slowly trying to get parameter back to a better range (I don't want to rush things only to cause a mass extinction level event in the tank). I also have a suspicion that it was using the Chemipure Blue in prior months that resulted in my Hammers and Frogspawn dying due to nutrient levels dropping (although not as bad as this past time, obviously). Hopefully things get better in a few weeks. Probably gonna do like you and dose Microbacter7 as well as feed a little more often, add some phytoplankton, pods, and sacrifice some bulls to Poseidon for salvation.

I just threw in the Dr.Tim’s gel packs and it seemed to temporarily taken care of my sand bed!!

Hi you should try and get a hold of some trochus snails. They work harder than Astreas and they can flip themselves over! Love your tank!!

I was dealing with the same thing today before this video popped up!!! 🤞

Five years of dinoflagellates was beat with raising my temp from 79 to 81.

no popcorn enjoyed anyway ...realy great video ✌i wish you luck 🤞 Greetings Pat

I don't know if you'll read this but i beat all my algae issues taking the sand out slowly and i never had the problem again. Dinos, gha, bubble and cyano. No more coral death either, life is great!

What app are you using? Thanks for the video!

How do you manage to test every day? I'm so bad at testing even with a hanna :D

Great video as always. Isn't manual remove the first best course of action? I'd skim the surface of the sand.

Hi did you get your high fins mated or you did as the Yasha's also are those neon gobies in the water column? Good luck with the Dinos!

Keep fighting the good fight brother pulling for you. I’m surprised since you know Travis that you did not send some of your dinos off to him there’s been a lot of people that have been very successful following his recommendations and beating it. Looking at your sand I am reminded why I only do Bare bottom. I love sand but it gets so ugly so fast. Since your particular strain of Dino’s hides in the sand at night have you ever thought of siphoning the hell out of the sand when the lights are out

Ok, you get the “notifications set to all” lol

would you still find the hanna checker to be accurate?

i don't tell my wife about the filter socks in the washing machine either

Just subbed to your channel, did you really just clamp that microscope to your phone?! That's awesome 👍

You're way too happy playing mad scientist lol. I might sign up for some marine biology classes to keep up!

Fun video, But check out the bubbles on the glass in the end of the video... i have dinoflagellates the kind that floats.. and these bubbles were the first sign for me...

your 0.16ppm of po4 and 3ppm of no3 you considered as low nutreints?

Do I still dose my all for reef when doing a blackout?

What type of silica do you use ? Or do you have a link for the one you use please and thank you

how do you film your microscope? is there some sort of attachment?

In my experience I’ve always gotten dinos from over feeding the tank and having food particulates for the dinos to feed on (I think there’s a lot of confusion between nutrients phos/nitrate and food particulates in the water column/in the rock work) I had Ostreopsis dinos which they have an actual mouth that can consume food particulates I change filter socks daily max 3 days as BRS showed in a video (after 3 days food has broken down and socks are no longer much use) Feed fish what they will consume and same for corals Filter and skim heavy and when needed carbon dose I like to run my nutrients .03 like chris at ACI aquaculture I feel having .1 phosphates is just opening up to many doors to allow cyano and Dinos to come in as well as algea growth I noticed in your older videos you lost some sps frags no surprise I had the same issue with my tank as soon as my water got to dirty from over feeding (sps love pristine water) There’s a lot of talk about corals needing high nutrients but I’ve seen the best polyp extension when I set up brand new tank with cycled rock and crystal clean water I hope this info helps someone because when I first got into reefing I couldn’t figure out which way to go! I also notice the best growth in clean water (when I did run a high nutrient/dirty tank everything seemed to grow slow/stunted I have some corals who have been the same size for a year till i changed things up!

I posted in your last video that was dinos and not diatoms. GL with that species... Took me almost 9 months. The thing that worked for me was actually not dosing or doing anything just giving it time and keeping the big three stable with good nutrient levels. Adding silica, bacteria, light schedule changes, blackouts, uv, live rock enhance, all that other junk made things worse. Within 2 months of doing nothing but routine maintenance keeping the big three super stable and having good levels of nutrients Dino started to fade away and cyano came into the picture for almost another month to 2 months for cyano. Over the next 3 months I'd have very small breakouts of Dino that lasted a couple of days before it was quickly overtaken by cyano. I have not seen any dinos in the tank for almost 10 months now. At the worst the dinos were actually growing on the fins of all the fish, walls sand rocks pumps wires overflow everything was covered in it. They were even growing in my sump without light clear strands everywhere. Sometimes less is more. Good luck however with adding all that junk.

Nice video! Could you siphon them through a UV sterilizer?

What's that app you're using to record the tests?

I tried to treat my tank with hydrogen peroxide and now everything except the fish and crabs are PISSED. Snails barely moving (but alive), and all corals look extremely sad (but again, not dead). On the plus side, no more dinos😆 Now I’ve got a whole tank to nurse back to health over the coming few months, yay Update: everything but the fish, snails and crabs died 🤦‍♂️ Update 2: removed all the dead corals and left the tank with just the rock and the fish for several months afterward. Have stuck to softies and anemones since, stony corals are too much of a PITA to maintain👍 Also I’m convinced the thing that actually solved my dino issue was removing the Chemipure Blue I was using. Don’t use hydrogen peroxide, it’s better to do nothing than nuke your tank with that stuff.

Dinos do not like the temp to be between 82 and 83. I have my high alarm set to 83, and the basic temp set to 82.

Ever try drill free? I’m having major tank troubles

I also got Dino’s after dosing vibrant

Hi I just finished beating dinos!!!!!

I had 6 months of Ostreopsis in my frag tank and finally beat it with UV (direct in tank) and OceanMajik Phyto. Weirdly my display tank plumbed together never got dinos and had 100 lbs of real live rock. I read that live rock is a key against dinos because of its biodiversity.

I just defeated a nasty case of brown Dino. I let my nitrates get to zero by using AF pro bio s. I dosed neonitro until my nitrates hit 10+ and dosed microbacter7 every night. It started working faster when dosed at 1.5 the recommended dose. I also siphoned the dinos twice a day by using a separate filter sock.

Ur boy was all syked up for day 3 😆

Nice video. Thanks for sharing. My tank is just 3 months old, but seems like it got dinos as well. Not sure tho. Don't have microscope... yet. 1 question tho: what kind of app you use to keep track of your water parameters? I saw briefly it has some nice graphics and diagrams - mind sharing? Thanks again and keep us updated.

Only advice I can give a reefer from a reefer is your tank is young and the reef just have to age. All those stages are just a part of a healthy reef. Ps would’ve tried hard manual removal followed by black out for a few days 1st. By the way Silica scares me in the tank.

Red sea slime remover worked awesome for me

You also have ostreopsis. Those cells that have a beak and rotate on their axis is ostreopsis. You might wanna run uv too

Raise your temperature to 80-83f that helps also

I have a black snotty looking one do you know whot dineo it is

Since you have a microscope, why don’t you put a drop in the slide to test if it works first before dosing i to your main tank?

Please never appologize for your pronunciation....your accent is petfectly you 😁

I’m getting that shirt!

Pretty sure everyone battles algae and bacteria of some form or another. Just part of the hobby. Wondering though how his SPS is holding up with all these nutrients in the water though?

My kids microscope kit says it starts at 300 though and up to 2400 I believe if I change the lense. It is not very focosed though. What is it you are sampling? Is it just the water? I took some off the side wall and covered it with a cover slip a nd it looks nothing like what you have or what I see people post, so then I tried with water and didnt really see anything. I am so confused because It is in both my tanks! The small tank has it growing fast and tall or rocks with bubbles so looks like dinos. The sample of what I pulled off the rock looks like a big glob of algae with just bumps and ridges ect. I dont see any separation or movement and nothing in just water. WTF? Its has killed several corals and my sand is totally stained red in one tank that had it the longest but I have went 3 weeks now with no waterchange since it seemed to make it worse so I was just waiting for a id and a tretment plan. I tried chemiclean with no success It used to be slimy and hard to get up now its just kind of dusty with out the slime and clumping together when I tried to vacum out I had to use a turkey baster, to get out small sections at a time. I could probably vacuum it up noow. My phosphates have dropped to 0.04 since I added chemipure elite. My po4 has been allover the place. It was high so started dosing nopox and phospates went to 0 then started dosing po4 and then went to 0.36 and now added chempure elite and 0.04 so that cant be good being all over like that. I need to lower no3 which is about 15 but dont want to dose nopox because that is what started everything. Sorry to ramble but what am I supposed to sample and also like to know how the heck do you get such clear pics and videos. We tried to keep the lense over sample and shoot but shaky hands and all came out blurry, also just a clump of algae with no movement so dont know what that means anyway. I know I need to get rid of it! Maybe diatoms? Please help! Love you channel! Your 10 gallon was my inspiration to get into the hobby!

so I started a thread on this on reefcentral called "dino experiment", has 935 responses, a good amount of people commented on it. What finally cleared my issue was slowing down my return pump to slow down the turnover rate. Not sure if that gave my skimmer more time to filter stuff out I'm not sure but I did long no light periods and other methods and slowing my turnover was the only solution to my whole problem. Dino's whipped out my whole tank and this was the only solution.

I really hope I never need to figure out dinos

Where can I get that microscope I need one asap please and thank you

The Halloween crab is killing your sand konk had to put my Halloween crab in the sump because of that good luck 👍 🙃 😅

I trying raising the tank temp and some of my corals were pissed

Is this type of dino on the rocks as well?

I think that's what my tank have it's long slimy stringy stuff it's retreating a bit now but it killed every coral in my tank it's been so bad that I was ready to give up on reef keeping totally it's been a 6 month battle but it look like I might be getting rid of it I did a 7 days complet dark out since there is no corals left and they are almost gone but I am so afraid they are coming back in full force again

Should put that Live Phyto under the microscope

Lol...first glance at the shirt, thought it said jason fox...lol

Always look forward to Sundays for a new innapropriate reefer video!!!

I beat them by simply turning my temp up to 80~82 it was super easy.

"Enjoy the wrasse of this video", but i dont see any Kramer :O

I couldn’t find that shirt!! Help a brother out!! 🙏🏼🙏🏼🙏🏼 Love the channel!!

Things got intense at 9:45 😂😂😂🦉🍻

"Dinoflagellates support group reef" is the name of a group on Facebook with clear directions on how to beat them. The regiment is really good and well thought out.

Dino X worked for me.

I don't see the new shirt on tee spring??

Of the two microscopes you spoke about, would the first handheld one be enough for any hobbyist for home use? in your inappropriate opinion. :-)

I think Emily is jealous of your succes

i have dinos and my phosphate is 0.3

how did Dinoflagellates get in your tank?

How you call the T-shirt got wet?

I would be in that tank doing a gravel vac water change before adding loads of different chemicals but then again I’ve been lucky enough not to have to deal with dinos 🤞 , I gravel vac every week though as love a clean sand bed so if you don’t do it very often do a small section at a time. Good luck 😉

tried microbacter clean and it made my dino problem worse... microbacter clean will work too well and take out most of your nutrients and then they will die and feed the dinos more

this is my method on how to get rid of dino in 24 hours: wet skim and empty skimmate often, add purigen, add carbon, add uv light. The next day it will be almost completely gone.

Your new tank is hurting doesn't have the tank magic that Your 40 gallon had .

Atleast you got the least toxic dinos, just keep your nutrients up and in 6 months youll be good.

That type of sand is very course it traps to much crap... I clean tanks and most people with this type have issues .... I only recommend Fiji pink stays cleaner and not so fine

dinoflagelaNts

Your hermit crab may have ate your conches.

Dammm why such a long vid

Did you try your new microscope with your phone do you use an iPhone

Dino Flatulence? 😂👍

This is a funny approach because I would have adopted the opposite treatment by removing phosphate and injecting oxygen while doing the treatment. Nitrates contribute to cyanobacteria and dinos. Also thre change in parameters not the dino.. would negatively affect the coral tissue. Copepods are growing because you've added so much food to the water column..

Here’s a tip for everyone: Don’t use Vibrant. Moki used Vibrant to eliminate bubble algae, but that ravaged the tank of nutrients and left the door open for dinoflagellates. So don’t use Vibrant. Lastly, all tanks look like crap the fist couple of months or even a year. You are creating an ecological system. The best thing you can do is to have patience. Smacks Moki on the face for doing dumb shiatt!