STEM Outreach with BASF: Exploring Chemistry - Clean Water and pH

It has been a busy summer, but I finally got back into a classroom to have fun doing science with middle schoolers.  It has only been a few weeks since I transitioned from Bayer to my new employer BASF as part of a large divestement.   Yet in that small amount of time, it did not take long at all to see that BASF is also a strong agvocate in our community.   As a large BASF group we all took half a day to head over to East Wake Middle School in North Carolina to meet a bunch of 8th graders.

Game faces were on as a bunch of enthusiastic folks from BASF wore their green shirts with pride.

Some of have been doing outreach together for a long time so you gotta take advantage of selfie moments.

Once we loaded up it was a short trip to East Wake to meet the students.  We split up into groups and headed to our classes where my team ended up meeting Ms. Shores class.   What a great opportunity it was to take some time out of our busy day and work with students and to work closely with my BASF colleagues Courtney, Paulette, Casey, and Yasmin.  This is an account of my expereince with one class, but there were similar stories going on across many other classroms with other teams.

We first had to safety up.  And we would not look like scientists without our lab coat, glasses, and gloves!

Our first experiment was on pH.   We used red cabbage juice as a pH indicator which I have shown before in a previous post.  If you are interested in more details on pH experiments here is the link:  https://atransgenicworld.blogspot.com/2017/02/science-for-kids-ph-fun.html

The last time I used cabbage juice as a visual indicator of pH I just used some powder extract you can buy on amazon.    The organizers of our group went an extra mile and actually made the cabbage juice indicator the night before.   So if you want to make you own, here are the instructions.  Instructions are courtesy of BASF materials.

After explaining a little about pH we tired all kinds of stuff to see if it was acidic or basic.

Next up we talked about water and they all agreed clean water is super important.   We showed that water can have different types of contaminants.  Soil, sand, and dirt make water dirty, but so do other contaminants like  heavy metals or other chemicals.   We had a tube of water with sand and used food coloring to show other contaminants.   This dirty water definitely needed cleaning up.  First it went through just a regular filter and everyone's hypothesis that the filter would just catch the sand was correct.  The water no longer had dirt in it but it was still colored from the food coloring. 

First we added the water to just a paper filter.

The next thing we learned was that activated charcoal is a material that can help clean up water.  Everyone had their dirty water with dirt and food coloring to try and clean up again.  They put it through a paper filter again, but this time it also passed through some activated charcoal that we had added to the top of the filter.   I heard a few gasps when the water really did come out clear and clean as oppsed to dirty and red from the food coloring.

Lastly we just had a chance to talk.  Each of us from BASF joined 4-5 students and had about 10 minutes to just talk.  Of course the topic of video games did come up and most of them did indeed play Fortnite.  Maybe I gained a little more respect when they learned I like to play Fortnite too.   But I also heard such ambition and drive from this group.  One young lady wanted to be a Youtuber.  When I asked how many subscribers she had, she reported it was over 1000!!  I told her I barely get 5 likes on my instagram pictures!   They are so talented!  There were two that wanted to be marine biologists, 2 who wanted be a doctor, a couple that wanted to soccer players, one that wanted to be a lawyer, and other aspirations  And of course some who did not know which is OK too.   I did not even know what I was going to be and more importantly really like until I got my second job after college. 

Whatg a great day.   Thanks to the teachers, to the school, and to BASF for organizing this day.  I encourage all of you to pour your knowledge and passion on a subject into this generation whenever you get the chance.  They listen, they question and they fill you with hope for our future.

A Summer of Planets: Jupiter, Saturn and Mars

I really could call July 2018 the summer of clouds.  Here in Cary, NC this July has been full of humidity, storms, and clouds.   Yet, when the clouds have parted the July sky has housed wonderful views of the planets.   In fact Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars were all lined up at the same time across the sky to view late into the night.

I was able to get my scope out this July literally in between storms and get a quick picture of each planet.  Due to high humidity and clouds rolling in it was still not the best viewing.   However Mars is at opposition in July.  This means the Sun, Mars and Earth form a straight line with the Earth in the middle.  This event is when Mars is the closest the Earth and when it also will look the brightest.  In fact Mars is the fourth brightest object in the night sky now with only the Sun, Moon and Venus outshining it.  A Mars opposition only occurs every two years so i did not want to miss this one.

The pictures I took follow the same capture and processing steps as shown in previous blog entries.  The only difference is that I used a DSLR camera to record the videos instead on the webcam type camera.  My webcam camera is only black and white and while it can give crisper images, the DSLR shows color.  Therefore these images pull in some of the color of the planets.

The equipment and software used are:

Celestron EdgeHD 8
Celestron Edge AVX Mount
Televue 2.5X Powermate
Nikon D5300
BackyardNikon, Autostakkert!3,  Registax6

Mars

First up is Mars.  Even though it closest to the Earth right now, it is still a small little object for my  scope.  This picture picks up little detail other than the planet is red. :)   If you really look at the top of the planet you can pick out a whitish/less red area.  This is one of the polar caps.  Under the polar cap you can make out a little of the darker region of the surface.   Mars just went through a global dust storm a lot of surface detail is lost even when looking under a bigger scope.

Jupiter

I missed the red spot this night, but the banding is still beautiful.  Here are two separate processing attempts.

Saturn

By the time I got to Saturn the viewing conditions were getting worse, but you can at least see it has rings!

Hopefully I can follow up with another post showing these again.  I never get tired of looking at these majestic planets and seeing how they change each time you view them.

Spotlight on "Seeds of Science": How a mind was changed on GMOs

Have you ever wondered why it is so hard to change someone's mind even when you give facts that should make the decision easy?  Maybe even looking back you realize how many times you have not changed your own mind easily on certain topics even when someone presents a logical and fact driven argument. 

My wife and I have had some great debates over acupuncture.  I present to her all this information and science on why I think acupuncture is a hoax.   She presents all this information on why it is helpful.  I don't believe anything she shows me and she ignores my  arguments while making her next next appointment.  In the end neither one of us changes our minds.   In this example we have both succumbed to confirmation bias.  We both formed a strong belief and bias all of our arguments to finding information to support our views.   This is called confirmation bias.  Once we form a belief it becomes part of our identity and changing who we are are is much easier said than done. 

Confirmation bias is real and one that will take advantage of all of us at some point.  Taken from Wikipedia the definition of confirmation bias is "the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one's preexisting beliefs or hypotheses.^[1] It is a type of cognitive bias and a systematic error of inductive reasoning. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs."

Here are some great quotes across history that show confirmation bias is not a new concept:

“What the human being is best at doing is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.”

— Warren Buffett

“The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects.”

— Francis Bacon

“Beliefs can survive potent logical or empirical challenges. They can survive and even be bolstered by evidence that most uncommitted observers would agree logically demands some weakening of such beliefs. They can even survive the destruction of their original evidential bases.”

— Lee Ross and Craig Anderson

“One of the biggest problems with the world today is that we have large groups of people who will accept whatever they hear on the grapevine, just because it suits their worldview—not because it is actually true or because they have evidence to support it. The striking thing is that it would not take much effort to establish validity in most of these cases… but people prefer reassurance to research.”

— Neil deGrasse Tyson

“The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”

— Robertson Davies

Confirmation bias is no joke.  I have fallen prey to it many times and it is a bully that prevents us from changing our mind.   I have had countless debates with people who have already made up their mind that GMOs are bad.  In the end I can convince very few of the merits of GMOs with the facts alone.  As a scientist I love the facts, but over the years I have come to realize facts are only part of the equation to convince someone to change their mind.  There has to be some other connection, usually an emotional connection that can enable us to pull off our blinders and look equally and fairly at both sides of an issue.

That is why today I am not going to spout facts, but instead spotlight a book I just picked up called Seeds of Science by Mark Lynas.  I am not going to pull much from the book, but instead encourage everyone to pick it up and give it a read.   It was just released in June of 2018.   The only part I will focus on is some pages from Chapter 2 which is entitled "Seeds of Science:  How I Changed My Mind."

Mark Lynas was a strong anti-GMO advocate and led efforts to go into GM fields and destroy them.   You could almost call him the father of the Anti-GMO movement.  We are not talking about someone who just thinks GMOs are bad, we are talking about someone who was willing to break the law in destructive tirades to get a point across.

As Mark was protesting GMOS, he was also becoming a strong believer in climate change.  He began to dig into the science as well as use its arguments because the science supported his view on the climate.  (Confirmation bias at its finest!!).  As Mark says, "the environmental and scientific communities were closely aligned on the issue."    He started looking at the facts and digging into the data.  It was this emotional connection to the environment and then a realization that science is just more than just one article that started to make Mark think.  

There is an excerpt I love in the book that in my mind defines when Mark came to the realization of what scince really is and why we can trust in it.  

Mark says, " When sifting through contradictory material, I learned to trust my intuition as much as anything, and to understand that single papers advancing unlikely conclusions should not be taken at face value on their own.  I began to see that scientific knowledge is cumulative: it is built up slowly like a house made of bricks.   Sometimes individual bricks need to be relaid or taken out and replaced altogether, but overall the wall generally continues to rise. Only rarely does it get entirely demolished and rebuilt thanks to a paradigm-changing discovery such as plate tectonics or evolution by natural selection.  Accordingly the vast majority of those who claimed, Galileo-style, to have overturned a century of scientific research were mostly cranks."

As Mark started to see the power of science he also started to question his views on GMOs.  There are many more details in the story that make a great read, but finally in 2013 at the Oxford Farming Conference Mark addressed a crowd of farmers with a big statement.

"My lords, ladies and gentlemen.  I wanted to start with some apologies.   For the record, here and upfront, I apologize for having spent several years ripping up GM crops.  I am also sorry that I helped start the anti-GM movement back in the mid-1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonstrating an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.  As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path.  I now regret it completely." 

You can also see the video and read the blog entry from 2013:  http://www.marklynas.org/2013/01/lecture-to-oxford-farming-conference-3-january-2013/

Even after all these years, I am still amazed when I read or hear this.  I am also encouraged.   It is hard enough for any of us to change our minds, and even harder to apologize when you are on such a stage, yet he had the courage to do it.   

There is so much more in this book, but for Mark the seeds that started to change his mind were not from the facts on the safety of GMOs at the start.  They were born from the strong emotions he had for the environment that spilled over into how he thought about GMOs.  When making those arguments for the environment he could use the science because the science conformed to his beliefs.  If he could use science for one, how could he not use it for another topic?  Mark is an example of overcoming confirmation bias.  It took years to see it for what it was, but the story is that it can be done once we realize and understand confirmation bias.

Any technology is just a tool and all tools need to be used responsibly.  The beauty of the world is that we all look at issues through a different lens.  Those lens ensure a checks and balance system so that we do understand an issue from all angles.   It is when we challenge and then concede or challenge and the other side concedes based on sound evidence that we advance as a civilization and do not waste time in gridlock.  

The Beauty of the Moon: The Tycho Crater

This post is purely to share the beauty that is around us.  I can spend hours just looking at the moon in a scope and it never gets old.  This is an HDR picture of the moon I took recently which is 3 pictures of the moon stacked together.   I broke out my bigger telescope to get more detail of that beautiful lunar surface.  

Scope:  Celestron Edge 8 HD 

Camera:  Nikon 5300

Mount:  Celeston AVX

Processing Software:  Affinity Photo

It was still a little light in the sky when I took the image and that is why the background is still blue instead of black.  

If you look towards the bottom right of the moon there is one crater that stands out.  It is one of the brightest craters we see This is Tycho Crater.  It is 85 km in diameters and 4.8 km deep.   The crater is 108 million years old, making it a fairly young crate relatively speaking.  In the center of the crater is a peak complex that itself stands 1.6 km above the crater floor.   You can just make out the speck of

Here is a zoomed in image of the Tycho Crater.  You can just make out the raised peak in the center of the crater.

Getting a picture of Jupiter: Firecapture, Autostakkert!, and Registax

I have put a picture of Jupiter up before in a previous entry, but this time I wanted to go over the software I use to get a final picture.  It was an excuse to finally take my scope out again.  I have to admit that when I took these over this past weekend the seeing was not great.  Clouds were moving in and out, and the atmosphere was not supporting crisp pictures.  However, I did recover a picture even thought it is not of great quality.

This guide is just one one way to get a picture of a plant.   There are many methods and programs that can give the same end result.


Equipment:  

Scope: Celestron Edge 8 HD

Camera:  I used a webcam called an ASI120MM to take the movie that would ultimately make the final picture.

Magnification:  I used a Televue 2.5X Powermate to add just a little bit of magnification to the prime focus.

Mount:  My scope is attached to a Celestron AVX Mount.

Here is the setup:

Step 1:    Capture a movie of the planet with Firecapture

For planetary imaging we can can take a small movie and then stack the best frames from the movie to create the image.

The software I like the best if FireCapture to create the movie.   You can download the software for free.

http://www.firecapture.de/

Just hook your camera up to your computer and chose the camera you will use.  My ASI120 is made by ZWO so I choose the ZWO button.  You will probably need to install your camera drivers before using firecapture

Once you choose your camera and have your scope pointed to a focused Jupiter you just need to tell FireCapture to start recording.   FireCapture has a button with all the planers to the left.  Just pick the planet you are imaging.   Once that is done hit the play button to record.  I usually record about a 30 second video, but you can do more or less.

After you have a few videos that you like your scope time is done.  Now it is time to process the movies in a picture.


Step 2:  Stack frames from the movie with Autoskakkert!

There are lots of programs that you can use to stack frames, but I like to start with Autostakkert!

https://www.autostakkert.com/wp/download/

First hit OPEN and add your movie.  You will see he first frame of the movie appear in the second box.

Next hit the Analyze button.  This will show you a graph of how  many quality frames vs not so quality frames the software thinks are in your movie.    From this graph you can enter in the green/red boxes how many frames or the the percentage of frames you want to stack.  Based on my graph I am only going to use about 50% of the frames.  50% was already the default when I opened the software.

Once your have the number of frames you will use you need to place the AP grid.  These are points that that the program will use to make sure frames align.  I usually chose 24 as the AP size and then hit the "place AP grid" button.

Finally hit the STACK button and your  image is created in the output folder.

That is my final picture but we can use another free program to sharpen it a little. 

Step 3:  Sharpen Image with Registax

The next program we will use is Registax6.

https://www.astronomie.be/registax/

 Just open your image in Registax which will look like this:

In Registax there is a "wavelet" tab.  You can move those sliders and then hit the "do all" button to sharpen your image.   I find this a little bit of trial and error so keep playing around.

I finally finished adjusting and saved the final picture.

Just to show that Registax does make a difference, here is the side by side comparison.  The left image is after the stack in Autostakkert! and the second image took the stacked image and applied some post-processing in Registax6.  Those bands came to life a little more.

Dinoflagellates in the Reef Tank - What, Why, and How?

Dino what?  Yeah that is what I said until I started looking more into the what, why and how.   I remember going to the beach with my parents one week for vacation and there were warnings everywhere.   The warnings were about the "red tide."   In fact I remember the water had a brownish red hue as the waves crashed into the shore.    It turns out that the red tide is caused by dinoflagellates, a type of single celled algae.   Some dinoflagellates produce a toxin that can harm marine life and humans alike.  Most of the time when humans get sick it is from eating seafood that has ingested the dinoflagellates, but some cases of sickness have occurred from breathing in aerosolized toxin or even skin contact.  Look up Ciguatera and you will hope you never eat any contaminated fish with this particular dinoflagellate toxin.

Just recently dinoflagellates were in the news as  a red tide is hitting San Diego beaches.   In this case the "red" is replaced by blue as the dinoflagellates are showing bio-luminescence at night. 

So dinoflagellates can be beautiful, but they are known for the toxins they produce.   So when these things bloom in your reef aquarium it can cause all kinds of problems!  Here is my story with dinoflagellates and I hope this story along with other stories can help those in the hobby.

It all started when I noticed my white sand in my tank was turning a thick greenish color.  After I read about it I thought I had identified what I had as cyanobacteria.   This is a bacteria that gets its energy through photosynthesis.   However it can take over parts of the aquarium and does not look very pretty.

There is a chemical called chemiclean that is supposed to do a really good job on cyanobacteria so I tried it.   I would speculate that an antibiotic is one of the main actives.   It worked really well and my green slime algae (cyano) was gone.

It was only a couple weeks later that my beautiful white sand was turning a brownish color.   I just thought it was cyano again since cyano can present as a brown, green, or purple color.   I did another treatment of chemiclean and this time the brown stayed.  The chemiclean did not touch it.  This is when I knew I was dealing with something else.  And it was only getting worse.  My entire sandbed started to turn brown.

I started to research and when you start looking at something that is brown and not cyano it is probably diatoms or dinoflagellates.  Diatoms are also a type of algae that usually bloom and then go away, so they are not usually a bad thing.  Dinoflagellates on the other hand are probably one of the worse things a hobbyist can get.  I started to panic a little.   This is also where I learned a valuable lesson.  Even with cyano I just treated based on some visual observations and a guess.

In hindsight I had another clue that I should have paid attention to.  Dinoflagellates also produce toxins.  Some produce more than others, but in my case I had ~75 small snails die very quickly.  Even the bigger snails would fall off the glass almost like they were drunk.  Look for these observations as well since it will help your identification.

In my case brown was mainly in the sand.  Some dinos will grow on your rock (and coral) as well and people will describe "snotty strands" of brown algae with bubbles coming off the rocks.  If you ever see that in your tank or hear that description, then dinos are a very probably cause. 

STEP 1:  USE A MICROSCOPE FOR IDENTIFICATION

Before you do any type of treatment, identification is so important.   Almost anything that happens in your aquarium can be treated if you have the right identification.  If you treat something without the proper identification you can do more harm.  Go to amazon or a store and buy a cheap kid microscope.  You can find these for under 20 dollars an it is all you need.  Here is one I found at a toy store.

I took a sample of my water and look under scope for the moment of truth.  That is when my heart sank.

I did not want to see anything moving, because the "flagllate" part of the dinoflagellate name means they have a flagellum.  A flagellum is a whiplike tail that lets it move.   And look at how many there are in just a drop of water!!

Once I realized I had dinoflagellates I needed to figure out what kind I have.  There are lots of types and as I would find out they all are a little different in how they should be treated.

I also realized that I was not the only one battling these things.  In fact dinoflagellates may be one of the few things that can happen to a hobbyist to cause them to give up and get out of the hobby.  There are so many stories of people getting out of the hobby or restarting from scratch because of these monsters.  This is because there is no easy fix.  Almost any other fish infection, algae bloom, or problem has a specific treatment or product.  Many of these products can fix a problem in days.   This is not so with dinoflagellates and I was about to learn that.   If you have these in your tank you need to read the forum over at REEF2REEF.  We are talking about hundreds of posts with help, but most importantly they can help you identify your particular dinoflagellate.  I cannot thank this community enough.

Read this thread!

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/dinoflagellates-%E2%80%93-are-you-tired-of-battling-altogether.293318/

Here are the major dinoflagellates that hobbyist find in their tanks the most.  I took these pictures from the forums to help consolidate some info.

1.  Ostreopsis:  These are usually more sesame seed in shape.  They will move into the water column at night.

2.  Prorocentrum:  These are usually more oval, but can be rounder too.

3.  Coolia:  These are usually round and darker in color.

4.  Amphidinium:  The biggest sign you have this type is they will stay in the sand.  If your sandbed is the only thing affected and you have IDed dinoflagellates their is a good chance you have amhidinium.  This type comes in two versions, large cells and small cells.   Both seem to react fairly similar in the tank.

There can be other strains that may be in your tank, but these seem to be the biggest threats.  Many times you might have multiple types at the same time too which can make things even more difficult.

So once you have an ID the next step is to develop a treatment plan.  I had Amphidinium.   The identification came from how the cells look under microscope, the fact I was having a die off of snails, and the observation that the sand bed is what was mostly infected.

WHY DO WE GET THESE IN OUR TANK?

Before we get into treatment plans, why do you get these?  Well they are everywhere and there are probably already in your tank, but they just never bloom.  A bloom is where you will see them and they will start casing problems.

After reading the forums and and thoughts from other hobbyists the biggest reason I think dinos seem to bloom is because they do not have any competition.    I think there are two big reasons as to why dinoflagellates have no competition.

1.  Low phosphates and nitrates.   When I started my tank, my phosphates started to rise and I did everything I could to get them down.   When you have nitrates and phosphates get out of hand, you get all kinds of algae growing in your tank like hair algae or bubble algae.  We don't want that either.   So I added a GFO reactor and even an algae scrubber which eventually took my phosphates to almost 0.  I was very careful to not overfeed my fish and did not have a large fishload so my nitrates were also very low.  The problem is dinoflagellates have been shown to grow quite well in a low nutrient environment while other things do not.

2.  Low biodiveristy.  I have a hypothesis that in my case the chemiclean not only killed the cyanobacteria, but that it killed some other biodiversity in my tank.  Combined with the fact that I had low nutrients and then used chemiclean, I think I set up the perfect storm to let the dinoflagellates that were in my tank bloom.   There is one other connection I see when reading reports that affect biodiveristy.  Many hobbyist now use dry rock as opposed to live rock when setting up their aquairums for the first time.   The dry rock is "dead" when it enter the tank for the first time and slowly grows life, but only life that the hobbyist wants.  If we buy live rock we may be putting unwanted hitchhikers in our tank.   However the live rock is going to have a lot of biodiveristy.  I chose to use dry rock and I can argue that this may have been one more factor to start my bloom.

STEP 2:  TREATMENT PLAN

I did not really think through a treatment plan, I just started treating with anything that I saw worked for others.  I was getting desperate.   Here is what I did and what I learned in the process.  Those in green I feel had a very positive outcome in the end for my tank (amphidinium) and those in red not so much.

1.  Raise nutrients (nitrates and phosphates):  This is the first solution you will find on the forum about how to treat dinoflagellates.  It is counter intuitive to every thing you know and are taught, because dinos can use phosphate and nitrate to grow too.  However they seem bad at competing with other algae.  So this is step one of trying to get biodiversity back in the tank.  First I took my algae scrubber and GFO offline.  I stopped doing any water changes as I also did not want to replace used up micronutrients s or decrease the nutrients I was trying to raise.   I was targeting 0.10 ppm phosphate and 5-8 ppm nitrate.  To raise phosphates I added Seachem Flourish (phosphorus) and to raise nitrates I used spectracide stump remover (potassium nitrate).

Mix 1 part ro/di (1 us cup) with 1 part stump remover granules (1 tbsp). After I made a solution I did not need to add more that 5 -10 mL at a time to get an increase in nitrates.

 

 

This one is already in liquid form.   Again it took very little to raise phosphate for me.  However you need to keep measuring your nitrates and phosphates as it will take a couple weeks to stabilize.  Once you add them, they will get used up quickly.

 

 

I used a Hanna phosphorous checker to measure phosphates and the Seachem nitrates kit for nitrates. 

 



2.  Run Carbon:  I was already running carbon, but I started to change it weekly.   Even with carbon running I had a die off, but I am sure the carbon saved some of my fish and snails.

3.   Siphoning the sand:   I seemed to only have these things in the sand so i started siphoning the sand.  I ran the water through a filter sock and dumped the water back in the tank.   I may have slowed them down a little, but they just came right back.   I slowly stopped even trying this method. 

4.  3 day Blackout and hydrogen peroxide:  A guy at the LFS told me a three day black out might work along with adding hydrogen peroxide.   I had just started dosing nutrients and thought this might be worth trying.   You will see this method to control other algae blooms with success.  the idea is you cover you tank with blankets for 3 days.   The fish and coral will be just fine.  During that time and for a couple of weeks after I added hydrogen peroxide at the rate of 1 mL per 10 gallons of water.   The verdict is this did not work at all.  After the lights came on, everything looked pretty good, but the dinos immediately came back with a vengeance!

On a side note, I did some tests under the microscope and added hydrogen peroxide to a sample of my dinos.  They almost instantly died.    I just think that the amount of hydrogen peroxide I was adding to the tank was not strong enough to hurt their overall high population and any higher can start to hurt your coral.  Also the type of dinos I had were probably protected by the sand. 

5.   UV Sterilizer:  There are many reports that a UV sterilizer will work.  Many of the dinoflagellates will swim in the water column at night and the UV sterilizer will work.   Since amphidinium stays in the sand bed there are many reports that the UV will not help there, but I tried it anyway.  I bought a Jebao 55W UV sterilizer and hooked it up.  No luck for me with amphidinium.   However if you have the other types of dinos this seems to be a solution that is pretty dependable as long as you by one that is sized right.   Recommendation is at least 1 watt per 3 gallons.   I also plumbed this directly in the tank.  While it did not help me, for those species that it does work it seems having the pump directly in your display is better than in your refugium.   Again this did not work for me, but I put it yellow because I am certain its works on certain strains. 

--I PAUSED IN TREATMENTS TO RE-ACCESS  --

I had been raising nutrients for almost a month and if you do this you will go through a ugly phase.  I started growing green hair algae on my rocks and glass.  The dinos also got much worse.  If you go through this then I can say this is a good thing.   It did get to the point that it was starting to cover my coral in places so I would take a toothbrush and give these places a good cleaning. 

I finally hit a point after a month and half of dosing nitrates and phosphates where the tank looked awful.  Dinos and other algae were everywhere on the glass, sandbed, and rocks.   I got fed up with the way it looked and took a toothbrush to everything.  This actually increased my phosphates and nitrates even more.    My phosphates got as high as 0.20 ppm and my nitrates where 8-10 ppm.   I did this cleaning routine every other day for about two weeks and I them I hit a point where the algae did not start growing back and while the dinos were there, they did seem to be getting worse.   It was kinda crazy how everything just stopped growing.   I probably hit some limiting factor in the tank.  Many think this is iron, but maybe it is other things as well?  Something gets used up and dinos and algae alike do not grow as fast.   By the way I was not doing any water changes in this two month period either to replenish anything.

The good news is nothing was getting worse, but they were still there when I looked under scope.

5.  Add Biodiveristy:  After things got really ugly and I cleaned off everything, things were not getting worse, but not fully improving either.   I then also tried other ways to increase biodiversity.  I bought a bunch of FIJI mud (from BRS) and added that to the bottom of my refugium.  I bought a large piece of live rock and added that to my tank.  I bought 15 lbs of GARG grunge (course live sand) and added that directly over my sand.   I covered as much of the sand bed as I could with a thin layer.  Link: www.garf.org  I really feel like this garf grunge had a huge impact!!

5.  Silica dosing:  The last thing I tried was based on a paper someone had found on the forums.   It seems that silica has been used to initiate a diatom bloom and help out compete the dinoflagellates.  At this point things were doing better but again dinos were not completely gone.  Most samples still showed some in the sand, although much left after the garf grunge.  This silicate dosing was a strategy that seems like it is the most geared towards amphidinium since it stays in the sand. 

The paper is this one:  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0044848602003733

I bought some silicate and started adding.   I did not do any calculations.  I just added 10-15 drops per day to my 125 gallon until I saw a diatom bloom. 

After about 2 weeks I got a good diatom bloom.  Everything got covered in brown including the sand, the glass and the rocks.   I was worried I actually had diatoms again, but I took a sample to see what was going on.

This time I had rice shaped diatoms and not dinoflagellates!   I still could find some dinos here and there but not like it was.   It would be just one cell instead of hundreds and I really had to take a lot of samples to find them.

I stopped dosing silicate and let the diatoms run their course.  Even after a month of no dosing I still have diatoms in spots, but the overall bloom is gone.   I went back to water changes, and still the dinoflagellates did not re-bloom.  At this point I know I at least won the battle.

The only thing I have noticed is whatever limiting factor hit to get stuff to stop growing I think is still a limiting factor.  I still have no algae growth in my main tank even with high nitrates and phosphates.   I am sending a water sample to ATI just to see how my water looks after all this.


Things I did not try:

1.  For amphidinium some people slowly remove all their sand.  I wanted to try everything before going this route, but there has been some success stories.

2. There is one product that is supposed to help with Dinos called DINO-X.   I again was only going to use this as a last report.  Just going by reports only it seems hit or miss and there are some reports of it hurting coral.   I have no direct experience with this one.

LESSONS LEARNED

1.  Make sure you ID what you are fighting.  It really makes a difference in how you will treat and will make sure you don't make things worse.

2.  I will never run a ultra low phosphate and nitrate tank again.   In fact my phosphates stay between 0.10 and 0.15 and my nitrates are over 4.   I added chaeto to my refugium and all the algae seems to grow down there now.  I do not have any algae problems in the main display.  Everything tells you to get those phosphates to 0.  Nope.  I will never do that again nor will I ever recommend it.   One bout of dinos and you will change your tune quickly.

3.  Use the resources out there and share your experiences.  There is an unbelievable community that i have so much to thank for and I hope my story can help someone else in turn. 


HAPPY REEFING!  AND DON'T GIVE UP!

Chemistry Fun - How does the antacid Gaviscon work?

Have you ever had heartburn and gone to the medicine cabinet to grab some relief.   Then have you ever stopped and wondered how that medicine is actually working?   Heartburn  is caused when acid from the stomach moves up in the esophagus.  The sphincter muscle controls the opening from the esophagus to the stomach so if this muscle does seal correctly you can feel heartburn.  The stomach is covered in thick mucous and is protected from the acid, but the esophagus does not have that protection.

One way antacid can work is by reducing the acidity of the acid in your stomach.  If the acid is not as strong it will not inflame the esophagus as much.  However the antacid Gaviscon works a completely different way and the chemistry is pretty ingenious.

The main ingredients of Gaviscon are:

Sodium alginate
Sodium bicarbonate
Calcium carbonate.

The chemistry behind Gaviscon is pretty neat. 

Sodium Alginate is a polymer that is derived from seaweed.  Once it goes into the stomach, the acid in our stomach makes it go from a soluble state to an insoluble state.  In other words it becomes a solid.   Secondly there will be Calcium ions in the stomach from the calcium carbonate.   The calcium helps to cross-link the alginate molecules together into something called an "alginate raft."  You are left with a big piece of solid material in your stomach from the medicine.

The second piece of the story is the calcium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate react with the acid in your stomach to form carbon dioxide gas.   The gas that is formed propels the solid alginate raft upwards.  It gets caught at the top of the stomach where the esophagus and stomach come together and forms a barrier.  This barrier prevents acid from going up into the esophagus. 

This is an amazing piece of chemistry and all of it relies on the acid in our stomach to start the reactions.  The neat part is we can replicate the experiment. 


Supplies needed: 

• 250 ml flask:  This replicates your stomach.  The bottom portion is your stomach and the neck of the flask is your esophagus. 
• 50 mL Gaviscon liquid
• 150 mL of 1M Hydrochloric Acid - This can be pretty nasty and most will not have access to this.  So be very careful if you do. (safety glasses, coat, eye protection)

The Experiment

This experiment is quite simple.
1. Add 150 mL of 1M HCl into the flask
2.  Add 50 mL of Gaviscon to the flask
3.  Observe

Watch the Gaviscon go from a liquid to a solid while the alginate raft forms. Observe Carbon dioxide bubbles forming.  And finally watch the gas push the raft up to the neck of the flask and form a barrier.

The barrier actually makes it difficult to get the HCl out of the flask when we cleaned up!!

You just saw a real life application of chemistry in a over the counter medicine thousands of people use everyday.  And it was so fun seeing the students doing the experiment.