Well, all of a sudden I have a teeny bit of cyano on my acro frag plug. I have had my tank ( 8 gallons) for 3 months. I've never had pests, but all of a sudden, I see the slime on the ORA plug. I have 4.3 wpg of pc's. ALl the corals are growing and doing well. There's 2x a week water changes. I have 6 ppm nitrates. The tank is well established and everything is going strong. How do I kill the cyano?

check and possibly raise alk, export nutrients, reduce import of nutrients, get something that eats it, manually remove it, add flow

Thanks.

Yhis happens alot when the seasons change from warm-summer to cold -fall, winter see if theres been a bigger change in temp throughout the day goodluck

Thanks. I have added xtra circulation. How else should I combat this?

Why couldn't it be bubble algae?

You want bubble algae?

Cyano isn't that bad... Suck it out during water changes, and do the stuff johnmaloney suggested.

I don't want bubble algae, but the cyano will kill everything!

It won't hurt anything if it's managed.

i shortened my light cycle. just a tad! every once in awhile i manually puuled some out and rode the rest out. it'll go away in time. plus, johnmaloney is the man!

I also went through a massive cyano outbreak a week ago when I had a power outage that reset my light timer the weekend I was gone so my lights stayed on constantly for a good 2 days I think. What I did was do a water change after blowing a lot of it from the rocks and then I only turned on my lights for 2 hours a day for 3 days and most of it disappeared. I was doing 12 hour lighting but now I am doing 8 hour lighting and it has helped a lot in controlling it. I found that not having the lights on at all really helps to combat cyano the natural way without needing any chemicals although I was already using Chemi-Pure Elite in my fuge.

What kind of livestock do you have in your tank? Is it OK to cut down on the lights so much if you have corals and fish?

I have a pair of Ocellaris and a big patch of GSP as well as a frogspawn with about 5 heads and 2 more growing. The GSP didn't come out at all during that time because the outage also killed some of the beneficial bacteria so I had an ammonia spike and the frogspawn just stayed small. GSP is almost unkillable anyway so I wasn't worried about that. After that week of hell though the frogspawn is now getting pretty big and it's extending to at least twice the size that it was when I bought it from the LFS.

I know people don't like GSP because it can take over a tank but I have it isolated on a rock that isn't next to any other rock plus I like how they are the first ones to tell you when there is something wrong by not coming out even when the lights are on. I wish I had a pic of what it looked like when I bought compared to what it looks like now.

Thanks, that info. helps.

I got a frag of GSP a week ago at a NCRC frag swap. When I first put it in the tank, some of the polyps came out. But after moving it to another position in the tank, the polyps haven't extended for a few days now. I'm wondering why this is... how can you tell if a GSP is dead? I've heard they're hard to kill, but I haven't seen them in so long I'm wondering if I've done the un-doable!

It took a good week if not almost 2 weeks for my GSP to really come out in full force. It looks like they take a little bit longer to acclimate but when it does watch out haha.

Read my Winning The Cyano Battle thread. I had this stuff 3 years ago and it wasn't a good story but this one is. I beat it without chemicals. It took a little persistence and patience and it's all gone now.

Thanks all. I've raised alk, added flow, did water changes, did a dip, fed less, and removed the gunk. The reason I didn't do the lights is because of my acros.

Oh no! Emergency! My platygyra is bleaching at the sides, and so is my acro at the base! The cyano got worse!

im cheating im useing chemiclean i have faught and screw the bs it seems to be working well ill let you know how it does and it is suppose to be safe for all coral including stony's

lol I just dosed chemi clean. Following your lead! Throw in the towel and chemi-clean it! The stuff is scary though!

Well, problem taken care of. I had some scrambled cyano for breakfast.

how'd that taste? i bet you have redish purple teeth. lol

I'm still fighting the battle. Every 3 days or so I manually remove the cyano covering parts of my sandbed, and then watch as it rapidly grows back on top of the sand after a few days. Very annoying... time consuming.

I'm doing weekly 10% water changes, and don't feed much: I was feeding every other day, but have recently switched to only feeding 3x/week. I have my lights on for 10 hrs/day. I added Koralia Nano for additional flow. I'm using distilled water for top offs and RO water for my water changes.

Despite all this, I'm still getting cyano... makes me wonder what's the cause? Perhaps it's just part of the tank cycling process (I started mine on 8/21)?

Whats your alk at? try running the lights for 8 hrs, the actinics fir 10 hrs

its probably the distilled water

Cyano de Bergerac cramping your style? (get it? Hahahaha!)

Go big on the water changes man. 10% isn't going to cut it. How are you manually removing it? I strongly suggest using a siphon hose, maybe a turkey baster if you find it sucks it up enough. Don't just pinch it as it comes apart really easily and if you let some of it get blown around it'll start popping up everywhere.

I last tested my alk about a week ago and it was in the mid/normal range. I currently have my lights on for 10 hours.



Sorry, I don't get the reference =)

I may try the big water changes as you've suggested. I'm manually removing by using a combination of turkey baster and tongs, the latter if I find that I can successfully "roll up" the cyano into a semi-solid mass and remove it.

I was using SeaChem SeaGel to remove phosphates, but added ChemiPure Elite to the mix yesterday. I'm hoping the ChemiPure will work some magic and get rid of some of the cyano.

I have noticed recently that my hitch hiker rock crab hasn't been seen for awhile, and am wondering if it actually died and is contributing to the cyano... but I'm pretty certain that I've had cyano growth prior to my noticing the hitch hiker crab missing.

just chemi clean it works like a charm!