Cyano Assistance

[heifinator]

Trying to help a local reefer with his cyano outbreak and thought I would turn to my friends at Nano reef for some assistance.

 

He has a 75g tank that had BRS reefsaver rock added (was rinsed first) and tropic eden sand (also rinsed).

 

Tank was cycled with 10lbs of live rock that was added to the BRS reefsaver rock. Went through all the normal cycle stuff for about 6 weeks then a few fish were added. The tank stabilized after the cycle, however the algae blooms never went away.

 

Since then he has been battling cyano and hair algae like CRAZY. In all the tanks ive seen this is the worst. Tank has 4 fish in it which are being fed a pinch of NLS pellets daily (think ~15 pellets).

 

No corals, ample flow (2x MP40). Skimmer is rated for 150g (reef octopus), and running about 75grams of GFO in a phosban reactor (slow tumble).

 

I have helped him do 40-50% water changes weekly for over a month now with no results. Water is my personal RODI water which reads @ 0-2 TDS.

 

Lighting is a 48" ATI t5 fixture with 6 bulbs, about 12-16" off surface.

 

Reef Crystals is salt.

 

Params as follows

 

temp 78-79

salinity 1.025

ph 8.3

calc 430

alk 9

mag 1300

po4 reads at 0 on hanna (means nothing I know)

nitrate undetectable

amm undetectable

nitrite undetectable

 

 

Its a really nice rimless tank and I am sad to see him having so many issues, really doesnt make any sense to me. Nutrient import is almost non-existent and all but a small portion of the rock was dry and free of organics. Any ideas would be appreciated! Thanks.

 

[MikeTR]

Since then he has been battling cyano and hair algae like CRAZY. In all the tanks ive seen this is the worst. Tank has 4 fish in it which are being fed a pinch of NLS pellets daily (think ~15 pellets).

Feed every other day.

 

No corals, Skimmer

I have helped him do 40-50% water changes weekly for over a month now with no results.

 

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?pcatid=24842

 

I've beat it using 2 methods. No water changes and it burns out. Or chemiclean.

[BluCrab]

just my 2 cents...

I've recently had issues in my 48 gallon because as it turns out my fuge light was disconnected for about a month without me knowing it.

 

3 days lights out and no feeding helps, also re aquascaped it for better flow all around has helped.

[BOMBreef]

I'd suggest maybe trying an algae turf scrubber if he can fit it in his sump or display. Santa Monica scrubbers makes a nice unit. I always hate to suggest trying algeafix marine, but I've seen it work miracles on local reefers tanks without any harm to fish, coral, or inverts. Just a thought...

[MikeTR]

Low flow can be a problem.. or in my case the shit just grows up the glass right up to the vortech.

 

Have you done a period of lights out? 3 days, cover the tank?

[Mojado]

Chemiclean for cyano. Gone in one dose.

[Markburns43]

But its just the fact that you want to know whats fueling it. Id let it over populate to an extent and see if it starves its self to death and just keep vital components clean. Also what kind of flow in the tank are we talking. Cyano cant get a real good hold in a strong current.

[tibbsy07]

You need decently high flow and you'll need to remove the light - they are primarily photosynthetic. Do you have a clean up crew at all? Certain snails will help - ninja stars I think?

 

One big question - how old are the bulbs? Cyano and algae love red spectrum. Old bulbs often have more of this than we like. Try lowering the photoperiod (no corals anyways) and swapping to new bulbs for the lights. Your fish really don't need much light. You only need normal human light hours for their circadian rhythm.

[heifinator]

The tank has had this cyano out of control for over 3 months now. I really doubt its the 15 tiny pellets of food. I feed my SPS tank that much 3 times daily with no algae / cyano what so ever.

 

Tank has very high flow to those that said increase flow, two mp40's at about 40-60%. Sand barely stays still.

 

I will try reducing photo period and some chemiclean although that seems like a bandaid, would like to know whats fueling it!

[brandon429]

if I had to name the single best option for controlling cyano above all it would be any sort of phosphate management above and beyond norm. and not an api test kit to indicate levels.

[heifinator]

Highly controlled import + GFO + Water Changes I would think would handle the po4 management. You'd think lol.

[brandon429]

lets see pics

 

 

I think something in that loop is off, we are assuming its got zero phospates

 

what kind of kit and post pics

 

 

somewhere there is phosphate we aren't considering, pics w show benthic details and possible things we can glean about prior hist of the live rock

 

it could be leaking from the substrate itself and being actively taken up by the cyano

 

 

i guarantee we have active phosphate occurring in some form that eludes so far

 

pics show any unique areas for stored up detritus or waste, position of the live rock stack etc all kinds of goodie details

 

what the substrate looks like is big deal too

[tibbsy07]

I'd stop the GFO for now. Use phosguard. That stuff pulls in phosphates like CRAZY. It also may benefit to vacuum the sand bed when you do water changes. Phosphate RX may even be a great idea. I know a lot of reefers use it - Melev's Reef is one who recommends it, and I trust his recommendations.

 

I'd hold off on the chemiclean as long as you can - and if it is as bad as you say it is, the biofilms they make are going to make them VERY resistant to the chemiclean and they will be more likely to build up antibiotic resistance to it.

 

Here is what I would do: Reduce the photoperiod and change bulbs if they are old. Heck, if they are old, just use the room lights to light the tank during the day. Remove the GFO. Do major water changes (I know you've done these already) and physically vacuum the sandbed to remove some of the cyano AND to clean the sand a bit. You could have phosphates leeching from something dead in there. Get a decent clean up crew. Use Phosphate RX for a few days. Swap over to phosguard afterwards. Drain the phosphates from the tank - you have no coral, you don't need them.

 

Hold off on the chemiclean until you have no other option.

[xiaoxiy]

But its just the fact that you want to know whats fueling it. Id let it over populate to an extent and see if it starves its self to death and just keep vital components clean. Also what kind of flow in the tank are we talking. Cyano cant get a real good hold in a strong current.

Haha. Tell that to the cyano that took residence in my tank.

[deadthrone]

I'm in the same boat here. I've got insane flow to the point where the cyano is barely holding on in the wind. I BARELY feed maybe once every couple of days a pinch of reef chilli to spot feed sps/lps a couple pelets once every few days and I use gfo, polypad, purigen and weekly 50% water changes. I highly highly doubt it's coming from my live rock. My sand is only 7 months old and it's seachem something or other. Brand new LEDs. Tds reads 0... I'm following this post so I can get some flipping answers.

[brandon429]

imo this restrictive feeding cycle is probably the secret killer of the corals via rtn etc when doing assertive phosphate management. our corals always run underfed no matter how well we think we feed them, the water always runs too high of dissolved particles mid digestion leaking this and that, balance issue

 

 

so we restrict them further in hopes of good phosphate management even in the presence of the same light intensity they were once well fed at= stress

 

imo the right way to manage a phosphate stressed tank is to actually feed the same or more, you just make up for it with raw water changes and this accessory binding above. no feed restriction or we get that eventual cascade of bad imo

 

by changing the water before breakdown completes, phosphates are exported in the whole or partial proteins they were encased in. what the corals retained and digested would be the legit phosphate being uptaken by the extra help

 

the typical manner is let it totally break down 100% in tank, and feed less to lower that accumulation. we're always trying to avoid work lol

 

Although there may be one, I cant recall a need to ever feed a tank less, that was just to make up for being lazy on export.

[jedimasterben]

Wait, no corals and all that equipment? Dayum.

 

Kick the lights down a few notches. Run only a pair of bulbs, no reason to run six or even four. The skimmer is definitely sized to take over, flow is good with the MP40s, and using GFO in a reactor, so in theory there should not be a problem. In theory, of course

 

Definitely just turn the lights completely off for a while and dose a bit of peroxide to start killing off the hair algae quicker. It won't help the cyano, but the lights being out will keep it from photosynthesizing.

[heifinator]

There was some coral in the system, we removed all of it so that we could take care of the algae. However nothing has worked, not sure where the po4 is coming from.

Thanks for the tips though. Will turn lights off, continue running GFO, and keep doing massive water changes. Guess eventually he has to run out of po4...

[jedimasterben]

With no coral, load the hell out of the reactor with GFO.

[Newtybar]

Your options with no coral to keep alive are great.

 

3 days lights out (not intentional) beat mine. To make sure it didn't come back I put a couple of powerheads on both sides near the substrate surface to create high flow so that it didn't have a chance to come back.

 

I have yet to see it come back in my new setup.