Cyano Revisited

[Weetabix7]

Cyanobacteria is something most Reefers encounter sooner or later.

Conventional wisdom says that poor flow and too many nutrients are the root causes of it.

While I am sure that there are many instances where this is true, I have also run across several cases over the last 6 months that have led me to question whether Cyano infestation might also have other causes.

To cite 2 examples, both Gillz and BibleSue have had Cyano problems in the last 6 months.

These are both very experienced Reefers who did not/do not have flow issues in their tanks.

Gillz tried everything she could think of before resorting to another method to deal with the Cyano (more on that in a bit).

BibleSue is still continuing to deal with the problem.

I have seen several others in this situation recently as well.

 

A couple of months ago I came across an interesting article in Coral magazine on Cyanobacteria, which stated that cyanobacteria are much more complex than was previously realized.

It also stated that recent research shows that they are able to adapt and consume nitrates as a food source if phosphates are not available.

I haven't been able to find an online version of the article, or I would link it.

I also personally suspect that there are a variety of different strains of Cyano.

 

Anyone else out there have some thoughts or experiences with Cyanobacteria that go beyond the usual "Increase flow, decrease nutrients" ?

I have a strong suspicion there's more to the story.

 

I'm working on a list of things ppl have used to get rid of Cyano as well....

[Mr. Fosi]

Cyanobacteria, like other organisms, needs both N and P. It can't switch from one to the other.

 

The problem is twofold:

 

- they don't need high concentrations (in aquarist terms) of either to do well

- some cyanobacteria can fix their own nitrogen from N2 gas if NH3 & NO3 are too scarce

 

It's been my experience that if people target PO4 in a serious way (increase export simultaneous with decreasing import), they can beat it over time. The fight may be prolonged if there is PO4 being liberated from the rock or sediment, but they can't beat you forever.

[Weetabix7]

The article that I read stated that according to very recent findings, Cyano could switch from one to the other, and that they were more complex than previously realized.

Really wish I could find a link to an online version of the article, not sure if there is one.

[Mr. Fosi]

Can you cite the article? Title, publication, pages, etc?

[Oceanus]

Mmm I have cyano in my 29g and do not have flow or nutrient issues. I've got 1800gph flowing and feed a cube of mysis 1-2 times a week. I knew something was phishy!

[GatorHunter]

It seems like 29g or around that size have it the most. How many large tanks like 100g or more have cyano I have never seen one really....

[scubasteve2580]

ill say this... my 10 gallon has been set up for almost a year. a few weeks back i added a 10 gallon trashcan with a 6" sandbed as a refugium. man am i paying for it now. ive had a little cyano here and there (believed it was from the refugium cycling and could be) so i did a water change the otehr day. 5 gallons.. guesstimated 35% give or take. anyway i used glacier water out of one of the water machines at albertsons because they give you a big list of filter types they use (ro, carbon, blah blah) as well as state the service date... ive always used it for top off with no problems. so i changed the water sunday and today my rocks are almost covered. i will tell you this.. it can and will feed on itself when dieing off. also flow doesnt matter, i hvae this stuff growing by where the k-nano blows directly on it.. one tactic to battle it is, if possible when you do a water change, pull the rocks out and blast them off.. ive had little patches here and there where detritis would pile up on the bottom of the tank. chemicals such as chemi clean only mask it.. not only mask it but provide food for another very near future bloom. cutting the light cycle doesnt do squat. tried it and i dont care what anyone says, all it does is make the time you have to look at it shorter. something else i found out.... the best time to vac this crap up is when you see it makeing bubbles.. seems to me to be at the longest part of the light cycle. this is when i believe its prepping to spore out. i also did 2 50 percent water changes 2 days apart and vac'd it up everywhere i could, cut feedings back and problem solved. ive been feeding my clowns live bbs, freshly hatched from scubasteves fish room... i dont believe this to be part of my problem or am i wrong??? would like to add this to my list of do's or donts.. oh and one more thing, bulbs getting old and dropping in spectrum also doesnt make sense. i didnt really have cyano with 6500 k so why would that play a role when my 10k loses a little?? it wouldnt.. also if anyone tells you it cant survive with actinic lighting on only, they are full of it.. tried that too...

[ReefEscape]

Mr. Fosi, the article in Coral that Weetabix refers to is in the Nov/Dec issue titled Butterfly Fishes. The article is on page 10 under the title Reef News. It was written by Dr. Dieter Brockmann who references several papers for a study on Cyano and Phytoplankton. He says that "in phosphate poor water, cyanobacteria can reduce the amount of phosphate they require for their matabolic processes and turn to sulfur and nitrogen instead."

 

It is an interesting article, but he admits in the end that even with this information there isn't a simple inexpensive way of controlling cyanobacteria (other than normal practices).

 

I too battle cyano, but I am also trying to control elevated phosphates in a closed hood system.

[ajmckay]

Coral Magazine rocks. I got my first issue last week... Here's a link to the December issue with the article Reefescape mentioned (I will read it now...) http://livedemos.texterity.com/coral_demo/2009 See page 10.

 

Anyways, back to cyano. I'm not at all familiar with the specifics of cyano, but typically the kind that molests us aquarists is the red stuff. Like other blue green algaes, it's tough and can adapt to a wide range of conditions (I knew I would learn something in bio!).

 

I've had an ongoing battle with cyano for the past 6 months or so. During my water changes I'm pretty good about blasting the rock (the stuff comes off rocks pretty easily) and siphoning it up, but it comes back a day or 2 later the same as it was. The interesting part (in my tank at least) is that it seems to reach a "saturation point" where it stops spreading. I'll admit that my tank probably has plenty of nutrients available. So in such a tank I would think that it could take over everything! Yet it doesn't...

I would like to be able to understand why this occurs. My assumption is that there is a limiting factor, I just cannot identify it. I don't test PO4 (would love to, but too poor to buy a test kit) and my NO3 are not zero, but typically between 3 and 5ppm. I use RO water from the grocery store like scubasteve.

 

This thread is a good idea. I'm looking forward to the possible replies.

[1reefluvr2]

hello everyone i also have a problem. i set up my gils tank about 4 months ago and i swear that cyano is like a battle with out a couse im almost 2 the point of netting up the 3 nano gobies and changing the water rocks coral and sand from my 150 reef and startin all over. the 5 gallon nano is a fluval edge with a hamilton 75 watt 14k bulb 2 hydoor nana pumps and a 3 gallon sump with a skimmer drilled tank and a chiller with heater and cold control and can change the tank temp from a 15degr. to heat it to 80. the two hydoors are on each side of the corners .so thers plenty of flow i tried turning of the light also .but no can do it didnt work.i do water changes every week and syphon the rocks blast the sand rocks and sum coral but with little sign of it not wanting to return.but in less then aweek worst.i just dont know what else 2 do i dont feed but half a cube.of cyclops .once a week and once a weeks i give 4 drops of reeds phyto plankton. so i think im going 2 tear the tankdown if i cant fix this problem soon

[scubasteve2580]

hello everyone i also have a problem. i set up my gils tank about 4 months ago and i swear that cyano is like a battle with out a couse im almost 2 the point of netting up the 3 nano gobies and changing the water rocks coral and sand from my 150 reef and startin all over. the 5 gallon nano is a fluval edge with a hamilton 75 watt 14k bulb 2 hydoor nana pumps and a 3 gallon sump with a skimmer drilled tank and a chiller with heater and cold control and can change the tank temp from a 15degr. to heat it to 80. the two hydoors are on each side of the corners .so thers plenty of flow i tried turning of the light also .but no can do it didnt work.i do water changes every week and syphon the rocks blast the sand rocks and sum coral but with little sign of it not wanting to return.but in less then aweek worst.i just dont know what else 2 do i dont feed but half a cube.of cyclops .once a week and once a weeks i give 4 drops of reeds phyto plankton. so i think im going 2 tear the tankdown if i cant fix this problem soon

rocks may be leaching

[Mr. Fosi]

Got the citation + link and I'll take a look at it.

[Weetabix7]

Got the citation + link and I'll take a look at it.

 

Thanks Fosi, I'm really interested in your thoughts on it.

And thank you very much ajmckay for finding and posting that.

[ajmckay]

No problem.

 

 

I'm interested in what Fosi has to say as well. I'm not a biologist by any means but I can usually understand biological concepts when I hear/read them. I'm just not aware of many of them

[perverseosmosis]

Just my two cents. I've always felt that the "you need more flow" advice is rather dubious.

 

In my tank, it grows most rapidly on the areas of glass being blasted by my koralia 1's. The second best place for it is on the tips of said powerheads!

 

I can't think of a place with more flow, short of the actual impellers in the pumps themselves. Those are usually free of cyno, but difficult to mount coral on

[zemuss]

I have been battling Cyano for weeks.

 

 

"Z"

[Weetabix7]

I have been battling Cyano for weeks.

 

 

"Z"

 

You're not the only one.

BibleSue, who is a knowledgeable and experienced Reefer, is in the same boat.

[pismo_reefer]

Me too....

[Mr. Fosi]

I took a look at that article and decided to dig up the paper that Dr. Brockmann was referencing.

 

Before I dig into the info in the Mooy et al. paper and how I think it applies to us as marine aquarists, I wanted to mention a sentence that I take issue with in the article Brockmann:

 

"Under such conditions, it is rare to see any forms of true algae, as the afrementioned inorganic nutrients are required for their growth; inadequate concetrations of phosphate, in particular, can limit their development."

 

I take issue with this statement because it is actually extremely common see "true algae" in nutrient poor tanks. I assume that by "true algae" Brockmann means eukaryotic (non-bacterial) algae, since that is the common use of the term. If so, coralline is just one form of algae that is obvious and ubiquitous. I also have seen bubble algaes, green unicellular algae and other macroalgae like chaeto and various Caulerpa species thrive in tanks that are PO4-undetectable using hobby-level kits. My tank is a perfect example, as I am sure many of your tanks are as well. I'm shocked, frankly, that this was allowed to be published being as patently (and obviously!) false as it is.

 

When reading the Mooy et al. paper, it is important to note the concentrations of PO4 that they were dealing with: nmol/L.

 

The better hobby kits (like Salifert) can detect nothing less than 0.03 mg/L of PO4. That's important because 0.03 mg/L is ~316 nmol/L. Red Sea is worse, they can only go down to 0.1 mg/L, LaMott to 0.2 mg/L and Tropic Marin back to 0.03 mg/L. These LOD's assume that the tester is administering the test correctly, which isn't always a fair assumption.

 

That means that best we can do is 3x the the 100 nmol/L that Mooy et al. cited as the change-over point for PO4 reduction behavior. Take a look at the points that the authors used to support their conclusions:

 

 

An LOD of 316 nmol/L is right at the tippy-top of the PO4 amounts they were seeing in the South Pacific. That's well above what Mooy et al. say is needed to induce pelagic cyanos to change to a reduced-PO4 lifestyle. It is also what they referred to as "much more readily available" than the limiting conditions in the Sargasso Sea (p. 70, first paragraph). Assuming these data are what they used to set what they called "high PO4" and "low PO4" in their laboratory experiments, they are operating well outside of what we can detect in our aquariums.

 

So what? Well... That means that if administered perfectly, your hobby kit will return non-detect long before PO4 concentrations in your tank reach the levels that Mooy et al. (2009) say are required to induce the PO4-reduction behavior they describe. That means that it is entirely possible that your system is still rich enough in PO4 to support typical phosphorus use even though your test kit says there's 0.00 mg/L PO4. Until it is shown that marine aquaria that are non-detect for PO4 commonly have PO4 concentrations below 100 umol, the findings of Mooy et al. (2009) don't apply.

 

This, of course, all overlooks the PO4-libration that cyanos and heterotrophs are easily able to accomplish using the substrate in your system. Brockmann brings up liberation (even citing papers), then brushes it aside with the findings from Mooy et al. (2009) and I think that's the wrong response. Mooy et al. (2009) was a pelagic study, focusing on pelagic organisms under pelagic conditions. One problem: Our systems are not pelagic in nature. They are benthic.

 

In the areas of ocean where Mooy et al. (2009) collected their samples, there is no plausible benthic component to the ecosystem. The organisms they tested in the lab were all primarily pelagic genera. That means that you can't make a good case for benthic processes influencing what you see in the sampling areas or the laboratory result. It is thus inadvisable to apply these results to systems that are dominated by benthic processes... Systems such as all marine aquaria.

 

A key "benthic process" here would the liberation that Brockmann pushed aside. In our tanks, we have a little bit water over top a lot of rock & sand. In that rock and sand is PO4. PO4 from being co-deposited with Ca and Mg during calcification as well as any PO4 that has settled out onto or adsorbed into it. Plus, we are adding PO4 all the time in the form of food or, in my case, already present in the SW we change in. That means that we have ready sources for PO4 filling our tanks, with more coming in all the time and this is a stark contrast to the open-ocean sites that Mooy et al. (2009) were sampling from. How then can you make a case for directly applying the findings of Mooy et al. (2009) to marine aquaria? You can't.

 

According to the conditions of Mooy et al. (2009) as well as the assessment of system type (pelagic/benthic). The abundance-of-PO4 hypothesis is more than sufficient for explaining why we see cyano in our tanks and is clearly a better option to that posed by Brockmann.

[Urchinhead]

Thank you Mr. Fosi. You made my brain hurt. And I had to reach WAY back into the memory palace to remember allot of your terms.

 

On that note and for those with Cyano problems I would recommend the following treatment. It has worked for me constantly to the point where I would be confident in trying a controlled experiment to prove its efficacy.

 

 

1. manual removal of as much visible cyano as possible prior to following steps

2. 25% water change

3. All light into tank removed for 72 to 120 hours. That means *ALL* light

4. Appropriate watt/flow UV Sterilizer run 24/7 over same lights out period

5. Use of erythromycin in a dosing appropriate to the volume of your tank

6. 50% water change at half way point of lights out

7. Redose 50% of initial erythromycin dose

8. After lights back on 50% water change followed by 20% water changes every other day for an 8 day period.

[Billdemart]

Coral Magazine rocks. I got my first issue last week... Here's a link to the December issue with the article Reefescape mentioned (I will read it now...) http://livedemos.texterity.com/coral_demo/2009 See page 10.

 

Nice.. Thanks for that link. Reading the Flow article right now.

[Billdemart]

Actually reading the whole thing now. Is this always free like this?

[zemuss]

When in doubt let Fosi SHOUT!

[Mr. Fosi]

I put in all that work and no one wants to disagree?

 

After all the initial posts, I thought what I had to say might upset the apple cart.

[scubasteve2580]

so why nopt run a good phos remover "rowaphos" and do a few water changes. if what your saying is true and complete that would pretty much do it right fosi?