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Slowly losing battle with cyano, I need help!!


brianinak

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19 minutes ago, Sherman said:

Try to feed your coral and fishes. Usually the feed has PO4.

Are you running any phos remover like rowa or any other brand?

If you are running phos remover stop a day or 2 for the PO4 to build up

zero phos remover.  

I have been minizing food due being afraid introducing too many nutrients.  Think I need to Ultra low range hanna checker.  

 

 

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9 minutes ago, brianinak said:

Hanna low range checker 

For Phosphates or Phosphorus? It actually makes a difference, the Phosphorus checker being much more accurate.

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I am continues to read up on cyano and dino.  think I can rule out dinos.  

 

I have come across a few post that cyano thrives in low nutrient tanks, Sherman had also made a reference.  One of the first things I did was double up on water changes to two a week, and reduce nutrient input, back to one a week now.  My water params are good.  Could this be part of the problem?

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3 hours ago, Sherman said:

Try to feed your coral and fishes. Usually the feed has PO4.

Are you running any phos remover like rowa or any other brand?

If you are running phos remover stop a day or 2 for the PO4 to build up

I am running GFO in mini reactor.  Do you suggest removing the GFO and just running carbon?

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Thrassian Atoll

How do I get rid of the cyano without removing too much of my nutrients?  Nuked my sps when I changed my chemipure blue and stripped my nutrients, but the cyano was gone.  I removed my all of my media and am raising nutrients but the cyano is back.  Lol.  It's a no win.

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3 hours ago, brianinak said:

I am running GFO in mini reactor.  Do you suggest removing the GFO and just running carbon?

You try to stop GFO for 2 days and let the PO4 climb a bit(Say 0.02 0r 0.03). Zero PO4 is the main problem.

You dose bacteria ?

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2 hours ago, TILTON said:

How do I get rid of the cyano without removing too much of my nutrients?  Nuked my sps when I changed my chemipure blue and stripped my nutrients, but the cyano was gone.  I removed my all of my media and am raising nutrients but the cyano is back.  Lol.  It's a no win.

You siphon them out as much as possible

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8 hours ago, Sherman said:

You try to stop GFO for 2 days and let the PO4 climb a bit(Say 0.02 0r 0.03). Zero PO4 is the main problem.

You dose bacteria ?

I do not dose bacteria.  I'll take out the gfo and see what happens.  

thanks for help

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Sherman,

 

I have removed the gfo.  I'll test in two days and see if phosphates come above 0.  Feel partly like working against myself.  But, the further I dig into cyano the more I find that very common in new tanks around the 3-4 month period and like yourself, other's state that partly due to Low nutrients.  I'll keep you posted.

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Thrassian Atoll

I raised my po4 to .003 and nitrates to 10.  I just added a small bag of chemipure elite tonight.  I am going to test frequently and see where it takes those.

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23 hours ago, TILTON said:

I raised my po4 to .003 and nitrates to 10.  I just added a small bag of chemipure elite tonight.  I am going to test frequently and see where it takes those.

Keep on posting how things go!

what is your goal with raising PO4 and nitrates the adding chemipure elite?

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Agreed to all so far, a nano has the ability to experiment with all these options. In the end if a skip cycle reset is wanted we show it’s not hard to lift out rocks, rinse em off w saltwater in the sink, take out the bed and either replace or rinse it, and put it all back 

 

we have that access flexibility in our small tanks so there’s no concern either way we want to try, a less work option is ideal 

 

if can’t be found, work w turn it around 

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Quote

 

A bit under 48 hrs without gfo

Nitrate 5ppm (red sea)

Phosphate 0.00 (hanna low range)

also left lights off all day today.

 

Nitrates up a bit, phosphate still 0.00.  I worry that Hanna low range not sensitive enough.  I have never had a reading other than 0.00.  Might test my tap water to see if measures anything at all.  so nitrate up a little but also 6 days since last water change.  Water change day is tomorrow, might put off till Friday, leaving lights on off for 3 days and then large water change.  

 

 

Not sure if that is relevant or not, but getting what I am pretty sure is green carolline algae growth on rocks.  I am excited about that!

 

So back cyano battle.  What do you all recommend next step to be?

 

thoughts?

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I few things that I have come across as I continue research my battle with cyano

 

1. My cyano problem is very very minimal compared to what I have seen and read while continuing to do research on cyano

2. I am coming across more and more post about tanks 4-6 old with low nutrients experiencing the same problem I am, most of which stared with dry rock, and lack the biodiversity needed for appropriate water chemistry and biological balance.

3. With newer tanks the issue may not be excess nutrients but unbalanced nitrate phosphate ratio (Sherman, this supports you thoughts)

4. Reducing nutrients in tank may be fostering a healthy environment for cyano, so reducing feeding, black outs, gfo, etc are not addressing the problem.  Some post even recommend skipping water changes, adding fish and over feeding to allow nitrate and phosphate, sounds crazy right!

5. Redfield ratio; regardless of amounts of nutrients, a proper nitrate to phosphate ratio good for tank and battles algae 16:1.  So young tanks that are sterile are often out of balance in this area, and cyano may not be an high nutrient issue in this scenario. 

 

I removed by gfo several days ago, still measuring zero phosphate as of two day ago.  Need hanna ultra low phosphorus I think.   I'm not changing any else just yet, going to do more research and hoping to get other's thoughts on this.  Please chime in!  

 

Here is a link to thread I read and gathered a lot of this info.  I have found several other post about young tanks, low nutrients, and cyano in addition to this one.  Thread is long, but worth a read if you are in the same boat as me.

 

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/carbon-and-cyanobacteria.89062/

 

Again, please chime in!

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On ‎12‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 9:22 PM, TILTON said:

How do I get rid of the cyano without removing too much of my nutrients?  Nuked my sps when I changed my chemipure blue and stripped my nutrients, but the cyano was gone.  I removed my all of my media and am raising nutrients but the cyano is back.  Lol.  It's a no win.

Hey Tilton,

 

How old is your tank?  Did you cycle with dry or live rock?

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If you have cyano, your test results will be inaccurate, the cyano is using up the available nutrients.

 

I stopped testing p04 because it always reads 0 and has from the beginning on ALL my tanks.

 

Many ppl have this problem.

 

 

 

Chemipures did nothing to my tanks, never helped with any outbreak I had.

Most keep it too long in their tanks(states it last 4mnths?) and it becomes ineffective and then becomes a nutrient trap.

 

Individual media's work much better.

 

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Thrassian Atoll
11 hours ago, brianinak said:

Hey Tilton,

 

How old is your tank?  Did you cycle with dry or live rock?

Tank is 5 months old.  I used dry rock.  Everything was going great up until last month.  I was getting a little bit of cyano but nothing crazy.  All of my sps looked great at the time.  I was dumb and changed out 4 chemipure blues at the same time on my IM25.  I also changed all of my RODI filters as well.  My alk creeped up passed 9dkh.  

 

So with increase in alk, and huge decrease in nutrients, my sps got burnt tips, stn, brown out over the course of 2 weeks.  The cyano was gone though!  

 

I took all of the chemipure blue out for 2 weeks and let my nutrients get back up, decreased my alk to around 7.5.  What's left has started to bounce back a little and nothing else is dying.  The cyano has came back as strong as is it was before.  I have recently added the chemipure elite small bag and have been testing things regularly to try and find that area where the cyano will start to go away but my sps won't die on me.  

 

Its been a tough battle.  I feed twice a day, but also run a skimmer as well.  I really want my nitrates around 4-5 and my phosphates around .002-.003.  I feel like if I want to keep my sps good, that I might have to live with the cyano until my tank matures more and hopefully it starts going away on its own.  Not really sure.

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Cyano is a tough one.  In my big SPS tank I let it grow here and there and don;t worry about it.  Whenever I have cyano I also have fantastic SPS colors.  In my 40 it was really bad, really really bad.  I used a chemical to get rid of it, it came back, used it again, it came back a little more so I just gave up.  A few months later it was all gone.  So you can wait it out, or tolerate.  I know in these smaller tanks just a little can make the tank look bad so I understand wanting it gone, but if you react too fast it can harm corals.

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Thrassian Atoll
32 minutes ago, markalot said:

Cyano is a tough one.  In my big SPS tank I let it grow here and there and don;t worry about it.  Whenever I have cyano I also have fantastic SPS colors.  In my 40 it was really bad, really really bad.  I used a chemical to get rid of it, it came back, used it again, it came back a little more so I just gave up.  A few months later it was all gone.  So you can wait it out, or tolerate.  I know in these smaller tanks just a little can make the tank look bad so I understand wanting it gone, but if you react too fast it can harm corals.

Exactly what happened to me.  

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10 hours ago, TILTON said:

Tank is 5 months old.  I used dry rock.  Everything was going great up until last month.  I was getting a little bit of cyano but nothing crazy.  All of my sps looked great at the time.  I was dumb and changed out 4 chemipure blues at the same time on my IM25.  I also changed all of my RODI filters as well.  My alk creeped up passed 9dkh.  

 

So with increase in alk, and huge decrease in nutrients, my sps got burnt tips, stn, brown out over the course of 2 weeks.  The cyano was gone though!  

 

I took all of the chemipure blue out for 2 weeks and let my nutrients get back up, decreased my alk to around 7.5.  What's left has started to bounce back a little and nothing else is dying.  The cyano has came back as strong as is it was before.  I have recently added the chemipure elite small bag and have been testing things regularly to try and find that area where the cyano will start to go away but my sps won't die on me.  

 

Its been a tough battle.  I feed twice a day, but also run a skimmer as well.  I really want my nitrates around 4-5 and my phosphates around .002-.003.  I feel like if I want to keep my sps good, that I might have to live with the cyano until my tank matures more and hopefully it starts going away on its own.  Not really sure.

When I used rscp and my alk increasingly got higher, I had the same thing happen to my sps. 

 

All burnt tips and then algae developed on them. 

My sps seem to like alk between 7.7- 9, 12 not so much.

 

Have you tried using phosguard but in a small qty? Phosguard works well in small quantities changed as needed rather than a larger amount infrequently.

 

Large qty seems to drop the phos too much too quickly and corals hate that.

 

Phosguard and purigen really helped when I went through cyano and gha. Increased flow helped too and a big cleaning of all equipment, filtration, sand, hoses etc.

 

I also dropped my photo period by a few hrs.

 

 

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Thrassian Atoll
27 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

When I used rscp and my alk increasingly got higher, I had the same thing happen to my sps. 

 

All burnt tips and then algae developed on them. 

My sps seem to like alk between 7.7- 9, 12 not so much.

 

Have you tried using phosguard but in a small qty? Phosguard works well in small quantities changed as needed rather than a larger amount infrequently.

 

Large qty seems to drop the phos too much too quickly and corals hate that.

 

Phosguard and purigen really helped when I went through cyano and gha. Increased flow helped too and a big cleaning of all equipment, filtration, sand, hoses etc.

 

I also dropped my photo period by a few hrs.

 

 

I have not tried phosgaurd yet.  I am going to keep my alk stable at 8 or less and go with the the small bag of cpe for a few weeks and see what my nutrients do.  After that I will try some phosgaurd or maybe a couple packs of chemipure blue again and go slow with adding them.  I still have some left.  I just got a new light too that I need to get the corals used to.  I am going to purchase some new sps next month.  I need something new to keep as gauge for stability going forward.  It's going to take forever for what survived to color back up.

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52 minutes ago, TILTON said:

I have not tried phosgaurd yet.  I am going to keep my alk stable at 8 or less and go with the the small bag of cpe for a few weeks and see what my nutrients do.  After that I will try some phosgaurd or maybe a couple packs of chemipure blue again and go slow with adding them.  I still have some left.  I just got a new light too that I need to get the corals used to.  I am going to purchase some new sps next month.  I need something new to keep as gauge for stability going forward.  It's going to take forever for what survived to color back up.

Sounds like a good plan.

 

It's hard getting the perfe t balance of enough nutrients but not enough for gha and cyano.

 

Euphyllia are another coral that helps with reactions with alk swings, do you have any?

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