Cyano in new tank

[PJPS]

7 minutes ago, BioReefed said:

Can't take a picture of that, that microscope was not the best one. Even though the algae looks red by the naked eye in the microscope looks green, and looks like needles kind of like hay or straw. I didn't see any little individual circles or cells like typicall dino. So that makes me assume it is cyano. But I'm not sure if cyano goes away at night and comes back when the lights are on, that's what happens to mine.

so if it happens to be cyano, is it time for a water change? My tank is exactly two months today and I only did one small water change a month ago.

I heard if it is dino then no water change, but with cyano you should do a water change and syphon the sand. Not sure what to do

Skip water changes for now.  I can't remember which are super toxic to snails, but those are UV susceptible.  The overarching theory, if or if not using UV, is to make the battlefield inhospitable to dinos.  Dinos thrive in the vacuuum 0 phosphates creates in the tank. So the first step, no matter what, is to get nutrients as close to 20 no3: 0.2 po4.  Really anything non zero, but that range is solidly off zero.

 

When I beat dinos in a few weeks, and I had a solid plague, I just hammered it from all angles. Dosed a little sponge excel to encourage diatoms, dosed a little eco balance to favour good bacteria and 0.3ml nopox to feed the bacteria, lots of pods and live phyto, pulled all filtration, stopped water changes and scraping the glass, and hoped for anything else.  The diatoms came in, took over, and were gone in two weeks (likely all the pods).  Then it was just GHA, manual removal and snails dealt with that in days.

 

No light or heat idiocy, no Dino X.  You'll only be back with dinos + dead/dying stuff.

 

Basically determine how upset they make you, and scale your budget accordingly.  Faster diatom dismissal scales with your wallet.  If you're willing to $pend, and want to skip the harder work (waiting), do everything above + run a decent UV directly on the display (not as useful for dinos if sump plumbed).  If you're sick of $pending, just get your nutrients in line and keep them there, the dinos will eventually pass.

 

Needles sound like silicates/diatoms (maybe).  It's honestly impossible to guess, there's lots of stuff that's pointy under a scope.

[PJPS]

56 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

Using dry rock to start reefs comes at a great cost to the keeper...tank fixers like to vy for best methods among that group of reefers. There's big $ in honing skills that prevent new cyclers from losing their investments

 

Who is getting rich honing dino removal skills?  I can think of dino x as a product, but who's charging for dino advice?

 

Also I gotta say, I disagree that it's 10% that don't need to do a so called "rip clean".  That sounds like giving up to me.  Restart your tank when it hits an inevitable rough patch?  Do we murder grandma when she's no longer perfect?  No, we learn how to manage her new struggles.  And follow expert advice.

 

Now, expert advice isn't easy to discern on a forum, but I'm not shooting grandma until she's posing a legitimate danger to others.  So I agree they should try everything before doing a "rip clean", but I'd keep it off the table (not mention it) until it's a SERIOUS problem.   If you're tearing it all apart, I see no value in doing it before you've lost lost livestock/livestock is noticeably getting worse at speed.  But that's just me, I understand why R2R is "rip clean" for everything these days.  It's instant gratification.

 

From the thread you posted:  the benefit you get for the hours it takes to run a true rip clean is your tank looks and runs like you want it to, for a while, until conditions in your home bring it right back full circle. rip cleans aren't a permanent fix for algae / invasion management, they're a tool to reverse old tank syndrome in reef tanks because OTS is caused by compounding waste and dead cells. ripping that mass out of the tank correctly, surgically, gets the results you can clearly see here. 

 

So it's the fix for Old Tank Syndrome and New Tank Syndrome?

[brandon429]

I don't do theory battles, I post links of work done as the weight. 

 

 

For example

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/official-sand-rinse-and-tank-transfer-thread.230281/

 

 

that's a lot of aquariums not feeling how you feel. That's also a lot of fixes and after pics and happy tanks, all post rip clean

 

It's easy to assess negatives when not having to work any tank live time. Accountable for the outcome live time, things are different- we only care about results linkable. 

 

Which of the two methods have the least tradeoff invasions

 

There are many things we can evaluate objectively from work threads

 

Which method shows the most cures given simply the links avaliable

 

Did we have any tank crashes for eight years

 

Many objective things can be noted

 

A weakness for us: not helpful for big tankers. Good thing this is a nano reef site, we've got those in the totally fixed group apparently per pics and testimony

 

[PJPS]

Just now, brandon429 said:

I don't do theory battles, I post links of work done as the weight. 

Good move, I''ll post links of "rip cleaned" tanks, I imagine they're great for a few months.  They ought to be, there's no microbiology.

[brandon429]

As long as we can see the links of work umpires have earned, BioReefed can shop for best practices without having to guess. 

[brandon429]

You wrote that before inspecting any of the eight years on file pjps 

 

Sustains can be tracked by clicking find all posts by the entrants

 

We never used ID for any job

 

We did no parameter testing or hesitations

 

It's just pure results, both threads. 

[BioReefed]

37 minutes ago, PJPS said:

Dinos thrive in the vacuuum 0 phosphates creates in the tank. So the first step, no matter what, is to get nutrients as close to 20 no3: 0.2 po4.  Really anything non zero, but that range is solidly off zero.

But what if is not dinos? I think it is cyanobacteria. I removed the purigen and chemi pure 2 weeks ago and started dosing neonitro and neophos for three days until my P AND n went up, they ahve been at 10 for nitrates and 0.25 for Phosphates, constant for two weeks, I test the water daily and it is constant. So that's another reason to believe it is cyano and not dinos.

I probably need to double check again in the microscope to be sure what it is. Eerything seems to contradict itself. If its dinos no water change but if it is cyano do a water change? Let's say it is cyanobacteria, what should I do at this point?

[PJPS]

If it was cyano, I'd check that nutrients are both off zero and not crazy out of balance, siphon it off, and wait.  And keep siphoning it as it annoyed me.  If it got crazy I'd reach, relunctantly, for chemiclean, knowing it'll nuke a lot of good bacteria (antibiotics, especially the aquarium stuff, aren't super choosy about what gets nuked).  Meaning the chemiclean will nuke the cyano, but likely introduce some other issue.

 

I do not claim to be a remote tank strategist, I'm just sharing what has worked for me over the 17 years I've been nano reefing.

[PJPS]

22 minutes ago, BioReefed said:

Eerything seems to contradict itself. If its dinos no water change but if it is cyano do a water change?

This is why proper ID is so valuable :).  But I wouldn't be quick on water changes for cyano either.  We're after stability, let nature figure itself out, it'll find balance.  Water changes should be nutrient "spiked" so they match the tank with either though.  I don't believe high nitrate cause cyano, in my experience it pops up shortly after I measure nutrients where NO3 is super low and PO4 is elevated.  Basically lopsided nutrients.  I have no research papers to site, but the correlation is there in my mind for sure.

[BioReefed]

32 minutes ago, PJPS said:

If it was cyano, I'd check that nutrients are both off zero and not crazy out of balance, siphon it off, and wait.  And keep siphoning it as it annoyed me.  If it got crazy I'd reach, relunctantly, for chemiclean, knowing it'll nuke a lot of good bacteria (antibiotics, especially the aquarium stuff, aren't super choosy about what gets nuked).  Meaning the chemiclean will nuke the cyano, but likely introduce some other issue.

 

I do not claim to be a remote tank strategist, I'm just sharing what has worked for me over the 17 years I've been nano reefing.

Thanks again. I will keep syphoning and adding microbacter 7 and give it time.

 

[PJPS]

9 minutes ago, BioReefed said:

Thanks again. I will keep syphoning and adding microbacter 7 and give it time.

 

Good stuff!  Easy on the MB7, think 1/4 dose weekly.  We're guiding, not shoving :).  Otherwise the MB7 takes over and strips your unstable nutrients.  Slow and steady, make the right adjustments over time, it'll find it's groove sooner than you think 🙂

[PJPS]

I follow this euro-stickhead 

 that’s a healthy look for rock under 9 months if starting white.  The tank looks like it’s meh, because it’s young, his old tank is stupid nice for a small cube.  This is advanced stuff, decent acros at 6 months, but the tank is funky (algae, cyano, etc), so don’t get down, every tank needs to find it’s groove.

 

Embrace mild suck, it’ll pass.  If not, we’ll help you sort it out 👍🏻
 

edit: 10% water changes (no more) every 2 weeks is probably OK, since it’s unlikely anything toxic we desperately need to correct (we think).  The fish will appreciate some dilution for the long haul 😊.  Don’t want to leave you thinking never water change.  I’ve just found too much is unhelpful early on.

 

Here’s the tank boot

 

[mcarroll]

21 hours ago, BioReefed said:

But what if is not dinos? I think it is cyanobacteria.

What I see in the pics looks totally normal for a tank that young.  

 

Cyano can be very fast growing and can appear to recede overnight and grow back in the day....not usually as dramatically as it appears to happen with dino's though.

 

21 hours ago, BioReefed said:

I removed the purigen and chemi pure 2 weeks ago and started dosing neonitro and neophos for three days until my P AND n went up, they ahve been at 10 for nitrates and 0.25 for Phosphates, constant for two weeks, I test the water daily and it is constant. So that's another reason to believe it is cyano and not dinos.

I probably need to double check again in the microscope to be sure what it is.

If you haven't run the at-home dino test, you may as well do that to rule out (or confirm) any remaining doubt whether there are dino's present:

1. Take a sample of your algae mix in a vial with some tank water.
2. Shake it up until any clumps are mostly broken up/homogenized.  
3. Leave the vial under good light and see if anything forms into a mass or string.  
4. Should happen quickly....no more than an hour, probably a lot less.  
5. Only dino's will group back together on their own.

 

21 hours ago, BioReefed said:

Eerything seems to contradict itself. If its dinos no water change but if it is cyano do a water change? Let's say it is cyanobacteria, what should I do at this point?

It all makes more sense when you relate the details back to getting your system (re)balanced and look at the dino's (or other pest) as a symptom rather than a problem.  

 

👍

 

What do you have for a cleanup crew right now?

[BioReefed]

3 hours ago, mcarroll said:

What do you have for a cleanup crew right now?

as of right now I have 4 snails, 4 hermit crabs and 1 peppermint shrimp

[BioReefed]

On 2/11/2023 at 3:59 PM, PJPS said:

10% water changes (no more) every 2 weeks is probably OK,

So, after I do the at home test and rule out dinos, should I perform a water change now? and then one every two weeks?

I checked again all the parameters of the water today. Salinity its a little low at 1.024, Temperature 77, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 10, Ammonia 0, PH  not sure colors hard to read, but between 7.8 and 8.0, Alkalinity 9, Calcium 395.

Also some people say not to syphon the sand while you change the water, but isn't that the point of changing some water? get all that stuff from the sand?

[PJPS]

17 minutes ago, BioReefed said:

as of right now I have 4 snails, 4 hermit crabs and 1 peppermint shrimp

 here’s how I’d stock a BC 16, since I had one.

 

6 astrea/trochus

6 nassarius

3 bumblebee

2 peppermint

hermit crabs for enjoyment.  I wonder about usefulness as CUC, but I love watching them and always keep a variety of types and sizes.  They’ll occasionally murder each other or a snail, so embrace the brutality of nature if you go hard on hermits like I do.

1 small urchin down the line

 

you’ll need to let go of worrying a lot about Nitrate and Phosphate. Just keep them well away from zero and feed your inverts.  Use a probiotic powder (benepets/coral frenzy) and they won’t move your nutrients and your invert menagerie will be happy (so will your coral).

 

It can be frustrating with all the info from 15 years ago living seemingly forever online.  BRS does more harm than good in my opinion, unintentionally but it’s still unhelpful.  You should listen to advanced/seasoned hobbyists or actual marine biologists that aren’t selling you anything.  Reinaldo Rivera’s creedo applies “if their tank ain’t nice, don’t take their advice!”.  This goes for influencers, it’s in the name.  Don’t take their advice.

 

 

[PJPS]

15 minutes ago, BioReefed said:

So, after I do the at home test and rule out dinos, should I perform a water change now? and then one every two weeks?

I checked again all the parameters of the water today. Salinity its a little low at 1.024, Temperature 77, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 10, Ammonia 0, PH  not sure colors hard to read, but between 7.8 and 8.0, Alkalinity 9, Calcium 395.

Also some people say not to syphon the sand while you change the water, but isn't that the point of changing some water? get all that stuff from the sand?

Here’s what I would do, I’m sure others will have other modalities.  This is just me:

 

get your phosphate stable for 7-10 days

siphon all the crud in the sand

dose a bottle of eco pods, keep live phyto in the fridge, 5ml every 2 days to keep the pods reproducing

add a clean up crew as I describe

 

enjoy the tank and get a variety of quality foods into rotation - quality & variety of marine foods make it easier for everything to thrive.  Don’t overfeed, but don’t underfeed under the misapprehension that it’ll keep bad stuff from growing in the tank. The bad stuff is mostly healthy stuff, you just want stuff to eat it, so you don’t have to look at it, like everyone else 😊👍🏻🐒

[BioReefed]

4 hours ago, mcarroll said:

Cyano can be very fast growing

I did the test and nothing formed on the vial. So I thing we can definitely rule out dinos. And here's another picture of the tank 

[BioReefed]

39 minutes ago, PJPS said:

Here’s what I would do, I’m sure others will have other modalities.  This is just me:

 

get your phosphate stable for 7-10 days

siphon all the crud in the sand

dose a bottle of eco pods, keep live phyto in the fridge, 5ml every 2 days to keep the pods reproducing

add a clean up crew as I describe

 

enjoy the tank and get a variety of quality foods into rotation - quality & variety of marine foods make it easier for everything to thrive.  Don’t overfeed, but don’t underfeed under the misapprehension that it’ll keep bad stuff from growing in the tank. The bad stuff is mostly healthy stuff, you just want stuff to eat it, so you don’t have to look at it, like everyone else 😊👍🏻🐒

Thank you! I will do that. The only thing I'm feeding are my soft corals once a week, I don't have any fish since they died form brooklynella, so I'm running the uv light for a few weeks and hopefully that will help so I can get more fish later on.

 

[PJPS]

Just now, BioReefed said:

I did the test and nothing formed on the vial. So I thing we can definitely rule out dinos. And here's another picture of the tank 

Great news!  I’d bet $50 that’s cyano from the picture.  Turkey baster the corals, lightly siphon the cyano off surfaces.  Think 1% water change volume.

 

Once your nutrients are back in balance for a bit, I’d do the sand bed and have the pods ready to add that night in 0 flow for 40 minutes.  Poured over the rock and sand, you want them widely dispersed, not 2000 in one spot.  They’ll eventually get everywhere, but moving the bottle a bit will save you a few weeks 😉

[PJPS]

3 minutes ago, BioReefed said:

Thank you! I will do that. The only thing I'm feeding are my soft corals once a week, I don't have any fish since they died form brooklynella, so I'm running the uv light for a few weeks and hopefully that will help so I can get more fish later on.

 

If you’re not feeding fish, nutrients get both tricker and easier (contradictions I know 🤷🏻‍♂️).  The complexity of having to guesstimate nutrient processing through the digestive system of a fish, is replaced by the complexity of how many different foods you have to stick in there to get a good balance of Nitrate and Phosphate.  The tricky part will be consumption time. How long does it take to go from food to measurable nutrients, and how those look in terms of ratio?  It may not change, it may be wildly different than with the fish.
 

You won’t know till you try, just know that you can’t screw it up too badly if you keep your nutrients off zero.  I qualify all of this with the statement - I am just a hobbyist sharing my opinion.

[mcarroll]

On 2/12/2023 at 4:41 PM, BioReefed said:

as of right now I have 4 snails, 4 hermit crabs and 1 peppermint shrimp

Depending on which snails you have so far, that may be zero herbivores.

 

Do you have any Turbo, Astrea, Trochus, Ceriths or Nerites?

[BioReefed]

10 hours ago, mcarroll said:

Depending on which snails you have so far, that may be zero herbivores.

 

Do you have any Turbo, Astrea, Trochus, Ceriths or Nerites?

That's a very good question, I have no idea what types they are, I know two of them sometimes bury in the sand, one is always cleaning the rocks, and there's one with a red shell that never does anything it is always on top of the glass and doesn't move at all.

[BioReefed]

On 2/12/2023 at 5:25 PM, PJPS said:

Great news!  I’d bet $50 that’s cyano from the picture.  Turkey baster the corals, lightly siphon the cyano off surfaces.  Think 1% water change volume.

 

Well I think I owe you $50.  I borrowed a better microscope and I was able to see better, it is hard to take a picture though, but when I was looking at the sample I noticed right away this worm like creature moving and some other small ones, you can see through them. I wonder what those are, any idea?

[PJPS]

I can't tell at that magnification, but really doesn't seem like dinos (hooray!)  I wouldn't worry about that worm until it's causing issue, it looks harmless to me, just a critter until I worry it's not because making trouble.  I'd stay the course for now, siphon/pick out what drives you batty (we all have our triggers) and keep striving to stablize nutrients (stable off zero roughly 10:1 to 100:1 - 10:3 hasn't made any difference, nor has 100:1, or 30n:0.4p, herbivores keep the ugly down, more nitrate than phosphate in a not absurd range, keeps the uglier stuff at bay.

 

Can we get an FTS?  see if we need to readjust anything, I wanna help get you where you'd like to get 🙂