cyan out break

[jrhein]

Does anyone know what is the best thing to do when haveing a cyan bloom?

[don-n-sa]

how long has the tank been running?

[GaryP]

jrhein,

Increase your circulation and run a phosphate removal product. Siphon out any cyano that you can.

Chemi-Clean will kill it, but its only treating the symptoms, not the cause. The cause is excess nutrients in your water, especially total organic carbon, detritus build up, and phosphates. Some hermits will graze on it but you will hear pro's and con's from other members about keeping hermits in your tank. If nothing else the hermits will keep your detritus build-up under control. Personally, I have dwarf Mexican hermits in my tanks.

Gary

[jrhein]

The tank has been up for about a year now. I have taken some of the snails and hermits out of there and into the big tank. I guess I should of left them in there.

[cvonseggern]

I've been fighting a pretty ugly outbreak in my 100g. At least, it looks ugly to me...I'm told it could be worse. I'd had it slowly creeping up on me for a while, then I came home from a business trip to find several of my rocks looking like they'd been wrapped in crimson Mylar. All over the sandbed, too. What I've done is to turn the lights off and not feed for 3 days. I started feeding VERY sparingly this afternoon (only have 2 Banggais and a LMB at the moment) and turned the lights back on for 4 hours. I'll keep the 4-hour photoperiod for a few days and slowly increase it. The cyano isn't gone, but it's hugely reduced.

I think my outbreak stemmed mostly from overfeeding. I'm still learning this stuff :) As preventative measures I'm going to keep the feeding somewhat lower and increase the size of the cleanup crew. I'm trying to focus on snails that will stir up the sandbed. Got a couple fighting conchs and will have some nassarius soon. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Just my $.02

Chris

[GaryP]

Chris,

I really don't think that cutting back on the lights will help. The cyano will just wait it out. It might even have a negative effect in that other beneficial algaes competing for nutrients are going to cut back on their metabolism as well. IMO, the best solution, as I said above, is having adequate grazers and nutrient export.