cyano outbreak

[medi]

I noticed I am starting to have a bit of a cyano problem that started about a week ago. I can't really figure out what the problem is. My parameters all look great

Phosphate 0
NO3 is undetectable
NO2 is 0
NH3 is 0
PH is 8.0
KH is 9
calcium is a little on the low side at 360

All test are elos, so they should be accurate. I do a 5G WC every week. I only use RO/DI water. TDS reads 0. My MH bulb is a 14K phoenix that is only 3 months old. The back is packed with chaeto, but not enough to limit flow. I have probably too much water flow for a 34G Solana: 1 #2 Koralia, 1 #1 Koralia, and 1 Nano Koralia. I added a bag of Chemi Pure Elite yesterday. I don't really know much about it accept for the good things I have read on the forums. Anyone know of anything else I should try?
TIA,
Calvin

[mharmon]

Blast as much of it off with a turkey baster, etc. then try to siphon it up. If all your numbers are in line, flow is good, and your lighting is good then it should clear up.

What are you feeding? You might need to cut back a little on your feeding or adjust a bit.

Mark

[medi]

I am feeding a 1/4 cube of Fish & Reef #1 every third day, and a small amount of Ocean Nutrition Formula one marine pellet every day. I have been trying to manually remove as much as possible, but it just keeps coming back.

[justahobby]

If Feeding, parameters, and flow is all in check. Maybe you have big eaters and poopers in a smaller tank? Theres not been new LR or LS added and nothing has died? With syphoning and patience taking too long, you could go with more flow and maybe make adjustments to the directions of the flow. I have found too much flow does help. Just move the coral out of direct line of fire if the dont like it. and then I remove the extra power head after its gone and put my coral back in their spots.

[medi]

I added new LR, but it was dead and had nothing on it to cure. Also, this started a few days before I added the LR. Also, I only have two smaller Ocellaris Clowns and one purple dottyback

[jc]

I've been fighting cyano for a long time. I think once it gets a foot hold it is hard to kill it off. I've used chemiclean with good results. It does stress out the corals though.

[justahobby]

How old is the tank?


Even rock that has sit out for months will have living and decaying matter. Dry rock doesn't mean theres not other bacteria growing that will die off.

If you need a kick start, blacking out the tank for 3 days has shown me good results. But as others have wisely mentioned, finding the culprit is the best method for a good ridance.

[medi]

I am not to the point that I want to use chemiclean. I have heard good things about it, but I am always afraid to put chemicals in my tank

[medi]

The tank is 4.5 months old. This rock has been sitting for a LONG time. no chance of anything living on it. I think I am going to see if the Chemi Pure Elite helps at all, and it it doesn't then I may have to try the three days of darkness

[justahobby]

There you go! Your due for cyano. I wouldnt do chemicals. Its antibiotics and they dont distinguish good from bad bacteria. You are still building up your good bacteria and kicking their butts now will only drag out the process. I know it can be disheartening and may even last longer than you expect, but it always goes away given you aren't a contributing factor ex. overfeeding. And YES there is living bacteria on everything unless your soaked it in bleach and left it in an isolation chamber.

[medi]

hmm...I have never heard that cyano was a normal part of cycling. Learn something new everyday. I know this is hard to say, but how long do you think is "normal", and at what point should I start worrying.

[Jonthefishguy]

Cyano IS NOT a part of cycling. If you have cyano, you have too much nutrients in the water. DO NOT use chemiclean as a bandaid to fix the issue. You use chemiclean to help combat the cyano from getting out of control, however you must get to the bottom of the issue. Overuse of chemiclean and similar products without finding the root of the cause and fixing it, will only make the cyano strain become immune to chemiclean.

[ErikH]

I use Red Slime Control every now and then. I have a bunch of fish and corals and they all seem unaffected when I use it. I did not find chemi clean to be a band-aid though either. Phosphate tests do not detect all phosphates, so the results of the tests are probably accurate.

FLOW helps, make your currents smash into each other creating turbulent random flow.

Alot of people with established tanks run into this problem, and I always suggest to them to replace 1/4 of their sandbed.

Also, you could run some phosban in a filter sock for a few days. Or you could do a large water change and see if that remedies your problem.

If you do all of the above and still have cyano, I'll buy you a sixer.

[Sherri]

Just be careful...I crashed my tank using chemicals to try & kill red slime. I've tried ChemiClean in the past and had no prob with it at all. Don't know if they've improved it or not, but it seemed to only work temporarily & it came back. I used Red Slime Control & something went wrong. Still don't know. Lost all but 2 of my fish and all my SPS but none of my softies. But I do know I won't put any more chemicals in my tank. Didn't for 6 years except for Chemi Clean...then the Red Slime Control. Not slamming the product as some here have used the Red Slime Control with no probs at all. I even under dosed. Just be careful what you do and how you do it. If the tank is only 4 mos old, it prob is going thru what JustaHobby states above. Good luck.

Since then, I have increased my water flow and done a few good water changes.

[medi]

First I just want to say thanks for all of the help and ideas so far. I am not sure what I would do if these forums didn't exist.

I think I have plenty of Flow, and they are pointed where they should create enough turbulence.

Is there such a thing as too deep for a sandbed? Right now I have approx. a 3 in deep SB. I have always been under the impression that "the deeper the better".

Has anyone ever used the Chemi Pure Elite to combat cyano? I have read on other forums that it helped with GHA and Cyano. I just put it in last night, but I want to make sure I am doing the right thing before it is too late. I am also thinking of purchasing a Phosban reactor just to be on the safe side.

Also, any ideas what the root cause could be? Like I said I feel everything is where it should be, and I am still having problems. So obviously I am missing something.

[medi]

Sherri,
I agree with you about chemicals. That is why I am so wary of putting them into the tank.

[wesheltonj]

How much flow do you have? Recommended would be 10x tank size.

[Jonthefishguy]

There have been cases on ALL of these products of people losing livestock for what seems to be no apparent reason. Chemiclean and various other chemicals that are all the same lower the amount of oxygen in the aquarium and kill off the bacteria. By lowering the oxygen levels, it suffocates the bacteria thus causing it to die off. HOWEVER, if the oxygen level drops too low, it can cause loss of livestock.

Drops in the level of dissolved oxygen (O2) in in the aquarium that takes place during the night certainly will effect your livestock during this period. While they are photosynthesizing during the day, algae and zooanthellae consume CO2 and produce O2, but at night when the lights are off, this process is reversed and the photosynthetic organisms consume O2 and give off CO2 and those that are most sensitive suffer.

[medi]

34G Solana,
1 #2 Koralia, 1 #1 Koralia, 1 Nano Koralia, plus the stock return pump, which I believe is rated around 400 GPH

[justahobby]

If you buy your LR from a store and not from established aquariums, and buy sand in a bag, or add your fish at the same time, or ..... ya slime is a part of cycling a new tank and can be avoided but not always the case. The die off process takes time. It doesnt all die in a month like LFS will tell you. Bacteria dies creating nutrients, more bacteria is born and eats these nutrients, then the nutrients drop and bacteria dies..... It takes a while for the tank to be stable.
It doesn't sound like something you are doing so what about filtration? Have you rinsed the bio balls? Is your skimmer pulling out thick green tea? IME all-in-ones are more maintenance because of the false back. They collect poop and rotting food like none other. Might need to syphon that out as well.

[medi]

I actually removed every bio-ball except for the ones in the skimmer. the only reason I am keeping those is for reduction of microbubbles. The stock skimmer actually does surprisingly well, everytime I clean it it has very dark green nasty skimmate. :) The one thing I have not done is syphon the back. I know it is nasty back there, I guess I will have to try that.

[cbianco]

Is there such a thing as too deep for a sandbed? Right now I have approx. a 3 in deep SB. I have always been under the impression that "the deeper the better".

This very well could be your problem. First, you don't actually have a deep sand bed. Second, a 34 gallon tank is too small to make the most of a deep sand bed.

Deep sand beds have 4-6 inches of sand minimum. Typically, it is suggested that a tank have 1 inch or less or 4 inches or more. Tanks with 1-4 inches of sand do not fair well.

I would have to go out on a limb here and say that this is your problem.

My suggestion is to siphon some of that sand out.

Ping is our resident expert on DSBs. Maybe he will chime in here.

Christopher

[Sherri]

More than likely the sandbed is your prob. Was told the same on me as mine is approx 3"....

[medi]

I am at work 'til tomorrow morning, but when I get home I am definitely going to remove ALOT of my sand and hopefully this takes care of the problem.

[jrsatx20]

i think takin the sand out while the live stock is in there is also a problem. you will be introducing all the crude that is in there into the water column and stress the fish.

[gjuarez]

I am not sure that the DSB is the problem, I say this because you have only had your sand bed for four months. DSB take a longer time before they start leaching out the nasty stuff back into the system. THe bacteria that grows at the very bottom of the tank takes a while before it establishes, then again three inches might not even be enough to create an anoxic zone. How old is the sand bed? How old is the live rock? Live rock can be the culprit as well. With time, if rock is not cleaned properly, it could store phosphates. I usually blast mine with a turkey baster, and a ton of detritus leaches out, i mean a ton.

[justahobby]

Have you seen a difference with the slime yet?

I agree that its too early for a problem in the sand bed, again I say if there hasn't been massive overfeeding in the past. We still don't know if this LS was from a bag in a store which is basically overpriced dying sand. Now the 3 in. is thought to be in the useless zone for anaerobic bacteria. Although alot of people agree that a 3 in. SB will become a problem, but that's usually years later, I suspect heavy feeding with low end clean up crews are contributing factors. If you can get your critters to live in a bucket while you suck it out and make sure nitrates are in check... it will be better to do it now than later.

[seatrueblue]

Do you salt water rinse the food you feed your fish? Do you use DT phytoplankton? DT caused a lot of cyano outbreaks in my tanks in the past. Not saying its bad stuff, maybe I got a few bad bottles.

[rocketeer]

I've been removing my DSB gradually. I syphon the sand out down to one inch then I vacuum that when I do a water change. I hardly cloud up the water at all and haven't noticed any negative effects. My cyano problem is improving a little I think. So far I am only about 25% done with the sand and 10% done with opening up my rock pile. I've got a lot of detritus traps. So far I have no nitrates. I never have been able to measure phosphate.

The water that comes out with my sand is dark brown and opaque. My system is much more than four months old though. The sand was washed about two years ago. It was 3.5 inches deep and reduced to 3 inches over time.

Jack

[medi]

Alright....so a lot has been posted since yesterday. I got off work this morning, and the first thing I did was remove approx. 75% of the LS. I hope this was a good thing, but on the other hand since I placed the chemi-pure in my tank I have not seen any new cyano in my tank. So hopefully this is helping.

To start answering questions:
The LS was "basically overpriced dying sand", the LR was from an 8 year old 180 gallon aquarium, so maybe this is part of the problem.
I used DT's a couple of times, but then I read about the possible problems and ceased all use.
I guess I SW rinse my frozen food. I usually thaw a 1/4 cube by sticking it in a cup of SW from the aquarium.
Finally, like I said before all of my water parameters are in check, according to ELos test kits. NO3 is undetectable, NO2 is 0, NH3 is 0, Phosphate is 0

[medi]

Oh, and I do clean my LR alot with a turkey baster