My battle with Cyano and what I am doing to beat it....

[ErikH]

Hey y'all! As of recent, I have finally been battling cyano. I recently went from 20k bulbs to 10k, and as I figured, there were algae problems. Cyano, and lots of it, and other green algaes that seemed to just grow out of control.

I am winning this battle using an invasive strategy. I do not recommend this for everyone as it could easily spike and kill everything in your tank.

That being said, here's some detail:
75g Oceanic Brick
29g Fuge
150+ LBs LR in display
30+ LBs LR in fuge
No skimmer
4x Chromis
4x Tangs
1x Engineer Goby
1x Target Mandarin
1x Emo Nemo
4" sandbed display
6-10" sandbed fuge

At first, I was blaming the lights. Then I was blaming the abscence of the skimmer.

Cyano needs light, and nutrients to grow. If you cut the lights for three days, WHAM, no cyano.... For about a month or two.... Then you are right back where you started. Then I became a Chemi-Clean/Phosban addict. Spending money on chemical removal of nutrients is a waste of money, unless being used only temporarily. YOU MUST ELIMINATE THE SOURCE(S) OF WHAT IS FUELING THE GROWTH OF THE ALGAE, EVERYTHING ELSE IS A BANDAID.

What I realized is that my sandbeds were overloaded with excess detritus. I have a DSB in my fuge, and knowing that will keep me from spiking, I went berzerk. I got a 5g bucket, an mj1200 with a hose running from the bucket into a filtersock (higher the micron the better here for SURE) and a siphon hose from display to bucket. I could have easily went from display to filtersock in the fuge, but my return would not have been able to keep up, so I used this method.

I ran my fingers through all of my sand, getting ALL THE WAY TO THE BOTTOM, and swirled and swirled the sand. Then I started my siphon and kicked on the mj. The siphon tube is larger than the MJ tube, so I had to watch for a bucket overflow. Once the bucket was full, I would stop the siphon. Then I power washed more rock, and swirled more sand. By this time, the MJ is just about to empty the bucket, so I started my siphon again. I did this for about 15 buckets of water on my display and my tank is looking GREAT.

I am going to keep doing this regimen once a week on my display until it becomes too much work for too little detritus. Then I will start on my fuge. Just what has been done on the display has made such a huge impact that I am feeling much better about my husbandry techniques and more attached to my tank.

[JimD]

I was just discussing the importance of sandbed maintenance with another member yesterday. It can only process X ammount of gunk before it turns into a sink and begins releasing back into the water causing all kinds of problems. Before I went bare bottom, I let mine go for over five years without anything and I paid for it dearly. If I ever go back to a DSB I would change out at least a quarter of the sand every year or so just to keep it fresh. I wouldnt recommend what Scorpino did unless youre very confident in your abilities and have the time to constantly monitor your perameters. Glad your tank is coming around Erik. When my sandbed crashed, I was this close to shutting it down, glad I didnt.

[chark]

Wow, radical. How are your fish doing? If I didn't hate the look of bare bottom so bad I would go bare bottom.

[Bill S]

Please use rubber gloves, folks.

[ErikH]

everything is 100% fine. The fuge can handle pretty much anything I throw at it. The LR in the display also handles alot! I am VERY confident in my setup thus far, which is the only reason I did it. If you have followed the rules, overdone your rock, nutrient exportation, NNR, this is your route if you are having cyano problems... Like Bill said USE GLOVES. Bristleworms got a nasty lil sting.

[allan]

ah, was fixing to ask about the gloves. I got some kind of jab about a month ago, think it was a shard of rock, cut it out with a knife when the swelling got too bad. Don't want to go through that again.