fed up with cyano!!!!

[Dowtish]

chemi clean usually is just a band aid, and doesnt eliminate the problem. try the microbactor 7 or microbe lift special blend, it will attack it at it's source by adding beneficial bacteria to out compete the cyano.

 

[reefknight]

I've had much the same issue with mine. I began dosing Coral Snow along with MB7 and am on week 4, most of the cyano is gone. I've never been a fan of the "miracle algae removers" and have had horrible experiences with them in the past. Decided to try this combo as I've always been please with Zeo products, just not the cost. MB7 has been a great alternative to Zeo Bak as its much more affordable.

Hope your system has pulled out of its issue.

 

[TulsaTye]

Coral Snow is a good product but if u want to go natural try some conchs!

 

[FaviaFreak]

I used zeo coral snow and zeo bak ..... dosed every other day for a little over one week and cyano gone ..... and as a bonus, water has never looked more crystal clear!

+1 coral snow

 

[thewackyreefer]

I don't understand the Coral Snow + MB7 combo, can someone explain?

 

[mcarroll]

Don't blame your rocks!

The tank is 4 years old 75 gallon.

Given the tank's age and if your rocks are clean outside of the slime algae and if you have no sponges or cannister filters running in the system, I would commence with replacing your sand bed. Do it a little at a time - say 25% or less removed at a time - so your rocks can take over bio filtration. Minor pain in the butt, but a very inexpensive solution - especially so if you switch to bare bottom and don't put new sand in!

I have a bubble Magus nac6. I shoot for drier skim.

Dunno about that skimmer, but you definitely want to be skimmming wet, not dry. I would (and do) skim that way every day, but it is especially recommended during "issues" like this.

I used to never have cyano but I can't catch whatsoever causing it.

The age of the tank (along with no obvious causes) is the main clue, but not a cause. The cause is too many nutrients "in" and not enough "out" over time - and this all winds up in the sand bed.

After the sand bed is replaced to keep this from happening again, I would strongly consider improving your flow and skimmer performance. This could mean more pumps, better pumps, smarter pump placement, more turbulence, less turbulence - even moving/removing some rocks - but it also definitely means wet skimming.

There's also a chance you have too many animals in the tank and/or are feeding more than the tank can handle, so consider making changes there if it makes sense.

Lastly, make sure you have good alkalinity levels - close to 4.0 meq/L would be good. Low alk *can* bring these things on and/or make them worse - not a cause though...just a catalyst to unlocking excess nutrients in the system.

This is not the end of the world - don't give up, don't replace your rocks! :-)

-Matt

 

[robert]

I think mcarroll nails it, however I'm not sure why the rock would also not contain leach-able phosphates. I'm guessing that the rock also is leaching phosphates but that the majority is in the sand-bed and addressing this issue would effectively solve the problem. Phosphate has been shown to adsorb strongly on calcium carbonate - the sand, originally a phosphate sink becomes a phosphate source as the chemistry of the sand bed changes or the environment of the sand bed is changed by bacterial action.

Just for the fun of it, take a scoop of sand from beneath the surface (a couple of tablespoons). Rinse any obvious organics away with tank water. Drain off any residual water and put the sand in a small cup. Pour enough dilute white vinegar over the sand and let sit for a while. Pour off the vinegar and neutralize with some baking soda. Test this solution for phosphate. I don't know what you'll find - but it would be interesting to see if you read more phosphate than in your tank.

 

[Young Frankenstein]

+1 The age of the tank (along with no obvious causes) is the main clue, but not a cause. The cause is too many nutrients "in" and not enough "out" over time - and this all winds up in the sand bed.

 

[mcarroll]

I think mcarroll nails it, however I'm not sure why the rock would also not contain leach-able phosphates. I'm guessing that the rock also is leaching phosphates but that the majority is in the sand-bed and addressing this issue would effectively solve the problem. Phosphate has been shown to adsorb strongly on calcium carbonate - the sand, originally a phosphate sink becomes a phosphate source as the chemistry of the sand bed changes or the environment of the sand bed is changed by bacterial action.

Just for the fun of it, take a scoop of sand from beneath the surface (a couple of tablespoons). Rinse any obvious organics away with tank water. Drain off any residual water and put the sand in a small cup. Pour enough dilute white vinegar over the sand and let sit for a while. Pour off the vinegar and neutralize with some baking soda. Test this solution for phosphate. I don't know what you'll find - but it would be interesting to see if you read more phosphate than in your tank.

Good point! The rocks may have bound some PO4, but it's not worth pursuing IMO so I didn't mention it. Rock is not easily or cheaply replaceable, and sand is both optional and inexpensive - so removing the sand bed can cost as little as nothing. Rock also has a much smaller surface area to pick up nutrients vs the almost infinite surface area of the sand bed...not to mention all the crud that can build up between the grains which will contain much more PO4....so doing anything with the rock besides cleaning it off mechanically isn't really worth it 99% of the time. There's also the factor that I think low-pH conditions in the sand bed contribute a lot to re-dissolving the PO4 into the water column. I don't think PO4 easily breaks from aragonite without some factor like low pH being involved. (This is mostly deduction from reading and experience on my part....I'm not a PO4 expert or chemist.)

Testing for PO4 this way seems like a fun experiment if you want extra credit! :) If you find detectable PO4 different than your tank's tested level I'd want to proof my vinegar and baking soda for PO4 as well before I interpreted any of the results.

Good luck!

-Matt

 

[mallorieGgator]

Is there any light hitting your tank from outside at all? I put black out curtains on my windows and the cyano went away quickly.

 

[mcarroll]

Here's a little bit of more-authoratative information about PO4 binding to Aragonite.

The details/formulas in that article (abstract actually) are mostly over my head, but I can still see a summary - changing salinity and changing water temperature both affect adsorption and desorption of PO4 on aragonite. Also, the bulk of the PO4 adsorption and desorption happened within 24 hours. A secondary stage where "relatively little" PO4 can be adsorbed and desorbed can take another week or longer.

Another article says that changing pH has an impact on adsorption and desorption as well.

For us...most of us anyway, this means that a nice stable tank where salinity, temperature and pH are very stable should have minimal to no issues with "mystery" PO4 desorbing from the rocks or sand....at least not after the first day or so. If your tank has crashed or gone through other extreme conditions where chemical and nutrient levels went off the charts, perhaps you could be one of the exceptions - I don't know.

It's a lot of potential reading, but there's probably a pile of useful tidbits buried in this list of similar research. Considering the level of mystery in the hobby about PO4 leaching from rocks, there sure is a lot of research on the subject! :)

There's certainly room for a lot more to be said...anyone?

-Matt

 

[robert]

This is a fun one...there are so many seemingly contradictory observations and just as many contradictory theories as how to eradicate cyano. I have had cyano in high flow, low flow, in high nutrient tanks, low nutrient tanks, with and without dino. I've had it under the best light sources as well as bad ones. In brand new tanks and fully mature tanks.

Invariably, in every post regarding cyano there are suggestions of treatments ranging from coral snow, chemi-clean. water-changes, antibiotics, gfo, vodka, bio-pellets, vinegar or bacterial dosing, all offered the ultimate treatment followed by the admonition that these are simply band-aids, to really get rid of cyano you have to fix the cause of the problem - nutrients.

But what does that mean exactly - if its that simple how can two tanks three feet apart. One with perfect chemistry, zero nitrate, zero phosphate have cyano, and the other a veritable nitrate/phosphate soup (my puffer tank) never see the stuff?

My favorite theory, at least for the moment, is the Nitrate/Phosphate balance theory. This model based on Redfield ratios holds that macro algaes (most life really) are comprised Carbon, Nitrogen, and Phosphorous in the general ratio of 106:C,16:N,1P. Sometimes Silica and Iron ratios are added in, but the 106:16:1 is enough to make sense of cyano and suggest a corrective course of action in all the conditions I describe above. In all cases the problem is rooted in phosphate. But that's impossible in practice - everything living in your tank needs phosphate to live and as Matt and his research points out phosphate readily binds to our rock work and sand. GFO can strip it from the water, you can export it with algae scrubbers, bacteria etc - maybe even get the reading to 0 on your tests - but there is always a ready pool lurking and every time you feed you add some more.

Let say your tank starts out with 0 phosphate and 0 nitrate. The food you use also conforms generally to the Refield ratios. You essentially are adding nitrogen and phosphorous in balance. Bacteria, and algaes - good and bad - can utilize the food (c:N:P) to grow - some phosphate and some nitrogen escape getting eaten and get sequestered in your substrate. Some binds, nitrogen and phosphate both - and are taken out of circulation. But this binding doesn't follow the correct redfield ratio - much more phosphate binds leaving excess nitrogen floating around in the system.

Now you do a water change - more of the nitrogen gets taken out because its free - sure, some phosphate too - but all the bound phosphate gets left behind. So over time the total ratio of phosphate to nitrate in you tank shifts to elevated phosphate as nitrogen is constantly being carried off in water changes. (or outgassed as N2) Stuff - cyano included - need the balanced mix of 106C:16N:1P - to grow and multiply - so a competition for nitrogen ensues and cyano wins!

Why does cyano win? Because there is another source of nitrogen in your tank that most competing algaes and bacteria can't use but cyano can. That is nitrogen gas dissolved into the tank water from the air itself. So cyano can continue to grow while everything else is lacking the nitrogen to grow. Cyano becomes dominate - because it can grow and spread, it monopolizes the phosphate sources too! If your tank is relatively clean - low free phosphate - you'll see the phosphate first in the high flow areas because that is where cyano which can't move can catch the most phosphate in a low phosphate environment.

Now comes in the dino. Dino can't get it nitrogen from the gas dissolved in the water, but it can change the chemistry in its immediate environment to liberate phosphate from the sand and rock-work. So while cyano can monopolize the available phosphate in the water and starve everything else into submission - dino survives - and it too grows and multiplies. Now its much more diabolical than that, Dinos and cyano together seem to feed each other - dinos liberating phosphate for the cyano and cyano fixing nitrogen for the dinos!

All this because you changed your water and let you nitrates get out of balance to your phosphate sources...When has anyone told you your nitrates are too low? (Its not the right answer but close)

Sorry for all the typos and taking this thread into left field - That's enough for now. I'll post up some abstract if anyone wants - you can run down the articles from the titles - or message me and if any one still interested I'll post up some more later -

 

[robert]

(Does this really happen? Not exactly as I described it but close enough, I have my own theory.)

"Heterotrophic dinoflagellates with symbiotic cyanobacteria and nitrogen limitation in the Gulf of Aqaba"

ABSTRACT: Many symbiotic associations characteristic of tropical and subtropical oceanic waters
were observed near shore during a long-term study of the microbiota in the northern part of the Gulf of
Aqaba, Red Sea. Among such associations were the heterotrophlc dinophysoid genera Omithocercus,
Histioneis and Citharistes with cyanobacterial symbionts. The detection of these heterotroph-autotroph
consortia repeatedly coincided with extended nitrogen limitation in the fall season. Populations of
free-living cyanobacteria, with known N fixation capability, such as the unicellular Synechococcus/
Synechocystis spp. and colonial forms, e.g. Trichodesmiurn spp., also peaked at the same time. We
propose that heterotrophic dinoflagellate hosts may provide the cyanobacterial symbionts with the
anaerobic microenvironment necessary for efficient N fixation. Thus, these self-supporting consortia
increase in numbers during the long period of stratification and nitrogen limitation in the oligotrophic
subtropical waters of the Gulf of Aqaba.

And another - lakes - but the same principle.

THE IMPACT OF NITROGEN AND
PHOSPHORUS CONCENTRATION AND
N/P RATIO ON CYANOBACTERIAL
DOMINANCE AND N2 FIXATION
IN SOME ESTONIAN LAKES
ILMAR TÕNNO

"Cyanobacteria appear responsible for most of planktonic N2fix in
aquatic ecosystems, this ability gives a significant competitive advantage to
these organisms during the periods of nitrogen limitation (Tilman et al., 1982;
Howarth et al., 1988a; Leppänen et al., 1988)."

many hypotheses have been presented to explain cyanobacterial dominance and blooms in lakes. One of the
most common is resource ratio competition theory, predicting that cyano-
bacteria tend to dominate in lakes where the ratio of nitrogen and phosphorus
(P) is low, mainly because of the ability of some of these species to use
molecular nitrogen (Elser 1999). This theory has been proved both empirically
and experimentally. Cyanobacteria, both fixing and not fixing N2, tend to
dominate if the ratio of total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) in the
water column is below ca. 5–10 by mass (Schindler 1977, Seip 1994, Michard
et al., 1996, Bulgakov & Levich 1999),

 

[turok]

robert, can you summarize?
I change my water ever week.
I started using GFO, to get rid of the algae.
cyno does appear in my higher flow areas.

Should I change the water every other week? and take off the GFO? and feed every other day?

 

[markak]

This worked good for me.

 

[robert]

robert, can you summarize?
I change my water ever week.
I started using GFO, to get rid of the algae.
cyno does appear in my higher flow areas.

Should I change the water every other week? and take off the GFO? and feed every other day?

I can try.

Its not only nutrient levels that lead to cyano, but perhaps more importantly, nutrient balance.
Water changes take out more nitrogen than phosphorous.
Cyano/dino has a competitive edge when nitrogen becomes the limiting nutrient in your system.
Even when both nitrate and phosphate "read 0" - The presence of cyano is a strong indicator that nitrogen has become the limiting nutrient in your system.
Even if both nitrate and phosphate are elevated above "ideal", the presence of cyano, particularly in high flow, indicates a nutrient imbalance.
In both cases, correcting the imbalance between nitrogen and phosphorous helps eliminate cyano by removing its competitive advantage.

Keep the GFO.
Either let you nitrate rise by being less aggressive with water changes, or through the addition of nitrogen to the system.

 

[robert]

This worked good for me.

Yes it does. But its a little like getting rid of cockroaches in your kitchen by spraying DDT over the entire state. Its an antibiotic - Erythromycin - and is not at all specific to cyano - potentially killing the good with the bad. Our tanks don't work without bacteria.

 

[707 Reefer]

have you added more water flow in certain dead spot areas?

 

[mcarroll]

Yes it does. But its a little like getting rid of cockroaches in your kitchen by spraying DDT over the entire state. Its an antibiotic - Erythromycin - and is not at all specific to cyano - potentially killing the good with the bad. Our tanks don't work without bacteria.

While I don't disagree with the sentiment that this should be a last resort type of treatment, the reasoning is a little myth-based. While there may be exceptions I'm not aware of or products may have been diffent in the distant past, these red slime treatments all seem to be clones of Boyd's Chemi Clean, which is an oxidizer (as in Lugol's solution or household Hydrogen Peroxide) rather than an antibiotic like Erythromycin. Any products that are the same form (white powder in a little jar) and carry the same instruction to discontinue skimming during treatment are most likely clones of the same thing.

If you choose to try one of these treatments - read and follow the directions!!

The only negative side effects I've personally heard about from using one of these oxidizers were from someone who didn't read the instructions all the way through. In their case their pods and a few of their clean up crew inverts got zapped...nothing more.

Having said all that, I'll repeat that this should be a last resort. Red slime can get completely out of hand to the point it literally forms a blanket over all your rocks and corals. If your bloom is not this bad, then siphoning would be my first tool of choice against cyano, but there is a point where it can be bad enough that you really can't get enough of it in the amount of water you'll be able to remove practically. Using a product like Chemi Clean in this scenario can put a "reset" on the cyano and give you a chance to eliminate its roots. I would not advocate the ongoing use of a treatment like this.

-Matt

 

[mcarroll]

This is a fun one...

Robert:

Awesome post - I love seeing this sort of thing! :-)

Very interesting and correlates well with some theories I've held about causes of cyano blooms! More to think about!

-Matt