Brew's 187g slice of the ocean

[GBRsouth]

It seemed like such a great idea. Struggling to put it into practice.

Brew! Someone mugged your tank!

 

[RichtheReefer21]

It seemed like such a great idea. Struggling to put it into practice.

Post of the year.

 

[Brew12]

Making preps to do a water change and vacuum some cyano out of the sand. Decided to take some quick pictures first.

 

[Brew12]

Phone pics with the pumps off before the water change.

 

[Sallstrom]

Soon there won’t be any room left for the Cyanobacteria for all the corals

Looking great!

 

[Brew12]

I think I can just about declare my little issue with cyano over. I still have some mats in a few places but it hasn't come back in any areas that I cleaned during the water change.
Sometimes, patience is the best cure for what ails a reef tank.

 

[Brew12]

Warning: non-reef related topic!

Some of you know that I set a goal to run a 5k in under 25 minutes as motivation to get in better shape. Today, I did a 3 mile speed run to get an idea of where I'm at (5k=3.1miles). Did much better than I expected to! Very pleased with my progress. Unfortunately, I still have to wait another month before there is a 5k that hasn't been canceled.

I'm thinking my next goal is going to be a half marathon in the spring....

 

[dantimdad]

I think I can just about declare my little issue with cyano over. I still have some mats in a few places but it hasn't come back in any areas that I cleaned during the water change.
Sometimes, patience is the best cure for what ails a reef tank.

I couldn't agree more.

Check out the videos in the 240 build thread.

 

[montethemoster]

Amazing tank...and not bad 3mi time congrats on all the effort paying off!

 

[User1]

The nitrate + carbon source would be to keep the nitrate level and decrease the phosphate. A way to decrease the phosphate without using regular remover/GFO. Long term, not as a quick fix.

Some kind of Cyanobacteria do very well in low nutrient water. That much we know. So both too low nitrate and too low phosphate could probably those Cyanobacteria.
Cyanobacteria also do well in unstable and shifting environments. That could be quick changes in temp, nutrients, light etc. They are opportunists and can take over quick when the environment isn't good for more slow growing organisms(the ones we like, corals and coralline algae for example).

So I like to joke about the meassuring and keeping my hands dry "method" for getting rid of Cyano, because so many like to do something greater when they see a problem. Like cleaning the sand or scrubbing the rocks. They want to get in there and do hands on work. But meassuring and slowly adjusting the nutrients is the way we have worked against Cyanobacteria the last 10 years at my work. So for us it works. Not in a week, but over time. Of course together with keeping every thing else we can stable and the water parameters as good as possible.

I've cleaned 1000L tanks in the exhibition twice a week from Cyano back in the days. That was a Sisyfos work, they just kept coming back So I won't go back to that.

There are theories on why Cyanobacteria blooms in low nutrient waters and why they form mats, but I leave that to @Lasse and the other bacteria nerds to explain..

Interesting read. Now you have me curious as well. I'll have to test NO3 and PO4 tomorrow and see. I have a pretty thick mat on my sand and a few rocks starting to get some growth. I thought maybe it was related to me removing a large front yard bolder size piece of pukani and splitting it in smaller chucks for better water flow. I still suspect that because pukani is nasty stuff inside and takes years to mature. 2 years in and when I split it it looked as new as when I first put it in.

After that the cyno started to take hold. Maybe timing and my water is off. So now I'll test tomorrow and see I usually just let it run its coarse as long as it doesn't grow on my corals.

Thanks for the note above. It is interesting.

 

[Brew12]

The chicken is still inside ready for the smoker. She’s guarding the door.

 

[User1]

Interesting read. Now you have me curious as well. I'll have to test NO3 and PO4 tomorrow and see. I have a pretty thick mat on my sand and a few rocks starting to get some growth. I thought maybe it was related to me removing a large front yard bolder size piece of pukani and splitting it in smaller chucks for better water flow. I still suspect that because pukani is nasty stuff inside and takes years to mature. 2 years in and when I split it it looked as new as when I first put it in.

After that the cyno started to take hold. Maybe timing and my water is off. So now I'll test tomorrow and see I usually just let it run its coarse as long as it doesn't grow on my corals.

Thanks for the note above. It is interesting.

So I'm a bit late

Alk (hanna 8.7) trident 8.47
Phosphates hanna ulr 18 ppb / 0.06 ppm
Nitrate nyos 1 - 3 (very hard to tell the difference but it is a slight yellow)

Tank seems to be doing ok other than the cyno. I did have a coral shipment come in yesterday that had blue cespitularia. My second attempt and it melted over night. 1 inch frag down to a stump this morning. No idea yet my normal Xenia is great sadly... For some reason I used to be able to keep this coral and now it just melts old frag or new.

 

[Sallstrom]

So I'm a bit late

Alk (hanna 8.7) trident 8.47
Phosphates hanna ulr 18 ppb / 0.06 ppm
Nitrate nyos 1 - 3 (very hard to tell the difference but it is a slight yellow)

Tank seems to be doing ok other than the cyno. I did have a coral shipment come in yesterday that had blue cespitularia. My second attempt and it melted over night. 1 inch frag down to a stump this morning. No idea yet my normal Xenia is great sadly... For some reason I used to be able to keep this coral and now it just melts old frag or new.

Okay! So not very low, but quite low nutrients. From what I’ve seen, those numbers are fine most of time. But sometimes the Cyanobacteria comes anyway. Could be local “nutrient sink” perhaps, or tests not showing exact numbers. I don’t know.
You could try just getting the nutrients up just a little bit further. Not to 10ppm NO3 and 0,25 ppm PO4, but say 4-5 ppm and 0,08 ppm. A increasing too fast may harm coral, at least for phosphate. So go slow. Perhaps just feed some extra and skim less for a couple of days and keep testing.

I know I sound like I’m chasing numbers and many thinks that’s a crazy thing But running large tanks not possible to “rip clean” or do 50% water changes in, we had to find another way to get them to work the way we wanted. So therefor doing water tests regularly save us time in the long run, since we often can see changes when they come and act early. Nowadays I’ve set up bottles with NaNO3 and KH2PO4 on dosing pumps for all reef tanks. So when I see signs of Cyanobacteria I just start or raise the dose of N, or N and P, and just sit back and wait. Sometimes I can’t even see the NO3 going up on our Salifert test, but I see Cyanobacteria decreasing. So you often don’t need to add that much extra nutrients.

Sorry @Brew12 for making your thread inyo a Cyanobacteria thread. Specially now when you already fixed it I will post a sum up on this sometime, so I can link to it instead of writing the same thing over and over again
Hope you have a great weekend!

Edit. @saf1 I forgot to write, when having low nutrients like you have now, a high KH might be risky. So I wouldn’t go higher, rather bring it down to say 7,5 dKH instead.

 

[Brew12]

Sorry @Brew12 for making your thread inyo a Cyanobacteria thread. Specially now when you already fixed it I will post a sum up on this sometime, so I can link to it instead of writing the same thing over and over again
Hope you have a great weekend!

No problem at all, I love this kind of stuff in my build thread. One stop shopping!

But.. since it is my build thread, I'll add my thoughts....

I feel that cyanobacteria are very opportunistic. I'm very confident that mine was caused by letting my temperature rise by over 2F after being very solid for a year. The cyano adapted to the temperature change much faster than some of the other life in my tank and bloomed. Once it forms mats, it creates conditions in which it will thrive.
That is why I feel the best way to get rid of it is to break up the mats and work on creating ideal conditions for more preferable algae and bacteria to thrive. Hence the manual cleaning or CuC and nutrient dosing.

 

[User1]

Okay! So not very low, but quite low nutrients. From what I’ve seen, those numbers are fine most of time. But sometimes the Cyanobacteria comes anyway. Could be local “nutrient sink” perhaps, or tests not showing exact numbers. I don’t know.
You could try just getting the nutrients up just a little bit further. Not to 10ppm NO3 and 0,25 ppm PO4, but say 4-5 ppm and 0,08 ppm. A increasing too fast may harm coral, at least for phosphate. So go slow. Perhaps just feed some extra and skim less for a couple of days and keep testing.

I know I sound like I’m chasing numbers and many thinks that’s a crazy thing But running large tanks not possible to “rip clean” or do 50% water changes in, we had to find another way to get them to work the way we wanted. So therefor doing water tests regularly save us time in the long run, since we often can see changes when they come and act early. Nowadays I’ve set up bottles with NaNO3 and KH2PO4 on dosing pumps for all reef tanks. So when I see signs of Cyanobacteria I just start or raise the dose of N, or N and P, and just sit back and wait. Sometimes I can’t even see the NO3 going up on our Salifert test, but I see Cyanobacteria decreasing. So you often don’t need to add that much extra nutrients.

Sorry @Brew12 for making your thread inyo a Cyanobacteria thread. Specially now when you already fixed it I will post a sum up on this sometime, so I can link to it instead of writing the same thing over and over again
Hope you have a great weekend!

Edit. @saf1 I forgot to write, when having low nutrients like you have now, a high KH might be risky. So I wouldn’t go higher, rather bring it down to say 7,5 dKH instead.

Thanks @Sallstrom for the detailed response. To be honest I'm not sure what is consuming whatever nutrients are in the tank and I'm not trying to keep them low. I'm lazy so do maybe one water change a month if that. Maybe I am not feeding the fish enough and also I do not have a much of fish which could be minor issue.

In any case I'm not trying to be low - just whatever is normal for it. If I can manually dose something to 10'ish NO3 I'll be good. I can start there slowly.

@Brew12 Also sorry - not to hijack your thread just seems we had a similar tie in with cyno around the same time. I didn't think of lower nutrients until you two started to talk about it. Interesting on the temp although mine is pretty consistent.

Nutrients though - I do not dose anything. Honestly all I dose is tropic marin all for reef - the DIY recipe. Nothing else goes in the tank but food

 

[Sallstrom]

About the temp and Cyanobacteria, we had a high nutrient system(4 tanks, 6000L in total) where we got problems with cyano every summer The museum building was without AC and we just had to live with the tanks getting up to 28-29 degrees in the warmest summer weeks. Usually it went away by itself when the temp when down and were kept stable for a while.
So I agree on that!

We also forgot to change back the light schedule for a reef tank after an evening event. So the tank got like 13 hours of light a day instead of 10. The corals looked a bit unhappy and we started to get Cyanobacteria the week after. I think I cleaned the sand and did some other changes before I noticed the light schedule. After I changed it back to the old schedule the Cyanobacteria went away in a week or two.

 

[Brew12]

Thanks @Sallstrom for the detailed response. To be honest I'm not sure what is consuming whatever nutrients are in the tank and I'm not trying to keep them low. I'm lazy so do maybe one water change a month if that. Maybe I am not feeding the fish enough and also I do not have a much of fish which could be minor issue.

In any case I'm not trying to be low - just whatever is normal for it. If I can manually dose something to 10'ish NO3 I'll be good. I can start there slowly.

@Brew12 Also sorry - not to hijack your thread just seems we had a similar tie in with cyno around the same time. I didn't think of lower nutrients until you two started to talk about it. Interesting on the temp although mine is pretty consistent.

Nutrients though - I do not dose anything. Honestly all I dose is tropic marin all for reef - the DIY recipe. Nothing else goes in the tank but food

It's not hijacking, its hanging out and sharing knowledge. Great use of my build thread!

 

[RichtheReefer21]

It's not hijacking, its hanging out and sharing knowledge. Great use of my build thread!

#r2r4life

 

[User1]

It's not hijacking, its hanging out and sharing knowledge. Great use of my build thread!

Well thanks. I actually ordered some Loudwolf sodium nitrate to dose and see if I can bring it back up to around 10 ppm. We shall see. I never connected the dots with it being low let alone pay attention until you both started talking about it. So maybe that is why I'm seeing it. In any case learned something new and I'll go from there.

Tank and corals don't seem to mind although I still can't figure out why the blue / purple cespitularia melted in less than 24 hours yet my other xenia is doing too well The joys of reefing I guess.

 

[Maxx]

Okay! So not very low, but quite low nutrients. From what I’ve seen, those numbers are fine most of time. But sometimes the Cyanobacteria comes anyway. Could be local “nutrient sink” perhaps, or tests not showing exact numbers. I don’t know.
You could try just getting the nutrients up just a little bit further. Not to 10ppm NO3 and 0,25 ppm PO4, but say 4-5 ppm and 0,08 ppm. A increasing too fast may harm coral, at least for phosphate. So go slow. Perhaps just feed some extra and skim less for a couple of days and keep testing.

I know I sound like I’m chasing numbers and many thinks that’s a crazy thing But running large tanks not possible to “rip clean” or do 50% water changes in, we had to find another way to get them to work the way we wanted. So therefor doing water tests regularly save us time in the long run, since we often can see changes when they come and act early. Nowadays I’ve set up bottles with NaNO3 and KH2PO4 on dosing pumps for all reef tanks. So when I see signs of Cyanobacteria I just start or raise the dose of N, or N and P, and just sit back and wait. Sometimes I can’t even see the NO3 going up on our Salifert test, but I see Cyanobacteria decreasing. So you often don’t need to add that much extra nutrients.

Sorry @Brew12 for making your thread inyo a Cyanobacteria thread. Specially now when you already fixed it I will post a sum up on this sometime, so I can link to it instead of writing the same thing over and over again
Hope you have a great weekend!

Edit. @saf1 I forgot to write, when having low nutrients like you have now, a high KH might be risky. So I wouldn’t go higher, rather bring it down to say 7,5 dKH instead.

@Sallstrom

What is the concern with dKh of 8.7 in lower nutrient tanks like saf1's (and mine as our parameters are very close)?