cyano after nitrate dosing?

[PaulK]

I've always had undetectable nitrates and phosphates. Corals were getting a little pale so I started dosing nitrates a few weeks ago; I'm now keeping nitrates around 2ppm. This definitely helped the corals--the SPS are much brighter and seem to be growing faster, the LPS are much more expanded. But I'm starting to get a lot of cyano on the sandbed. There was no cyano at all before I started the nitrate dosing. Anyone else have this problem after they started nitrate dosing? Does it go away after a while? Anything I can do to get rid of it?

 

[Brew12]

I've always had undetectable nitrates and phosphates. Corals were getting a little pale so I started dosing nitrates a few weeks ago; I'm now keeping nitrates around 2ppm. This definitely helped the corals--the SPS are much brighter and seem to be growing faster, the LPS are much more expanded. But I'm starting to get a lot of cyano on the sandbed. There was no cyano at all before I started the nitrate dosing. Anyone else have this problem after they started nitrate dosing? Does it go away after a while? Anything I can do to get rid of it?

You changed a balance in your system. I'm actually surprised you ended up with cyano instead of dino's. Try raising your nitrates to 4+ and stir your sand bed daily to break up any cyano mats. Some more common strains of cyano cannot form mats with nitrates >3ppm. Your tank should find a new balance before too long and it should go away.

 

[PaulK]

Thanks. That's interesting, I'll try raising the nitrates to 4 or so and see what happens.