Cyano Concern

[9975]

Let me start by saying that I'll get parameters put in here after work. Tank runs 79/80 degrees and 1.024 salinity from my GHL app.

Tank is about 11 months old with 7 fish, some crabs and snails. 350 gallon with about 65 gallon of sump water and chaeto. Good sized skimmer. I run some carbon pouches in the sump that get changed out monthly.

I had cyano about 2 or 3 months ago that took some chemiclean to get rid of. Tank has looked good since then. The cyano started out on sand then moved to rocks. I confirmed with microscope. Something that I have noticed that may not have anything to do with the cyano but needs noted:

- I have run the Noopsyche hybrids from day one
- I started the Noopsyche leds up about a week before the first outbreak
- Turned leds off while dealing with the outbreak
- Turned leds on about 4 days before the second outbreak hit

While this could be coincidental with the leds I felt it needed mentioned. I don't Feel that the fish are overfed but they are nice and healthy.

Besides the parameters can anyone think of something that could help beside just going with the chemiclean again?

 

[shred5]

Here is the thing Turning out light or using chemi clean does not take care of the problem.

If the problem is not taken care of it will come back or another algae will take it place eventually. Cyno is common and in pretty much in everyone's tank.
A little cyano is natural and part of the bio diversity, it can help combat dinos in my opinion. The problem is when it takes over and their is to much.

Tuning the lights out and Chemi clean or any other erythromycin just kills it temporarily and once reintroduced it will just thrive again or the problem will build and you could get something worse if not taken care of.

Erythromycin also does not just kill cyano it can kill other bacteria that also could combat cyano and other algae..

You have to find the problem. Usually it is built up organics, phosphate or bound phosphates.

I find persistent cyano could be phosphates that bound to sand or live rock. Calcium carbonate can bind phosphates when they are high. Sometime this can register as low phosphate because it being bound when in actuality they can be high.

Bound phosphates need to be released and this can take time.

 

[9975]

Well I put some of the nuisance under a microscope and it is a little teardrop brownish spinning thing which I would believe is Ostreopsis.

I grabbed this pic from another thread but looks just like this....

 

[9975]

I need some thoughts on what I just measured please.

- kept lights off for a couple days
- turned lights on right before normal lights out to feed and look at the tank
- the dino was probably >90% dead so I blew it all off of the rocks and changed out sump filters
- I measured NO3 @ 20 and PO4 at 0.64 ppm....not a typo! I use the HI774 from Hanna which is only a couple months old

Question....i figure that the nitrate and phosphate be that high due to the dino dying but roughly how long until the system "normalizes"? I f necessary, I plan on dosing to keep these 2 measurements in check.

Thanks!

 

[9975]

**Update**

Finished installing my Lifegard UV sterilizer around lunchtime then blew off what I could of the dino on the rocks. I just took a few measurements:

NO3 - 10
PO4 - 0.74

This is what I still have on the rock which I would think is hair algae

This is what grew on the sand in the last 6ish hours which looking in the microscope is Ostreopsis.