Cyano or Diatoms? Outbreak on sandbed after water change

[EastCoastScaping]

So Maybe 1.5 months ago I did a sand bed cleaning and 50% water change on my reef tank (IM 10) . Ever since then I have had either cyano or diatoms on my sand. When I did my waterchange i had PO4 at 0.18ppm and NO3 at 5ppm.

-Now I got my whole sand bed covered in a thin layer of this algae, I have also had a issue with the nutrients bottoming out, PO4 at 0.08ppm and NO3 at less than 2ppm as of today. The film looks like red cyano with lights on but diatoms when lights are off
- Lighting is a Nanobox Tide Mini Plus M, I think i have it running for 11 hours with 1.5 hr ramp up and ramp down, with a 2.5hr blasting period. My light schedule hasn't changed for 4 months.
- Stocking wise I got one damsel which i dont over feed, and to keep my phosphates up I dose AF Amino Mix, one drop every saturday, with 1 waterchange a month
Im really confused with this, i have tried adjusting how much food I feed and I have been watching my nutrients carefully but I am stumped. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Pics below are of the film I have, I can get better pictures if neeeded

 

[ndrwater]

Definitely Cyano.

 

[EastCoastScaping]

Definitely Cyano.

I was thinking it would most likely be cyano, but I dont understand exactly why I have it?

 

[sfin52]

It can bloom with bottomed out nutrients. I used the Dr tims recipe and wiped it out of tanks

 

[Birddog61]

Diatoms are short lived. Thay exhaust there food source rapidly. Usually inside 2 weeks ish

 

[EastCoastScaping]

Diatoms are short lived. Thay exhaust there food source rapidly. Usually inside 2 weeks ish

Well this has been going on for 1.5 months and has slowly been getting worse. Which I guess rules out diatoms?

 

[EastCoastScaping]

It can bloom with bottomed out nutrients. I used the Dr tims recipe and wiped it out of tanks

Whats is dr tims recipe for diatoms? Where can I find it?

 

[sfin52]

Whats is dr tims recipe for diatoms? Where can I find it?

I don't think they have one for diatoms but cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates they do.

 

[brandon429]

simply clean your reef fully, vs partially, and be done with the issue. here is 120 gallons of what exactly to do. imagine how easy it is for a nano

B

by doing partial work, you upwelled and mixed nutrients in the tank sandbed with typical new tank invaders and bright light. the rip clean reverses all of it, instantly, without a recycle. You can then feed your tank much better, not causing algae, and you'll fix the nutrients without having to measure for them.

120 gallon rip clean

I’ve decided to perform a rip clean on my 120 with 100% new water. The tank has been running for 5 years and was battling Dino for several months. I used the bacteria method from elegant corals and worked great I haven’t seen Dino in months now. But I tried several other methods including...

www.reef2reef.com

see how harsh he cleaned? no recycle. He did it before the outbreak, which is rare. Deep cleaning is not harmful to any reef. proof is right there/you can copy it get same results.

that lighting period is two hours longer than the one i use, not a big deal but something to consider in future light tuning.

 

[EastCoastScaping]

I don't think they have one for diatoms but cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates they do.

I meant cyano, not diatoms. Oops

 

[EastCoastScaping]

simply clean your reef fully, vs partially, and be done with the issue. here is 120 gallons of what exactly to do. imagine how easy it is for a nano

B

by doing partial work, you upwelled and mixed nutrients in the tank sandbed with typical new tank invaders and bright light. the rip clean reverses all of it, instantly, without a recycle. You can then feed your tank much better, not causing algae, and you'll fix the nutrients without having to measure for them.

120 gallon rip clean

I’ve decided to perform a rip clean on my 120 with 100% new water. The tank has been running for 5 years and was battling Dino for several months. I used the bacteria method from elegant corals and worked great I haven’t seen Dino in months now. But I tried several other methods including...

www.reef2reef.com

see how harsh he cleaned? no recycle. He did it before the outbreak, which is rare. Deep cleaning is not harmful to any reef. proof is right there/you can copy it get same results.

that lighting period is two hours longer than the one i use, not a big deal but something to consider in future light tuning.

Thank you, ill check it out. Im in class right now. I get home a day earlier this weekend from college so i should have plenty of time to clean

 

[brandon429]

the new way of guiding reefs through the maturation phase is different than the old way. The old way practices allowed uglies on the basis that over time they really do self correct in a lot of reefs, another reason they practice it is because filtration bacteria are commonly thought of as weak and cannot endure cleaning, without undoing the cycle. Rinsing one's substrate in tap water above may seem crazy, but that reef is worth at least 5K and now its bright and shiny. Bacteria are so tough, so viable, that ridiculous deep cleaning doesnt even hurt.

We rinse off rocks in saltwater only, we baby those bacteria on rocks and whatever happens to sandbed bacteria simply doesnt matter, in two days all the bac are back on sand. lol

*your current tank looks nice, has no param issues, and all the growths are normal. to practice hand guiding simply to be ready for harsher invasions is ideal here, since this is easy to fix up

 

[EastCoastScaping]

Well my tank is about 13 months old, I was having a bubble algae and film algae issue with the tank. So i started dosing vibrant 2 month ago, and the bubble algae is basically all gone and the film algae has basically gone away. The cyano wasnt bad either during that time either, just a few specks here and there. I stopped dosing it 2 weeks ago. But ever since then the cyano has spread more throughout the sand.

 

[brandon429]

hey good detail. vibrant is strongly associated with cyano issues, a rip clean will fix this for sure.

 

[EastCoastScaping]

hey good detail. vibrant is strongly associated with cyano issues, a rip clean will fix this for sure.

I was also dosing it in my frag tank... thick cyano on the sand in that tank... but in that tank my no3 was 20ppm and po4 was .10ppm. The tank crashed like 2 weeks ago, lost almost all the sps and lps in there sadly. I havent really touched it other than feeding and dosing alk to keep dkh at 10

 

[EastCoastScaping]

hey good detail. vibrant is strongly associated with cyano issues, a rip clean will fix this for sure.

how does vibrant creat cyano issues? is it something to do with the bacteria within vibrant?

 

[brandon429]

once they find out what it is, they'll update the formula to not cause it ha nice. Not sure, but 100% the two are related yep if we search cyano and vibrant. you have already made purchases to wind up here, do the rest as physical work like what Jon did, dont pump money into more bottled items.

 

[sfin52]

Recipes | DrTim's Aquatics

Recipes for Aquarium Success This page contains recipes with step by step directions on how to use a combination of DrTim’s Products to: Fishless Cycle your aquarium with One & Only and ammonium chloride Fight Cyanobacteria and/or Algae with Re-Fresh and Waste-Away Color-Up your corals with...

store.drtimsaquatics.com

 

[EastCoastScaping]

I think I will do a waterchange this weekend. Ill most likely agitate the sand to remove some detritus and wash out the rear chambers for detritus. After Ill probably add some gfo and carbon to see if that works to some extent over the next 2 week. If not then I will do a rip clean, i got a small 20gal frag tank set up so ill have a place for my corals and fish while that gets done.

 

[Dan_P]

how does vibrant creat cyano issues? is it something to do with the bacteria within vibrant?

@taricha has studied this. It seems that Vibrant kills algae and that becomes food that fuels cyanobacteria growth. Not sure this happens in every system though.

After a year and half, why haven’t you resorted to ChemiClean? Just curious.