Cyano

[benkirsch07]

I started my tank about 3 months ago (give or take a few weeks) and I am now having a cyano outbreak. Long, stringy, red slime. Its a 55 gallon, odd dimension, cuboid tank. I added some more astreas to cut down on some of the algae while I deal with manually removing the cyano. I scrub it off the rocks with a toothbrush almost everyday, and on water change days I really go to town on it. I've been dealing with it now for about two weeks or so. Any advice on how to get through it? I just cut back on my lighting yesterday to see if it ends up helping at all. I think it may be caused by my phos being totally bottomed out at 0. I am running carbon and gfo in the BRS mini reactor down in the sump. What do you guys think?

Parameters:
Alk: 9.2
Calc: 420
Mag: 1380-1400
Nitrates: between 3 and 5 ppm
Phos: 0-0.1

Stocking:
6-8 inch snowflake eel
3 Tonga Fighting Conchs
5 Nassarius Snails
15 Astrea Snails

 

[T-J]

Cyano is caused (mostly) by nutrients and low flow. I would suggest verifying your nutrient levels and increasing flow to the tank. If you have a sand bed, do you vacuum it when you do water changes? How often do you do water changes? You may need to cut back/alter your feeding schedule, or find the source of the nutrient issues.

 

[benkirsch07]

Cyano is caused (mostly) by nutrients and low flow. I would suggest verifying your nutrient levels and increasing flow to the tank. If you have a sand bed, do you vacuum it when you do water changes? How often do you do water changes? You may need to cut back/alter your feeding schedule, or find the source of the nutrient issues.

I vacuum my sandbed when I do my water changes, and the spots where I can't fit the siphon I stir up into the water column and then suck up with the vacuum. My nutrient levels have been testing the same for the past two weeks. Nitrates steady at 3-5 and the phos bottomed out at 0. I do a weekly water change on Fridays. I feed my eel three times a week. Do you think that the phos bottomed out at 0 have anything to do with it? I saw on the forums around here that some people see cyano outbreaks when one of the two nutrient values (Nitrates or Phos) hits 0.

 

[T-J]

I vacuum my sandbed when I do my water changes, and the spots where I can't fit the siphon I stir up into the water column and then suck up with the vacuum. My nutrient levels have been testing the same for the past two weeks. Nitrates steady at 3-5 and the phos bottomed out at 0. I do a weekly water change on Fridays. I feed my eel three times a week. Do you think that the phos bottomed out at 0 have anything to do with it? I saw on the forums around here that some people see cyano outbreaks when one of the two nutrient values (Nitrates or Phos) hits 0.

While I'm not an expert....one of the common issues when fighting cyano or algae is that parameters can LOOK a certain way, because the bad stuff (cyano/algae) is consuming it, so our test kits show low levels of things. So it's possible that your P and N might be higher, but then again, you're running GFO, so higher P is less likely.
I recently had a small cyano outbreak. This was due to my Jawfish digging out an entire corner of the sandbend and releasing who knows what into the water all at once. Even though my parameters still read "normal", the cyano popped up. Knowing the cause of it, I treated it with ChemiClean and it was gone in 48 hours, and has not returned.
Sure you could use ChemiClean, but until you know the source, it'll probably come back.
Again, could flow be an issue?

 

[benkirsch07]

While I'm not an expert....one of the common issues when fighting cyano or algae is that parameters can LOOK a certain way, because the bad stuff (cyano/algae) is consuming it, so our test kits show low levels of things. So it's possible that your P and N might be higher, but then again, you're running GFO, so higher P is less likely.
I recently had a small cyano outbreak. This was due to my Jawfish digging out an entire corner of the sandbend and releasing who knows what into the water all at once. Even though my parameters still read "normal", the cyano popped up. Knowing the cause of it, I treated it with ChemiClean and it was gone in 48 hours, and has not returned.
Sure you could use ChemiClean, but until you know the source, it'll probably come back.
Again, could flow be an issue?

You know this is really strange because I know from previous tanks that cyano prefers the low flow, stagnant areas. Yes I have some dead spots where the cyano is growing, but some of it is up around my torches where it is absolutely ripping. I see some red long strands flowing off the rocks into the water column that I have to scrub off.