Dealing with cyanobacteria

[Porcupine Reefer]

First I delt with dinoflagellates, now I'm seeing cyanobacteria of the red kind pop up. What are the best ways to deal with cyanobacteria?

 

[ZachariahBeanzz]

First I delt with dinoflagellates, now I'm seeing cyanobacteria of the red kind pop up. What are the best ways to deal with cyanobacteria?

I’m not an expert by any means, but this same thing happened to me. I would keep cleaning it off manually, and use cemi-clean. This worked very well for me, but I would do more research before adding anything. This issue could also have been result of having very low nutrients, if I’m not mistaken.

 

[TheDuude]

Same root cause as dinos, nutrient imbalance and lack of biodiversity.

 

[eggie]

Try Using Phytoplankton at first also Prodibio or CyanoClean had help me to deal with Cyano

 

[Science/G]

Manual removal, coral snow and a bacterial supplement. Increase flow if possible in areas where it's occurring. Cerith Snails may help as well. Use a antibiotic as a last resort.

 

[MDReefguy]

Manual removal, coral snow and a bacterial supplement. Increase flow if possible in areas where it's occurring. Cerith Snails may help as well. Use a antibiotic as a last resort.

This is exactly how I got rid of cyano. Remove manually, coral snow, Microbacter 7, and about 25 cerith snails. Upped the flow so there were no dead spots. Never came back. Took a few weeks of staying consistent for it to disappear. And didn't have to dose Chemiclean or anything else. Great advice MrGisonni.

 

[iko2thdk]

Hi R2R Have been battling green tuft algae for some time. It cleared up mostly to be replaced by red cyano coating the substrate and some rock as well. Long established tank, over three years. My ratio is about 100, Nit 5.7, Phos .06, Calcium 450, Alk 10.2, Mg 1250. Dosing Nitrate every day (ESV). Active skimming and regular water changes. RODI also current, Plenty of flow for a Red Sea 350. Any suggestions?? Help.

 

[mmorrison55]

Any pics of your red Cyano? All the online examples probably are showing the worse case scenario where it looks long, very red and slimy, but what does it look like starting out?

 

[iko2thdk]

Hi R2R Have been battling green tuft algae for some time. It cleared up mostly to be replaced by red cyano coating the substrate and some rock as well. Long established tank, over three years. My ratio is about 100, Nit 5.7, Phos .06, Calcium 450, Alk 10.2, Mg 1250. Dosing Nitrate every day (ESV). Active skimming and regular water changes. RODI also current, Plenty of flow for a Red Sea 350. Any suggestions?? Help.

 

[iko2thdk]

 

[mmorrison55]

This is kind if similar to what im seeing, except yours seems to have more green in the mix.


I turned over my sand to remove some old shells and this was back the next day.

It’s hard to tell, but the photo is under 100% white light. Visually it looks reddish brown. More on the brown side at the moment

 

[LiquidSpace]

I was just dealing with this, I’m not sure if it’s fixed but is looking good right now. Syphon that out. When done make sure you have powerful enough flow that it moves the grain of sand a bit. I also turned my lights off for two days and came back on a heavy blue cycle.

 

[hellokevin]

I had cyano/dinos for 3-4 months last year, which I finally beat recently. My nitrogen was bottoming out.

Suck out as much as the cyano as you can. But I realized for me it would never eradicate the problem.

So then I used chemiclean. They were mostly gone after the first treatment, but it became a battle of dinos and some cyano for a few months. Measured nitrates/phosphates daily, and was doing carbon dosing for a while. I also did silicate dosing to 2ppm to get diatoms back to outcomplete them, and near the tail end, I tried bacteria dosing (I used this one for coralline algae, but actually contains good bacteria) as the last step which I think put my tank back in balance some how.

Near the end I also got some tiger conch which ate a ton of the nasty stuff and turned them into poop, which was easily suctioned out :P

 

[Sophie"s mom]

Manual removal, coral snow and a bacterial supplement. Increase flow if possible in areas where it's occurring. Cerith Snails may help as well. Use a antibiotic as a last resort.

I second this opinion! Coral snow and Microbacter 7 will go a long way along with manual removal.