Fighting Cyano

[Sea Wizard]

OK, R2R need some help. I have been fighting cyano for approx 2 months now. Water perimeters are Ca 600, yea, I know it's high, mg 1290, 12 dkh, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0, Po4 0 or so low it does not register on my test, I am not over feeding, a few pellets a day and they clean it up (Spectrum Marine). Lighting has been reduced to approx 4 hrs a day. Don't want to go lightless because of many light loving corals. Using tap to top off water approx 2 gals daily. Don't have an r/o system, but in the market for one. I have had both red and green cyano, now it only red. Wife purchased a sand sifting goby this weekend and he has been going crazy sifting the sand. I know that he does not eat cyano, but he has been rearranging it! Looking to buy some cerith snails to sift the sand even more. Now what can I do to help eliminate this problem? Am investing in new lights, currently running t5's and pc's. Cyano only grows on sand in front of the tank under the pc's. Is the lighting a contributing factor? Tank is approx 5 months old. Talked to gflat65 and was advised to use Magnesium in higher doses. Trying it, but looking for more answers!

 

[BigAl07]

S-W sorry to hear about your problems. There are a couple of things you need to do to help reduce/eliminate this issue...

A) Most all prepackaged food has lots of preservatives added for shelf life (= Rocket Fuel for algae). Consider changing foods?

B) Increase flow as this many times grows in areas where the flow slows/stops (near glass and behind rock etc)

C) Increase water changes and scoop vac out as much as you can before and during water changes. You have to REMOVE it to eliminate it.

D) Stop using tap water YESTERDAY.

E) Add some nassa snails to the CUC. they are amazing sand sifters and they are awesome cleaners

I've never seen increases MAG used for Cyano so I can't comment on that but that tends to work very well for Hair Algae. Keep in mind Cyano is actually a complex bacteria and some people will say "Treat with anti-biotics" but that's a HUGE no no in a Reef Tank. You'll most likely also kill ALL of your beneficial bacteria and kick off on HECK of a Tank cycle.

It's not a QUICK process but one that many of us battle in the first year or so. Hang in there... make slow deliberate changes and it will go away.

Exporting it and not feeding it are KEY in it's elimination from your syste.

 

[Poseidon]

I just had a month long battle with green cyano, and I was able to eliminate it by manual removal, and LOTS of water changes. I went thru a 160 gallon mix bucket of IO over the last month, and it is finally gone. (I have a 90 gallon tank, and 100 gallon sump.)

I also added a diamond goby, the DSB has never looked better, but the tank was cloudy for a week while he went through the entire tank.

 

[aquarius77]

"Using tap to top off water approx 2 gals daily. Don't have an r/o system"

Get an ro/di asap, it sounds to me like everything else is in order. your calcium and alk are most likely high because you are mixing with tap water... Water is the most important thing that could go into your tank, tap can be LOADED with trash that you dont want any where near your reef.

 

[Sea Wizard]

Thanks for the input! Will buy r/o water from lfs until I can get r/o sytem in. Changed from IO to SeaChem Reef Salt because imbalance of additives. Was difficult to maintaine Ca, mg, alk and ph. Reef Salt has eliminated this problem for me. But getting back to the cyano I do thank everyone who responded. Flow is fairly high in the front of my tank so much that it was blowing up the cyano in clumps and it was still growing! Have scooped it out and 2 days later it's back, so it's a never ending battle. Will look into the food change, was feeding frozen for while, but changed to Spectrum about a month ago. Will appreciate any more input from all!

 

[vietcu]

Here was what I did that took care of my cyano outbreak. I too battled this for almost 2 months. First thing I did was do a 3 day no light. When lights came on, all cyano was gone. But then came back right away. Did a whole lot of water change, cut back feeding to every other day. I finally got the cyano taken cared of by adding GFO, and doing vodka dosing. I have a 75g tank with about 8 fish and a 40g sump. So far its been working for me because I have been doing this for over a month now and no cyano. I still have a little bit on one of my rock, but its receding and not spreading out.

 

[reefboy]

Tap water is the problem

 

[gflat65]

With tons of flow, I'd agree with tap water being the main culprit. Find a cheap TDS meter, too. A lot of LFS' don't change their filters regularly, so they may not be giving the quality water you expect in some cases. The TDS meter gives you a good idea what is in the FW. If it is RO/DI, you should see a reading of maybe as much as 3 down to 0 (should really be near zero, but I've heard people in high solids areas with higher TDS with new filters). Maybe as high as 9(?) with just RO. I've heard of tap water into the 300's.

Do you run any carbon? I've had cyano while running carbon, but I figure carbon can help pull a lot of bad thigns out of the water, so I think it is a good safety net. Some can leach PO4 back into the water column, but the benefits seem to out weigh the detriment.