Green Cyano Outbreak

[Stomatopods17]

All my rock and most of my sand is coated in green slime.

Nitrates: 0ppm
Phos: 0ppm
alk: 8
Calc: 380
Ph: 8.3, stable
Temp: dropped recently from 79 to 77

These params... aren't the best and what they looked like pre-outbreak, tank was actually really clean, then I started attempting to raise nitrates and phospates cause all my corals just wilt (due to these params), and now I have green cyano that ain't going away. Tried adjusting flow to increase it, not much luck.

Can I use chemiclean for this? I read mixed results here... I treated red slime with it about 8 years ago with no negative effects on that tank, and I think once it disappears my nitrates can raise up more visibly. I'm already working on raising the calcium.

Siphoning it out manually doesn't seem to be getting anywhere, I can't completely remove it from surfaces I blow on so it just re-spreads from those spots, it seems way stickier than red cyano, which there's also a tiny bit of.

 

[blaxsun]

Some images would help...

 

[Stomatopods17]

The stuff in the bucket didn't show up well on camera to show it was more of a 'mat', but this is post about 1 hour after I blew on the rock work and siphoned some out.

 

[blaxsun]

How old is the tank?

 

[Stomatopods17]

How old is the tank?

8 1/2 months. 40g (29g display, sump holds about 10), dry rock.

Inhabitants;

Display
- Peacock Mantis Shrimp
- Yellow Tail Damsel

Sump
- Chocolate chip starfish
- Squillia Mantis (new)

Was trying to grow corals in this, have really terrible luck (made another thread on this build here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/a...p-me-solve-the-mystery.1000047/#post-11619252)

In the process of raising nutrients and was going to buy an ATO + mag test kit to try and get my calcium up and consistent, then this happened and I'm pretty sure this is a tell-tale sign there's indeed nutrients but its feeding the wrong intended thing and I won't be able to monitor well with it.

It started out as a little red cyano, I already beat diatoms a few months ago, and now green cyano is spreading in every spot even where there's flow.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

your parameters seem off, the nitrate and phosphate is zero which is not good, and low calcium, and temperature fluctuation. If no ATO yet then possibly salinity fluctuation.

What kind of test kit are you using? How often you do water changes?

There are issue's with your tank, that I would work on correcting, before using chemiclean or anything like that. This is not a stable envorinment, and algae likes unstable environment.

 

[Stomatopods17]

your parameters seem off, the nitrate and phosphate is zero which is not good, and low calcium, and temperature fluctuation. If no ATO yet then possibly salinity fluctuation.

What kind of test kit are you using? How often you do water changes?

There are issue's with your tank, that I would work on correcting, before using chemiclean or anything like that. This is not a stable envorinment, and algae likes unstable environment.

For Phosphate I use red sea Pro

For everything else I used API. Nitrates ik I need to get another red sea pro for, but as is I ain't getting readings even with the phosphate (most I got was 0.01 so nitrates I'm kinda figuring algae will mask the real values of) so was prioritizing it after other things.

Just purchased this tonight:

and I bought an ATO, one thing I'm debating is if I want to just dose the RO/DI water reservoir with kalkwasser, and let the ATO dose, or buy a separate 2 part auto doser after raising it. I read that can back fire badly.

I also use reef crystals salt, and feed reef roids, krill, sometimes mysis, and snails are constantly killed by the mantis as CUC is added.

EDIT: water change about 2 times a month, last one was a week ago, skimmer broke down many months back and I never bothered trying to fix it since I needed some of the nutrients to dirty the water.

 

[slogan315]

How are you raising nutrients?

I beat green Cyano by raising nutrients, most notably phosphates. Then when I saw it stop spreading or slowing down, blew the sheets off rocks or siphoned to get it out the system.

Took a week or so of having phosphate above 0 before I saw little clear patches in parts of the Cyano where it was dying/being eaten.

Btw this is what “covered” looks like….

 

[Stomatopods17]

How are you raising nutrients?

Nonchalantly dumping reef roids a bit whenever I feed the tank (3 times per week) and adding extra pieces of krill. I also added another mantis in the sump to try and stock the tank more, and leave clams down there for the starfish to eat.

I don't have many corals to feed atm, a duncan, 3 mushrooms, 1 gorgonian that aint looking too good (I think mainly because cyano was growing on its whole stalk, blew it off), and zoanthids I haven't seen open in literal months now cause everytime I blow algae off them, it smothers them again. I seen a tiny glow in their centers about a week ago to let me know they're still alive.

I was considering an automated feeder for the corals but I couldn't find anything that looked like it wouldn't just dump way too much in at once, and I was worried raising the nutrients would just make the algae harder.

 

[slogan315]

If you don’t have more livestock to be fed, you may consider just dosing nitrates and phosphates. There are commercial products like brightwell NeoPhos and neonitro. There are also diy solutions. Increases specifically the nitrates and phosphates without polluting the water with all the extra stuff that comes with “feeding heavier”. If you have consumers for that food, fish and corals, then great. But if it’s just extra food decaying in the corner, there are cleaner ways to increase nutrients.

 

[Stomatopods17]

After manually blowing off and removing most of the green, red cyano took its place.

I bought a better pump online (apparently mine is only rated 300 GPH when it should've been a 400), however I don't think it will make an astronomical difference to the problem even if it makes things better.

I bought an ATO and am going to mix kalkwasser in the reservoir, and try to get the calcium stable, and I'm going to do a water change today. I also bought 2 frags at the store cause I don't have anything to really give me feedback right now, and cyano covered both of them literally in less than 10 hours of them being in there... idk how cyano grows on the flesh part of Acans but it does apparently.

I'm just at a loss of what to do. I put so many nutrients in the tank and I get no results with nitrates going up I just get more cyano and I see bubble algae in a few corners I didn't see before. If I chemiclean I'm near certain bubble will take over. If I blow it off, it comes back, if I manually pull it out of the tank, it takes less than a day for it to completely regenerate, if I put the skimmer on, I can probably starve it but I also starve my corals which I'm trying to grow and keep alive.

Only thing I can do is a 3 day black out, which is how I beat diatoms, but I'm in disbelief that'll solve the problem long term and am still willing to try it.