Help me understand cyano

[carnthetiges]

I've recently started getting long strands of brown cyano on my leathers in the high flow area and a little on the sand bed.
My understanding is cyano will appear when certain conditions are met - primarily a high level of nutrients and light.

I've got a 15g AIO, filter floss and some seachem matrix but otherwise its just live rock doing the filtering.
26 degree C
pH: 8.1
NH3: nil
NO2: nil
NO3: nil
dKh: 8.5
Phos - don't have a tester

Was worried with my nitrates sitting at negligible levels dinos could be a concern but don't understand why the cyano's appearing?

Light schedule was recently changed with a slight reduction in hrs, white light's there but lower than it was.
I don't have an RODI unit, use store bought water in my inverted bottle ATO. Does say it's created via RO though.
I feed 4 times a week, roughly a quarter frozen cube for a clown and dottyback - not much going to waste.
Only messy thing i can think of is there is a bit of red gunk that builds up in the filter chamber that i periodically clean out.

Any thoughts as to what's keeping the cyano happy?
Cheers

 

[Deep]

Cyano thrives on instability . Your tank has nil nitrates which sounds quite impossible given your export. What are you using to measure it ?
If your nitrates/phosphates are really low, then sounds like Cyano does not really have any competition in terms of algae etc

Also how did you establish it is Cyano and not Dinos ?

 

[carnthetiges]

Thanks for the reply.
I'm using a red sea test kit. It gave me fairly high reading when the tank was initially setup in Jan, the reading has slowly dropped to 'clear' (i.e. no detectible nitrates) in the last 6-8 weeks.

Also how did you establish it is Cyano and not Dinos ?

Good question. My first thought was dinos, posted a pic in another thread to confirm, feedback (albeit only 1 reply) was cyano.

Long fine brown algae?

Hoping someone's able to ID this algae for me. Only noticed it after moving some of my corals around. The leather in the attached pic has long fine strands of brown algae. Worry it's the dreaded dinos but i couldn't find any similar pics - most pics i've found has it appearing thinker, gunky and...

www.reef2reef.com

Side note - i gave the sandbed a thorough vac over the weekend and that stired up what might be dinos - clear stringy stuff. Sucked most of it out, hasn't re-appeared, unlike the brown presumed cyano.

 

[Hydrored]

That is Dino

 

[brandon429]

Consider this action below as the identification of your invader doesn’t matter half as much as the fact you have an easy tiny nano to rip clean

Algae/Cyano Issue Not Improving, Help Please?

Hi all, I have a Red Sea Reefer 250 that has been up and running for 8 months now. My issue is a strange black algae\cyano growth that has plagued me for the last two months+. I have been treating as follows: cleaning gravel twice weekly 20% water changes twice a week Addition of beneficial...

www.reef2reef.com

you can have a clean reef within two hours, anytime you will it. It’s a very stunning after pic option

 

[carnthetiges]

Thanks for the reply brandon, had seen some of your posts around the place, whilst I'm hesitant you're right in that it would be a relatively minor procedure compared to most.

My sticking point is what i've done thus far to cause the issue.
My fear is doing the deep clean, solving the issue short term and my husbandry resulting in a flair up again.

If it is dinos, after the deep clean is it a case of bumping up feeding and possibly adding a third fish?

 

[brandon429]

worry about that if it comes back, you have a 99% chance it wont. *thats not being evasive* truly it means if anyone had an idea on the causes we'd never have any rip clean jobs.


some folks say param balances matter between N and P
yet adjusting those doesnt remove or prevent it, it only works some of the time


some say adding pods prevents/undoes it...same outcome. I know hundreds of tanks with pods that still get it.


if I had to truly pick one alternative that can be done differently, its using a few pounds of real live rock vs white rock. im assuming this system is totally dry rock is that right/cycled from bottle bac? about 75% of dino challenge tanks are from that origin
(not sure if you have dinos or cyano, but it doesnt matter to rip cleaners we dont take time to ID as thats hesitating and not associated with prevention, action is associated w prevention)

evaluate your tank from the clean condition, strong habit.

heres fifty more pages of rip cleans to predict outcomes from

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

by making that thread of about two million bucks of safe reefs cleaned, we wanted to show that parameters and ID of organism has no basis in making reefers happy. Cleaning the tank beats all the other options, its why every page is just happy reefers and nobody is mad about outcome.

as more and more examples are clicked we see that cleaning resets the invader mass % in the system from highest number of cells to lowest, then natural competition has a better chance. By dosing additives, a person kills off the invasion then intakes the waste back into rocks and sand, which is why the above method is best there's no doser that's better, they all add waste to a highly waste-laden system. we do pure export and leave the rocks and corals and fish and sand behind all happy, pics show.

 

[Charles Zinn]

Have you added a clean up crew?