Losing The Battle With Cyanobacteria

[tulsadad]

Hey reefers,

I am coming here a bit defeated looking for feedback on what I can do to combat my losing battle with cyano.
I'm mainly defeated as I have not solved the underlying issue and am out of ideas.

I feel like I am doing "everything right", but clearly I am not, so I am curious what other reefers can see or suggest that I am missing.

My main two questions are:
1. What else can I do to defeat cyano beyond the details provided below?
2. Can I "wait it out" and hope it burns out by itself, or is this a terrible idea?

What I have done for cyano:
* dosed chemiclean twice, which knocks it down, but it keeps returning.
* manually break up mats on sand, careful to not disturb anything beyond top layer
* blow off rock work with a small powerhead at water change time
* why do I think it is cyano? it is a mat of red that responded to Chemiclean, and I am nearly 100% it is not dinos as I have had these before. perhaps it could be something else I am not aware exists.

Relevant info:
* 200 gallon IM tank
* 50 BTAs, some softies and LPS, 12 clowns, 2 banggai, 1 melanurus
* CUC = an army of various snails, hermits, four tuxedo urchins, peppermint shrimp
* system running for 9 months
* started with dry rock and sand, Dr Tims One and Only, MB7
* have coralline algae growing, BTAs and corals seem happy (fully expanded, good color, puffy tissue)
* seeded with copepods
* I dose MB7 or Dr Tim's EcoBalance 1-2x/week
* I feed 1x daily, either one cube of mysis/brine shrimp/blood worms, or small amount of reef frenzy/TDO pellets

Water quality:
* nitrates 8-10, phosphates .05 - 0.1 (I test these every other day given my current cyano issues)
* alk 8-8.5, calc 400-420, mag 1325 (tested with Trident daily)
* these have been stable for months
* 35 ppt, 79F, stable forever
* 8.1-8.3 pH
* make my own RO/DI, which verifies 0 TDS as given by the BRS RO unit
* use Red Sea blue bucket for salt if relevant

Filtration:
* skimmer, I skim wet
* 5 micron filter socks
* Rox carbon
* UV sterilizer

Lighting:
* Radion G6
* LPS preset with whites halved
* set to 35% total output
* 10 hour photo period, 2 hour ramp up and down, 6 hours peak photo period
* yields around 175-100 par top to bottom of the tank

Flow:
* four MP40s
* positioned opposite each other and offset, 2 higher in tank, 2 lower and behind rockwork
* running Lagoon anti-sync at 35%

Husbandry:
* swap socks 1-2x/week
* clean skimmer 1-2x/week
* clean foam power heads 1-2x/week
* vacuum 20% of sand 1x/week
* 10-20% water change 1x/week religiously
* blow of rock work 1x/week
* refresh Rox 1x/week

 

[Rhetoric]

Can I "wait it out" and hope it burns out by itself, or is this a terrible idea?

I vote this, keep sucking it out and be patient

 

[tulsadad]

Can I "wait it out" and hope it burns out by itself, or is this a terrible idea?

I vote this, keep sucking it out and be patient

Before dosing chemiclean I tried this, but it just kept getting worse and worse. I did only give it a couple weeks though. Maybe I need to wait longer?

It’s hard to wait while watching it slowly take over the tank.

 

[bushdoc]

Increase biodiversity by adding live rock to display tank and live rock rubble to sump, increase flow

 

[tulsadad]

Increase biodiversity by adding live rock to display tank and live rock rubble to sump, increase flow

I will probably go ahead and give this a try. Is the idea here to add microbes to compete with cyano?

 

[Jimbo327]

Are you dosing any amino acids? In my experience, they seem to really fuel cyano.

Since you have used chemiclean twice and it is effective, I would repeat chemiclean again, and leave it in the tank for 5 days. I've done it before with no issues. Make sure you turn off your UV and remove carbon during treatment because those take out the chemiclean. And before you dose, make sure you do a good manual suction clean into a filter sock to get the big mats of cyano out.

Personally, I would also dose silicate to 1-2 ppm to encourage diatoms.

 

[TheNative192]

I will probably go ahead and give this a try. Is the idea here to add microbes to compete with cyano?

The tiny collonista snails replicate like crazy and eat cyano like crazy. Now you may have a million tiny snails but I had an issue with cyano at my office tank and I added those bad boys and they eat it all up. Also they self replicate & lay eggs so if you get 10 it will knock it out. Only concern is they are small and will replicate non stop.

 

[tulsadad]

Are you dosing any amino acids? In my experience, they seem to really fuel cyano.

Since you have used chemiclean twice and it is effective, I would repeat chemiclean again, and leave it in the tank for 5 days. I've done it before with no issues. Make sure you turn off your UV and remove carbon during treatment because those take out the chemiclean. And before you dose, make sure you do a good manual suction clean into a filter sock to get the big mats of cyano out.

Personally, I would also dose silicate to 1-2 ppm to encourage diatoms.

No amino acids or any other dosing, other than some soda ash + calcium as needed to keep alk/calc in range.

I did forget to mention when I dosed chemiclean, both times I removed carbon and UV for the reasons you mentioned. I also dialed my skimmer back so it was only aerating the water and not actually removing any of the medication.

 

[tulsadad]

The tiny collonista snails replicate like crazy and eat cyano like crazy. Now you may have a million tiny snails but I had an issue with cyano at my office tank and I added those bad boys and they eat it all up. Also they self replicate & lay eggs so if you get 10 it will knock it out. Only concern is they are small and will replicate non stop.

I would rather have a million tiny snails than ugly red cyano slime.

Unless I hear from anyone else, I might just get some live rock and add it to my sump to encourage biodiversity. And in the meantime stay on top of the maintenance schedule I detailed in the original post. Potentially dose chemiclean again.

And then pray to the anti cyano gods.

 

[malacoda]

I would say a combination of more time (at least a few more months) while continuing to suck it out + adding a couple pieces of gulf live rock and/or sand.

Tanks started purely with dry rock and dry sand can take a loonnnggg time to achieve strong, stable biodiversity.

Adding some from the ocean will help speed up that process. (But still won't happen overnight.)

 

[Aquadude1]

I think more time is always a good play. I would like others mentioned add diversity.

I would also stop skimming wet. I have found that this can delay the stabalizing of new tanks. I would skim very dry or not at all and just keep it bubbling for gas exchange.

 

[joefishtank]

Stop using uv-sterilizer? More macro algae in sump? You need something to out compete the cyano. To reduce labor you can get a shellfish that plays in the substrate; that might help a little.

 

[tulsadad]

Stop using uv-sterilizer? More macro algae in sump? You need something to out compete the cyano. To reduce labor you can get a shellfish that plays in the substrate; that might help a little.

Curious to hear the rationale behind turning off the UV sterilizer?

 

[tulsadad]

I think more time is always a good play. I would like others mentioned add diversity.

I would also stop skimming wet. I have found that this can delay the stabalizing of new tanks. I would skim very dry or not at all and just keep it bubbling for gas exchange.

Wouldn't this result in increased DOCs in the water column that directly feed cyanobacteria?

 

[joefishtank]

Curious to hear the rationale behind turning off the UV sterilizer?

literally the opposite of why u are using it.

You need something to out compete the cyano.

Let me ask you this: What is a UV sterilizer for and why do you use it?

 

[tulsadad]

literally the opposite of why u are using it.



Let me ask you this: What is a UV sterilizer for and why do you use it?

I used it in part to successfully eradicate my dinos. I also used it in part to successfully eradicate pathogens in my water that led to several fish deaths. I have since left it running.

I am curious why you suggested turning it off to help cyanobacteria, as they are benthic microbes, so the presence/absence of a UV sterilizer seems irrelevant to me, given they live on rocks/sand.

Additionally, beneficial bacteria are also attached to rock, sand, bio-media, etc, so my understanding is the presence of a UV sterilizer doesn't do much in terms of harming healthy populations of these microbes.

Given all of this, what is the rationale of turning off the UV sterilizer to help the cyano issue?

 

[Aquadude1]

Wouldn't this result in increased DOCs in the water column that directly feed cyanobacteria?

DOC is a really broad category. Kind of like saying you have high TDS. More than one type of solid can make water have high TDS, some bad, some harmless or beneficial. I find DOC to be a fairly useless metric personally. There are lots of opinions on that though.
Yes some things that contribute to DOC feed cyano but they also support what you want to grow.

When a new tank is started, it is sometimes overfiltered. This starved allows things like cyano or dinos to take hold because the other desired algeas dont do well in this environment. Sometimes providing more of the "bad" allows other more desirable organisms to take hold and beat out the cyano. If cyano could be beat in new tanks but more filtering, it would never be a problem with todays equipment.

 

[tulsadad]

DOC is a really broad category. Kind of like saying you have hard water. More than one mineral can make water hard. I find DOC to be a fairly useless metric personally. There are lots of opinions on that though.
Yes some things that contribute to DOC feed cyano but they also support what you want to grow.

When a new tank is started, it is sometimes overfiltered. This starved allows things like cyano or dinos to take hold because the other desired algeas dont do well in this environment. Sometimes providing more of the "bad" allows other more desirable organisms to take hold and beat out the cyano. If cyano could be beat in new tanks but more filtering, it would never be a problem with todays equipment.

Interesting insight, thank you for elaborating!

I am definitely going to add some more live rock to seed more bio-diversity. I will look into this a bit more as well.

 

[Aquadude1]

DOC is a really broad category. Kind of like saying you have hard water. More than one mineral can make water hard. I find DOC to be a fairly useless metric personally. There are lots of opinions on that though.
Yes some things that contribute to DOC feed cyano but they also support what you want to grow.

When a new tank is started, it is sometimes overfiltered. This starved allows things like cyano or dinos to take hold because the other desired algeas dont do well in this environment. Sometimes providing more of the "bad" allows other more desirable organisms to take hold and beat out the cyano. If cyano could be beat in new tanks but more filtering, it would never be a problem with todays equipment.

Interesting insight, thank you for elaborating!

I am definitely going to add some more live rock to seed more bio-diversity. I will look into this a bit more as well.

No problem! With your willingness to wait and patience, whatever method you choose, you'll knock this out

 

[joefishtank]

I used it in part to successfully eradicate my dinos. I also used it in part to successfully eradicate pathogens in my water that led to several fish deaths. I have since left it running.

I am curious why you suggested turning it off to help cyanobacteria, as they are benthic microbes, so the presence/absence of a UV sterilizer seems irrelevant to me, given they live on rocks/sand.

Additionally, beneficial bacteria are also attached to rock, sand, bio-media, etc, so my understanding is the presence of a UV sterilizer doesn't do much in terms of harming healthy populations of these microbes.

Given all of this, what is the rationale of turning off the UV sterilizer to help the cyano issue?

how about turn it off to save energy since you said you solved the prior issues

Given all of this, what is the rationale of turning off the UV sterilizer to help the cyano issue?

Do you know for fact whether or not killing microbes for no reason is helping your cyano problem? why not do the opposite? science use counter. other science use other counter.