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All My Cyano is Gone?!
A little background - I have been fighting a cyano outbreak for about 6 months in my 390-net system. It had me at my wit’s end and that's an understatement! I did everything I could think of to try and combat the issue; more frequent water changes, feeding less, cleaning the sand bed, more flow, H2O2, etc, etc, etc. You name it, I did it. While some of these things helped they did nothing to resolve the issue. Suffice to say it would come back with a vengeance covering everything and I mean EVERYTHING! I took a break from my self- proclaimed "war" on my cyano issues and focused on other things like summertime fun. I wasn't giving up but just thought it best to stop and let the system settle.
Now this is where it gets interesting...
The other day I walked into the basement Fish Tank Room to find my cyano dying away. I hadn't changed anything; the stuff was just peeling off the sand and rockwork. To tell the truth, I was a bit dumbfounded. I mean I kept asking myself "what changed" and kept replying back "nothing", well nothing I knew about at least!?!?
Two days went by and the cyano, even the stuff in the submersed layer of sand along the glass, was dying. That surprised me as the H2O2 treatment, while somewhat effective, never seemed to get deep enough to have an effect on it.
I had a mystery on my hands and for the life of me could not find out what was killing it off so quickly and yet have no ill effects on the reset of my system. Test after test, came back normal. All parameters are and continue to be within optimal levels for parameters in a coral reef aquarium. So what was it?
As I was cleaning my system I noticed I had some leaves from my mangroves, now brown and decaying, stuck to the overflow strainer. I removed them and didn't give it a second thought, until I recalled a thread about the leaves possibly being poisonous. To what extent I could not recall, so it was time for some research.
I found a few online articles. These are snippets from two:
"The Red Mangrove is Rhizophora mangle (rye-ZOFF-for-ruh MAN-glee.) When one mentions coastal bushes walking on water it’s the Red Mangrove that comes to mind. Their seed pods litter the beaches at certain times of the year. In central Florida they are bushes but the farther south one goes towards the equator the larger they become eventually reaching tree status. Its dried leaves make a nice tea with tannin. The same leaves have also been used as tobacco and make wine, as can young fruit. Further, its fruit is actually not a fruit at all but a hypocotyl, an embryonic root. It starts out as a bud but grows somewhat like a curved, thin-ringed cigar and when dry can be smoked like one, if you snip off each end. You can also make a whistle out of it. The bitter inner portion of the same hypocotyl when green can be eaten as an emergency food cooked well in a lot of water. By the way, they can float for a year in salt water before rooting. Recent research shows extracts made from the bark of the Red Mangrove can reduce gastric ulcers, is antimicrobial and contains antioxidants. Red Mangrove twigs can be used to clean teeth."
"
445 Melissa Hicks, Mitylene A Bailey, Thippi R. Thiagarajan,
Timothy L. Troyer and Luke G. Huggins
Figure 6: Cytotoxic Effect of Hydrophilic Fractions of MEE on HT1080 Fibrosarcoma cells.
This study showed that an ethanol extract of mature Rhizophora mangle propagules had antibacterial activity against gram-positive, not gram-negative bacteria. The aqueous extract showed cytotoxic activity against a human fibrosarcoma cell line (HT1080). Because antibacterial activities were found in the ethanolic extractions, while the cytotoxic activities were found in the crude aqueous extractions, we suggest that two different chemicals are responsible for these activities. Although there
are reports of antibacterial activities from Rhizophora bark extracts (Perera et al. 2007), this study is the first to find antibacterial compounds in the hypocotyle of R. mangle fruits. The selective effect of the ethanolic extract on the gram-positive bacteria and not on mammalian cells suggest that the antibacterial compounds may not be toxic in a eukaryotic system, and thus makes the active ingredient in the ethanol extract a better candidate for drug development."
So now my mind is racing - could it have been the leaves and their antimicrobial properties? I didn't think a few leafs would be enough but the more research I did, the more I'm leaning toward that direction. I have no conclusive proof outside of my observations and a cyano free system. I have changed nothing; not water change intervals, nor feeding routines, I mean NOTHING....
One test to reproduce the results is underway in a friends system. We are letting the leaf decay slowly in the water column to see if it has similar effects on his system. If so, we’re hoping the results of removing it will exhibit similar results. I will post my findings.
One thing to note is that the leafs that made it to the overflow are the ones that have been sacrificed by the mangrove in order to maintain the overall health of the plant, from what I've read this is the way mangroves can survive in a hostile saltwater environment and will be the leafs used for my experiments.
I still have a laundry list of questions, for which I'll only have my observations to fall back onto, but this is what this hobby is all about.
Sources:
https://www.researchgate.net/public...izophora_mangle_LRhizophoraceae_fruit_extract
http://www.eattheweeds.com/mangroves-marvelous-muck-masters-2/
Edited:
I wanted to add that all NH4 test performed showed no elevated level, infact no detectable (Salifert Ammonia Aquarium Test Kit) levels at all. That would suggest (yes an assumption) that the bacteria responsible for consuming NH4 in my system was somehow not affected or minimally affected, but again I have no proof outside of my observations and test results.
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