Need some help I have a bad bacteria bloom

[mcdrichj]

So here is the background. I have a 40g that I setup and was cycled in January. Brought 3 fish from my old setup 2 clowns and Banggai cardinal (no LR or media fresh start). One of the clowns died due to stress I think (both clown were 12 years old).

I let the tank stabilize about 2 months until March and added 3 more fish after QT another clown tailspot and flasher wrasse. In April I added a cleaner shrimp and tuxedo urchin when I started to get algae so they wouldnt starve.

In the beginning of May I started to get cyano and it spread rapidly. I ended up nuking it with chemiclean, that cleared up the cyano. A week later I added some gulf rocks to get my microbiome going the tank was crystal clear for a few weeks. Then I started to get dinos and the cyano came back with some GHA. Not a huge deal everything needs to balance out and it didnt look like anything was taking over.

Last week on the 13th I added my 2 MP10s. I added one on the lower right side (opposite of my gyre) and mid center back. I'm not running them hard please see my schedule I posted. My Gyre is a MJ-GF308 that runs on random mode upto 70% is on the top left blasting flow across the top of my tank. My MP10s were from my old setup and weren't cleaned and left to dry out and kill everything off for about 6 months. I soaked them in citric acid several times and scrubbed them and rinsed them in hot water over the course of a week before adding them. I added them because there were some dead spots and I figured it would help out with some of the algae.

After adding them my ORP started to drop and my tank got a bit cloudy. I figured this would happen plus the MP10 on the right is a bit low so I figured it would blow up some sand and settle out. After a day my tank got a bit more cloudy. So I did a water change instead of doing 4gal I did 8gal and was blowing cyano and dinos off the rocks and got out most of the algae I could manually remove.

Then 2 days after that my tank got really cloudy and I found my banggai dead (this fish was also kinda old). The only additional thing I have done is add polishing pads to my HOB filter with carbon that I change every week. It still looks the same and this point and the cyano has started to spread but I dont want to keep messing with the tank. All the fish shrimp and the urchin seem to be doing fine and are eating and not acting unusual. Before I over react and start doing things like water changes or moving/turning off powerheads I would like some advise. Should I be patient or something immediate?

I tested my nitrates and they came up at 0. I'm currently waiting on more packets for my PO4 tested I apparently lost them during the move. I will include a picture of the polishing bad in my HOB it brown not white-ish so it doesnt seem like sand. You probably dont need my PH temp or salinity graphs but I threw them in too.

I really don't know what way to go with this right now. My livestock doesn't seem stressed at this point so I can keep waiting or buy a UV. I know a UV will hammer this down but I would prefer the tank balances out then me hammering it more. I'm pretty open to ideas at this point.

 

[EnterName]

I'm sorry this is happening to your tank

I assume nitrate (and possibly also phosphate) is at 0 because those cyanobacteria and the bacteria bloom simply ate up all freely available nutrients. The tank's overall nutrient export might be insufficient, otherwise GHA and cyanos probably wouldn't have shown up in the first place. Can you remember the nitrate and phosphate levels before the bloom?

I would start by siphoning off those cyano mats and combining the process with water changes. I recommend checking on your fish frequently. If they appear to be breathing very fast the bacteria bloom is consuming too much oxygen and you will need to find a way to provide more (air pump, more surface agitation, etc.).

It might be possible that your gyres stirred up a lot of detritus and provided flow to areas that previously were "dead" which could might have caused this issue, but I don't think removing the gyres and letting everything slowly rot away again is going to be a solution in the long-run. Most bacteria blooms die down on their own after a while, but I can still recommend a UV sterilizer for emergencies like these.

 

[mcdrichj]

Thanks for the help. I did my normal 4gal water change and sucked up that mat of cyan. I have a uv sterilizer on the way. Im still cloudy. I also relocated the right side MP10 a bit higher up.

I will follow up on the saga.