Well the battle with cyano is over. Took around 6 days for it to clear up after changing my media. I blame the ALK swing due to a phosphate spike while I was away. My GFO was depleted the week before I left which caused the spike.
I figure the spike in phosphate also caused my ALK to drop to the 6.1 reading I got when I returned. I replaced my GFO and reduced my phosphates back down. ALK shot from 7.3 to 7.9 in a couple days. My sps looked really stressed from the swing and I had to cut half my bird of paradise off due to some STN. The other half is making a recovery. Obviously Swinging from 7.3 to 6.1 then up to 7.9 over the course of 10 days is not what I wanted however I have stabilized the system again.
Lots of lessons to be learned while dealing with 40g of total water volume. The swing's and changes inside the tank happen real fast with not much time to react.
I figure the spike in phosphate also caused my ALK to drop to the 6.1 reading I got when I returned. I replaced my GFO and reduced my phosphates back down. ALK shot from 7.3 to 7.9 in a couple days. My sps looked really stressed from the swing and I had to cut half my bird of paradise off due to some STN. The other half is making a recovery. Obviously Swinging from 7.3 to 6.1 then up to 7.9 over the course of 10 days is not what I wanted however I have stabilized the system again.
Lots of lessons to be learned while dealing with 40g of total water volume. The swing's and changes inside the tank happen real fast with not much time to react.