Recent Water Change - Cyano now on Sand Bed..."to siphon into sand bed or not" in next water change?

joe-ejs

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Hello.

I did a 30% water change in my 90gl last weekend and when I did the water change I stuck my siphon tube all the way down to the bottom of my approximate 2" sandbed, sucking up the yuck. I now have a section of my tank that is getting cyano on a daily basis. I am wondering to battle this, if I should just siphon the top layer of my sand bed every 2 days to remove the new cyano until it disappears, or should I do another 20% water change and dig into the sand bed once again? I have filter sock in system to capture debris as well.

BTW...water parameters before and after my last water change are on par..
Nitrate = 0.0 - using new Hanna High range test kit
Phosphate = 0.03 - using Hanna Low Range Phosphorous test kit

Tank is 10 months old, never had any algae issues. Run UV as well.
 

t5Nitro

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Your nutrients match mine. If I attempt even a 5 gallon change on my 75 I get cyano. Not sure why. I dont do water changes any more and use all for reef. You can siphon it out but it'll come right back in a few days.
 

Reef.

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Increasing flow and removing is the way to go.

Adding more biodiversity is good too, such as live phytoplankton.

Maybe rethink your 2 inch sand bed, if you don’t clean the sand bed regularly you may keep running into issues if you disturb it, as you have seen already, the sand can hold a lot of detritus even after only 10 months.
 
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joe-ejs

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Increasing flow and removing is the way to go.

Adding more biodiversity is good too, such as live phytoplankton.

Maybe rethink your 2 inch sand bed, if you don’t clean the sand bed regularly you may keep running into issues if you disturb it, as you have seen already, the sand can hold a lot of detritus even after only 10 months.
So for the short term, would you recommend that I just siphon the top of the sand bed, or should I go deeper into the sand bed?..
 

Reef.

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So for the short term, would you recommend that I just siphon the top of the sand bed, or should I go deeper into the sand bed?..

siphoning to remove would be good, try and get it before it has time to form a layer, it’s under the layer that the cyano does it’s work.

The sand bed is down to personal opinion, 2 inches is not deep enough for a deep sand bed to get the affects some believe a DSB gives, but 2 inches is deep enough to collect a lot of detritus, so what reason do you have for 2 inches? For a type of fish you want to keep? If not then not touching the sand bed is one option and if you like that look ( can look ugly to,some people) or just don’t want the hassle of cleaning it then go for it but if you want a clean bed and not worrying about disturbing the sand then you need to start slowing vacuuming the sand bed a little bit each time you vacuum, once you have got it all vacuumed you can then vacuum larger areas or it all in one go.
 

Lerequin

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Nitrate = 0.0 - using new Hanna High range test kit
Phosphate = 0.03 - using Hanna Low Range Phosphorous test kit
It looks like your nutrients are too low. I would feed more, reduce the export methods or dose NO3 and PO4 to approach the Redfield ratio of 1part PO4 (16 part P) for 10part NO3. Are the cyano appearing where the sand was siphoned?
 
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Tankkeepers

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Cyno is coming from sand do not disturb it enless you plan to remove it as it can and will kill your tank if disturbed to much without removal with pumps off to suckout everything in it with it

Bare bottom will help alot as sand is not needed
 

Tankkeepers

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Good luck the water change is giving the cyno a chance to grow since you temporary starved the water while the localized zones are feeding the cyno
 

Tankkeepers

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Flow can help in some cases but is not an end all be all fix as alot of the time cyno is not being caused by a flow problem
 

Tankkeepers

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It's can be a time problem that takes months or years to start and then can't really be fixed without jurassic measures and I say if it does not hurt anything Then don't worrie about it
 

Tankkeepers

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Also you can kill it with 1/2 teaspoon of 3 percent peroxide per 25 gallons of water daily with lights on durring full light on time will tick off the corals but in my experience only for a few minutes without any effects and add it to the pump area where it can mix not the display and start with less then I said as a test to make sure it won't hurt the coral u have first the step up slowly to what I use and it'll be gone in a month or so
 

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