Recommended plan of action for cyano

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So I have got some serious cyano growing rn in my tank. Even when the cyano wasn’t too bad I was reading basically zero nitrate and completely zero phosphate so I’m sure it’s not nutrients causing this. I’ve been doing lot of water changes but it keeps coming back. Tried a black out but it came back rigjt away and tried chemiclean but didn’t seem to do much. Any thoughts? Tank is about a year and 3 months old btw
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Suohhen

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Cyano can be a problem with high or low nutrients. It is also possible that nitrate and phosphate are scavenged so fast by the cyano that high nutrients are a problem. So you really need to dissect which is happening. What is your bioload and filtration, what/how much/how often do you feed?
 
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Cyano can be a problem with high or low nutrients. It is also possible that nitrate and phosphate are scavenged so fast by the cyano that high nutrients are a problem. So you really need to dissect which is happening. What is your bioload and filtration, what/how much/how often do you feed?
I feel like it ain’t high nutrients because even before I had cyano I was running low nutrients. I got a porcupine puffer two clowns a jawfish a coral Beauty and a dotty back in a 40 breeder. Porcupine is only temporary ofc. Feed them ab every other day and not very much. Running aquamax hob 1 for the skimmer and a reactor with activated carbon. With water changes typically every other week to two weeks but recently it’s been weekly 10 gallon changes. I feed them flakes/pellets and once I got the puffer last week I feed him clams but I’ve had the cyano for about a month or so before I even got the puffer and started feeding frozen
 

Suohhen

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I feel like it ain’t high nutrients because even before I had cyano I was running low nutrients. I got a porcupine puffer two clowns a jawfish a coral Beauty and a dotty back in a 40 breeder. Porcupine is only temporary ofc. Feed them ab every other day and not very much. Running aquamax hob 1 for the skimmer and a reactor with activated carbon. With water changes typically every other week to two weeks but recently it’s been weekly 10 gallon changes. I feed them flakes/pellets and once I got the puffer last week I feed him clams but I’ve had the cyano for about a month or so before I even got the puffer and started feeding frozen
Ab as in Red Sea AB+? What/how often do you feed the fish? These types of issues are difficult to diagnose on a forum so you are in the best position to judge. If it is low nutrients what can happen is that you need competition from other bacteria and algae. Cyano is a very versatile bacteria on top of being noxious so there is almost nothing that will touch it once it has grown out that much. The best course of action is to correct the cause, if it is lack of nutrients you can increase feeding/change to higher phosphate content food such as pellets or algae based frozen food. Formula two has 10x the phosphate of mysis shrimp. You can also dose sodium phosphate directly but nitrate and phosphate are more of a barometer than a cure.
Also make sure you are not overlighting, to strong (the lights in this hobby have gotten super powerful) or to long of photo periods (corals only need 6 hours of light so ramp up to your required lighting but back way off of that for the rest of the day). And finally make sure your major parameters are locked down, Salinity, Alk, Cal, Mag. Coralline is a good barometer for whether your lighting and chemistry is locked in.
Once you have figured that out you should remove as much as you can with a siphon and turkey baster. And then you can add to the clean up crew, fighting conches are the most effective algae eaters and they hang out in the sand but I'd only keep one. Scarlet hermits are great for sand as well as they are one of the best scavengers. And for the rock I'd add a few Astrea snails. The CuC isn't going to solve the problem for you but they are going to help make it better every time you do a maintenance. At first it may be every few days you need to go in their with a turkey baster but eventually things will balance out. This type of thing is very common at the 1 year mark.
 
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Ab as in Red Sea AB+? What/how often do you feed the fish? These types of issues are difficult to diagnose on a forum so you are in the best position to judge. If it is low nutrients what can happen is that you need competition from other bacteria and algae. Cyano is a very versatile bacteria on top of being noxious so there is almost nothing that will touch it once it has grown out that much. The best course of action is to correct the cause, if it is lack of nutrients you can increase feeding/change to higher phosphate content food such as pellets or algae based frozen food. Formula two has 10x the phosphate of mysis shrimp. You can also dose sodium phosphate directly but nitrate and phosphate are more of a barometer than a cure.
Also make sure you are not overlighting, to strong (the lights in this hobby have gotten super powerful) or to long of photo periods (corals only need 6 hours of light so ramp up to your required lighting but back way off of that for the rest of the day). And finally make sure your major parameters are locked down, Salinity, Alk, Cal, Mag. Coralline is a good barometer for whether your lighting and chemistry is locked in.
Once you have figured that out you should remove as much as you can with a siphon and turkey baster. And then you can add to the clean up crew, fighting conches are the most effective algae eaters and they hang out in the sand but I'd only keep one. Scarlet hermits are great for sand as well as they are one of the best scavengers. And for the rock I'd add a few Astrea snails. The CuC isn't going to solve the problem for you but they are going to help make it better every time you do a maintenance. At first it may be every few days you need to go in their with a turkey baster but eventually things will balance out. This type of thing is very common at the 1 year mark.
When I said ab I meant “about”. Ya I was thinking about dosing phosphate because I’m not reading anything. Should I dose nitrate as well? Also should I use a tooth brush to remove cyano or will that cause it to spread more? Also when I had Dino’s in the past I went to the lfs and they gave me some green hair algae to help compete with the Dino. Should I do that again in the scenario as well or should I just let whatever is in there eventually start to compete with the cyano on its own?
 

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When I said ab I meant “about”. Ya I was thinking about dosing phosphate because I’m not reading anything. Should I dose nitrate as well? Also should I use a tooth brush to remove cyano or will that cause it to spread more? Also when I had Dino’s in the past I went to the lfs and they gave me some green hair algae to help compete with the Dino. Should I do that again in the scenario as well or should I just let whatever is in there eventually start to compete with the cyano on its own?
The coral beauty should be fed twice a day or more and with a good mix of algae based food. That change itself will increase your nutrients by a lot potentially even causing the reverse issue. Feeding is always preferable to dosing as dosing just simply doesn't produce the same effects as feeding. And yeah like Pico said you could definitely benefit from adding a refugium which will greatly increase the amount if feeding your system can handle.
 

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I've found that dosing a solution of Microbacter Clean and Microbacter7 eliminated dinos from my tank and that it also does a good job with cyano control. My nitrates are around 1-2 and phosphates test 0.00
I made a thread here talking about how I got rid of dinos and a before and after picture of some cyano I had recently.
 
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The coral beauty should be fed twice a day or more and with a good mix of algae based food. That change itself will increase your nutrients by a lot potentially even causing the reverse issue. Feeding is always preferable to dosing as dosing just simply doesn't produce the same effects as feeding. And yeah like Pico said you could definitely benefit from adding a refugium which will greatly increase the amount if feeding your system can handle.
Ya tnis tank is only gonna be up for another year so I don’t wanna spend the time and money on a refugium. So u think best thing to do is keep with manual removal and try to increase nutrients?
 

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For sure manual removal is the best course, also nutrients are certainly needed for new algae and bacteria grow and compete with the cyano so you can certainly achieve that with more food/higher phosphate food, but also may with to dose some nitrate and phosphate if your not seeing improvements and numbers aren't climbing as the equipment in this hobby has gotten so effective at pulling fish poo out of the system. I have tried changing to high phosphate frozen and pellet and I still never see a change unless dosing sodium phosphate which is a stable daily dose of .01ppm.
Ofc there are lots of products, dr tims has a line that works well but It is pretty expensive for all 3 parts. There are other brands too but basically what they all have in common is that they introduce and feed bacteria to out compete the cyano. I would suspect you can put together your own blend of cheaper products as bacteria and food shouldn't cost that much.
 

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Add bacteria to beat them out.
I raised my nutrients and added more beneficial bacteria and pods and in a couple weeks it was all gone

Thats my success story I do agree they can thrive in low and high nutrients
 
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For sure manual removal is the best course, also nutrients are certainly needed for new algae and bacteria grow and compete with the cyano so you can certainly achieve that with more food/higher phosphate food, but also may with to dose some nitrate and phosphate if your not seeing improvements and numbers aren't climbing as the equipment in this hobby has gotten so effective at pulling fish poo out of the system. I have tried changing to high phosphate frozen and pellet and I still never see a change unless dosing sodium phosphate which is a stable daily dose of .01ppm.
Ofc there are lots of products, dr tims has a line that works well but It is pretty expensive for all 3 parts. There are other brands too but basically what they all have in common is that they introduce and feed bacteria to out compete the cyano. I would suspect you can put together your own blend of cheaper products as bacteria and food shouldn't cost that much.
When I’m raising the nutrients is it gonna be one of those things where it makes the cyano worse for a bit and then after a little while it gets better when the other bacteria and algae come? Or r the other algaes gonna start competing with it right away?
 

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So I have got some serious cyano growing rn in my tank. Even when the cyano wasn’t too bad I was reading basically zero nitrate and completely zero phosphate so I’m sure it’s not nutrients causing this. I’ve been doing lot of water changes but it keeps coming back. Tried a black out but it came back rigjt away and tried chemiclean but didn’t seem to do much. Any thoughts? Tank is about a year and 3 months old btw
3F3F75EC-9478-446A-9032-04EBE15225AD.jpeg
68B90743-20F1-4580-A83D-E234F6F708D7.jpeg
FF930324-229C-440F-B50C-F3E548E53FE6.jpeg
BAA023A1-48F5-4DFB-9416-40625F040DE8.jpeg
Have you ID under microscope? Looks like dino
 

monkeyCmonkeyDo

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Cyano....lol. uhg!!!!! How is cyano a product of low nutrients? Or dino for that matter? Something dosent exsist or grow because of low nutrients. Stop believing whatever youve been fed. Lol. Jeez
D
 

Jilly92

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Cyano....lol. uhg!!!!! How is cyano a product of low nutrients? Or dino for that matter? Something dosent exsist or grow because of low nutrients. Stop believing whatever youve been fed. Lol. Jeez
D
If it's photosynthetic it can
 

monkeyCmonkeyDo

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Yes we use bright lights... specially the coral tanks. Most use the light to make glucose or sugars to feed off yes. Still requires nutrients. Its not all light feeding the by products in the reef tanks.
D
 

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