Sneep's Little Paradise

[Sneep]

I've lurked on here since I got into the hobby a few years ago, but haven't made an account until recently so I could post about cyano.

Background
My journey started with a 5g Eshopps nano tank that I had for about a year, then my big dreams led me to upgrade to a 9g nano tank from Eshopps. It was an ambitious upgrade, I know. When I had the 5g, I just had my white clownfish, a cleaner shrimp, and a handful of soft corals. The entire aquascape was just 3 rocks piled into an arch, and looking back on it, it wasn't an appropriate habitat. I ran into some algae troubles that I couldn't quite overcome, and Eshopps had just come out with the 9g, so I bought that tank to solve my algae issue. I made sure there was a cave in my small aquascape this time, and tried adding a second arch, but it gets no attention. With the extra space, I added a second clownfish to give my original one a friend. Black this time around to spice things up. That was about two years ago. Overall, the white clownfish is just over 3 years old, and so is the GSP in my tank - the only surviving coral from when I originally set up the tank.

The Here and Now
My tank had been in a very stable state for the first time (probably) ever around a year ago, which gave me the confidence to try some stony corals. I don't remember all the varieties I tried, but I bought a bundle of 3 from my LFS. My powerful snail enjoys eating things that are under my frags, which results in the snail breaking the glue and knocking the frag down. Only one of the stonies has survived being knocked over on a regular basis, so I leave it on the sand. I had a couple of decent zoa colonies growing in the tank on different rocks, but one was overgrown by the GSP, and the other was smothered by the cyano. Oh, the cyano...

I'm quite lazy, and I don't measure my parameters, so don't ask what my nitrates are etc. Several months ago, I had a cyano outbreak that quickly took over the tank. It quickly covered my rocks, corals, sand and glass. Nothing was safe. I tried aggressive water changes for several months where I would try to siphon out as much as I could, but since it's such a small tank I can't siphon enough cyano before removing too much water. I had tried blowing it off the rocks and corals, but a lot of it would always end up settling back down. Someone on here mentioned sucking it up instead of blowing it off with a turkey baster - which I hadn't thought of yet. So I spent a while today sucking up cyano about 3 square mm at a time, and squirting it into my filter. I also added some more clean up crew this past weekend, so hopefully that combination will make a difference. My pump was pretty old, so I replaced it with a new stronger one a few weeks ago, and that definitely slowed down the cyano's growth rate.

Hopefully this is the tail end of my battle with cyano, and I can track my tank's progress back towards its former glory on here.

Equipment
- Eshopps Deskmate Florida
- AliExpress AIO system ($20 and I've had it for 3+ years, highly recommend)
- Kessil A80 Tuna Blue
- Fluval 50w heater

Residents
- Frostbite (I think) clownfish
- Black clownfish
- 4x Sexy shrimp
- 1 Emerald crab (he doesn't leave his rock)
- 3 Blue hermit crabs
- 2 Astrea snail

 

[JumboShrimp]

Beautiful chunk of GSP growing there. The green really pops!

 

[Sneep]

Beautiful chunk of GSP growing there. The green really pops!

Thanks! It didn't grow at all for a couple years, which goes against everything I've ever heard about these corals. Once it did start growing, it exploded and ate the zoas that were on the same rock.

 

[Sneep]

Yesterday was a long day of sucking cyano off the rocks, and today I went after the sand bed. Unfortunately, my itty bitty siphon can disturb the cyano on the sand, but the clumps are often too heavy to be sucks up through the hose. I may go back in with just the hose and remove some sand with the clumps.

I also picked up a couple more astrea snails from the store. Hoping they'll help keep the rocks free of cyano.

As long as I don't find any evidence of the cyano growing back by this weekend, I'm going to pull the rocks out and add more sand. Maybe I'll get froggy and add another rock or two.

 

[P-Dub]

NICE!!!

 

[Sneep]

I ended up doing a few more things to deal with the cyano:
- Disassembled and cleaned my return pump
- Cleaned my filter section (LOTS of sponges in there)
- New "phosphate reducing" filter
- Dose of chemiclean

The cyano proceeded to die off over the next few days, and showed no signs of building back up. I took that opportunity to remove all the rocks from my tank and add more sand in there, and rearrange my rocks. The cave in the back of the tank was hot real estate, so I made a new cave with the rocks and moved the big arch to the back, and the fish have shown very little interest in my creation. Ungrateful. I've included a picture of the heater after the sponges (I think) dried out.