What snails can help with Cyanobacteria?

[Reef By Steele]

I believe everybody hates when Cyanobacteria (Cyano) creeps up in our tanks. The causes for these bacterial blooms vary, but it is most often caused by an imbalance in nutrients, often but not always due to insufficient maintenance. It is important to track your nutrient levels, especially nitrates and phosphates, as changes can indicate issues present or to come in the near future. Other factors that can play a role include, faulty or undersized skimmer, undersized or under maintained filter, inadequate flow, and decaying detritus and left over food sources in the substrate. Cyano seems to at least begin to develop in low flow areas, and localized spot on the sand bed can indicate dead zones or an abundance for decaying material in that location. Failing to maintain the appropriate feeding schedule and amount can also play a role, as the extra food often ends in those low flow areas. This is probably my biggest issue as I really want to ensure that our fish get their fill, and are not left wanting strictly so I can have less maintenance.

While there are a number of Clean Up Crew members who can help with the battle, to truly cleanse your tank of this undesirable slime, it is important to determining the root cause and making the necessary changes to fix it. Quick fixes such as Chemi-Clean can offer short term fixes, but require at least two water changes and the cyano will return, sometimes with a vengeance if we do not address the root cause. Early on I have used it, but invariably the cyano has returned especially since starting www.reefbysteele.com<http://www.reefbysteele.com> as I have much less time for our tanks now.

With that disclaimer, let's approach CUC that can help us keep Cyano from overtaking while we work to get our tanks back into balance.

There are many snails that consume some strains of cyano, cannot say all, but the consensus is that they work a lot of the time. These include Banded Trochus, Cerith, Astrea, Nerite, Mexican and Zebra Turbos, and Margarita snails.

This list provides snails for every tank setup and size. Fortunately it isn't only turbos, which would not be as suited to a smaller aquarium.

Other CUC options to assist with the battle are copepods and Rotifer. Rotifers have been studied, and shown to prefer cyano over other algae. And from personal experience I have found vast amounts of pods in samples of cyano I have drawn for identification purposes. While not all copepods will eat cyano, I have found that most of the benthic (crawling) pods do, making our Premium and Majestic pods ideal, as they include rotifers along with 3-4 species of benthic copepods.

To help with dead flow and local sand issues, sand sifting CUC can make a serious impact. Sand Sifting Stars, Nassarius snails (Although not as strong of an algae consumer), fighting conchs and others help out by eliminating the decomposing detritus trapped within the sand, while moving it around to increase aeration.

Blue Leg Hermit Crabs are another reef safe example of CUC that will eat cyano. Fun to watch, just be sure to supply shells for rehoming as they grow.

Employing an arsenal composed of multiple selections from the above will greatly increase their over all efficiency.

The first step in this battle should generally be adding the CUC you desire, removing as much cyano as possible manually, followed by a strong but reasonable water change. The best method I have found for cyano removal, is a two person job. Taking a small diameter hose, siphon the tank water through a fine filter sock and back into the sump (if present) while the tank is running. This allows you to remove the cyano from the surfaces, trap a large percentage of the cyano for export, improving your tanks appearance and giving the snails and other CUC an opportunity to keep up with it while making the necessary changes.

Unfortunately, in my experience none of these can keep up with a major outbreak, but they do help a lot. Smaller issues, commonly cause by a dead spot in flow or underlying detritus on a patch of sand, may often be solved with CUC.

What have you tried, please share success and failure stories.

Happy Reefing from Kent and Sherry

 

[JumboShrimp]

Sounds like your write-up covers most (if not all) of the bases.

 

[Reef By Steele]

Sounds like your write-up covers most (if not all) of the bases.

Thanks. I research anything I write about, and will only put out what I feel are facts. Doesn’t help anyone to throw out opinions or hunches. That is why I love Reef2Reef so much. When I returned to the hobby from a hiatus from a large move, I found this forum to come up on every search I made. The deeper I dive into it, the more threads I found that were supported by other sources. Not that there isn’t ever any wrong info posted on here, but the majority of it is tried and true.