Continuous issues with Cyanobacteria

Tammy J · May 14, 2022

My tank is 3 months old and I’ve been dealing with this Cyanobacteria for about a month now. It comes and goes, sometimes within hours. It’ll be light or dark purple in the morning and then in a few hours there is no sign of the purple (or the other way around). I’ve tried changing the water flow direction of my 2 power heads and vacuum the purple out each weekend and do about a 7-10 gallon water change each time. I have 7 fish, and 12 bottom feeders in my 55 gallon tank. I have also cut what I feed the fish by half in case the issue was over feeding. I’ve read the other forums on this but I didn’t find anything that was exactly what I was experiencing (especially with how long and wavy the purple is and the constant coming and going within hours). I have photos attached. Does anyone have any advice? Thanks!

Jflozfzx1 · May 14, 2022

Tammy J said:
My tank is 3 months old and I’ve been dealing with this Cyanobacteria for about a month now. It comes and goes, sometimes within hours. It’ll be light or dark purple in the morning and then in a few hours there is no sign of the purple (or the other way around). I’ve tried changing the water flow direction of my 2 power heads and vacuum the purple out each weekend and do about a 7-10 gallon water change each time. I have 7 fish, and 12 bottom feeders in my 55 gallon tank. I have also cut what I feed the fish by half in case the issue was over feeding. I’ve read the other forums on this but I didn’t find anything that was exactly what I was experiencing (especially with how long and wavy the purple is and the constant coming and going within hours). I have photos attached. Does anyone have any advice? Thanks!

I was having issues for almost 2 years but i finally beat it! First thing i did was check my parameters everything checked out good Nitrate, Phosphate both were in good levels but i was still getting Cyano. Next thing I did was buy filter pads and put them where the overflow is to catch everything before it hits the sump, i would change/clean the pads every 3 days including the filter sock. After that I bought a lot of Nassairs snails (spelled it wrong) so it can move the sand and release gasses from the sand and i increased the flow in the tank dramatically so much that it would push my corals around would have to use glue to hold them in place. After a few weeks i notice the cyano dying then after a month it was clear and my corals were growing like crazy. Also always us RO/DI and check when it gets depleted. I do have an algae scrubber it help but I believe increase flow really help.

Tammy J · May 15, 2022

Jflozfzx1 said:
I was having issues for almost 2 years but i finally beat it! First thing i did was check my parameters everything checked out good Nitrate, Phosphate both were in good levels but i was still getting Cyano. Next thing I did was buy filter pads and put them where the overflow is to catch everything before it hits the sump, i would change/clean the pads every 3 days including the filter sock. After that I bought a lot of Nassairs snails (spelled it wrong) so it can move the sand and release gasses from the sand and i increased the flow in the tank dramatically so much that it would push my corals around would have to use glue to hold them in place. After a few weeks i notice the cyano dying then after a month it was clear and my corals were growing like crazy. Also always us RO/DI and check when it gets depleted. I do have an algae scrubber it help but I believe increase flow really help.

Thank you for the information! I will try that!

Yates273 · May 15, 2022

You say your tank is only 3 months old. It is just going through it’s balancing stage not sure if you started with live rock but give it time and it will take care of itself. Jfloz gave you some good info. Whatever you do don’t just try start dumping chemicals in to combat it. Good luck