Cyano ... I call BS

[Tuffloud1]

I hit it with chemiclean last week and it nuked it. Everything came out fine, my styloporia was not exctally happy but everything else looked just fine. Now the cyano is gone and everything looks great. Hope it lasts

Did it last?

 

[Dan_P]

i keep seeing excess nutrients are the magical cause of cyano. I am going to challenge that with no data or experiment ... jus a gut feeling out there that the blue green algae that was one of the first multicellular success on Earth maybe that suggests that it is a highly adaptable organism. I am starting to think it is introduced to our system more than magically appearing because of excess nutrients. I have it and started with mostly red now get more green cyano. So tell the truth ... Agree or disagree I just wonder what everyone thinks on it?

There is much said on the causes of cyanobacteria blooms.

A fun fact about your color shifting infestation. If the film is the same species of cyanobacteria all along (do you have a microscope?), the red to green shift can occur either through adaptation to a light change or a change in nitrogen source (nitrate vs ammonia). If you haven’t adjusted the light spectrum in your system, then the nitrogen source it is feeding on is changing.

Cyanobacteria are in every system and very likely there are many species in each system. There might only be a small number of species that can get out of hand and cause an Issue.

The narrative about excess nutrients causing cyanobacteria isn’t all that bad because to have a very high concentration of an organism, there must be a high level of something to maintain this amount of growth. For example, to generate a high level of biomass requires a high concentration of nitrogen. Other elements are needed to support a high accumulation of biomass, but in much lower amounts.

Adding to the confusion about cyanobacteria growth is the hobby-wide misconception that what you measure in the water informs you about the nutrient level where the organism is growing. This has resulted in competing schools of thought: high v low nutrient levels stimulate cyanobacteria growth.

Also fueling the debate is another misconception: that what you read about free floating cyanobacteria applies equally well to benthic species. The ecology of surface dwelling species is nothing like that of the free floating organism. Whereas the free floating organism depends on the surrounding water for its nutrients, the benthic species depends more on heterotrophic bacteria and what is on and in the substrate they live on. Particulate matter may be a more important source of nutrients for benthic species and dissolved nutrients more important to the free floater (Fun fact: just about all nuisance growth in an aquarium is benthic).