Cyano Not Responding to H2O2 Treatment?

[DeepBrew]

Is it normal for cyano not to grow in mats on sand bed. I only get it on my rocks.

The cyano in the 75 gallon tank that this thread focuses on was almost exclusively on the rocks. There was only one small mat on the sand and it was several weeks before it appeared. I siphoned it off once and it hasn't come back. It was also in one of the highest flow areas of the tank.

The red stuff on the 40 breeder I was battling in this thread:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/algae-id-vibrant-testing.282189/

looked the same as what was in the 75 gallon, but it was actually spirulina. Now that you mention it, it grew mostly in mats on the sand and not so much on the rocks. I don't recall discussion about the differences in preferred growth areas of cyanobacteria and spirulina. I wonder if that could be another way to help ID.

BTW, I'm thinking about changing the title of the thread. The cyano is responding to H2O2 treatment, I just needed some help getting the dose correct.

 

[Griff]

I'm so nervous to dose anything. I just added 500 in new corals. All LPS and mushrooms. I'm going to do the water mixed with H20 test tonight.

I need to treat because it keeps getting on my corals and it's irritating them. I've lost a couple small lps frags and about a dozen or more sps frags.

I had an issue with GHA and started dosing vibrant. It got rid of the GHA/bryopsis but cyano is eating the left overs I guess.

Hopefully it's cyano not spiro. I'm more nervous to dose chemiclean than h202. That being said I do have one fire shrimp so the H202 scares me there too.

I have a reefer 525xl 139 gallons. Concerned about guessing how much the rock and sand are taking up and getting the dosing right too.

I'll be setting up my apex this week so I can more closely check ph. Got the doser too so once I get that dialed in hopefully I'll have better luck.

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

I'm so nervous to dose anything. I just added 500 in new corals. All LPS and mushrooms. I'm going to do the water mixed with H20 test tonight.

I need to treat because it keeps getting on my corals and it's irritating them. I've lost a couple small lps frags and about a dozen or more sps frags.

I had an issue with GHA and started dosing vibrant. It got rid of the GHA/bryopsis but cyano is eating the left overs I guess.

Hopefully it's cyano not spiro. I'm more nervous to dose chemiclean than h202. That being said I do have one fire shrimp so the H202 scares me there too.

I have a reefer 525xl 139 gallons. Concerned about guessing how much the rock and sand are taking up and getting the dosing right too.

I'll be setting up my apex this week so I can more closely check ph. Got the doser too so once I get that dialed in hopefully I'll have better luck.

The VIbrant cyano is a bit technical to describe but it'll pass. Water changes, fresh air for ph. Good surface agitation.

 

[Griff]

The VIbrant cyano is a bit technical to describe but it'll pass. Water changes, fresh air for ph. Good surface agitation.

Should I keep dosing it or start some h202 or chemi clean based on my test results with water h202 algae in a cup?

 

[twilliard]

Is it normal for cyano not to grow in mats on sand bed. I only get it on my rocks.

They will grow where the food source is most abundant. "Many cyanobacteria are able to reduce nitrogen and carbon dioxide under aerobic conditions, a fact that may be responsible for their evolutionary and ecological success."

I'm so nervous to dose anything. I just added 500 in new corals. All LPS and mushrooms. I'm going to do the water mixed with H20 test tonight.

I need to treat because it keeps getting on my corals and it's irritating them. I've lost a couple small lps frags and about a dozen or more sps frags.

I had an issue with GHA and started dosing vibrant. It got rid of the GHA/bryopsis but cyano is eating the left overs I guess.

Hopefully it's cyano not spiro. I'm more nervous to dose chemiclean than h202. That being said I do have one fire shrimp so the H202 scares me there too.

I have a reefer 525xl 139 gallons. Concerned about guessing how much the rock and sand are taking up and getting the dosing right too.

I'll be setting up my apex this week so I can more closely check ph. Got the doser too so once I get that dialed in hopefully I'll have better luck.

Vibrant is where the double edge sword came into play. Vibrant is a CARBON source and cyano loves this

 

[saltyfilmfolks]

Should I keep dosing it or start some h202 or chemi clean based on my test results with water h202 algae in a cup?

Vibrant is where the double edge sword came into play. Vibrant is a CARBON source and cyano loves this

So it will go away on its own.

 

[Griff]

They will grow where the food source is most abundant. "Many cyanobacteria are able to reduce nitrogen and carbon dioxide under aerobic conditions, a fact that may be responsible for their evolutionary and ecological success."


Vibrant is where the double edge sword came into play. Vibrant is a CARBON source and cyano loves this

I'm afraid if I stop the vibrant the GHA wil come back. There are a few very small patches of it left.

 

[DeepBrew]

Today is day 10 dosing 12ml of H2O2 twice daily in the 75 gallon tank. It's actually about 12.5 ml, there's a 12.5 line on the little measuring cup I use. I siphoned out everything I could see with a 10% water change three days ago and I'm starting to see some regrowth in a couple places.

I what point should I expect it to disappear?

Thanks!

 

[twilliard]

Today is day 10 dosing 12ml of H2O2 twice daily in the 75 gallon tank. It's actually about 12.5 ml, there's a 12.5 line on the little measuring cup I use. I siphoned out everything I could see with a 10% water change three days ago and I'm starting to see some regrowth in a couple places.

I what point should I expect it to disappear?

Thanks!

Please keep in mind that you may possibly have more than one species present.

 

[twilliard]

I'm afraid if I stop the vibrant the GHA wil come back. There are a few very small patches of it left.

Also here there may be a possibility of another species.

 

[DeepBrew]

Please keep in mind that you may possibly have more than one species present.

So far every sample I've taken from this tank looks the same. I'm going to pull a few more and look at them before I siphon it out again. I'll post pics when I do. It may not happen tonight though.

 

[Griff]

Also here there may be a possibility of another species.

I've decided to cut the vibrant back to once a week. I also did a major sump and tank clean. Everything looks pretty good. The test will be is it going to come back. I also did the h202 water test and the water turned pink in about an hour. Is it ok to dose the h202 with the vibrant? I have 140 gallon total system. I know it's 1ml per 10 gal but don't know how much I should reduce based on rock and sand. Sand bed is about 1-2 inches.

 

[Griff]

Anyone?

 

[DeepBrew]

I haven't dosed Vibrant with H2O2 personally but I believe others have in this thread:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/vibrant-liquid-aquarium-cleaner-discussion-thread.271428/

@twilliard mentions it in post #1952, I think there is some other discussion too.

I started this thread to document what's going on in my 75 gallon tank which has not had any Vibrant dosed. I've got another thread running for my 40B and 20L tanks which have been dosed with Vibrant and developed massive spirulina problems here:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/algae-id-vibrant-testing.282189/

I expected that I would be dosing H2O2 in those tanks but since the microscope reveal spirulina as the culprit I used Chemiclean instead.

I've been dosing H2O2 in the 75 for so long that other than the last few stubborn cyano spots it look almost too clean for me. At this point I probably won't dose Vibrant in the 75.

@twilliard I took pic of algae samples in the 75 this afternoon. I'll try to get them posted today. It looks to me like all of them are the same but you may see things that I don't.

 

[DeepBrew]

I took samples from 4 spots that have regrown red stuff in the last 4 days. Today is day 11 of dosing 12ml of H2O2 twice daily. This is one of the spots in the tank:


Here are microscope pics from each sample:








They all look pretty much the same to me. Does anyone see anything that would indicate I should either increase the H2O2 dose or try something else to finish it off? I'm a more than a little hesitant to increase the H2O2 dose more. I have very little experience with it and don't know how high is safe to go.

Thanks!

 

[DeepBrew]

Today is day 12 dosing 12ml of H2O2 twice daily. I found several new spots of cyano today, which is a bummer to say the least.:mad: I didn't look at any of today,s spots under the microscope but I don't have any reason to believe they're different than the ones I checked out yesterday. I started using a brand new bottle of H2O2 earlier this week. Just to be sure it is good I dropped a couple pieces of a cyano mat in a small cup. It bubbled fiercely so I'm pretty sure it's good stuff.

I turned off all of the lights this evening and will leave them off a few days. Saturday will be 14 days of dosing at this level. I feel like the tank needs a break, especially the cleaner shrimp. The little guy shed earlier this week and still looks pretty rough. I'm not sure where to go from here. While I'm reluctant to use a higher dose of H2O2, I'm also afraid that if I stop dosing the cyano will take off very quickly.

I think I'll do some water testing and report the results in a little while. Maybe that will help me figure out where to go from here.

 

[SandJ]

I took samples from 4 spots that have regrown red stuff in the last 4 days. Today is day 11 of dosing 12ml of H2O2 twice daily. This is one of the spots in the tank:


Here are microscope pics from each sample:








They all look pretty much the same to me. Does anyone see anything that would indicate I should either increase the H2O2 dose or try something else to finish it off? I'm a more than a little hesitant to increase the H2O2 dose more. I have very little experience with it and don't know how high is safe to go.

Thanks!

@DeepBrew is this stuff in your second picture the same as this:

 

[DeepBrew]

@DeepBrew is this stuff in your second picture the same as this:

I don't think so, the green stuff in your picture is sort of the same structure as the red stuff in my tank, but strands of my red stuff are longer and don't have the clear places between cells. I don't think I've seen anything like either of the critters in your picture in my tanks. I'm a real noob at algae identification though.

 

[DeepBrew]

Here are the water parameters tonight:

Salinity: 35 ppt (calibrated refractometer)
pH: 8.17 (cheap meter)
KH: 7.7 (Salifert)
Ca: 430 ppm (Salifert)
Mg: 1320 ppm (Red Sea)
Nitrate: 8 ppm (Red Sea high range)
Phosphate: 0.04 ppm (Red Sea)

Does anything look way out of line?

I've been aiming for a KH of 8.0 and recently changed salt brands to Fritz RPM which has lower KH than what I was using before. The past couple weeks I've been watching the KH and increasing the daily dose as the tank adjusts to the new salt. It looks like I need to increase the dose a bit more. I dose manually once a day and hadn't dosed at the time I drew the sample water tonight. The daily dose should increase KH by 0.2 so I don't think it's that far off the mark.

Thanks in advance for any comments,

DeepBrew

 

[DeepBrew]

Today is day 14 of dosing 12ml of H2O2 twice daily. I'm also about 48 hours into a lights off period. I did a 20% water change this afternoon and siphoned out all of the cyano I could find. The combination of H2O2 and lights out really seems to affect it but I'm afraid that as soon as I stop dosing and turn the lights back on it will be right back. If that happens I think I will try Chemiclean. Today's water parameters before the 20% change are:

Salinity - 35 ppt (calibrated refractometer)
Ammonia - 0 ppm
Nitrate - 6 ppm (Red Sea high range test)
Phosphate - 0.08 ppm (Red Sea)
Calcium - 410 ppm (Salifert)
Alkalinity - 9.0 (Salifert)
Magnesium -1420 (Red Sea)
pH - 8.1 (cheap meter)

The phosphates have come up some to 0.08, I wonder if that is because the cyano is starting to break down. I was a little surprised to see that since I'm running some GFO. The water change should have brought it back down some though.