Cyano Not Responding to H2O2 Treatment?

[biom]

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

those red worm like creatures are nematodes

 

[biom]

@DeepBrew any updates?

 

[DeepBrew]

Not really. I did the water change yesterday and will dose H2O2 today. Tomorrow will be lights back on and no H2O2. We'll see how it goes from here. My guess is that the cyanobacteria will reappear after a few days and I'll break out the Chemiclean.

 

[DeepBrew]

As of 2/18/2017 there were only a couple of red places in the tank. I scrubbed both off and siphoned them out with the weekly water change. If it stays at this level I'll be happy.

 

[DeepBrew]

The last dose of H2O2 was 2 weeks ago today. As I mention in the previous post I scrubbed and siphoned a couple of spots of cyanobacteria on 2/18/17. Since then one of those spots is back with a vengeance:


All of the purple color to the left of the little leather is cyanbacteria, the same stuff I was hoping the H2O2 would deal with. I pulled a sample today to make sure, there a microscope pic:


I'm not sure what to do from here. My cleaner shrimp survived the H2O2 treatment but stayed hidden most of the time and lost most of his antennae. He has molted now and regained them for the most part. I don't really want to restart H2O2 at this time, I'm afraid he won't survive another round.

I'm tempted to try Chemiclean even though @twilliard 's testing shows it's not likely to be effective. Or maybe I should keep siphoning it out as it appears for a while and see if it goes away on it's own. I will do the weekly water change tonight and scrub off the rock while I consider what to do next.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[Griff]

I know shrimp can be affected negatively by h202. Will the h202 hurt my pod population? Can I use h202 while dosing vibrant?

 

[DeepBrew]

The pod population in the 75 gallon tank seems fine after H2O2 dosing. There are dozens hanging out on the glass a few days after cleaning.

I have not dosed Vibrant in this tank at all or dosed Vibrant with H2O2 in the other tanks. My experience with Vibrant in other tanks is that if you dose heavy (2x per week) it may cause nitrates to bottom out and you can experience cyanobacteria outbreaks. I had to stop treating my other tanks with Vibrant and deal with big spirulina problems using Chemiclean.

I'm trying to take care of the cyanobacteria and make sure everything is stable in this tank before I even consider treating it with Vibrant.

 

[jkobel]

@twilliard

I did the test with 2 cups water and 1ml or h2o2. The water did not turn pink at all and the matts coalesced into a single clump. It turned yellowish/green but I assumed that since the water didnt turn pink it was spirulina. I dosed Cemiclean and its been almost 24 hours with zero change.

If I need to try h2o2, what is the dose per gal you would recommend? I have a 75gal DT with a 20gal sump

Thanks for your help!

 

[DeepBrew]

@twilliard

I did the test with 2 cups water and 1ml or h2o2. The water did not turn pink at all and the matts coalesced into a single clump. It turned yellowish/green but I assumed that since the water didnt turn pink it was spirulina. I dosed Cemiclean and its been almost 24 hours with zero change.

If I need to try h2o2, what is the dose per gal you would recommend? I have a 75gal DT with a 20gal sump

Thanks for your help!

I'd give the Chemiclean the full 48 hours before deciding if it's working. I,ve had to do a second round of Chemiclean after the 48 hour water change to completely deal with spirulina in one of my tanks before. Just make sure the tank is very well aerated to keep oxygen levels up.

I have not dosed Chemiclean in the tank covered in this thread. I only treated it with H2O2. I started at 1ml H2O2 per 10 gallons of water but that didn't kill the cyanobacteria. @twilliard said he thought it was a species of phormidium and recommended a dose of 1.5 ml per 10 gallons. That was much more effective but the cleaner shrimp suffered during treatment. I stopped treatment after 14 days at 1.5 ml per gallon.

I have had some recurrence of cyanobacteria but it's concentrated in one spot I can easily siphon out during water changes. I don't plan on more treatment at this time.

There is something I noticed recently since I had one tank with spirulina and one with cyanobacteria at the same time. They looked identical without a microscope but they behaved differently. The spirulina stayed in the sand, didn't get on the rocks at all. The cyanobacteria stayed on the rocks, just a tiny bit of it got on the sand. I haven't seen anyone else mention this so it may just be by chance. It's definitely something I'll look for in the future though.

 

[jkobel]

Thanks for this response DeepBrew.

I did 12.5ml 2x per day into my 75gal with 20gal sump. Literally zero effect. I tried Chemiclean a couple times with zero effect. its all over the rocks and sand. Have you had further success or tried anything else?

@twillard any ideas? This has been going on for so long I'm getting extremely frustrated. Corals arent doing great and no coralline algae is growing because this covers all surfaces. I recently ready something about Spirulina being in frozen Mysis shrimp, does anyone know anything about that? I feed that, is this adding to the problem?

 

[DeepBrew]

Wow, you have some resilient stuff in your tank. Every problem cyano I've had responded to either H2O2 or Chemiclean eventually. I haven't treated the 75 gallon tank with H2O2 any more. I still get a small patch on the same rock every week which I siphon out with water changes. The cleaner shrimp is looking good again so I don't plan on more H2O2 unless it really becomes a problem.

 

[jkobel]

Yeah, I'm not sure what the next step is. Hoping someone on here will have insight..