Cyano on Rock

fraghunter · Jul 21, 2015

my 3 bits I have tried all the above remedies and I must say the only thing that ever worked or works for me is I put 45 ml of white finger in my 5 gallon top off water(carbon dosing) and I use 1 ml per every 10 gallons of volume water of peroxide everyday till the cyno went away and then once a week as routine and I must say my phosphates sit at .01- .03 and I never have any cyno or any nuisance algae in the past 2 years. Facts speak for themselves in my tank and its a dominate SPS tank and I don't use carbon or GFO and the only thing I dose is 2 part on a doser and read sea colors manual once a week. I do change 5 gallons on a 60 cube with 70 gallon total water volume every 7-10 days I tried every salt under the sun and went back to Kent Marine reef salt about 2 years ago as well.

PS I feed pretty heavy so my fish and corals eat well

djbetterly · Jul 21, 2015

What's white finger? And you dose peroxide directly into the tank?

twilliard · Jul 21, 2015

Vinegar

fraghunter · Jul 21, 2015

Sorry yes vinegar and yes I throw 1ml to 10 gal right in the sump. Most my friends had cyno issues and once they did the same the no longer struggle with these issues either I forgot to mention I have a8 gallon five with at least 8 diffrent macros and my lights are 8x24 and 2 24" reefbrite xho attinic I run the reef brite for 10 hours a day and the at I 8 bulb for 8. I know my nutrients are getting very low when my macro starts wilting away so I just feed more till the start growing again

djbetterly · Jul 21, 2015

1ml of peroxide to 10 gal of water....??

fraghunter · Jul 21, 2015

Yes that's a good base line I know some people do as much as 2nl per 10 gal.but I'm a bit conservative

djbetterly · Jul 21, 2015

And in asking again, because I've never read about this....the hydrogen peroxide has no effects on fish or inverts...???

fraghunter · Jul 21, 2015

None do a search on reef central there are tons of articles

backpack · Jul 21, 2015

it oxidizes organics. You want to watch your orp numbers when dosing it. Too high and it will hurt your fish and coral.
Sometimes less is more when fighting problems. Just listen to Farley. If it isn't taking over why complicate it with more stuff.
Skim wet, drop the lights down some, and feed less often.

JDP · Jul 22, 2015

OP, Going through the same thing. According to Triton ICP...I have Caribbean water (Green across the board), You just can't See it...for the red haze on the glass! LOL!

It started just like BeaslBoB said, All was fine, Nitrate and Phos dropped to undetectable (traveling neglect), color fading, so I reduced time on skimmer from 24/7 to night cycle. nutrients did increase in favor of cyano!

I cleaned what I could, noting craze, filter sock to catch most. Two days now with 100watts of actinic and no Growth of cyano! Still have some in spots but not spreading at this point.

Skimmer back on now 24/7, was't the best way to increase nutrients IMO. Oddly enough...no cyano in fuge (FULL of Macro)? So I am going to continue with reduced lighting, wait for the macro to export down to .04 and 8. I have not changed water or reduced feeding (Twice a day auto with a evening frozen snack).

Don't do anything craze...I am sure we did not initiate it that way? or maybe I did?

Elton20 · Jul 22, 2015

My guess would actually be the food, if you're having phosphate problems it's something you're putting into the tank, whether that be bad water or bad food. I had fed sanfrancisco bay brine shrimp and Larry's Reef Frenzy and had been getting terrible bryopsis and hairalgae. I switched to new life spectrum pellets and mysis shrimp and in about a week all my algae was gone. Change something and then do big water changes to dilute the nutrients and get good clean up like crabs and trochus snails

beaslbob · Jul 22, 2015

djbetterly said:
I feed the apex cross over diet with the apex feeder. It's set to the lowest setting and I feed once a day.

Doing a 5 gallon water change now.

It's hard to siphon since it's on the rocks. I cut the lighting to 25% and I'm going to feed every other day, once a day. I'm also going to do a 5 gallon water change every day for the next few days.

Id go lights out but my jawfish freaks out when there is no light. So I'm basically running just the blues at 25% and he/she seems content. He seems to do his building with the light in that range.

I also have a few pieces of rock I could take out and soak in hydrogen peroxide, would that kill cyano?

Probably.

but the cyano would also die off if you simply put the rocks in total darkness. Of course a little circulation would help also.

my .02

djbetterly · Jul 22, 2015

Thank you. I appreciate your advice. I just turned down my lights on all channels but deep blue. I left that at 5%. For some reason my jawfish freaks with no light on at all. I'm going to feed the fish every third day. I'll keep this up for 5 or 6 days along with a water change every day. Hopefully that will do it. To be honest he amount of cyano I have is minimal and probably not worth the efforts I'm going through. I strive for perfect and when I get focused on something it takes over. Not the greatest of personality traits...

Randy Holmes-Farley · Jul 22, 2015

I'd personally be more inclined to use an antibiotic for a bad cyano problem (like Red Slime Remover) rather than use an indiscriminate oxidizer like hydrogen peroxidevwhich will oxidize all exposed tissues, not just cyanobacteria.

fraghunter · Jul 22, 2015

In my case my corals or fish don't seem o suffer at all and am very satisfied with coloration when I used the antibiotic it seems to only last for a while and then the Cyno comes back even when used to the letter. just my experience may not work for everyone.

SantaMonicaHelp · Jul 23, 2015

Have you ever tried building one of these?

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/l...urf-and-slime-algae-from-your-aquarium.86207/

Good luck!

~SF

JimWelsh · Jul 24, 2015

So, I dose vodka. The article and none of the discussion addresses carbon dosing. Wouldn't I expect an elevated bacteria level as a result of the vodka dosing, and wouldn't that be an indication of a good thing in my case?

Piranhapat · Jul 25, 2015

Turning off the lights or turning them down will not help with the real problem. As soon the lights go back your cyano will be back. The best thing to do is remove it by siphon it out or like you said scrub and catch floating cyano. After that turn down your skimmer. Or only put it on skim during the night hours. Little or no skim during when lights are on. Today skimmers are more powerful and are removing good bacteria to off set the bad bacteria. Try this before adding stuff. It may take a week. But you should see it get better. I won't cut back to much on feeding. If you do WC do small and every two weeks. This worked for me.

Randy Holmes-Farley · Jul 25, 2015

JimWelsh said:
So, I dose vodka. The article and none of the discussion addresses carbon dosing. Wouldn't I expect an elevated bacteria level as a result of the vodka dosing, and wouldn't that be an indication of a good thing in my case?

Organic carbon dosing can be a mixed bag with respect to cyanobacteria because some types of cyano will thrive on the organic itself. If that happens, switching to a different organic can help. That's why I switched from vodka to vinegar.