Cyanobacteria

[gigimck]

AHHHH! This stuff has taken over my once beautiful tank and turned it into slime! Here's how I figure we got here:

1. We missed a water change by a week-and-a-half. We were on vacation and didn't get to do it before we left.

2. We do not have a reverse osmosis filter.

3. Phosphates are somewhat elevated but not by much. (Hubby took a water sample to our tank guy, so I don't know the exact value).

Here's what we know is not the problem:

1. Overfeeding

2. Lights

Any tips to get a hold of this? Snails get eaten in my tank. We don't know which fish is the culprit. Any insight would be appreciated.

Here's a photo of my tank:

 

[Reefing Madness]

Oh my!!
Water changes, several in a matter of days. Scrape, swift by hand, blow off using powerhead, then vacuum it out as best you can. Several days in a row should help out quite a bit.
Get a very large Cyano Snail crew. I don't know what you have for fish, but get bigger snails if the smaller ones are being eaten. Get the powerheads pointed at the cyano to keep it at bay. Should see signs of some improvements in a few days.
Run a HUGE reactor with GFO to stay on top of it. That'll help out with you using tap water.
You can overfeed, have bad lights, no worries, theres ways around all this.

 

[florida reef]

Agreed with Reefeing Madness. Attack on all fronts! Clean up crew, media, water changes via siphoning off as much of that crapola as possible. Understand though, it will come back almost immediately. You'll clean the tank and the next morning it may look like you never touched it. Don't be discouraged...keep a routine and eventually you'll beat it.

PS: It's always a good idea to spend the extra money and test your own water. Then you know exactly what's going on and how the water chemistry is changing based on your interventions.
Good luck!

 

[NanaReefer]

Definitely a case for ChemiClean!! Will all be gone within 48hrs. Use exactly as directed, making sure to use a good air stone during treatment and prepare to do a 50% WC after. You wont be sorry!


Sent from my iPhone 4s using Tapatalk

 

[Bartmmackey]

Bart's a fan of blackout for three days with a tarp and all the other stuff in this thread.

 

[Planedoc]

How long as our tank been up? Cyno is normal around 6 to 9 months. It's just part of tank growing up. Everyone has given great advice, just do your part maintenance wise and in about 4 to weeks things will be back to normal. One other thing I can suggest is at week 3 or 4 when you see it declining do a 3 days lights out followed by a 30% water change. It really makes a difference, just don't do it until it's declining because that's the sign that the nutrients it's feeding on are gone.

Tapatalk on Galaxy S3

 

[TheReefKeeper]

Clean, Water-change and lights out works keep doing this off and on for a month and it should clear.

 

[dannyab84]

Wow! I think its hard to get this much from just a week and a half late of a water change... Maybe there's a little bit more to this once you get things back to atleast a somewhat normal dirty tank. Make sure you clean your sump too, if you have one. That's what for me in the past has generated a lot of promblems.

 

[Martyd]

No offense intended, but that tank doesn't look healthy. I see much more than cyano problem. What kind of rock are you using? It looks to be pretty dense. It reminds me of Florida rock, which I always found to be a nightmare. The first thing I would do is invest in a good RO filter and a good test kit.