Green Cyano?

Radman73 · Dec 8, 2018

Mostly on rocks but it is slimy and blows off in sheets.

Nitrates have been 0 for six months. Just dosed them up to 10-20 on Thursday. Phosphate has never been more than .02-.05. Typically .04.

Just want reassurance that I’m dealing with cyano and not something else.

Thanks!

James M · Dec 8, 2018

Your tank is 6+ months old ? That looks like a new tank

Radman73 · Dec 8, 2018

More like 18 months old. Could be I’m just having a delayed ugly phase.

Radman73 · Dec 12, 2018

Trying a 3-day blackout. And have a microscope on the way. Nitrates have now been consistent around 20ppm but PO4 has dropped to .03. I changed my skimmer to only run 12 hours per day in the hopes of bumping up PO4 a bit. However, I had to blow the rocks off again this morning as they are getting blanketed with this stuff. Some blew off but not as much as before. Whatever it is it's creating/holding bubbles which makes me worried about Dino's. Practically nothing on the sand. Maybe a small patch in one corner but extremely thin.

To reiterate, I've had Nitrates hit 5ppm once in the last 18 months, rest of the time it was 0 and the highest my PO4 got was .04. So definitely a low nutrient tank. I did just send a sample off to Triton so it will be interesting to get those results back, hopefully in a few weeks.

DSC reef · Dec 12, 2018

Looks like blue green cyano. That stuff is worse than red IMO. Had some come on a frag and never could get rid of it.

Radman73 · Dec 13, 2018

DSC reef said:
Looks like blue green cyano. That stuff is worse than red IMO. Had some come on a frag and never could get rid of it.

Well that makes me feel better lol!

Might have to order chemi-clean if I can't ditch it "natural" ways.

emilios_reeftank · Dec 13, 2018

I found that Chemi-Clean works very good for Cyano and highly recommend you try it. Also I would do a blackout period with it like DSC reef said. Just make sure you do a waterchange after you add the Chemi-Clean as it removes oxygen from your system.

Radman73 · Dec 13, 2018

emilios_reeftank said:
I found that Chemi-Clean works very good for Cyano and highly recommend you try it. Also I would do a blackout period with it like DSC reef said. Just make sure you do a waterchange after you add the Chemi-Clean as it removes oxygen from your system.

Yeah, I've used chemi-clean before with success, just not on a system this large. We'll see if lights out helps, but I doubt it, worth trying though.

Brew12 · Dec 13, 2018

I would try and get my nitrates up above 5ppm and use a small pump, like a Cobalt MJ1200, to blast the stuff off the rocks daily.

Radman73 · Dec 13, 2018

Brew12 said:
I would try and get my nitrates up above 5ppm and use a small pump, like a Cobalt MJ1200, to blast the stuff off the rocks daily.

I have managed to get nitrates up. They've been ~20ppm for 4-5 days now. It took dosing for multiple days to get them up. They've dropped a little bit, but not much.

Brew12 · Dec 13, 2018

Radman73 said:
I have managed to get nitrates up. They've been ~20ppm for 4-5 days now. It took dosing for multiple days to get them up. They've dropped a little bit, but not much.

Thats great! Do the mats reform as quickly when you break them up? Some strains of cyano cannot form mats when NO3 is above 3ppm. Once the mats are formed they can grow those mats by creating ideal chemistry underneath them which is why manually breaking them up is important.

Radman73 · Dec 13, 2018

Brew12 said:
Thats great! Do the mats reform as quickly when you break them up? Some strains of cyano cannot form mats when NO3 is above 3ppm. Once the mats are formed they can grow those mats by creating ideal chemistry underneath them which is why manually breaking them up is important.

Within a day or two. It's getting more difficult to blow off the rocks though. Still slimy, though most anything on a rock is lol! When it does come off, it tends to come off like cyano would from sand. Just used a toothbrush to get as much as I could. Lights out doesn't seem to be having any effect. So not sure what I'm dealing with right now.

Brew12 · Dec 13, 2018

Radman73 said:
Within a day or two. It's getting more difficult to blow off the rocks though. Still slimy, though most anything on a rock is lol! When it does come off, it tends to come off like cyano would from sand. Just used a toothbrush to get as much as I could. Lights out doesn't seem to be having any effect. So not sure what I'm dealing with right now.

I do think it is cyano. I've had similar looking.
What do you have in the way of snails in your system? And any hermit crabs?

Radman73 · Dec 13, 2018

Brew12 said:
I do think it is cyano. I've had similar looking.
What do you have in the way of snails in your system? And any hermit crabs?

Maybe one or two hermits. Mostly cerith, nerite, dwarf cerith, and nassarius. I do have one turbo and a couple fuzzy chiton’s.

Brew12 · Dec 13, 2018

Radman73 said:
Maybe one or two hermits. Mostly cerith, nerite, dwarf cerith, and nassarius. I do have one turbo and a couple fuzzy chiton’s.

Do the nerites and ceriths eat it? I would have expected them to.

Radman73 · Dec 13, 2018

Brew12 said:
Do the nerites and ceriths eat it? I would have expected them to.

Nerites seem too though they usually stick to the back glass. This stuff seems to grow there too. Same with he turbo though I've seen it on the rocks chowing down too. Cerith's are good at hiding. I honestly don't see them too often though I've probably added 20-30 over the last 6-8 months.

Brew12 · Dec 13, 2018

Radman73 said:
Nerites seem too though they usually stick to the back glass. This stuff seems to grow there too. Same with he turbo though I've seen it on the rocks chowing down too. Cerith's are good at hiding. I honestly don't see them too often though I've probably added 20-30 over the last 6-8 months.

I think I'm about out of ideas. You've pretty well covered everything I would look at. If you don't have much in the way of coral I might consider trying to aggressively run GFO but if you do have coral, that might not be wise.

Radman73 · Dec 13, 2018

Brew12 said:
I think I'm about out of ideas. You've pretty well covered everything I would look at. If you don't have much in the way of coral I might consider trying to aggressively run GFO but if you do have coral, that might not be wise.

I have a few corals, nothing over fancy and I could move most/all to my 60 cube. But, what's the purpose of running GFO? PO4 is already down to .03 as of yesterday. My understanding was that cyano/dino's tend to flourish when we've stripped the water of nutrients? I do have GFO on hand, so I can throw some into a reactor and have a go at it.

Also, if it's cyano, I may just throw chemi-clean at it and see what happens. I get the microscope in tomorrow, so hopefully that will tell me what I'm dealing with.

Thanks for the assistance though, truly appreciated.

Brew12 · Dec 13, 2018

Radman73 said:
I have a few corals, nothing over fancy and I could move most/all to my 60 cube. But, what's the purpose of running GFO? PO4 is already down to .03 as of yesterday. My understanding was that cyano/dino's tend to flourish when we've stripped the water of nutrients? I do have GFO on hand, so I can throw some into a reactor and have a go at it.

Also, if it's cyano, I may just throw chemi-clean at it and see what happens. I get the microscope in tomorrow, so hopefully that will tell me what I'm dealing with.

Thanks for the assistance though, truly appreciated.

Sorry I couldn't help more!

Most strains of Cyano do better with low NO3 and higher PO4. By striping more PO4 out of the water you may be able to reduce the amount of cyano that can reproduce. Dino's prefer very low PO4 so that would be a risk.

something like Chemi-clean may be your best option since you've worked through all the more gentle ones. The microscope will help. I'm guessing it is spirulina which should be fairly obvious under a scope.