Having continual issues with Cyno outbreaks

[fishnugget1]

I was using Phosguard in past but I read it leaches aluminum and is bad for the tank. Called Spectrum and they say otherwise. Instead I have been dosing Phosphate E. My tank goes from .08-.05. However, I am constantly battling cyno. I have tried chemiclean in past but cyno keeps coming back. Thinking of trying Dr. Tim's method. Any thought? Will 7 mo old T-5 bulbs contribute to issue. I have a hybrid system Radions. Also Monti's are getting pale.

Any help would be appreciated.

Nitrate 5
Phosphate .05-.08
PH- Avg 8.3 (Running CO2 Scrubber)
Alk 8.5
Calcium 450
Mag 1335

 

[rusgum]

I was using Phosguard in past but I read it leaches aluminum and is bad for the tank. Called Spectrum and they say otherwise. Instead I have been dosing Phosphate E. My tank goes from .08-.05. However, I am constantly battling cyno. I have tried chemiclean in past but cyno keeps coming back. Thinking of trying Dr. Tim's method. Any thought? Will 7 mo old T-5 bulbs contribute to issue. I have a hybrid system Radions. Also Monti's are getting pale.

Any help would be appreciated.

Nitrate 5
Phosphate .05-.08
PH- Avg 8.3 (Running CO2 Scrubber)
Alk 8.5
Calcium 450
Mag 1335

What material is your reef made of? How old is the system? When you dose phosphate, do you add the dose you want to see in the system? Blow over the places where the cyano is. In any case, cyano is the best of all troubles. Make sure that more problematic evil spirits do not settle instead of cyano.

 

[RMS18]

Increase no3 a bit. I had similar issues and once my no3 was a bit higher 5-10 range it went away. Cyano can thrive in low nitrogen environments or when N ratios are off.

 

[brandon429]

We beat cyano in reef tanks by doing a single pass deep clean, and it works better than any other method to stop the repeat invasions

heres how it works: if the reef is large, then the work required to deep clean the right way is too hard and the keepers will choose to keep cyano over doing the cleanup work

but if it’s small reef, a nano, then your issue could be solved by 3 pm today and it’ll hold a long time.


Of the subset of aquarists that are nano owners, even then the majority chooses to skip labor and keep the cyano though they could easily dispense with it by 3 pm today, simply because any work was required. We are trained to always buy from retail stores for reef issues, that usually wins out

lol my two questions then would be how many gallons is your tank, and are you truly done with the cyano or can stand it a few more months as you experiment


cyano is only a chemistry issue for those unwilling to command the win, name the reason. For 220 gallon reefs clearly a deep clean isn’t feasible, and aligning parameters ideally will help.

considering the test kit comparison threads, it takes a really special test kit and tester to get results that are accurate. There’s a 1% chance the params you report would be found by a different test on the same sample…another reason why handling invasions via param alteration is so tricky. We usually can’t report accurate levels of po4 and no3

 

[fishnugget1]

200 gallon tank with 155 of water

 

[brandon429]

Dangit! Lol

I get a participation ratio of 60 offers to one take lol at that pace.


How about uv

It really can help because after initial removal (still have to siphon up) they truly help growback for cyano


Also pertinent: have you ruled out dinos, post pic

 

[lubeck]

We beat cyano in reef tanks by doing a single pass deep clean, and it works better than any other method to stop the repeat invasions

heres how it works: if the reef is large, then the work required to deep clean the right way is too hard and the keepers will choose to keep cyano over doing the cleanup work

but if it’s small reef, a nano, then your issue could be solved by 3 pm today and it’ll hold a long time.


Of the subset of aquarists that are nano owners, even then the majority chooses to skip labor and keep the cyano though they could easily dispense with it by 3 pm today, simply because any work was required. We are trained to always buy from retail stores for reef issues, that usually wins out

lol my two questions then would be how many gallons is your tank, and are you truly done with the cyano or can stand it a few more months as you experiment


cyano is only a chemistry issue for those unwilling to command the win, name the reason. For 220 gallon reefs clearly a deep clean isn’t feasible, and aligning parameters ideally will help.

considering the test kit comparison threads, it takes a really special test kit and tester to get results that are accurate. There’s a 1% chance the params you report would be found by a different test on the same sample…another reason why handling invasions via param alteration is so tricky. We usually can’t report accurate levels of po4 and no3

Curious to know the method for a nano size tank? I want to test the 3pm theory.