Need help with Cyano

[BitFix]

I was dealing with dinos some time ago, I tried raising my nutrients and it worked flawlessly, and as imagined I had a cyano bloom right after that. I thought it would be easy to take care of that by just reducing my nutrients agina, but that didn't work. I am trying to avoid chemicals like chemiclean and adding more flow, because I want some lower flow spots near the sandbed and right of the rockwork for new corals or mushrooms. What else should I try? Just more water changes and siphoning the substrate?

Also I do have a refugium with chaeto, but the chaeto is being suffocated by the cyano, the refugium is accumulating a lot of detritus, which I imagined the microfauna would eat, should I just suck it out?

Parameters:
Salinity - 1.025
Alkalinity - 6.7
Calcium - 480
Magnesium - 1440
pH - 8.15
Nitrate - 2
Phosphate - 0.03
Nitrite - 0
Ammonia - 0
It has been setup for about 5 months

Inhabitants:
1 Orchid dottyback
1 Bicolor blenny
1 Cardinal Bangai
2 Ocellaris Clownfish
1 Emerald Crab
2 Peppermint shrimp
4 Trochus Snails
4 hermit Crabs
Corals: Zoanthus, GSP, Clove, Toadstool, Candy cane, Duncan and Pavona

 

[brandon429]

How many gallons is that tank, under fifty?

 

[BitFix]

How many gallons is that tank, under fifty?

The display is about 25 gallons + a 10 gallon sump

 

[brandon429]

My goodness that would be a simple, easy fix.

Knowing the gallonage of any system with an invasion challenge is the most important factor in designing the lasting fix. It’s not a water param, or careful ID of the invasion that matters

Accessibility is what fixes aquariums, when they’re large and inaccessible, people get to try things that might work and they wait, sometimes months and years.

If you are serious about fixing it up, making 35 gallons of new water is so easy the rest of the job won’t be any harder, here is going on five years in one thread with multiple fixes just like yours. You’d take apart the tank, clean it out, put it back together without any invader and especially invader fuel in the sandbed, and your tank will be immediately better.

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

With one hours reading or less a complete map of the process is shown and lots of good follow up testimonies too. Zero tanks lost to recycle in five years, lots and lots of fixed tanks. I claim that thread to have the most cyano fixes we can locate in one place. There are 200 page cyano study threads, but in thirty pages we’ve collected the most follow up proofing.
B

 

[BitFix]

My goodness that would be a simple, easy fix.

Knowing the gallonage of any system with an invasion challenge is the most important factor in designing the lasting fix. It’s not a water param, or careful ID of the invasion that matters

Accessibility is what fixes aquariums, when they’re large and inaccessible, people get to try things that might work and they wait, sometimes months and years.

If you are serious about fixing it up, making 35 gallons of new water is so easy the rest of the job won’t be any harder, here is going on five years in one thread with multiple fixes just like yours. You’d take apart the tank, clean it out, put it back together without any invader and especially invader fuel in the sandbed, and your tank will be immediately better.

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

With one hours reading or less a complete map of the process is shown and lots of good follow up testimonies too. Zero tanks lost to recycle in five years, lots and lots of fixed tanks. I claim that thread to have the most cyano fixes we can locate in one place. There are 200 page cyano study threads, but in thirty pages we’ve collected the most follow up proofing.
B

I see restarting the tank as an extreme measure, which I'm trying to avoid. I feel like cyano is just an issue I will have to face eventually and combating it now will give me more experience in the future. Still, thank you for the help!

 

[7237689918]

I see restarting the tank as an extreme measure, which I'm trying to avoid. I feel like cyano is just an issue I will have to face eventually and combating it now will give me more experience in the future. Still, thank you for the help!

I just fought a battle and did this, probably unconventual but it works for me.

I turned the sand over daily and did a 2 week MB7 treatment as, for me, I believe it was caused by the dirty sand. Once I felt that was cleaned up, a lot of the Cyano was gone or greatly diminished. I then increased Nitrates to 10, by dosing, and it was gone in 2 days. I've actually done this twice and it works for me. I'm reducing feeding, turning over the sand weekly (blasting the pumps while doing so and blowing the rocks really well with a powerhead), and using a small maintenance dose weekly of MB7. And trying to keep Nitrates up a bit. My tank does better with slightly higher nutrients.

 

[brandon429]

Agreed, it's not a restart to clean the sand anymore than a water change is a restart. A restart is all new fish rocks and coral. It's tempting to just dose things to the water for cyano, and those dosers can work. But if the clouding and detritus which is in the sand so bad you couldn't disturb it safely is left in place by only dosing something to the water, the next invader enjoying that waste after Dino-cyano is gha

That waste doesn't just feed one invader it feeds the succession. Cyano is fixed nearly permanently by either cleaning the bed of waste we have stored up, or by not having detritus completely sinked in the sandbed and rocks at all/ periodic removal vs permanent storage.

The current system cannot be safely accessed in part due to pent up waste. If you grab sand and drop it, a massive cloud that can kill the tank occurs, by cleaning the tank you fix the cause and prevent future trade offs. If you clean it all at once that's the only safe way

Keep the thread updated pls with pics and chosen methods, large tankers who couldn't access their tank if they were willing want to see which water only measures will work

 

[BitFix]

Agreed, it's not a restart to clean the sand anymore than a water change is a restart. A restart is all new fish rocks and coral. It's tempting to just dose things to the water for cyano, and those dosers can work. But if the clouding and detritus which is in the sand so bad you couldn't disturb it safely is left in place by only dosing something to the water, the next invader enjoying that waste after Dino-cyano is gha

That waste doesn't just feed one invader it feeds the succession. Cyano is fixed nearly permanently by either cleaning the bed of waste we have stored up, or by not having detritus completely sinked in the sandbed and rocks at all/ periodic removal vs permanent storage.

The current system cannot be safely accessed in part due to pent up waste. If you grab sand and drop it, a massive cloud that can kill the tank occurs, by cleaning the tank you fix the cause and prevent future trade offs. If you clean it all at once that's the only safe way

Keep the thread updated pls with pics and chosen methods, large tankers who couldn't access their tank if they were willing want to see which water only measures will work

Oh, I thought he suggested to actually restart the whole tank. Every time I do a water change I grab my turkey baster and blow as much detritus as I can off the sand, I've bee doing this since the start of my tank. Do you recommend I do it more often?

 

[CuzzA]

You have a young system going through it's development to becoming mature. Cyanobacteria is always present in our systems as it is in the ocean. I wouldn't restart the system, I'm not a fan of quick fix chemicals either. Especially for a simple fix that requires nothing more than some extra time and patience. There are excessive nutrients in your system and perhaps not enough flow. Vacuum your sand bed and blow off the rocks often. You can do this while doing a water change, but you may want to pick up a few 1 micron filter bags off Amazon so you can harvest the bacteria more often while not doing a water change. In my experience not enough flow will also give cyanobacteria an opportunity to grow. Finally, I have always been a big fan of a UV sterilizer. They often keep cyanobacteria and various other free floating algaes and bacteria at bay. There are some really inexpensive units on Amazon. They may not be parasite killers due to the size, but they will help to keep these naturally occurring blooms from happening.

And yes, get the detritus out.

 

[BitFix]

You have a young system going through it's development to becoming mature. Cyanobacteria is always present in our systems as it is in the ocean. I wouldn't restart the system, I'm not a fan of quick fix chemicals either. Especially for a simple fix that requires nothing more than some extra time and patience. There are excessive nutrients in your system and perhaps not enough flow. Vacuum your sand bed and blow off the rocks often. You can do this while doing a water change, but you may want to pick up a few 1 micron filter bags off Amazon so you can harvest the bacteria more often while not doing a water change. In my experience not enough flow will also give cyanobacteria an opportunity to grow. Finally, I have always been a big fan of a UV sterilizer. They often keep cyanobacteria and various other free floating algaes and bacteria at bay. There are some really inexpensive units on Amazon. They may not be parasite killers due to the size, but they will help to keep these naturally occurring blooms from happening.

And yes, get the detritus out.

I live in South America, so unfortunately I don't have access to amazon. Filter socks under 100 microns are also pretty rare here (I use 100 micron filter socks on my system). I may get an UV sterilizer if the cyano gets out of hand, I was trying to avoid it because I don't want to affect any coral/feather duster spawns, but I'm starting to consider it more. For now I'll try to remove as much detritus as possible and see if that helps. Do you think dosing copepods and phyto may help?

 

[CuzzA]

No, I would not dose phyto. Just keep vacuuming and changing water. I know you mentioned wanting lower flow, but increasing flow is going to help. You may be surprised how much flow soft corals can withstand. I am not saying to put the kind of flow sps corals need in the tank, but increasing it or at least trying to get more flow over the sand will go a long way. Notice when anyone asks if this is cyanobacteria, the reply is blow it with a turkey baster. Well there you go, flow fixes it. When I dive I see cyanobacteria develop when the ocean has been very calm with little current after a couple weeks. Conversely, when the current is moving, there's no cyanobacteria present.

 

[BitFix]

No, I would not dose phyto. Just keep vacuuming and changing water. I know you mentioned wanting lower flow, but increasing flow is going to help. You may be surprised how much flow soft corals can withstand. I am not saying to put the kind of flow sps corals need in the tank, but increasing it or at least trying to get more flow over the sand will go a long way. Notice when anyone asks if this is cyanobacteria, the reply is blow it with a turkey baster. Well there you go, flow fixes it. When I dive I see cyanobacteria develop when the ocean has been very calm with little current after a couple weeks. Conversely, when the current is moving, there's no cyanobacteria present.

I have a 1000 G/H eavemaker and a 500G/H return pump. When I tried a stronger wavemaker it would blow sand and leave bare spots on the sand where I could see the glass. If I angle the wavemaker so it blows more on the sand would it work?

 

[CuzzA]

I don't know, you'll have to experiment. Is your wave maker controllable or one speed only?

 

[Gernader]

I had cyano a couple of months ago and I defeated it by using chemiclean (you probably can find it in your LFS or online) and performing weekly water changes until cyano is gone. I have not seen one speck of cyano ever since! Chemiclean did not affect anything in my tank including my corals, fish, and even my cleaner shrimp.
Edit: I just read your post about avoiding chemiclean. Sorry I couldn’t be much help to you, but this is what I did for mine.

 

[BitFix]

I don't know, you'll have to experiment. Is your wave maker controllable or one speed only?

It's a Jebao OW-10. I run it at max speed and seems like a pretty good amount of flow so far.

 

[BitFix]

I had cyano a couple of months ago and I defeated it by using chemiclean (you probably can find it in your LFS or online) and performing weekly water changes until cyano is gone. I have not seen one speck of cyano ever since! Chemiclean did not affect anything in my tank including my corals, fish, and even my cleaner shrimp.
Edit: I just read your post about avoiding chemiclean. Sorry I couldn’t be much help to you, but this is what I did for mine.

If nothing works I'll try chemiclean, it has a pretty good reputation, but I try to add as least chemicals as possible.

 

[CuzzA]

I would try and lower the nutrients first, there's a lot of reports where people have had great success with chemiclean and reports that led to disaster.

I will note I have not used chemiclean so take my advice on it with a grain of salt. In every build of mine I strip the water of nutrients, run high flow and UV before building my reef. This has worked for me. The times I've had a small patch of cyanobacteria I adjusted or cleaned my powerheads and it disappeared. I also do mostly hard corals. Nevertheless, I think cyanobacteria is a pretty easy to defeat pest.

 

[BitFix]

My nutrients are already pretty low, so I don't think that's the issue, plus I don't want to deal with dinos again. I'll remove detritus and mess with my powerhead and see what happens.

 

[CuzzA]

Well the cyano ain't growing off pure H2O alone. Like you said, it came with higher nutrients. Your test kits show low nutrients because it's bound up in the system or the tests are not accurate.