Need help with cyanobacteria

[Brew12]

What would you recommend for dosing NO3? Potassium nitrate? On the phosphate note my tank has ran at 0 (tested via Hanna) and still had a similar infestation. Stuff comes back within 12 hours.

For short term dosing I use potassium nitrate (stump remover). If I ever got to the point that I would need to dose long term I would use food grade sodium nitrate.

Your water could be at 0ppm PO4 because the cyano is consuming it quickly. You may want to add a little more phosphate remover but be prepared to feed your coral. If you have LPS you should notice them starting to suffer first.

 

[brandon429]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445


*im not through re editing 1st post. that is becoming an article on sandbed access broken down into 2 main categories so that new readers can make sense of all that collected work: 1. how to prep a new sandbed. simply rinse the heck out of it till its cloudless, then start. #2 division point is handling invaded beds, the biology procedure and justification for all that since Ive got only the 1st post to sell new readers on trying the practice and in the end contributing to more pages of proofs.

the wording wont line up much till im done editing, but look at the tons of links linked. big tank reworks across nanos, big tanks. tank moves, bed moves and upgrades, lots of work.

no losses, strong on invader outcome pictures.


*I would also add that manually force cleaning while powerful, isn't the best or ideal way its just one way that works darn well for small accessible tanks. there is a marked trend nowadays developing where people raise and lower nutrients to guide out invasions, or experiment with pods and fancier grazer options...without all our hard work and time invested. when that works its really smooth and ideal...but, its not as high of a compliance percentage as what we forced right there. If someone w gimme some dedicated work, we'll turn out a clean tank. we often need to decrease white intensity and up the blues, make the place cloud free a few times depending on variables, not selling a one off event here. selling a procedural system that simply utilizes skip cycle procedures so we can blast the hound out of an invader as it sits. something decisive for sure. # of cleaning events tends to correspond to delay times. if we can catch noncompliants in the cycling phase its much easier to beat them clean vs catching up from some delay. typically a few cleanings gets the worst cases done.

 

[Brew12]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445


*im not through re editing 1st post. that is becoming an article on sandbed access broken down into 2 main categories so that new readers can make sense of all that collected work: 1. how to prep a new sandbed. simply rinse the heck out of it till its cloudless, then start. #2 division point is handling invaded beds, the biology procedure and justification for all that since Ive got only the 1st post to sell new readers on trying the practice and in the end contributing to more pages of proofs.

the wording wont line up much till im done editing, but look at the tons of links linked. big tank reworks across nanos, big tanks. tank moves, bed moves and upgrades, lots of work.

no losses, strong on invader outcome pictures.


*I would also add that manually force cleaning while powerful, isn't the best or ideal way its just one way that works darn well for small accessible tanks. there is a marked trend nowadays developing where people raise and lower nutrients to guide out invasions, or experiment with pods and fancier grazer options...without all our hard work and time invested. when that works its really smooth and ideal...but, its not as high of a compliance percentage as what we forced right there. If someone w gimme some dedicated work, we'll turn out a clean tank. we often need to decrease white intensity and up the blues, make the place cloud free a few times depending on variables, not selling a one off event here. selling a procedural system that simply utilizes skip cycle procedures so we can blast the hound out of an invader as it sits. something decisive for sure. # of cleaning events tends to correspond to delay times. if we can catch noncompliants in the cycling phase its much easier to beat them clean vs catching up from some delay. typically a few cleanings gets the worst cases done.

Even if you get nothing else out of this post, take this to heart. If you aren't willing to aggressively clean your system you will be unlikely to have success fighting cyano or dino's. Daily stirring the detritus out of the sand bed is very helpful. Blasting the crud out of the rock with high velocity flow works wonders.

The entire reason cyano and dino's form those slimy mats is to maintain their ideal conditions for growth. It is necessary to remove the nutrients they are matting over as well as breaking up the mats. Until you get the build up of nutrients out of the sand and rock you cannot control them in any other fashion. Well, other than those strains of cyano that cannot mat at over 3ppm NO3.

 

[bcarl77]

Going to give this a shot. I get a nice white cloud any time I agitate the sand. Never washed it prior to set up. I was vacuuming weekly but never thought I was actually removing the detritus. Mats would be broken but return over night.

 

[40B Knasty]

I give up.. No one is reading the thread or looking at the video. Just throwing out their solution to THEIR tank. Every tank is different. In this case if you read the thread. It has nothing to do with the sand bed or numbers. You probably don't know if you had a cyanobacteria or a spirulina. Which would make the claim irrelevant to this thread. Thanks for the ideas. That I have already done 2-3 x a week.

 

[Brew12]

I give up.. No one is reading the thread or looking at the video. Just throwing out their solution to THEIR tank. Every tank is different. In this case if you read the thread. It has nothing to do with the sand bed or numbers. You probably don't know if you had a cyanobacteria or a spirulina. Which would make the claim irrelevant to this thread. Thanks for the ideas. That I have already done 2-3 x a week.

I hope my comments to bcarl77 haven't led you to the impression that I haven't paid attention to your system. I agree that in your case that the sand bed isn't an issue. You don't have a husbandry issue that way. You pretty much can't have a dirty sand bed if you are hitting it with a powerhead daily.

If you had spirulina (which you confirmed you did not via the H2O2 test) the chemical treatment would likely have worked. It didn't. So we know that isn't the strain of cyanobacteria you are dealing with. If your strain of cyano was spirulina then I wouldn't have suggested dosing nitrates as a possible solution.

That is why for you, I recommended the 2 options. Reducing PO4 further, or dosing NO3 above 5ppm. I did watch the video and read the entire thread and didn't see where you had tried either of those. I apologize if I missed something.

 

[brandon429]

40b I factored your tank totally in my response. All I can do is show you my work and ask you to bet yay or nay that your invasion would stump us



The ID doesn't matter. We don't need ID, nor params, in any invasion thread including about two hundred pages of peroxide work having nothing to do with cyano as we simply address visual fuel clouds + focused actual removal from the tank

nothing we do is redistributing, it's removal based action so the claim doesn't seem so brazen. Rootless anchorless matted invaders respond well to this, that's a pan-generic assessment of the power of true tank cleaning.





If you are saying your sandbed will pass a drop test, that's rare. Make a vid of you grabbing a handful deeply, and dropping sand.

If it's cloudless, that's rare. Power head blasting is redistribution not export is why I wondered about it being clean, at the bottom, not at the top only.

 

[brandon429]

I watched the vid. imo any small tanks rocks need external cleaning and saltwater detritus flushing occasionally as an ideal dislodging action

your sandbed is larger grain than some mixes and by rule has detritus in lower levels, I can't envision it being cloudless but would take any confirmations if avail.

There's ways to test before going cra on it:
Siphon some mud out of the bottom most level of the bed using a dowel and small tube

Let that mud water sit aerated and topped off to normal salinity for 48 hrs then test it for nitrate to see. That's a legit method of assessing nitrate potential from substrate dredge testing before work, but we just basically go by a cloud or not when disturbed.

It's not that the bed will stay clean forever, they store waste and need to be cleaned in smaller tanks. Right during an invasion challenge... when considering meds that can kill a tank, is ideal time to use manual work instead and for once just remove the invader decisively and not by partial action. Taking apart a tank and cleaning it is really powerful, not to overstate the method.

Most people will not thoroughly part clean, they fear systemic breakdown and recycle. Made the big thread to undo the concern. Holler message if customization wntd anyone.
B

 

[cracker]

I'm following You Knasy. I have the same issue with cyano. I want to see if what you do works . And everybody else for that matter . So this is what I got.
The slime remover works but have to solve the root issue as usual.
Keep low Po4 raise No3.
Get it out if the sand or where ever as best as possible.
I'm also going to get more flow where I have it.
So what are You doing & how's it going?

 

[Belgian Anthias]

The other option is to dose nitrates. Some strains of cyano cannot form mats with NO3 greater then 3ppm. The goal with this method is to try and keep your nitrates above 5ppm but less than 20ppm. You will then want to stir your sandbed every day if you can (not a bad idea with either method). This is much safer on the coral but it won't work for every strain of cyano.

Can you tell me where this information is obtained from? And what strains are we talking about?
This assumes it are N2 fixing bacteria which are responsible for forming mats and that they only form mats when fixing nitrogen. Doesn't these cyano's grow faster when they don't have to fix nitrogen?
This is about cyano's in a VLNS. The lack of competition ?

 

[brandon429]

Id really enjoy updates here
BCarl and I have worked tremendously on his challenge

40 B how is your cyano

 

[Belgian Anthias]

Cyno's are bacteria, they are able to develop the growth rate of bacteria. They have the availability of an unlimited energy source. They use ammonia as a nitrogen source for fast growth, as do most organisms. In VLNS nutrients are limited available. Also in VLNS the majority of the organic nutrients will be released as inorganics, depending on the feed protein content. Also in VLNS the skimmer will create a nutrient imbalance.
In a nitrogen-limited environment normally diatoms are the dominant species, they also have an unlimited energy source and they are the only photo-autotrophs able to use an internal urea cycle.
Cyno's may not outcompete diatoms in a nitrogen-limited environment.
Some are able to fix nitrogen ( N2) and transform it into usable ammonia, but this needs a lot more energy, provided by light. Their growth rate will be slowed down even more. Often they work together in microbial mats with other essential organisms when fixing nitrogen.
Often Red slime comes and goes, coming up with "lights on" and disappearing "lights out" Fast exponential growth is followed by a fast exponential decay, providing nutrients for the next break out. This may be because nutrients are limited available and most generations have not stored a nutrient reserve. Cyano growing in a periodic nutrient-rich environment may store phosphorous reserves for 3 to 5 cell divisions. Every morning such a situation may be created. Fast growth is supported by the availability of ammonium-nitrogen. The production of nitrate will slow down growth rates.
Diatoms may not be able to compete with cyano in a periodic phosphorous limited environment.

Using a slime remover, does it kill cyano? How? A coral holobiont does contain essential cyano's!
Or does such a product contains carbohydrates to activate the growth of r-strategists, very fast-growing heterotrophic bacteria, out-competing any other organisms for available nutrients, also in the coral holobiont? After using a slime remover and completing the cycles, what has been solved?

Removing the end result of a management strategy will not solve the created problem without changing that strategy.