So... where is the imbalance?

Dom · Jan 21, 2020

Frogger said:
Read Brandon429's blogs on Cyano, knowledge is a good thing.

Link?

brandon429 · Jan 21, 2020

It's just the sand rinse thread one, pretty much the patterns you guys are mentioning is what we came across when moving homes or changing out tanks...somehow the waste collected is a fuel for cyano in most cases/ power clean can help most of the time

Frogger · Jan 21, 2020

You can start here https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-official-sand-rinse-thread-aka-one-against-many.230281/
There is a wealth of information stored within Reef2Reef. Most of it is anecdotal, but there are some real gems.

I have found with my systems that while nutrients are key simply removing nutrients is not always the best answer as it can lead to stressed corals, more cyano or worse dinos.

DrTim · Jan 21, 2020

Hello All

I would like to add a little chemistry and biology to this conversation because experience and science show me that nature will generally out-smart us. Everyone likes to focus on nitrate and phosphate in these conversations but we are forgetting a few things such as:

Chemistry
1) you are only measuring inorganic phosphate which is a very small percentage of the total phosphorus in the tank,

2) you are only measuring inorganic nitrogen which again there are organic forms - meaning nitrogen bond in cells etc that the test kits cannot measure

3) you are not measuring carbon at all - organic or inorganic

What this means is just because your test kit says 0 and 0 does not mean there are not sources of this nutrients available.

Biology
1) many species of cyanobacteria fix nitrogen from the air. What this means is that getting inorganic nitrogen (ammonia, nitrite and nitrate) down to 0 and keeping the system clean of organic plays right into growing cyanobacteria because algae and bacteria need some inorganic nitrogen in the water or some organics to be degraded and produce some inorganic nitrogen. You have inadvertently made the environment inhospitable to algae and bacteria which are the natural competitors to cyanobacteria.

2) why do dinoflagellates seems to dominate in systems with no phosphate and nitrate. We were told get this dow to zero. Again biology. Most dino are photosynthetic and many of these Dinos are also predacious - they eat other organisms in the tank. What that means is that we get 0 nitrate and 0 phosphate and nothing can grow photosynthetically they can switch to feeding directly on organisms in the sand and they have no competition.

This last point may explain why people who have bare-bottom tanks seems to not experience problems with Dinos - they are no prey organisms for the Dino to eat because there is not place for those organisms to live.

Cheers

Dr Tim

Roger D · Jan 22, 2020

I started out in the hobby in 1975. I've had at least 10 different tanks started. I've only had one time that I didn't have cyano to battle. In all cases I've set a tub on the floor with a pump in it and a hose running back to the tank. Then with another hose I start a syphon and run it into a filter in the tub. Did this for about a week or two and the cyano is replaced with green algae and my tangs and foxface take care of that. It just takes time to go through the cycle.

Daniel@R2R · Jan 28, 2020

I'm having the fun of battling cyano right now. I'm planning to just stay the course and trust that the tank will eventually balance itself if I keep up with proper maintenance.

ZoWhat · Jan 28, 2020

The more I watch vids of very hard to follow Marine Biologist talk about coral growth....the more I hear coral growth is processing NO3 and the 400-500nm light spectrum in the complex cycle.

In the wild...wild reefs get fed by NO3 coming ashore from the deep ocean.

ULNS = stunted growth IMO

JSR · Feb 4, 2020

Rectently had a small outbreak on a <1yo tank.

Nitrate/phos very low almost undetectable.

Nutrients aren't everything. A bacterial imbalance plays a part.

My solution—-

Chemiclean per bottle.
After 48 hours a water change—scrubbing affected problem areas.
The I started dosing microbacter 7 daily.
Didnt touch lights or flow.

Couple months passed and no cyano returned.

Figured this reset the bacterial flora in a better balance.

JSR · Feb 4, 2020

Ill add—-only resorted to that after it started encroaching on corals

brandon429 · Feb 4, 2020

One of the challenges in wrangling cyano and dino battles is that we rate methods from single point source evaluation. Meaning most of what moves product in this hobby is someone saying something worked.

the rarest currency for the hobby is a work thread. It’s the opposite of a point source claim.

a work thread is posting an open input thread where people with all manner of cyano present for sustained fixes, and you do things live time that either result in compliance or noncompliance from the system.
Twenty people being worked at once lends patterns

without patterns, a reliable fix cannot be pinpointed

people largely dislike making work threads due to noncompliants, true challengers humble. so they’re rare, the rarest currency is pages of a cyano cure playing out with its own patterns.

it means if we try a point-sourced recommend theres about a fifty percent chance of it working, or sustaining... and unfortunately that guess usually involves buying something retail to see if it all works in the end.

this results in a mass transfer of cash out of our pockets.

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

I would love to see more work threads in the hobby, and if anyone is using bottle bac to battle cyano please make one so I can see patterns and evaluate noncompliants.

only small reefs find it easy to just blast clean the problems away occasionally, large reefs really do need some sort of balance that doesnt require gallons of exchange to pull it off. thats also a very water- wasteful method admittedly. we do it for the after shots and fixed tanks though.

bottle bac and nutrient adjusts have strong potential, I often recommend sludge digesting / non nitrifying bottle bac dosers to people who message me about dino battles. I don’t recommend a purchase for cyano since sandbed cleaning obviously has a 98% sustain rate but anything that shows patterns in work threads we want to see.

Frogger’s cyano would be neat to dose with bottle bac options, his overall system balance and waste loading is low; the strain is just powerful and ive always wondered what winning combo could clear his tank.

**Daniel is no sand system I’m pretty sure—would be curious to know D if those rocks cast off lots of retained organics if you twist them in the mid tank water, or if they’re sustaining the topical coverage even in the flow and clarity / non storage of the bare bottom tank setup

2Wheelsonly · Feb 4, 2020

I get cyano on my rocks, if I take the entire rock out and rinse it a cloud of dirt appears and that rock when put back in the tank never has cyano issues. The problem is that I can't take all my rocks out without a massive rebuild and destruction to my prized colonies and being free from cyano is not as important as living corals. In my 11 years doing this I have never seen cyano kill a coral and it's only issue was being ugly for several weeks as it came and went.

If only blasting my rocks with powerheads cleaned them as well as a simple rinse. There are problem areas on rocks that I just blast with powerheads and they never seem to be clean.

sde1500 · Feb 4, 2020

Dom said:
I wish I could figure out how this tank became infected.

I believe there are theories that one of the earliest life forms on Earth that is responsible for much life we now see is cyano. So no need to stress wondering how it got there. Figuring out the conditions why, however, that’s valuable knowledge.

Dan_P · Feb 4, 2020

Dom said:
Based on articles and posts I've read, Cyanobacteria thrives for a few reasons. But the common denominator that comes up in almost every article I've read is an imbalance in the tank where Cyanobacteria outcompetes for the nutrients available in the tank.

Both NO3 and PO4 have been at undetectable levels in my tank for many months. During this time, Cyano has thrived. In an effort to raise nutrients, I've shut down my skimmer and removed all Chaetomorpha from the refugium. But still, no rise in nutrients.

Am I right in concluding that the Cyanobacteria is consuming the nutrients?

What competes with Cyano for the tank nutrients. What do I need to add?

These are great questions and you are getting a good response. So, I’ll just sit back and offer an opinion.

What you are reading is not scientific research but popular narratives of what seems to explain things. The current trend in the narrative about the cause of nuisance organism growth is “low nitrate and phosphate concentrations starve the competitors of nuisance organisms”.

This narrative seems to have gained traction for two reasons. There is no apparent correlation between nuisance organism growth and high levels of nitrate and phosphate, the old popular narrative. Second, we focused so hard reducing nitrate and phosphate level because of this old popular narrative, the tools we have today can reduce nitrate and phosphare levels below the detection limit of hobby kits. Somehow we still experience nuisance organism growth. The hobby now has talked itself into believing low nitrate and phosphate levels are the current good predictors of nuisance organism growth.

Tweak the nitrate and phosphate level and no more nuisance organisms, right? The unceasing growth of our list of chemicals to battle nuisance organisms suggests nitrate and phosphate level adjustments do not work. And no, the “every tank is different” narrative will not save the “low nutrient level is bad” narrative.

As our narrative about the cause(s) of nuisance organisms evolves, I think it will start to include the notion that bulk water conditions do not tell us much about the condition of microenvironment where the pests are growing. The narrative will point out that heavy growth occurs only where there is plentiful food. This future perspective will point out that there are probably a very small number of nuisance organisms and they are actually rather fussy organisms whose fussy needs happen to match conditions in some aquarium. And finally, the new narrative will recognize that a nuisance organism outbreak is really an invasive ecology composed of at least several important organisms (only one you actually see) and many supporting organisms.

Dom · Feb 5, 2020

Dan_P said:
These are great questions and you are getting a good response. So, I’ll just sit back and offer an opinion.

What you are reading is not scientific research but popular narratives of what seems to explain things. The current trend in the narrative about the cause of nuisance organism growth is “low nitrate and phosphate concentrations starve the competitors of nuisance organisms”.

This narrative seems to have gained traction for two reasons. There is no apparent correlation between nuisance organism growth and high levels of nitrate and phosphate, the old popular narrative. Second, we focused so hard reducing nitrate and phosphate level because of this old popular narrative, the tools we have today can reduce nitrate and phosphare levels below the detection limit of hobby kits. Somehow we still experience nuisance organism growth. The hobby now has talked itself into believing low nitrate and phosphate levels are the current good predictors of nuisance organism growth.

Tweak the nitrate and phosphate level and no more nuisance organisms, right? The unceasing growth of our list of chemicals to battle nuisance organisms suggests nitrate and phosphate level adjustments do not work. And no, the “every tank is different” narrative will not save the “low nutrient level is bad” narrative.

As our narrative about the cause(s) of nuisance organisms evolves, I think it will start to include the notion that bulk water conditions do not tell us much about the condition of microenvironment where the pests are growing. The narrative will point out that heavy growth occurs only where there is plentiful food. This future perspective will point out that there are probably a very small number of nuisance organisms and they are actually rather fussy organisms whose fussy needs happen to match conditions in some aquarium. And finally, the new narrative will recognize that a nuisance organism outbreak is really an invasive ecology composed of at least several important organisms (only one you actually see) and many supporting organisms.

As I understand, Cyanobacteria is capable of photosynthesis. And if true, would not need any nutrients in the tank in order to thrive. So I can see how eliminating nutrient sources could lead you down a dead end.

Dan_P · Feb 5, 2020

Dom said:
As I understand, Cyanobacteria is capable of photosynthesis. And if true, would not need any nutrients in the tank in order to thrive. So I can see how eliminating nutrient sources could lead you down a dead end.

Cyanobacteria do need nitrogen and phosphorous and the micro nutrients. So, I guess we have to clarify what we include in the term “nutrients”. If by nutrients you are referring to organic molecules, there are some cyanobacteria that seem to welcome them in their diet, like amino acids. While eliminating nitrate might be unimportant to eliminating cyanobacteria growth, organic nitrogen compounds could play a role in sustaining cyanobacteria growth. In this case, the presence of nitrate might just be an indication that there is an accumulation of nitrogen In the system, but not the cause of cyanobacteria growth.

I recently came across a species of Oscillatoria that did not grow in a medium containing nitrate as the sole nitrogen source but thrived when I replaced the nitrate with an amino acid. Fascinating organisms.

Dom · Feb 7, 2020

Dan_P said:
Cyanobacteria do need nitrogen and phosphorous and the micro nutrients. So, I guess we have to clarify what we include in the term “nutrients”. If by nutrients you are referring to organic molecules, there are some cyanobacteria that seem to welcome them in their diet, like amino acids. While eliminating nitrate might be unimportant to eliminating cyanobacteria growth, organic nitrogen compounds could play a role in sustaining cyanobacteria growth. In this case, the presence of nitrate might just be an indication that there is an accumulation of nitrogen In the system, but not the cause of cyanobacteria growth.

I recently came across a species of Oscillatoria that did not grow in a medium containing nitrate as the sole nitrogen source but thrived when I replaced the nitrate with an amino acid. Fascinating organisms.

When I say nutrients, I am thinking of PO4 and NO3. And yes, when I look back at the sources of information in my reading, much of it IS narratives and not scientific.

For a long time, I removed my UV Sterilizer from my system. But have since reinstalled it (it has been up and running for 2 weeks this Sunday), Cyano is all but gone.