Turtle's Deep Blue Sea

Texas Reefer · Apr 6, 2018

Sorry, I have no idea how my reply about GFO got put into what I was quoting from you. I'm about to try GFO for cyanobacteria, so don't know the results yet. But I'm going to put it in a reactor with some ROX carbon. They say don't use too much GFO, it can strip too many nutrients.

SashimiTurtle · Apr 6, 2018

Yep, gfo is very good at reducing phosphates. That polyfilter I added said it is supposed to remove phosphate as well, so I may give it a little while and see what happens.

Brew12 · Apr 6, 2018

Robin Haselden said:
Yep, gfo is very good at reducing phosphates. That polyfilter I added said it is supposed to remove phosphate as well, so I may give it a little while and see what happens.

Yup. Most cyano can be removed by adding NO3 or removing PO4. Of course, your tank seems to like acting in "non traditional" manners. That, and daily stirring to break up the mats.

SashimiTurtle · Apr 6, 2018

Brew12 said:
Yup. Most cyano can be removed by adding NO3 or removing PO4. Of course, your tank seems to like acting in "non traditional" manners. That, and daily stirring to break up the mats.

Well, I have KNO3... no clue what concentration it is. I could just mix up a new batch.

Remember my nitrates are very low now. May do some good to dose a bit and see how things react.

vegamedic · Apr 7, 2018

I've been fighting cyano in my cube for quite a while. Tried starvation by going completely fishless for 3+ months, blackouts, GFO changed biweekly, carbon + GFO, chemiclean (twice!!), you name it. Nothing worked. I recently reintroduced fish and got my nitrates up to 1ppm (from 0ppm) and only now is it starting to go away. My chaeto is finally growing now too, albeit slowly, which might be helping. Getting to 1ppm NO3 has reduced the cyano by >50%.

SashimiTurtle · Apr 7, 2018

vegamedic said:
I've been fighting cyano in my cube for quite a while. Tried starvation by going completely fishless for 3+ months, blackouts, GFO changed biweekly, carbon + GFO, chemiclean (twice!!), you name it. Nothing worked. I recently reintroduced fish and got my nitrates up to 1ppm (from 0ppm) and only now is it starting to go away. My chaeto is finally growing now too, albeit slowly, which might be helping. Getting to 1ppm NO3 has reduced the cyano by >50%.

Welcome to the Deep Blue... last test I had .75-1ppm NO3 and 0.08PO4. My nitrate needs to come up some.

vegamedic · Apr 7, 2018

Robin Haselden said:
Welcome to the Deep Blue... last test I had .75-1ppm NO3 and 0.08PO4. My nitrate needs to come up some.

I'm interested to see if raising nitrates alone helps your problem as well, and if there's some range of NO3/PO4 ratios to shoot for. I should probably get a PO4 test kit.

Brew12 · Apr 7, 2018

Robin Haselden said:
Remember my nitrates are very low now. May do some good to dose a bit and see how things react.

Are you still running both your chaeto reactor and the fuge? If so, you can likely raise nitrates by reducing the photo period of one or both of them. I would try that before I would resort to dosing anything.

vegamedic said:
I'm interested to see if raising nitrates alone helps your problem as well, and if there's some range of NO3/PO4 ratios to shoot for. I should probably get a PO4 test kit.

Some strains of cyano cannot form a mat if NO3 is above 3ppm. It's not true for every strain though. Once they form a mat you have to break it up manually after you raise NO3.

SashimiTurtle · Apr 7, 2018

Brew12 said:
Are you still running both your chaeto reactor and the fuge? If so, you can likely raise nitrates by reducing the photo period of one or both of them. I would try that before I would resort to dosing anything.

Chaeto reactor has been offline for around two weeks. I have the refugium light on for 14 hours reverse display lights. I actually need to harvest some of it.

Brew12 · Apr 7, 2018

Robin Haselden said:
Chaeto reactor has been offline for around two weeks. I have the refugium light on for 14 hours reverse display lights. I actually need to harvest some of it.

I feel you should go down to 10 hours a day and don’t harvest.