cyano bacteria. why is it growing????

[Greatreefer]

Okay, question for all of you..
I have a 1.5 year old redsea XL425
specs:
Flow:
1x gyre XF15o and a Gyre XF250
M1 vetra return pump
Lighting:
2x Radion G4's
water parameters have been stable
n03 is at 2 ppm (red sea test kit)
Po4 is at zero (hana po4 checker)

Within the last 2-3 months I've been struggling with BAD out breaks of cyano bacteria.
I've added an inline dual BRS media reactor that runs GFO and carbon which seems to have zero effect on controlling and eradication of the out break.
the RODI unit has new cartridges and is registering zero TDS
feeding is sparse and is only done once a day.
I'm running out of ideas as to why this all of a sudden hit.

ideas on the cause?

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

Do you ever manually remove any of the cyano? My experience with the stuff is that if you do daily removal of the mats and have a strict water change schedule and keep nutrients low, it will eventually go away.

I would also go 2-3 days between feedings to help starve it out. I left on vacation with cyano issues and came back 8 days later with no cyano and haven't had it since.

Chemiclean is also a probable solution as well. My viewpoint on it, however, is that if you get rid of cyano through a chemical additive, something else will come in and replace it since the overall nutrient export issue hasn't been addressed.

 

[Greatreefer]

nautical_nathaniel-
yes. i manually remove it when I do water changes however, it seems to grow back fairly quickly.
I know about chemclean however, before i add it to the system I want to make sure that all my options are exhausted before I dose it
I'm wondering if it has something to do with my sand bed. At one point I did have a TON of bristle worms, pods, and spaghetti worms however, due to the lack of food being added the fish have gotten desperate and have slowly been dwindling down the population to almost nothing. I wonder if this lack of bugs could be a side affect of this algae out break?
Also, I'm thinking about shutting down the dual media reactor and adding a chaetomorpha reactor to attempt to starve out the algae.

 

[brandon429]

I purposefully pick fights with cyano invaded aquaria then log the results lol

nautical describes the method, the old stand by. we kick it up a big by having a sandbed that cannot cloud, no matter how much you disturb it, for the final kill.

in a large tank, earning a cloudless sandbed is quite hard for sure, so the battle shifts to all kinds of indirect action. UV correctly sized, which means oversized and not matched for your tank, is a hedge against all matted invaders and though its $ its a powerful jedi cheat for large tankers.

if your tank was ran through our sand rinse thread procedure it would not have any invasions, much less cyano.

 

[Greatreefer]

I purposefully pick fights with cyano invaded aquaria then log the results lol

nautical describes the method, the old stand by. we kick it up a big by having a sandbed that cannot cloud, no matter how much you disturb it, for the final kill.

in a large tank, earning a cloudless sandbed is quite hard for sure, so the battle shifts to all kinds of indirect action. UV correctly sized, which means oversized and not matched for your tank, is a hedge against all matted invaders and though its $ its a powerful jedi cheat for large tankers.

if your tank was ran through our sand rinse thread procedure it would not have any invasions, much less cyano.

Huh?.. all the information that ive read within the last couple years as said that uv sterilization isnt effective and can kill off beneficial micro organisms.
Can you send me the link to what your describing?

 

[brandon429]

you know we cant get three reefers to agree on procedure

but in all fairness, no large zoo exhibits exist wo uv, its that good. aquarists always take new paths, but UV is the old sage standy Ill always say/my opinion.

Im not through editing the first post of this sand rinse thread, its about to be an interactive article on sandbed biology.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

we cover in the thread the loss of pods and nice fauna: not critical. replaceable by today's common frozen food sources. UV is no less harsh on the planktors than the twenty five thousand nano reefers we have performing 90-100% water changes. their tanks, jars and cups are so packed with sps its unbelievable. it doesn't mean that reduce your sandbed fauna down to sand grains only is ideal, it means if this occurs incidentally alongside another action that stops your cyano/worth it.

We actually had someone successfully isolate out a ton of bed life, filter it wiggling and writhing using sack cloth, and put the fauna back into a blast cleaned/cloudless sandbed.

neat creativity. they found a way to be invader free and mixed bed

 

[IslandLifeReef]

I battled cyan after I overfed trying to raise my nitrates and over did it on phosphates. I manually removed the cyan every day and got my phosphate down to .02ppm and my nitrate up to around 1.5ppm. It took several weeks, but I eventually got rid of it.

What are you using to measure your phosphate? If it truly is 0.00ppm, you will have other issues such as dinos. Are you sure it is cyano?

I would clean out the cyano daily and get your nutrients balanced to take care of the problem.

 

[hubble]

It took me several months to finally get rid of cyano. Finally got chaeto growing in my sump in large amounts and I guess it out competes the cyano for food. Now my DT is so clean of algae that I'm concerned that all the crabs and snails will starve. So now I put seaweed strips in the tank a few times a week just to feed all the critters and tellow tang.

 

[Greatreefer]

Ive been using a hana checker to check my po4 levels. And yes. Im pretty confident its cyano. Red carpet slimy gunk.

 

[Greatreefer]

Interesting! Ill give a read.
Thanks

 

[Aquaholics4u]

Masstick fish food for the snails and fish.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

Ive been using a hana checker to check my po4 levels. And yes. Im pretty confident its cyano. Red carpet slimy gunk.

Sounds like cyano. Which Hanna checker are you using, the standard phosphate checker or the ULR phosphorus checker? You definitely have phosphates. I don't think cyano can survive without them. The low range phosphate checker has an error of +/- .04ppm. Even if you show zero, you could actually have a phosphate level of .04ppm, enough to support cyano. The ULR checker has an error of 5ppb phosphorus, so when you multiple the 3.066/1000 conversion factor for phosphate, the error is only +/- 0.015ppm.

 

[brandon429]

wrong thread

 

[O'l Salty]

I'm running a 25w uv filter on a 40 breeder but still have cyano. I've been adjusting the flow but so far it's not working. Cyano show'd up after elimination of Dinos.

 

[brandon429]

is yours the case of being hand removed and the growback is still occurring, or is it static in place and the uv isn't eliminating it?

im always curious how many repeated hand removal attempts are behind a set of pics or an invasions status update. how busy are you in hand guiding that tank was curious. literally every machine in reefing has pro and con reports, solely going off the 20 yrs collected works for UV claims online. do you have any threads that show the hand guiding part

 

[Greatreefer]

Sounds like cyano. Which Hanna checker are you using, the standard phosphate checker or the ULR phosphorus checker? You definitely have phosphates. I don't think cyano can survive without them. The low range phosphate checker has an error of +/- .04ppm. Even if you show zero, you could actually have a phosphate level of .04ppm, enough to support cyano. The ULR checker has an error of 5ppb phosphorus, so when you multiple the 3.066/1000 conversion factor for phosphate, the error is only +/- 0.015ppm.

I've had people tell me that there are two kits however, every time I look for them. I can only find one. NS what mine is it was a hand me down from someone who left the hobby.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

I've had people tell me that there are two kits however, every time I look for them. I can only find one. NS what mine is it was a hand me down from someone who left the hobby.

Does it read out in numbers such as 0.01? If so, you have the LR phosphate checker which is less accurate. If it reads out in whole numbers, i.e. 1-200, you have the ULR phosphorus checker which you have to multiply the result by 3.066 and then divide by 1000 to get your reading. I am guessing that you don't convert your result, so you have the less accurate phosphate checker. Your phosphates could be 0.04ppm even though it says 0.00ppm. If you are running GFO, I would get the ULR checker so that you can monitor it more accurately. I think if you get your phosphates lower and manually remove the cyano, you will solve your problem.