getting sick of my cyano bloom

[scarface70706]

so ive been trying to fight this bloom for 3 - 4 months now and its just getting worse every day. is there other media then gfo that will work for the cyano out breaks. first month tried fighting it with multiple water changes then i started to battle it out for another 3 months with gfo an all its been doing is getting worse. ive been changing out the gfo every 2 weeks since i figured it was getting exhausted due to seeing the bloom get bigger and bigger by each day. last night i vacuumed out almost all the cyano i could see on the sand bed and did a 20 gallon water change; refilled my gfo reactor with the remanding gfo i had. now i ran out of gfo from brs so im thinking of going with a different brand since brs didnt give me any luck. so what other brands would you guys suggest? tank you.

[stingythingy45]

You could knock it out with Chemiclean and then do a large water change.
It works for a reboot of the system.But you really need to find where the nutrients are coming from that's fueling it.

Do you run a skimmer?
How much do you feed?
What's the bioload in the tank?
Do you feed the corals?

[scarface70706]

oh yea sorry i totally forgot to give you details on my system. i have a 90g DT and a 20g sump/fuge. i run a reef octopus skimmer xs160. one mp40wes blowing at 75% on lagoon mode. i use to feed every day with reef nutrient vitamin enriched food. (i used mysis shrimp but never tried feeding corals) but go rid of that stuff since i figured that might be the source. now i use rod's original blend food and only feed a little every other day (i also switched to this since the food blend feeds corals & fish at the same time). bio load consists of 5 fish; very small blue tang, med yellow tang, small clown, small purple fire fish, small royal gramma, and a 5X5 RBTA. Corals are a hammer coral, frog spawn, zoo garden, and mushroom garden. i use BRS 5 stage plus ro/di unit and its fairly new since i bought it in Nov. TDS going in DI stage: .01 ppm TDS out: .00

i think what happen that started this whole out break was two factors. 1) LFS ro/di water had some tds in it. 2) over feeding with the reef nutrient food. the food has a lot of slimy crap in it that i was never really a fan of so i tossed it and now use rods food since i heard great things about it. i only feed every other day with a small pinch of it.

[slakker187]

first, you didnt say what your water change schedule is. in my experience cyno comes from two factors: infrequent water changes/not enough water changed per time. and water flow. i recommend using SPECIAL BLEND it doesnt kill you bio filter any pods and works really well. you can get it at petco. be warned, it smells bad. but only for a little while. also i would turn your mp40 up. more water movement helps a lot. you said you have a "lagoon" area in your tank. what that means to me is you have an area with insufficient water flow. in the ocean even "lagoon" areas have quit a bit of water flow. with the mp40 you can have a lot of flow without blasting your corals so i would suggest turn it up. your corals will thank you. hope this helps.

p.s. the kind of food doesnt matter if you keep up with water changes.

[Psirex]

control nutrients, phosphates and you will pretty much control any algae....

[scarface70706]

lagoon mode is on the mp40wes not a specific area in the tank. 75% on the mp40 is plenty for my aquarium trust me. any higher there will be a sand storm. i do weekly water changes of 20- 30 gallons and very consistent with them. i will look into that blend your talking about at petco though. any other advice? im looking into different media to control po4. what would you guys suggest? ive been using brs gfo but i want to use something else since brs's stuff didnt really impact my tank as i was hoping for. any tips on that would be great. thanks.

[dlp211]

3 days lights out, 4th day bring up actnics only, 5th day bring up all lights. Do this only one time a month and do it every month at the same time. It will go away eventually.

[scarface70706]

how would the corals react with the lights being off for that amount of time?

[SPotter]

Have you tested your nitrates and phosphates?

Steve

[chuckdallas]

I had ri-dunc-ulous trouble getting the phosphates under control so instead of using bags of GFO in nylon socks in the sump, I bought a NextReef Solid Media Reactor and a small 450 gph pump. I really didn't want another pump in the system that could fail but after wrestling with po4 for 3-4 months, I broke down and bought it. SO glad now. The pump sucks from the return section, runs it vertically through the media reactor, then dumps the output next to the skimmer. That has helped tremendously. Also, I got a few nassarius snails to "churn" up the sand and bfore I heard that I will kill sand sifting starfish, I bought two of those for my 120 DT. The snails and starfish aren't there to control the phosphates, but help keep the sand relatively clean.

[tankmates]

I am having almost same issue, the red slime algae seems to be increasing everyday and I run carbon and GFO from brs 24 x 7. I am now adding biopellets as well to get that crap out of my tank.

[scarface70706]

i have tested my water and all at a minimum level. po4 is at .25 though. was @ .25 - .5 so it has gone down since last nights water change. i will probably do another water change Saturday or Sunday. to attempt to minimize the po4 some more. i just hope i dont run out of salt mix lol.

i run gfo in brs duel reactor since day one of the signs of po4. i run my reactors separately and off my return so the gfo is tumbling as advised. im nervous to do the lights off method since i dont want to lose any corals and i really dont want my nem to move around looking for light and stress itself out.

[dlp211]

Originally Posted by scarface70706

how would the corals react with the lights being off for that amount of time?

Your coral and fish will be fine. Something that I think a lot of people don't realize is that cyano doesn't need PO4 or NO3 to grow. It needs light, water, and a carbon source. There is no way to remove carbon or water from your tank and continue to have a tank, this leave the lights.

When you do a lights out, make sure you close the blinds in the room and if necessary, sheet the tanks. It may take 3 or 4 months, but you can eliminate your cyano this way. This doesn't mean you can leave your tank with high PO4 and NO3 as those cause a whole host of problems.

Be sure to feed your tank on schedule, everything will pretty much rest during the lights out period, but they will still want to eat.

Sk8r has a really good thread on cyano, just do a search.

[slakker187]

please dont turn your lights off. IDK why people keep recommending this? it has nothing to do with the problem. its like saying you dont like the color of paint in your house so you turn off the lights. do not use chemiclean in a reef. it works too well and it ruins a lot of organisms that your tank needs that need to be rebuilt. use the SPECIAL BLEND and up your water changes. within three weeks it will be solved. you can also use microbacter 7. it costs more but works good. adding either of these introduces bacteria that out-compete cyno for food so hence the "fix". you will still need to clean up the problem with water larger water changes. also what is the fish list in your tank?

[karsseboom]

chemi clean is magic...use that and you will never have cyno

[dlp211]

Originally Posted by slakker187

please dont turn your lights off. IDK why people keep recommending this? it has nothing to do with the problem. its like saying you dont like the color of paint in your house so you turn off the lights. do not use chemiclean in a reef. it works too well and it ruins a lot of organisms that your tank needs that need to be rebuilt. use the SPECIAL BLEND and up your water changes. within three weeks it will be solved. you can also use microbacter 7. it costs more but works good. adding either of these introduces bacteria that out-compete cyno for food so hence the "fix". you will still need to clean up the problem with water larger water changes. also what is the fish list in your tank?

So you are saying that light isn't one of the key factors in Cyano? Because I am fairly certain that they are photosynthetic creatures, in other words, they need light to survive.

[bdaniel5278]

lights out for a few days got rid of my cyano