Beating Cyano?

[SkiFletch]

Hey guys, I come asking for some help tonight in defeating cyanobacteria in my tank. Long story short, I went away for the weekend (3 days) and returned to a rock collapse and a tank brimming with cyanobacteria . Man this crap takes hold fast... As my tank is pretty new and only has clowns I wasn't too worried about it for a weekend. The only corals I have in the tank are some zoos and mushrooms which dont need a lot of care, so I figured just leave it with the auto topoff running and go enjoy my trip.

Well, most of the right half of my rockwork in the tank collapsed but mercifully neither my zoos nor shrooms were affected. however, the rocks apear to have crushed one of my Turbo snails as I finally found its decomposing body tonight after digging deeper under the collapse. MAN did that thing stink. I'm pretty sure that the decomposing snail was fueling the cyano growth but now I dont know exactly what to do about it. If any of you guys have beaten a cyano infestation please let me know how you did it. Just before everyone asks, I figure I'll post up some general stats about the tank. If I've left anything out you guys need for advice, lemme know and I'll tell ya

ammonia, nitrite, nitrate 0,0,0
pH 8.1, temp 79F
sg 1.026
PO4 0
dKH 11

45 gallon tank (tall 3x1x2) with 80+ lbs of LR and 2 maxi 1200s for internal flow thats about 2.5 months old at this point. 2x96watt PC lighting on a 10 hour timer (one 10k one actinic). Custom sump approximately 20gal when operating with refugium and chaeto. Seaclone protein skimmer and a coralife turbo twist UV sterilizer. Sump fed via a homemade overflow box and evacuated via a mag 7. Triple distilled DI water is used for topoffs and water changes 10% weekly (i have my sources )

zoos, shrooms, 2 clowns, 5 turbos, 6 astrea, 4 red leg hermits for stocking. Only feeding are brine and hikari marine pellets hand fed for the clowns (little punks wont eat anything else ). was feeding once daily, planning on feeding once every other day for the time being if you guys think thats wise...

Anyway, if any of you guys can offer any ideas please let me know, as this stuff is really starting to tak e over and is very unsightly. Thanks in advance.

Fletch

 

[vitaldefect001]

i know how ya feel... i had a break out of cyno along time ago...
i got rid of it with a power stuff... although i read it was "just a temporary fix" and that "it shouldnt be done just to clear the problem for the time being, because the problem still is there, your just covering it up"
anyways it worked for me, and ihavent seen it since...

as for the stinking turbo... i ran into one of those tonight too...
and yes they do stink horrably....

hope u get some good advice...
and get ur tank beautiful again...

gl

-brandon

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

A point worth mentioning is that your system is young and you probably don't yet have a balance of microfauna (worms, 'pods etc.) that help to stabilize a system. A dead snail might easily throw things out of whack.

IMO siphon out the cyano and decrease the feedings as you mentioned. Frozen artemia (especially) can fuel red slime.

 

[SkiFletch]

Thanks for the replies so far guys, I appreciate it.

Gary, should I siphon it out with a regular gravel vaccum style or use a turkey baster?

A little update, my protein skimmer went ballistic over last night and pulled out a LOT of nasty skimmate... Should I be concerned over another death, or is that probably from my disturbing the decomposing snail?

Also, are there any natural predators of this stuff that I can pick up to help?

 

[nwrogers]

1) Siphon out the cyanobacteria.
2) Beef up your cleanup crew. I would recommend putting in 25 more Mexican Red Leg Hermit Crabs (Clibanarius digueti) and 25 cerith snails (Cerithium strercusmuscarum). Both of those are known to eat cyanobacteria.
3) If you don't have "live sand", consider activating it with a bag of Garf Grunge.

If that doesn't seem to be working you may have to do something more extreme...

DO AT YOUR OWN RISK

Remove any rocks and sand with cyanobacteria. Throw the sand out and cook the rocks by putting them in a bucket with no light until the cyanobacteria and pretty much every thing else dyes. This is extreme but that is the way I am. Want to speed it up? Don't heat the water. That will kill it quick. There is no guarantee it won't come back but you have to try. cyanobacteria sucks! This second part may cause some controversy and may likely be bad advice. The three steps listed above could work it just depends on the extent of the problem. I would try method one first. Keep us updated on what you choose to do. I will be interested to see if you can beat this and how.

Good luck man...

 

[SkiFletch]

Thanks rogers, I hope I dont need it

Going to drastic measures by cleaning rock like you mentioned would not be very wise at this point, because pretty much every piece of LR I have has at least a small bit of cyano on it at this point . I have no desire to leave my tank with 0 filtration

I'll keep my eye out for mexicans and ceriths then, thanks for those tips

 

[dalbrecht]

I sometimes like to use chemical filtration as a crutch in situations like this. By all accounts you should siphon out the cyano. A water change wouldn't hurt as well. I then find it can be helpful to the tank to give nature a boost by putting some nitrate / phosphate remover in the filter.

I don't believe in massive clean up crews for maintenence, some help but i've only ever needed 6 hermits & 2 turbo snails for my 55. "clean up" crews only recycle the nutrients. A method of export is much more powerful.

 

[SkiFletch]

Bags of chemical remover you say? Might be worth a shot...

Anybody else ever done battle with this stuff?

 

[eugeneK]

Had really bad cyano outbreak, did a lot of research, asked a lot of survivors. Here is what I think:

1. Treat the problem thats causing it first
aka bad / overdue to be replaced lighting ( cyano is not photosynthetic and actually hates sunlight, old bulbs create favorable conditions)
2. Steady Alk, cyano love 8 and lower alk
3. good flow

looks like most are covered from reading your post

When causes eliminated, buy red slime remover from a pet store and use as instructed. TURN OFF YOUR SKIMMER AND TAKE OUT CARBON FOR FEW DAYS. then after you done treating, put carbon back in and do a huge water change, thenm may be another before turning skimmer back on

haven't seen cyano in 6 months, recently bought a frag with cyano on the rock, syphoned it off and it never spread again.

Good luck

PS... that stuff is invert/reef/fish safe and willn not harm any other bacteria in the tank so dont be afraid to use it, just read instructions on how much

 

[SkiFletch]

Thanks for that man, appreciate it, I'll try that along with some vaccuming.

Started the war today with a gravel vac. Had to take the enlarged head off right away since it didnt pull enough pressure and just be deft with the 1/4" tube as it was pretty sticky. Drained 5 gallons of the stuff, cleaned half my substrate and a couple rocks. Still got a long way to go before the major clumps are removed. Wish me luck and keep the suggestions coming.

Tommorrow I'll start battle with more snails and hermits

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7295569#post7295569 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by SkiFletch
Bags of chemical remover you say? Might be worth a shot...

Anybody else ever done battle with this stuff?

:lol:

Man... we've all had to deal with cyano at one point or another.
People don't post to nuisance algae threads because they get tired of them. They might wonder why you don't do a search.
I don't mind replying because these threads always turn up some misinformation.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7298100#post7298100 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by eugeneK
cyano is not photosynthetic and actually hates sunlight

Not true. There are many types of Cyanobacteria. The 'red slime' Cyanobacteria commonly found in marine aquaria needs two basic things to proliferate: food (DOC's in the water) and light .
I have a picture (somewhere) of Cyanobacteria growing on a Caribbean reef under full sun. "Aquarium" Cyano will never proliferate in total darkness- it needs light. The dissolved organics in the water are what you want to limit to curb cyano growth. (As a bonus, clean conditions also promote most coral growth.)
I was never one to promote the use of medicating a tank for cyano. It's a great indicator of the bigger problem (high levels of DOC's).

 

[dalbrecht]

Gary, I use a material I know to have a High CEC. Typically this means a combonation of zeolites & chemical removers targeting phosphates as they also attract an entire spectrum of similarly charged ions. The purpose of this is to cleanse the water as much as as possible.

The one thing you never want to do is add a "cyano" killing chemical, cyano is a bacteria, unless you've got your hands on a pretty well targeted bacteriophage, your going to kill off beneficial bacteria as well. Besides, killing it doesn't remove the nutrient source of the problem from the water.

In short, cleaning and re-evaluating your maintenence habits with an eye towards removing / reducing phosphates & DOC's is your best bet long term.

 

[eugeneK]

Its ok , dont listen to the guy who actually had a problem, got rid of it and has one of the better looking tanks in rochester

As a matter of fact i followed this forums advice on this topic for like 6 months with no results untill I went my own way.. and what do you know! My tank didnt crash, cyano is gone!

 

[moriartiholmes]

Personally I think you may need more flow and time to get a balance. Your tank is a 45 and that is a very deep tank with a relatively small surface area. Any photosynthetic creature uses CO2 to create its energy. When flow is insufficient, the cyno has more CO2 to work with. I had a small but annoying outbreak last year and I simply added another pump. My corals were whipping around back and forth and I worried about them, but after a couple days they were fine and the cyno disappeared.
If your flow moves the water near the surface, but does little for the lower regions you will have "dead spots" where the CO2 levels are increased. If you add more pumps, make sure they don't shoot directly at any coral, but move the entire volume of the tank. A quick fix may be to do the "sawed off" mod for those MJ 1200's. That is simply cutting off the front of the exhaust port. You can drill some small holes in the bottom to allow more flow. This works surprisingly well. I'd look for the thread on this or at least a pic before trying it yourself.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7303492#post7303492 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dalbrecht
The one thing you never want to do is add a "cyano" killing chemical, cyano is a bacteria, unless you've got your hands on a pretty well targeted bacteriophage, your going to kill off beneficial bacteria as well. Besides, killing it doesn't remove the nutrient source of the problem from the water.

In short, cleaning and re-evaluating your maintenence habits with an eye towards removing / reducing phosphates & DOC's is your best bet long term.

Exactly. Unless you design a reef system to keep DOC's at very low levels (long term), it will eventually be ripe for another outbreak of red slime.

 

[SkiFletch]

Hey all, just wanted to say thanks for all the replies and update you on my progress. I figured that despite the fact that my phosphate tester read 0ppm that there must be some in there that it jus wasn't sensitive enough to detect. So, I ran a phosphate binder and added a bag of 10 small blue leg hermits. I was unable to find any Cerith snails at the time to add despite reports I've heard of them doing the job at eating cyano. I got lucky though and one of the "hermits" was an actual cerith snail leftover in the tank. That snail LOVES the cyano and makes surfaces it passes over crystal clean. You can literally trace its path over the last 3 days through out the tank.

Anyway, after adding the phoshpate binder the growth rate of the cyano has gone from way too fast to keep up with to almoast nothing. My skimmer has also calmed down recently and doesnt pull nearly as much waste anymore. I used to pull 3/4 a cup per day and now its 3/4 a cup per 3 days. It appears that with the DOCs and phosphates gone that the cyano is coming under control and now its just a matter of time before the CC finishes it off.

RandyO and I took a little look through the tanks at aquatech and found a couple more straggler ceriths the yesterday. Hopefully if I can get my hands on some more and keep phosphates down my problem will be solved.

Again, thanks all for the suggestions