Hi,
I consider myself to be a reasonably experienced reef keeper but I am having a problem with my tank, a big problem that I just can’t seem to get a handle on.
I have what I believe to be cyanobacteria but it is not just a passing phase or a ‘blip’ in the running of the tank, I have had this problem for almost a year now.
About 18 months ago I seemed to be having problems with my system. There was in infestation of an encrusting brown polyp that was taking over the tank and I started to lose corals. On top of that I picked up a disease and pretty much lost all my fish. So I decided to do a full strip down and start over. The rock was pressure washed clean of polyps and dirt and was rebuilt along with a lot of new dry rock that was mainly old coral heads. I had problems from day one but this was traced to the sand my local shop supplied me with being loaded with phosphate. This was eventually removed and replaced with Caribsea’s sugar fine aragamax sand. Things were ok for a while and then I started to experience a (possible) cyno outbreak which has now lasted a year.
I’ll start by showing a couple of pictures of the stuff in an effort to get a positive id.
The first picture shows a general area and the second shows a close up of the slime. Also at this point an explanation of how the stuff behaves would be a good idea. The stuff covers large areas of rock and the sand bed and appears a very dark red, almost black sheets. The sheets appear thick and sometimes have holes in them. However rather than a ‘silky’ mat it appears almost velvet like and is made up of what appear to be threads of material. There is some evidence of gas bubbles in some small areas of the slime but it is not what you could call widespread. If the slime is disturbed by a current of water it floats off in lumps but it also breaks up into the tiny filaments that you can see in the second picture.
Interestingly, this stuff seems not to be overly dependent on light. First thing in the morning the sand bed in reasonably clear and the coating on the rocks is light (but not light in colour) but still present. Before the main lights come on the sand darkens and the coat thickens on the rocks and sand. By the time the main lights come on at about 11 a.m. much of the sand and rock is a thick mat of this stuff. Later in the day, even though the main lights are still on it begins to subside. By the time the lights go off at about 8 p.m. things look a bit better. Turning off all lights for several days has little effect to this cycle which makes me wonder if it is time to some other cycle in the tank such as ph. Ph drifts from about 7.98 to 8.3 during the course of the day. Redox starts at around 375mv and peaks at 430mv at night. Ozone does not seem to have made much of a difference to this level but I have been running my AquaMedic 300mg unit at about ½ output for about 3 weeks now. This is not fed dry air so I would estimate that the output in nearer the region of 50-75mg.
A few details of the system may also be helpful. Volume is about 400 UK gallons. About 160kg of rock (66kg is new). Sand bed is about 1 inch of aragamax sugar fine sand turned over by several starfish and a couple of cucumbers. Skimming is via an AquaMedic Turboflotor 5000 Twin. Lighting is 3x400w Coralvue 14k mh bulbs that are around 5-6 months old supplemented by about 200watts of T5 actinic. Main flow is via 4xTunze 6100 (12000lph) stream pumps plus 2x Ehiem 1060 closed loops. Main return from the sump is via a Mak5 pump. Tank is mainly SPS with a few LPS and a couple of leathers. Fish load is light, a few smaller anthias, chromis, a young cowfish and clowns along with a couple of slightly bigger tangs. This load has only been built up slowly from just a pair of clowns, however even at very low stocking I still had the same problem as I do now, it has not greatly increased by increasing the fish load.
One possible issue that I can report is that recently I discovered that the media in my calcium reactor was leeching out quite a high level of phosphate. The media was AquaMedic Hydrocarbonat mixed with Caribsea’s ARM and it had been running for well over 18 months. This has now all been removed and I was hoping that there would be some improvement over the few weeks after this was done, but unfortunately there has been no sign of improvement since then. Even after blasting the rocks and siphoning off the material its reappearance was evident within a few days.
At this point I’ll list all the attempts I have made to eradicate this stuff over the past year. Obviously I have tried these things individually rather than all at the same time in order to try and keep some sort of stability:
Water changes. Quite a few large changes 25%+. No effect at all.
Addition of ozone to the skimmer. No effect at all.
Mechanical removal through blasting with a pump and siphoning. Slime returns within a few days to a week or so.
Chemical removal. Bluelife Red Slime Control. This product made the majority of the slime disappear but it returned within a week or so. Skimmer went mad for about 3 days.
Carbon and polyfilter. Both these products seemed to have no effect.
Phosphate removal. Phosphate remover is used continuously and phosphate level reads 0 on a high sensitivity kit.
New bulbs. BLV 20k bulbs replaced with Coralvue 14k bulbs about 5-6 months ago.
Replacement of rock. About 80kg of the rock was replaced by new freshly imported live rock. The remainder of the rock was introduced as dry rock when the tank was stripped down and rebuilt about 15 months ago.
Lights off method. I have kept the lights off and the tank in almost darkness several times up to a maximum of 4 days. This had little effect.
ZeoVit. I tried this method but it only seemed to make matters much worse.
All my SPS seem to be colouring up reasonably well although they are not growing as quickly as I have experienced in the past and I do not suffer any losses.
Any observations or advice would be greatly appreciated. I (not to mention my wife) am getting tired of throwing money at this problem and spending days trying to improve things. I have said to myself that if I don’t see a reasonable improvement by the New Year then I think it will be time to break down the tank and leave the hobby. I don’t really want to do this but I’m getting pretty down now. I used to love sitting watching my tank but these days I can hardly bear to look at it.
Thanks in advance,
Cam.
I consider myself to be a reasonably experienced reef keeper but I am having a problem with my tank, a big problem that I just can’t seem to get a handle on.
I have what I believe to be cyanobacteria but it is not just a passing phase or a ‘blip’ in the running of the tank, I have had this problem for almost a year now.
About 18 months ago I seemed to be having problems with my system. There was in infestation of an encrusting brown polyp that was taking over the tank and I started to lose corals. On top of that I picked up a disease and pretty much lost all my fish. So I decided to do a full strip down and start over. The rock was pressure washed clean of polyps and dirt and was rebuilt along with a lot of new dry rock that was mainly old coral heads. I had problems from day one but this was traced to the sand my local shop supplied me with being loaded with phosphate. This was eventually removed and replaced with Caribsea’s sugar fine aragamax sand. Things were ok for a while and then I started to experience a (possible) cyno outbreak which has now lasted a year.
I’ll start by showing a couple of pictures of the stuff in an effort to get a positive id.
The first picture shows a general area and the second shows a close up of the slime. Also at this point an explanation of how the stuff behaves would be a good idea. The stuff covers large areas of rock and the sand bed and appears a very dark red, almost black sheets. The sheets appear thick and sometimes have holes in them. However rather than a ‘silky’ mat it appears almost velvet like and is made up of what appear to be threads of material. There is some evidence of gas bubbles in some small areas of the slime but it is not what you could call widespread. If the slime is disturbed by a current of water it floats off in lumps but it also breaks up into the tiny filaments that you can see in the second picture.
Interestingly, this stuff seems not to be overly dependent on light. First thing in the morning the sand bed in reasonably clear and the coating on the rocks is light (but not light in colour) but still present. Before the main lights come on the sand darkens and the coat thickens on the rocks and sand. By the time the main lights come on at about 11 a.m. much of the sand and rock is a thick mat of this stuff. Later in the day, even though the main lights are still on it begins to subside. By the time the lights go off at about 8 p.m. things look a bit better. Turning off all lights for several days has little effect to this cycle which makes me wonder if it is time to some other cycle in the tank such as ph. Ph drifts from about 7.98 to 8.3 during the course of the day. Redox starts at around 375mv and peaks at 430mv at night. Ozone does not seem to have made much of a difference to this level but I have been running my AquaMedic 300mg unit at about ½ output for about 3 weeks now. This is not fed dry air so I would estimate that the output in nearer the region of 50-75mg.
A few details of the system may also be helpful. Volume is about 400 UK gallons. About 160kg of rock (66kg is new). Sand bed is about 1 inch of aragamax sugar fine sand turned over by several starfish and a couple of cucumbers. Skimming is via an AquaMedic Turboflotor 5000 Twin. Lighting is 3x400w Coralvue 14k mh bulbs that are around 5-6 months old supplemented by about 200watts of T5 actinic. Main flow is via 4xTunze 6100 (12000lph) stream pumps plus 2x Ehiem 1060 closed loops. Main return from the sump is via a Mak5 pump. Tank is mainly SPS with a few LPS and a couple of leathers. Fish load is light, a few smaller anthias, chromis, a young cowfish and clowns along with a couple of slightly bigger tangs. This load has only been built up slowly from just a pair of clowns, however even at very low stocking I still had the same problem as I do now, it has not greatly increased by increasing the fish load.
One possible issue that I can report is that recently I discovered that the media in my calcium reactor was leeching out quite a high level of phosphate. The media was AquaMedic Hydrocarbonat mixed with Caribsea’s ARM and it had been running for well over 18 months. This has now all been removed and I was hoping that there would be some improvement over the few weeks after this was done, but unfortunately there has been no sign of improvement since then. Even after blasting the rocks and siphoning off the material its reappearance was evident within a few days.
At this point I’ll list all the attempts I have made to eradicate this stuff over the past year. Obviously I have tried these things individually rather than all at the same time in order to try and keep some sort of stability:
Water changes. Quite a few large changes 25%+. No effect at all.
Addition of ozone to the skimmer. No effect at all.
Mechanical removal through blasting with a pump and siphoning. Slime returns within a few days to a week or so.
Chemical removal. Bluelife Red Slime Control. This product made the majority of the slime disappear but it returned within a week or so. Skimmer went mad for about 3 days.
Carbon and polyfilter. Both these products seemed to have no effect.
Phosphate removal. Phosphate remover is used continuously and phosphate level reads 0 on a high sensitivity kit.
New bulbs. BLV 20k bulbs replaced with Coralvue 14k bulbs about 5-6 months ago.
Replacement of rock. About 80kg of the rock was replaced by new freshly imported live rock. The remainder of the rock was introduced as dry rock when the tank was stripped down and rebuilt about 15 months ago.
Lights off method. I have kept the lights off and the tank in almost darkness several times up to a maximum of 4 days. This had little effect.
ZeoVit. I tried this method but it only seemed to make matters much worse.
All my SPS seem to be colouring up reasonably well although they are not growing as quickly as I have experienced in the past and I do not suffer any losses.
Any observations or advice would be greatly appreciated. I (not to mention my wife) am getting tired of throwing money at this problem and spending days trying to improve things. I have said to myself that if I don’t see a reasonable improvement by the New Year then I think it will be time to break down the tank and leave the hobby. I don’t really want to do this but I’m getting pretty down now. I used to love sitting watching my tank but these days I can hardly bear to look at it.
Thanks in advance,
Cam.
