Chaeto vs Cyano?

[mntnbighker]

I have been scanning the plant forum trying to arrive at a decent sump layout. At the moment I have a 5600K CFL bulb. My question is, how do you keep your chaeto healthy and lit with enough nutrient, but avoid just ending up with cyano and loads of nuisance algae. The cyano is even overgrowing the chaeto in my sump. Is a skimmer and GFO reactor removing everything the chaeto needs to flourish? I am doing a Chemiclean dose right now hoping things will turn around. My tank is about 8 weeks old.

 

[Subsea]

If cynobacteria is growing out of control then you have excess phosphates in your substrate.
Phosphate resins only remove inorganic phosphate from the water. Organic phosphate is bound up in your substrate as detritus...

 

[mntnbighker]

So I should be stirring up the substrate and vacuuming out as much gunk as I can get at?

 

[Subsea]

Yes. In my eleven year old Jaubert Plenumn DSB I only vacumn the top inch of 5" DSB.

How deep is your substrate? Macroalgae needs no substrate to grow. Help me understand your biological filtration. Do you have a large fish population? Do you have substrate in your display tank? Is your substrate aroggonite and what grain size? If you have sufficient biological filtration, you may consider removing substrate and cleaning outside of your system.

 

[mntnbighker]

75 gallon main display with about 2 inches of #5 coral sand. Naked bottom 20 gallon sump with some live rock and 20 pounds of miracle mud. 2 cardinals, 2 turbos, 6 tiny hermits and nassarius snails. I feed frozen mysis to the cardinals twice a day and very little goes uneaten.

 

[Subsea]

The bio load is very low

If you are having no cyno problem in your display tank and only in your sump, then let us focus on your mud. How long has it been in your system?

 

[mntnbighker]

The bio load is very low

If you are having no cyno problem in your display tank and only in your sump, then let us focus on your mud. How long has it been in your system?

The bulk of the cyano has been in the sump. But as the chunks have floated free and into the main it has started to appear there too, before I treated with chemiclean. The mud has been in since the tank was put together, so about 2 months.

 

[Subsea]

At two months, your tank is very young in its cycle. Cynobacteria is often associated with old tank syndrome because you should not have excessive phosphates in a new tank. Either you are feeding too much, or you brought in a phosphate source with mud, substrate or rock.
Have you measured phosphate?

 

[mntnbighker]

LFS says phosphate is almost undetectable. The only thing I can imagine adding extra waste was when the LFS told me to feed the cardinals pellet food, that they flat refused to touch. So there was a period where small amounts of food were uneaten. The frozen shrimp gets wolfed down as fast as I drop it in the tank.

 

[Subsea]

LFS says phosphate is almost undetectable. The only thing I can imagine adding extra waste was when the LFS told me to feed the cardinals pellet food, that they flat refused to touch. So there was a period where small amounts of food were uneaten. The frozen shrimp gets wolfed down as fast as I drop it in the tank.

With respect to inorganic phosphate in the water, it should be less .03ppm. Organic phosphate in substrate can not be measured by water test. I can not tell you where it is coming from, that is your job. I can tell you that you have organic phosphate in your substrate.
Patrick

 

[Subsea]

75 gallon main display with about 2 inches of #5 coral sand. Naked bottom 20 gallon sump with some live rock and 20 pounds of miracle mud. 2 cardinals, 2 turbos, 6 tiny hermits and nassarius snails. I feed frozen mysis to the cardinals twice a day and very little goes uneaten.

How deep is your mud filter? 20 lbs in a 20 gallon sump seems like a lot. In my 30 gallon Eco-system mud/macro filter, when I purchased the tank used 11 years ago, it had 1" of miracle mud. I am not sure what the miracle is. In 11 years, I have replaced no mud. Over those 11 years it has increased slightly in depth to about 1.25".
Just because all food is eaten, you have not removed phosphate from the system. The phosphate which comes in with the food is assimilated into the digestive system of the fish. Some of it contributes to biomass of the fish. The majority of phosphate rich food is passed on to the system in the form of fish detritus. I suspect that you need more detritus processors in your sandbed. In the case of my mud filter, bristle worm are the main detritus processor.

 

[mntnbighker]

How deep is your mud filter? 20 lbs in a 20 gallon sump seems like a lot. In my 30 gallon Eco-system mud/macro filter, when I purchased the tank used 11 years ago, it had 1" of miracle mud. I am not sure what the miracle is. In 11 years, I have replaced no mud. Over those 11 years it has increased slightly in depth to about 1.25".
Just because all food is eaten, you have not removed phosphate from the system. The phosphate which comes in with the food is assimilated into the digestive system of the fish. Some of it contributes to biomass of the fish. The majority of phosphate rich food is passed on to the system in the form of fish detritus. I suspect that you need more detritus processors in your sandbed. In the case of my mud filter, bristle worm are the main detritus processor.

I have 2 segmented mud partitions with 10 pounds each about 1.25 inches deep. My sump is 24Lx24Wx16H so it may be over 20 gallons? I will be replacing the sump soon with one 22Lx16Wx16H so it fits the space better. Eco Systems recommends replacing half of the mud every year. I just put the Nassarius snails in last week. With last nights 25% water change I cleaned probably a third of the sand bed. I am making changes on various fronts so I'm hoping that and the aging process will turn things in the right direction.

 

[mntnbighker]

The Chemiclean dosing was interesting. It made my skimmer go totally nutz as others here have reported. BUT, that effect only lasted about 8 hours (if that) and other folks report the skimmer acting different for a week. I am suspecting the same abundance of phosphate that caused the cyano outbreak neutralized the Chemiclean in a very short time. People report Chemiclean eliminating their cyano, but in my case only some of it was affected. I would probably have to do multiple doses to oxidize everything. Anyway, I plan to wait and see, and possibly do another large water change in a week, trying to clean another large portion of the sand bed in the process. Meanwhile allowing the skimmer and GFO to do their jobs as well. One thing I definitely notice is I have much less bubble foam in the main display now than I had before. Something I don't see discussed here that much is the little clues you can notice, like more bubble foam, or the smell of the tank or sump. I turned off the GFO/carbon reactor for 48 hours to do the Chemiclean dose and it developed such a stench there was no way to safely turn it back on. I had to change out both.

 

[Subsea]

The Chemiclean dosing was interesting. It made my skimmer go totally nutz as others here have reported. BUT, that effect only lasted about 8 hours (if that) and other folks report the skimmer acting different for a week. I am suspecting the same abundance of phosphate that caused the cyano outbreak neutralized the Chemiclean in a very short time. People report Chemiclean eliminating their cyano, but in my case only some of it was affected. I would probably have to do multiple doses to oxidize everything. Anyway, I plan to wait and see, and possibly do another large water change in a week, trying to clean another large portion of the sand bed in the process. Meanwhile allowing the skimmer and GFO to do their jobs as well.

You are going in the right direction.

I suggest you take one piece of knowledge with respect to patience. In my forty years of reef keeping, I have found only bad things happen fast. Chill out and let biology work its magic.
Patrick

 

[mntnbighker]

Good thing there are no HMO's for reef keeping (unless you count the reality shows). Their mentality is quick fix.. dose.. dose.. pill.. pill.. because anything slow and safe is too expensive for their bottom line.

 

[Subsea]

After being involved in this marvelous hobby for more than 40 years, I acknowledge that I am old school.
You have implemented several adjustments to your reef husbandry. Allow those changes to go forward with their processes. If you make major changes every two weeks, you will not know much about what caused good or bad in your reef.
Patrick

 

[mntnbighker]

After being involved in this marvelous hobby for more than 40 years, I acknowledge that I am old school.
You have implemented several adjustments to your reef husbandry. Allow those changes to go forward with their processes. If you make major changes every two weeks, you will not know much about what caused good or bad in your reef.
Patrick

Agreed, if I were to start from scratch I would have done several things differently.

 

[drej424]

I'm just wondering what you would have done differently?

 

[mntnbighker]

I'm just wondering what you would have done differently?

Since I swapped out my sump for one half the size, and doubled the flow, I have yet to see any new cyano. Though I have experienced yet another brown algae explosion.