Cyano... how's the approach sound?

BrandonS

BrandonS

New member
I've had a recent outbreak of cyano bacteria. I've been doing research and the problems seem to be nutrients (phosphate and nitrates) along with flow. The nutrients, I've been feeding my fish ever other day and upped the water changes. It hasn't slowed the growth down at all. For flow I have a 780gph pump in my sump that goes to one outlet in the tank. My light cycle is 12:30am to 8:30 pm for my dual 40w NO lights.

What I'm planning to do is this. I went and bought another pump that flows 1,017 gph. I'm going to put that on a closed loop system. I'm hoping the upped flow will deter it from growing. I read that this helps a lot in stopping it from growing to begin with. Then I'm going to remove my rocks and scrub them off in saltwater with a toothbrush and also suck the top layer of sand away (the cyano is on some of that as well). I'm also going to do a water change.... again.

I'm not sure if I should couple all this with a treatment. My LFS recommended ChemiClean. They said it would kill it, but I would still need to fix whatever was the problem or it would come back. I'm hoping all this stuff will fix the problem and get rid of the cyano.

Also, I have a 10g tank that I use as a QT tank. It's been empty for some time now, but do you think I should put my fish over in that until I get this problem under control? I have the following:
1 Sailfin Tang
1 False Perc
1 Blue Chromis Damsel
2 or 3 snails.... I had a lot but they ate all the algae and started dieing off when i first put them in 6 months ago and those are the ones that remained.
1 cleaner shrimp
1 long spine urchin

Any other suggestions?

Oh and what can I do for the inlet of the closed loop system to keep fish and such from being sucked into my tank?
 
too many fish to move to a 10 gallon tank.you definately should have more flow,i see you are gonna add a closed loop....good idea,they make strainers to go on the bulkheads to prevent things from going in it.
 
will they fit on standard 1" PVC. I dont' have a drilled tank so I need to have the pipe do a u turn over the top and then go to the pump and back up from the pump.
 
most reef type pumps are not that good at pulling water over the top of the tank, they are designed to push water. You might be able to get away with a strong submersible pump, and plumb a manifold from that with several outlets. The best bet for a CL is to drill the tank however.
 
I went through about a month of this about six months into my tank's life. I cleaned out what I could, but didn't fuss with it too much. It went away on it's own after about a month. I'd advise similar action... simply remove what you can and wait it out.
 
yes,they have 1 inch strainers that will fit right in the pvc.also,i have seen many people with a hang on back/closed loop as i have thought about doing this myself untill getting one of the maxi jet mods for 1200......needless to say,the best bang for the buck.
 
G'day Brandon,

Cyano can be a bugga. Your on the right track by increasing water flow and be carefull how much you feed the tank. Syphon out what you can and replace sand as necessary.

Next, since you dont list corals, turn your lights off ( assuming that you light the tank ). This will help dramatically. Leave the lights off for at least 3 days. Only turn them on to check your livestock. The lights being off will not hurt the fish. If you do have corals, use the same method, just keep an eye on the corals.

Do regular water changes, 10% a week to try to get nutrients down.

Heres a link for a cloosed loop on an undrilled tank. Just use the site navigation tools for the links.

melevsreef

Good luck and hope this helps.

Chris
 
lots of corals will feed on the red cyno,also do not break up by hand as this will cause this to spread even more.try doing five gallon changes a week with ro and salt suck up some of it with hose.you will no its dying when it gets the air under it and floats off
 
Thanks for all the suggestions. I ended up taking the advice of putting the pump in the tank. I figured the extra flow gained by not having head loss from going over and then back up would help out. I also redirected the sump return to blow down at a 45* angle over the center of the rock formation. This is where I was having the worst problem with the cyano on the rocks. In a day it hasn't made much of a difference, but on the rocks at least it seems to be slowly dissipating.

Here are a few pics of the setup. It's simple, but I think it will work. I have to change the angle of the 45* on the right side because it blew a hole out of the sand in the corner of the tank. I'm also going to move the little black pump to blow more into the left corner of the tank since the closed loop has it's water blowing through the rocks. Oh on the inlet there is a 6" peice of straight PVC with holes drilled in it. I capped the end with a peice of plastic cap I had from a can of spray starch I use to do my BDUs. It worked so I'll keep it.

IMG_0789.jpg

IMG_0788.jpg

IMG_0787.jpg


I have yet to clean the tank. It was too late when I got done with this and friends came over. Today I ended up washing my wifes truck and my goat. They were both filthy from our horrible weather lately.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9737203#post9737203 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by chris wright
How will you get your pump out to service it? Its no doubt going to need cleaning.
Click to expand...

There is only one rock on top of it. Other than that you can just lift the whole assembly out.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9736236#post9736236 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by BrandonS
Today I ended up washing my wifes truck and my goat. They were both filthy from our horrible weather lately.
Click to expand...

You have a GTO?
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9740827#post9740827 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Snowboarda42
You have a GTO?
Click to expand...

yea traded in my Saturn on one 2 months ago. It's an 04 Purple 6-speed.
 
for now I just have the mufflers off. Running cats and resonators. For now I really just want to get HID headlights since it already has projector lenses, put an AUX/IN on the stock headunit, and maybe get a bluetooth kit.

I would LOVE to have a maggie, but I can't afford the hefty price tag.
 
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