Cyano Problem

[ucdcrew]

I've been fighting with cyano the last few weeks. I assumed it was my nitrates - they were up at 10 last week and I did a water change to get them down to 5. Today they were 40!! However, I found a decaying turbo snail in my fuge - ew! They smell. I also found an empty turbo snail shell (2 dead snails). I removed the snail and shell. Should I just stay the course? I'm hesitant to use chemicals to control it if this will resolve without. Here's what I've been doing:

WC every week (for the last 4 weeks) (Do a bigger one this week for nitrates?)
Run GFO
Skim wet
Lights off for 3 days at a time (can I shorten the photo period instead? My corals are not happy with this)
Blow it off and suction it out
Cut feedings to every other day
Moved my powerheads to provide more flow

Parameters:
Ammonia: 0 (API)
Nitrite: 0 (API)
NitrAte: 40 (API) might be 20 because API is hard for me to read. Either way its really high
Phosphate: 0.018 (Hanna ULR)
pH: 8.18 (Archon, cyclic swings to 8.25)
KH: 8.1 dKH (Red Sea Pro)
Ca: 420 (Red Sea Pro)
Mg: 1480 (Red Sea Pro)

 

[NedFlounders]

I've been fighting with it as well. While it is not completely gone, i have definitely slowed its growth in the DT by doing the following:

1. Vacuum/siphon out the overflow to clear it of any gunk that has sunk to the bottom out of sight.
2. Siphon any visible cyano off the rocks before each weekly water change.
3. Add a refugium with chaeto.

Good luck!

 

[sailoracu2]

First question is how big is your tank and water volume. I very seldom take anything out of my tank that is dead because my cleanup crew takes care of it. What ends up in the water column my protein skimmer takes out, then I will do a water change. My total water volume is 120 gallons. If you have a smaller system I think I would stick with water changes and keep up with the GFO, I don't know if I would change the feeding schedule or the lighting schedule. I might reduce the amount of food that each day. I hope this was helpful.