Cyano

[Buckeye1]

I've got a brown and red cyanobacteria outbreak in one of my reef tanks. This tank is in my classroom so I am only able to use tap water. The setup has a skimmer, canister filter, lots of liverock, two Koralias to provide extra flow and powercompact lights that were just changed. The inverts are simple shrooms, softies and zoos.

Any thoughts on how to combat this? I've used the red slime remover before but it doesn't seem to take care of it all.

 

[byrdman81]

If you have a skimmer you dont need a canister filter so i would get rid of that for sure. Using tap water may be your problem, all depending on what your water company treats your water with you could have all kinds of bad things going into your tank causing this problem. Over feeding poor flow and high phosphates can cause these problems. I had and out break when i stopped doing WC in my DT while i was qt some fish and have since gotten rid of it with bigger weekly water changes and manual removal.

 

[Briney Dave]

got to improve your flow and dump the tap water. I am lucky enough to have a tap in my classroom where I have an R/O filter. There has to be a place somewhere where you can add one. Even if its not always hooked up

I ran without for a year or so when I was first starting. I never could beat algae no matter what I was doing.

I also agree that dumping the canister is fine; The skimmer (if big enough) will out do any good a can would have done. The chances of a canister leaching poo back into the tank is much higher