Cyano

[Felixn]

Cyano have the ability to free phosphate from nondissolved forms such as calcium pyrophosphate which is what forms when your phosphate precipitates out with calcium. This happens via a secreted enzyme.
That FYI is the reason cyano tends to break out in specific spots in a tank. I for example have 0 phos 0 nitrate and yet for over a year the motor case fo a HOB filter is the exlcusive always recurrent spot for a 2x2 patch of cyano. It is simply extracting from that filter surface.

I tell you this for 3 reasons:

1.) you can siphon and disturb that deep red matt and it will not cause your cyano to bloom everywhere provided your P and P are indeed low. (if N was also high youd have other things breaking out as well but when P is disproportionately elevated to N that favors disseminated cyano)

2.) The true fix is to decrease adsorbed phosphate availability on the surface of your sand bed.

3.) The light brownish smear on the surface of the sandbed by another poster is not cyano but a true diatom.

 

[Felixn]

I noticed if you don't stirr it up it spreads on its own and thrives if you stirr it up it can't tank in light or food so it will disapear I have gotten rid of this just by feeding less skimming more and turkey basting it off all the rocks and sand every couple of hours

Notice what he is quoting in his experience there? He is not wrong. When you detach a cyano matt from the surface it dissolved the nutrient from, it will not thrive once detached. Because in such cases the dissolved nutrients in the water column are not the problem or a sufficient food soruce.

 

[Felixn]

I've heard of dosing beneficial bacteria like mb7 to out compete the cyano.

Ok last post I swear. While I love biological methods in this particular case it won't work. The reason is that your specific outbreak is the result of an exact niche condition. The cyanobacteria happens to be the one candidate that finds itself able to remove that inorganic precipitated phosphate on the sandbed and reintroduce it to your biological cycle (unfortunate eh?). It is simply not competing with other bacteria or algae or anybody else for that phosphate there. The nitrate is not the limiting factor for cyano as they are able to fixate nitrogen.

And there you have WHY the anecdotal tales are: high P= cyano high N= nitrate.

It is more that when you have nitrate excess the most competitive users are vanilla microalgae which will also use up P.

Should you make a more abundant carbon source available that happens to be useless to algae oh say ethanol, acetic acid, glucose etc. You will easily have the much faster muliplying bacterial groups winning out... The birth of carbon dosing.

 

[shecter]

ive done a 3-4 day blackout followed by heavy skimming and a big waterchange. worked wonders for my tank. but its just a bandaid unless you find whats causing it and change it.

 

[hazmat319]

Cyano have the ability to free phosphate from nondissolved forms such as calcium pyrophosphate which is what forms when your phosphate precipitates out with calcium. This happens via a secreted enzyme.
That FYI is the reason cyano tends to break out in specific spots in a tank. I for example have 0 phos 0 nitrate and yet for over a year the motor case fo a HOB filter is the exlcusive always recurrent spot for a 2x2 patch of cyano. It is simply extracting from that filter surface.

I tell you this for 3 reasons:

1.) you can siphon and disturb that deep red matt and it will not cause your cyano to bloom everywhere provided your P and P are indeed low. (if N was also high youd have other things breaking out as well but when P is disproportionately elevated to N that favors disseminated cyano)

2.) The true fix is to decrease adsorbed phosphate availability on the surface of your sand bed.

3.) The light brownish smear on the surface of the sandbed by another poster is not cyano but a true diatom.

How do you fix #2 ?

 

[Felixn]

How do you fix #2 ?

A very good question

The most typical way to induce heavy phos precipitation is to dose alk and calcium at the same time especially when phos is readily present and magnesium absent (kalkwasser in more than drip rate additions).

That is a really neat cheap way to remove phos, but in order to not have our users problem you need to keep that phosphate where you stuck it so to speak.

options:

1.) Keep favoring precipitation while phos is low and you won't have it at the surface of the sand bed.

favorable parameters:
ph: high
phos: low
calcium: high
salinity lower end

The higher your salinity the higher calcium you can keep dissolved same for magnesium for different reasons.

So if you want to rapidly coat with a microsurface of clean calcite aim for this:

magnesium around 1000-1200, PH above 8, salinity 1.025 and then add kalkwasser or both ends of 2 part only every other day and when you do at a more rapid rate than usual (high flow area plz).

It will take maybe 3 times of that and your sandbed is resurfaced

Here a link to the most excellent Randy:
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-01/rhf/#15

just scroll to the section on kalk and phosphate.


here is a little snippet on how all that interacts in the really big reef tank:
http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpress...h20&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d2_9_ch20&brand=eschol


There is a reason many of the quiet long term reefing veterans continue to have lime and often vinegar in their top off water Its about as win win as you can get in reefing.

 

[Kdocimo90]

I noticed if you don't stirr it up it spreads on its own and thrives if you stirr it up it can't tank in light or food so it will disapear I have gotten rid of this just by feeding less skimming more and turkey basting it off all the rocks and sand every couple of hours

It's quite the opposite. Stirring it up wont get rid of it. That will simply spread the cyano algae throughout the tank and cause sheets to grow everywhere. This is the last thing you want to do. This is why you should siphon out as much as you can to begin with and cut down lights (if you please).

 

[Nuagedesigns]

Special Blend will do the trick just follow through the entire dosing... http://www.drsfostersmith.com/produ...D=525406451&catargetid=1570176386&cagpspn=pla

 

[Pdm2476]

Thanks everyone I have the new skimmer set up (blowing micro bubbles everywhere lol)so heres hoping it helps... I will continue to siphon out the clumps when i see them and if need be ill do lights out for 3 days or so and see how things go!

 

[Felixn]

It's quite the opposite. Stirring it up wont get rid of it. That will simply spread the cyano algae throughout the tank and cause sheets to grow everywhere. This is the last thing you want to do. This is why you should siphon out as much as you can to begin with and cut down lights (if you please).

I can agree on the light thing. The "spread of infection" story doesn't hold water. The organism is already present everywhere in the water column. It establishes colonies where conditions are favorable. When you disrupt a matt the only reason you could possibly induce colonies everywhere is if you have surplus nutrients everywhere and in that case you were about to experience that anyways. Such a scenario would call for addressing underlying cause eh?

 

[Kdocimo90]

I can agree on the light thing. The "spread of infection" story doesn't hold water. The organism is already present everywhere in the water column. It establishes colonies where conditions are favorable. When you disrupt a matt the only reason you could possibly induce colonies everywhere is if you have surplus nutrients everywhere and in that case you were about to experience that anyways. Such a scenario would call for addressing underlying cause eh?

So being that it may be likely you do have a surplus of nutrients why is it beneficial to break up the cyano causing it to spread throughout the tank as opposed to siphoning the whole mat out.