Cyanobacteria will not go away

Jnhernandez1

Jnhernandez1

New member
Need Help. I've had my first tank going for about 4 months now and about a month ago I started getting Cyanobacteria growing over everything. I cleaned it up by sucking and scrubbing and now it comes back on my rocks. I start to see it come back the next day after being cleaned. Every week I completely clean the rock with a 10 - 20% water change. It isn't terrible, just a thin coat over the rock surfaces exposed to light, but it isn't slowing down and has become quite annoying. I assume my rocks are still leaking phosphates (which I am unable to measure). I cured them for a month before going into the tank and used phosphate remover to knock the levels down - they are BRS Pukani. I'm worried if I tent the tank for 3 days I will hurt my corals and if the rocks are leaching phosphates now instead of feeding the cyano it will go into the water and ruin other things. I've reduced my feeding as low as I think possible. Any advise or suggestions?

I have a 50 gallon tank with 2 Radion XR15 LED Lights running "Radiant Color" at 45%. I run a skimmer and carbon/ GFO reactor. 50 lbs of pukani. 1.024 salinity. Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, Phosphate all zero. Ca 400, Mg 1300, alk 8, pH 8.4. Temp 78F.

9 fish - 2 clowns, 2 fire fish, 2 cardinals, 1 melanarous wrasse, 1 flame hawk, 1 royal gramma. 3 corals - Xenia, frogspawn, hammer.

I have learned a lot from this forum and this is my first thread. So thanks to all who help with this and helped others in the past that I have learned from.
 
run chemiclean. after 48 hours introduce stability or microbacter7.
id reevaluate your use of pellets and gfo and what your need for them is if your parameters are truly 0.

generally i see cyano when the biopellet train of goodness ended when no3 hit true 0 and traceable phosphates are in the column with the free carbon you have supplied via the reactor.

hth
 
What is your circulation like? Adding a second fan helped me. You might also supplement your CUC, not sure as it's not listed here.
To some extent, this is just a function of the newness of your tank too.
Two more thoughts and just my opinion:
1. I would not add a chemical to try to deal with this issue, I think it will only mask the problem for it to resurface in the future. Better to fix it the first time.
2. It's unlikely that lights out for 3 days would damage your coral (although I would not tent the tank, just turn off the lights). Think of it as a three day hurricane that has lots of clouds.
 
I'm no expert, but I had a similar problem. I did the lights out for 3 days and my corals did not get harmed at all. It didn't eliminate the problem completely but it took care of most of it.
 
ive never heard of more flow fixing cyano ever. it is a bacterial infection.

more flow will just disallow it to establish as easily.
check under your stand in the sump if you have lights for macros and clear nylon tubes you will see in those lines cyano.
 
I did lights out for three days once a month for three months. After the three days it would be gone for a while, but then come back. I stayed the course, and after the third time it was squashed......so far.
 
Cyano can result from bacterial imbalance/ problems. Siphoning it out helps. I have also used chemiclean which works well and has no detrimental effect on any of my sensitive SPS colonies.
 
IMO The Most natural approach is the lights out method. There is no harm to come to your corals by doing this.. Just make sure you ramp the lights back up slowly to not shock your corals to much.

As others have said it's totally normal for your tank to go through the "algae" phase and although it is a bacteria it is usually along for the ride on new tanks. I agree with the other poster also about the nutrients being to low and causing issues,in all my years reefing whenever my tank is reading 0 on N or P it looks like crap and seems like it us on the verge of disaster.
 
I am not too familiar with the stuff, to be honest.

From what I understand, Cyanobacteria is just that.....a bacteria. This bacteria is of course in itself invisible to the naked eye.

The Red Slime/blue green/gray/sometimes black coloring that we do see is the waste product of the bacteria, and it is sometimes mistakenly referred to as "Red Slime Algae" or "Red Cyano Algae", however it is not an algae at all. Google all of the above and the search results will lead you to same subject at hand.

That's about all that I know in regards to the actual Cyanobacteria.

Jnhernandez1, you were asking for advice and suggestions. Mine is to make sure that you have adequate flow throughout your tank, especially in your more problematic areas. If adequate flow is not a concern in regards to your tank, then that is one more issue you can check off the list of possibilities. Good luck!
 
Cyanobacteria will not go away

Make sure you have enough flow and your water quality is good. If you have a problem with cyano, turning off the lights and covering the tank during the day (if it could get window sunlight) for three days once a month seems to work well. It replicates a storm basically. Just keep in mind if it is being caused by bad flow or bad water quality, it will come back quickly. It will likely come back, but just continue to do it once a month and it should eventually go away for good (or at least for a while) if your levels are good. Just make sure not to do the three days more than once a month. It shouldn't harm your coral.

Make sure you are not over feeding. Leading cause of Cyano.

There is a good thread somewhere on here about cyano and how to get rid of it, I just can't seem to find it on my phone. I will try to find it and link it here when I get home. Best of luck!
 
Pigpen17 said:
I did lights out for three days once a month for three months. After the three days it would be gone for a while, but then come back. I stayed the course, and after the third time it was squashed......so far.
Click to expand...

Do you cover your tank (complete blackout) as well?
 
Thanks all. I have 2 tunze 6015 with wave controller. (U may be able to see them in my avatar - even though it is upside down) Based in the dust kicked up from my wrasse, it does not appear I have flow problems. Plus one of the worst spots on the rock in is one of the higher flow areas. I'm scared to use any chemical treatments and ruin all the good stuff I have been growing over these months. This weekend when I do my weekly cleaning I will try the "lights off" technique. I'll let you guys know how it goes.
 
Picture of tank - if the attachment works.
 

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