Cyanobacteria will not go away

[BeachVacationer]

I'm new to salt water but have many years of freshwater experience and have battled cyano many times in freshwater. What I use is EM or erythromycin by API. I scrub and suck out as much as I can then dose it per instruction. It works and doesn't impact the beneficial bacteria. It does shoot up the TDS but for freshwater fish including the sensitive discus that I keep, I've never had any die from the treatments. I also have snails and shrimps and they are not affected by EM. Now, I have zero experience with EM in a reef tanks so perhaps others who do can chime in. FYI, I've used chemiclean in my freshwater to battle cyano but it didn't help at all. EM wipes it out. You might have to redose monthly for few months to get rid of all the cyano so that it won't come back. If my new reef tank ever comes down with cyano, I will use EM because it works.

 

[Spacekitty]

I personally recommend avoiding any chemical solutions if at all possible. Once you add something to the tank, it is stuck there and you don't always know how it will affect things.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Yes cyano is a bacteria and will run it's cycle in a few months. The best you can do is just suck it up as it's in mats when you do your wc. I would suck it up weekly with a siphon hose and just deal with it. In a few months it will die out as long as you don't over feed to badly.

I feed my tank well and had it and it drove me crazy, if i let it. Sure you can do all the lights out, starve your fish and corals increase flow and yes even use chemicals; The chemicals do work but I prefer just to let it run its course. This normally takes about 2-3 months.

 

[homer1475]

I would have to agree with everyone above.

I have 2 small patches and its in low flow areas(between my plate coral and glass, and between my GSP and glass). I suck it up when I do WC's, it never gets out of control, just those 2 small spots. Within the last week or so its getting less and less. Just let it run its course unless it starts to over run the tank.

You can run all the chemicals you want to get rid of it, but unless you identify the root issue and fix that, it will make a comeback.

 

[CStrickland]

I have a little in one spot but it doesn't spread out of that low-flow nook. If it did I would look first at my flow, both having enough in the tank overall and tweaking the powerheads so there's no dead spots. I like 40x tank volume for flow, so in ops tank that would mean all of the powerheads together add up to around 2,000 gph. I'd also try setting my skimmer so the production is light-tea colored, as some have luck with that because the stuff the cyano eats is too light to get pulled by a skimmer "running dry."

If that didn't work I would follow this procedure for lights out from sk8rs post in the setting up sticky http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2279039

If that didn't work I'd use a chemical. Prolly not erythromycin though, there are some scary threads from when people used to do it that way. Chemiclean is used a lot so it's probably a safer option.

 

[jml1149]

I used chemiclean after flow and lights out didn't work. I keep softies and LPS. Product worked amazingly. Dosed on a Friday night, by Sat morning saw improvement. Sat night took a turkey baster to the areas and sucked everything I could see out. Sunday AM everything was gone, poof. Sunday night did the water change, and no issues since.

I get the concept of not putting chemicals into the tank, nor do I guarantee it will work for you, but this stuff was rock solid for me.

 

[MCC]

I used chemiclean after flow and lights out didn't work. I keep softies and LPS. Product worked amazingly. Dosed on a Friday night, by Sat morning saw improvement. Sat night took a turkey baster to the areas and sucked everything I could see out. Sunday AM everything was gone, poof. Sunday night did the water change, and no issues since.

I get the concept of not putting chemicals into the tank, nor do I guarantee it will work for you, but this stuff was rock solid for me.

+1 i had couple of rounds at cyano. chemiclean always does the job. your skimmer will go crazy for 3-5 days. I just ran a hose from the cup back into the sump for 5 days. once it settles down then i return the skimmer to normal. make sure you put in an air stone as well.

 

[Jnhernandez1]

So there is basically three options:
1) Continue water changes and cleaning and let the problem fix itself (assuming there is no ongoing source of the issue)
2) Lights out for three days
3) Chemical treatment

It would be interesting to have everyone weigh in on their option of choice and have a Reef Central treatment of choice for Cyano.

 

[Scorpius]

So there is basically three options:
1) Continue water changes and cleaning and let the problem fix itself (assuming there is no ongoing source of the issue)
2) Lights out for three days
3) Chemical treatment

It would be interesting to have everyone weigh in on their option of choice and have a Reef Central treatment of choice for Cyano.

I always seem to get a bloom of cyano when I overfeed so I vote nutrient control, then flow, then lighting.

 

[SahuaritaMike]

What Rodi water are you using as top off?

 

[TrogdorFTW]

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 work in pharma and the number one control we use to prevent the growth of bacteria in our water systems is maintaining a high flow rate and not allowing any low flow regions.

Bacteria can be eliminated but not if you also what life to occur all you can do is control the factors that it needs to multiply.

That being said I am in the same boat as the poster and am currently researching what wave-maker I want to upgrade to, I'm thinking a single jabao WVP-40 wave-maker for a 90 gallon.

 

[Mr tap water]

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.

The theory behind more circulation is because nutrients build up in less flow areas which can Tribute towards cyano so the idea is not to have no dead spots and by increasing the flow The nutrients Will not be able to build up in one area . And many people have had success doing it this way.

 

[Jnhernandez1]

I use a 4 stage RODI filter from BRS. My Color changing DI resin in about 1/3 brown - I was told this is still OK to use. I have never done any measurements on the RODI water.

I'm pretty sure I infected the tank when I re-used a carbon reactor that I set aside for a week. When I used it after being idle for a week my skimmer went nuts. After a day of running through it, I pulled it out and when I opened it up to clean it, it smelled like rotten beach. About a week after that is when I got the cyano outbreak. The first outbreak was on everything, including the sand. It has been about 5 weeks now and it only comes back on the rocks. I continuously run through the carbon now and change it out every 2 weeks. When I clean the carbon now it has no smell, and at the end of the 2 weeks my skimmer starts to get a little more active - but nothing even close to before.

So I assume the source of the issue is gone (maybe incorrectly) and now I just have to get through this infection.

I''m pretty sure it is not a flow issue - when the cyno gets thick and starts to have strands, I can see them swaying back and forth in the currents in my tank. Plus, it is pretty uniform over my rocks.

 

[Jnhernandez1]

So I cleaned off the cyano yesterday and turned off the lights today. I originally just had the lights off with no tank coverings. But then I saw the "red" start to return from ambient light from surrounding windows (no direct lighting but the tank was pretty bright and the fish were acting like nothing was different). So I covered the tank with paper to block the ambient light. I hope it works.

 

[Jnhernandez1]

Well, corals are good, fish are active again, and cyano is back.:facepalm:. I guess I'll continue my weekly cleaning and try the lights out again in a month. I'm not ready for chemical treatment just yet.

 

[Jnhernandez1]

It has been over a week now. The cyano growth may be a little slower than before, but still pretty steady. However, there are spots on the rocks where the cyano has not grown back. Hopefully these no grow spot will increase on my next lights-out attempt

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Sounds like it's on the way out.

 

[Happyschneider]

That was how the end started for me. All of a sudden all the cyanos went green and then really stopped growing. Couple of weeks later and I am almost free of them.

 

[Scorpius]

I never do any lights out. If you control nutrients and have decent flow it will go away on its own.

 

[Jnhernandez1]

I'm free at last:dance:. After my last cleaning it never came back.