cyanobacteria

R

rocky25

New member
Hello all,
I have been in the reef hobby for about 4 years. The past year and a half i have battled cyanobacteria I have tried different chemicals such as chemipure elite, new fliteration,and currently using carbon. I have tried different flow around the tank and has helped to a point but within 2 to 3 days it's back on the subsrtate. Current tank imfo is as follows. Salt is red sea coral pro,ph is 8.0 to 8.1, calcium is 415 to 425, mag is around 1280 to 1350, 0 nitrate, 0 phosphate. I due 3 gallon water changes on my 29 gallon tank each week. No refugium, I run a aqua euro skimmer rated for 90 gallons. have about 4 pumps for circulation. If anybody has ecountered the same problem all the help would be appreciated.
 
Is the sandbed new? Have you tried running GFO or any phosphate media? If you feel up to it you may want to try vsv dosing, I'd suggest 3/4 vinegar 1/4 vodka.
 
cyano

cyano

The tank is 3 years old. Today i did a partial replacement of the sandbed with new arganite sand. Then did a 3 gallon water change. I am not familair with with any vodka dosing or the vsv method how does it work? anything to worry about when doing that? the substrate hasnt been touched until today i thought gravel vacuming wold work since I do water changes once a week. I guess not. I run chmipure elite and carbon, I was told the chemipur elite contains gfo in it. I used to run a hob filter and used phosphate pads witch i had to replace every day. Seemed to work better, not much though.
 
am going through the same thing cant get rid of now my skimmer broke waiting to buy another although ill tell you before my gobie became an airplane he kept my substrate clean to where i didn't have any algae or cyanoebac at any time maybe now when i get the skimmer I'll also get me two gobies
 
D-Nak said:
I was going to ask the same thing. Also, what's your alk at? I've found that dosing Kalk and running a higher alk level helps keep cyano down.
Click to expand...

Exactly, I am not suggest you do this, but several years ago, I got an outbreak of cyano everywhere. This was a small 29 gallon system and I hadn't setup an ATO yet, so I was setting up a drip line from a small container of saturated kalk. In the process the container fell into the aquarium with a full on white cloud filled tank. I thought everything was dead, but the next day the glass had a coating of white, but the water was crystal clear. In less than a week all the cyano was gone.
Again do not do this, but it does illustrate the point.
 
I had green cyano bad. I kept alk higher than normal, cut my light cycle, I increase flow, cut down on feeding, and increased my flow. I also siphoned out what I could with a turkey baster. Things slowed down. I added a bunch of scarlet hermits, 2 fighting conchs, and a few turbos.... Cyano gone completely... The hermits were machines eating it.
 
try mixing zeovit coralsnow with zeovit zeobak based on the directions on the bottle and you will see amazing results. I used it to get rid of cyano and it took about 3 days to signs of improvement and by the end of the first week of treatment it was gone. Now I dose the combination once a week for good housekeeping.

Info from the product description...."Coral Snow neutralizes undesirable acids and is a solution against e.g. slime algae and cyano bacteria. Therefore take Corals Snow and add 1 drop of ZEObak per 100L/25 gallons tank water each 2nd day."
 
First I would like thank you all for the help who has responded to my thread. I called brightwell aquatics yesterday and talked to somebody about this. From the imformation I gathered from them was quite interesting. I noticed when I started Red Sea coral pro about 2 month's ago this is when it went from tolerable to outright frustrating. Now, I know alot of people love this salt and I did to because the levels were great. I didn't have to supplement alkilinity because it was high. But the salt is made by solar evaporation and things die in the process like plankton and other organisms that can lead to a huge nutrient overload in the tank overtime. I changed salt again and am back to the old reef crystals. I have since altered my flow again to where it's more focused on the dead spots and substrate. It has helped also. I will try those recomdations that people have posted. If you guys like red sea I say stick with it. But for some odd reason my tank just doesn't do well it. Same when I used D@D. Thanks guy's for the help.
 
I am not dosing kalk right now but this brings up another issue. I test alk once a week but for some reason I cant get it higher than 7 or 8 I have been using alkilin 8.3 but starting to think that kalk might be the asnwer.
 
No one had asked so I am going to ask how old is your bulbs and and how much are you feeding? And are you using RO/DI or distill?
 
Lights are brand new LEDS. Maxspect razor 27 in 1600k. Yes I only use RO/DI water. Just changed filters. You know I think I might be overfeeding But I only feed once a day. I use Prime reef flakes, omega one algae flakes for my tang, and aquadine from my local LFS. Along with brine and mysis shrimp and coral frenzy to feed corals. Ever since I bought my new lighting I have noticed more of a pinkish tint that I don't really like. Could this possibly be a reason for the cyano? because of the light color.
 
rocky25 said:
First I would like thank you all for the help who has responded to my thread. I called brightwell aquatics yesterday and talked to somebody about this. From the imformation I gathered from them was quite interesting. I noticed when I started Red Sea coral pro about 2 month's ago this is when it went from tolerable to outright frustrating. Now, I know alot of people love this salt and I did to because the levels were great. I didn't have to supplement alkilinity because it was high. But the salt is made by solar evaporation and things die in the process like plankton and other organisms that can lead to a huge nutrient overload in the tank overtime. I changed salt again and am back to the old reef crystals. I have since altered my flow again to where it's more focused on the dead spots and substrate. It has helped also. I will try those recomdations that people have posted. If you guys like red sea I say stick with it. But for some odd reason my tank just doesn't do well it. Same when I used D@D. Thanks guy's for the help.
Click to expand...

Yes, they actually make it on the banks of the Red Sea. I had to stop using it because I could never get it to mix up. I also went back to reef crystals, but I have seen Red Sea's videos though and they do wash the salt which seemed like a strange thing at the time, now it makes more sense. I am not sure how much I believe they leave enough nutrients in it. Brightwell, which I also don't use, has a competing product.
 
rocky25 said:
I am not dosing kalk right now but this brings up another issue. I test alk once a week but for some reason I cant get it higher than 7 or 8 I have been using alkilin 8.3 but starting to think that kalk might be the asnwer.
Click to expand...

It you, or your previous salt, are over dosing Calcium, it will be pretty much impossible to increase your alkalinity.
Given the numbers you are using 8.3, do you mean PH 8.3 and alkalinity 7 or 8 dKH?
 
Alkalin 8.3 is a liquid supplement that I use to raise the alkalinity from Brightwell. My ph is 8.0 which I would think is good. The problem is my alkalinity deplets so fast it's never above 8 dkh. From what the directions say it will raise the ph to 8.3 then will increase the alkalinity. The problem is it's really hard to get my ph to 8.3 so I'm thinking kalk possibly would work better? with the other stuff I have to dose every day just to keep up.
 
rocky25 said:
Alkalin 8.3 is a liquid supplement that I use to raise the alkalinity from Brightwell. My ph is 8.0 which I would think is good. The problem is my alkalinity deplets so fast it's never above 8 dkh. From what the directions say it will raise the ph to 8.3 then will increase the alkalinity. The problem is it's really hard to get my ph to 8.3 so I'm thinking kalk possibly would work better? with the other stuff I have to dose every day just to keep up.
Click to expand...

So part of this issue is likely that this supplement has borate as a buffer which is generally hard to measure for unless you have a special alkalinity test. I would not use it at the same time you are dosing anything else because you will not be able to tell how much to add. It is likely your alkalinity is higher than you are seeing without (sometimes even with) the special test kit.

ps. Baking soda doesn't have this issue and is way cheaper.
 
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