Dosing Nitrates, Cyano, and your SPS Colors

[greg683x]

So I have a SPS dominate 90 gallon tank, thats been doing pretty well for a couple years now. Ive had good growth and the colors of the SPS are alright.

I feel like im stuck between having a good tank and a great tank. Some of my SPS look great, very colorful and vibrant. The Hawkins echinata, red monti cap, forest fire digi, and my cali blue tort all look awesome. I have some other corals that look good but I feel like could look better. I have other corals that look good but I feel like could look so much better, there colors could be improved.

Then theres my pearlberry, wwc yellow tips, pc rainbow, and tri color valida. 3 out of those 4 corals feature the color purple which is lacking, its very faded and generally only on the tips of branches.

My tank always reads 0 nitrates and 0 phos. I run chaeto in the fuge and gfo/carbon. Theres no nuisance algae outbreaks, aside from 1 or 2 small patches of cyano in a couple low flow areas that I can never seem to get rid of.

I recently decided that I would start slowly dosing Potassium Nitrate and slowly raise the nitrates to 5ppm over a few weeks. However after the first couple days of doising, and only raising my nitrates up .5 to 1ppm, I had a cyano explosion in the tank. It was ALL over the sand.

So I promptly stopped dosing. Which was disappointing because at the third day I felt like I was starting to see a little bit of response from my corals, although it could have been all in my head.

So heres where Im at, Id like to continue dosing but Im clearly having a cyano problem. Ive considered using chemiclean or redslime away to completely rid the tank of cyano and start again, but Im not a huge fan of dumping chemicals in my tank. So im not quite sure where to go from here. I know theres people that have bumpbed there nitrates and not had this problem So im guess im just looking for some advice on how to procede.

 

[mcgyvr]

No one really knows the ins and outs of cyano.
There are so many assumptions thrown around though but really from what I've seen no one really knows it well enough to give you a solid answer as to what to do..
Some will claim its low flow, phosphate issues, nitrate issues, imbalance in N&P, excessive DOC, and on and on.. And maybe it a little of all of those.. Maybe its just what happens when stuff "changes too fast" in a tank.. No one really knows with any certainty..

I will say though that there have been enough people that have had problems after running chemiclean,etc.. that I would not risk it on a tank full of expensive SPS corals..

I would start by stopping the dosing and just siphon the cyano out as best as possible during water changes and maybe do a 3 day lights out and see if that helps and go from there...

 

[greg683x]

Thanks for the reply. Thats probably gonna be the route I go for now. Im gonna see if I can completely get rid of the cyano in a natural way, and then try dosing again.

Worse case scenario, the cyano comes back and I know how to get rid of it at that point

 

[Fredfish]

If you simply stop dosing nitrate and do nothing else (one change at a time) does the cyao disappear again?

Once you get into making more than one change at a time, you never really know what works in your tank.

 

[RCS82]

I would back off on the gfo and feed a little more to gain some N and P, let the fuge do the rest.

 

[tthouston]

I just do the experiment, I put a few live rocks with cyano algae in the big bucket with salt water and close the lid for 3 straight days and night in the dark. After 3 days, the cyano algae still on the rocks. This is the fact, you don't need to waste time to do this method. I did put live rocks with cyano algae in the sum for more than 2 weeks (no light in the sum) and it is completely clear. That means, the tank should be in the dark more than 3 days before the cyano algae die off.

 

[Daddi0]

I just had a cyano outbreak and did nothing. Within a week - ten days it worked itself out? and dis-appeared
Cheers! Mark

 

[nycman]

I had a huge cyano problem. I changed lots of things, did chemiclean, lights out, etc.

But the things that seemed to be most relevant were changing my RO/DI media, removing GFO, and placing 50, 100, and 200 micro filter pads in my sump and changing them very often.

With these last three changes, my tank went from red slime everywhere on sand, rocks and lower placed corals, to entirely pristine and rid of it in 2 weeks time.

 

[Tripod1404]

I would back off on the gfo and feed a little more to gain some N and P, let the fuge do the rest.

With tank that have a very high levels of nitrate consumption, you cant increase nitrate with feeding.

My tank also had very low phosphate, nearly 0 with salifert kit. I overfed for weeks sometimes 5-6 times a day. It barely reached 0.2 ppm. I switched to nitrate and now dose nitrate every other day to keep it around 1.5-2 ppm.

So I get why OP need to dose nitrate.

 

[greg683x]

I'm gonna go with a 3 day lights out period to kill a bunch of it off, then I'm gonna dose some mb7 in the tank to compete with it, should it decide to want to grow again.

Then I'll probably revisit dosing nitrate again and see if the same problem presents itself.

 

[rjjr1963]

Anytime you change anything it puts your tank in a state of imbalance. This imbalance might be why cyano became an issue. Over time your tank will reach a new balance and the cyano will probably disappear. I had an ULNS but the corals weren't looking all that great. They were ok but not much growth and dull colors. I started dosing nitrate and phosphate and the corals came alive. I slowly dosed nutrients over time to minimize the imbalance. Right now my nitrates are 10 and phosphate .1 to .07. I have no algae to speak of and the corals look great. With higher nutrient levels you can also increase the intensity of lighting and the corals grow more.

 

[rjjr1963]

I'm gonna go with a 3 day lights out period to kill a bunch of it off, then I'm gonna dose some mb7 in the tank to compete with it, should it decide to want to grow again.

Then I'll probably revisit dosing nitrate again and see if the same problem presents itself.

You will create a large imbalance if you go lights out for three days. Everything depends on light and while it may get rid of the cyano there will effects on everything else.

 

[greg683x]

Fair enough, I'll go with the mb7 first with no lights out and leave that out for now

It's almost moot anyway, the cyano has died back significantly since I've stopped dosing except for the areas it was at originally.

So I'll just dose the mb7 when I get it, if that can rid me of the cyano completely, I'll start dosing nitrates again except maybe at an even slower clip.

 

[Daddi0]

I found on one of my reefs that had cyano that if I vacuumed it out with a siphon toward the end of the light period, after a couple times the was a noticeable decline. Then it just disappeared.