How quickly do I need to fix a bad cyano outbreak...?

[ratherbediving]

We moved my reeftank (well, I moved my reeftank ) over to my inlaws house while we tried to sell our condo a year ago. That didn't happen, so now I want to move the tank back. Unfortunately, due to some travel I need to do for work, I am not going to be able to do that for another month or two.

I go over there every week or so, and perform a water change, feed the corals and fish some mysis, empty the skimmer cup etc. However, I don't really have the time to do a lot of the bigger maintenance tasks, which have been piling up.

One of the issues I need to tackle that came up recently is a bad case of cyano bacteria. I am hoping i can do something to boost my water movement in my tank once I get it back to our place... but I can't really make any changes without being there to monitor them.

I've siphoned off quite a bit of it during yesterday's waterchange. It is only on the sandbed, but its pretty bad; it covers almost the entire bed. Am I going to be okay with just continuing to maintain the tank every week or so until I can bring it back over to our house? Or are my corals going to be in serious jeapardy soon?

 

[chevegan]

I just got over a pretty descent sized outbreak including tons of hair algae. You need to remain focused in trying to find the underlying cause. After 2 months of hell I tore apart EVERYTHING and found 4 rotting snails that were stuck or died some other way. In a 20gallon it reeks havoc. Anyhow look around, is there Detritus collecting somewhere? is the sump full of detritus rotting? Any Anoxic zones in the tank (zones with no water movement causing Ammonia and Nitrate spikes) That's my biggest advice. Once you find the cause you can get rid of the cyano. Remember that they are there because there is food for them. Let them be they will actually help you till yoiu find the problem. Just keep them off the corals. Once that's done suck it all out and you will be fine. Believe me man that hell is not fun. But if you do it right things will go fine. Hope you find the prob!

 

[ratherbediving]

Thanks. Yeah, I am hoping when I tear down the tank for the move, I'll be able to clean things out a bit. Between that, and fixing my lack of water movement, I am hopeful the problem will go away. Other than the cyano, I really don't have any bad algae problems. It is amazing how fast the cyano spreads. Although everything looks okay for now, I hate to lose anything as a result of the outbreak. It's hard when it is a week between tank visits.