In need of some good advice on phosphate and a nitrate riactors on budget and cyano.

[PinstripePython]

Hey all, new here and need some advice, i am currently suffering with an outbreak of cyano bacteria, I have put my gyre maker up to full, put my power head as high as I can without draining the back compartment , I have cleaned all the rocks as thoroughly as I can with a tooth brush and have removed all but a little stuck around the base of my zoas which I have cleaned as well as I can. I have also scrubbed my entire tank glass and back but am unsure what to do about the media in the back as do not want to crash my tanks cycle and have heard that some red slime chemical treatments can cause some pretty serious side effects, I know to remove my filter media during treatment but am concerned that this will mean there is cyano in the media and will cause re distribution through spores and wondered peoples thoughts on this? Have also read that I should run fresh carbon for an hour after treatment is finished and wondered whether this should be done with a reactor, I don't currently have any riactors and need to upgrade my skimmer as the fluval one it came with is rubbish and doesn't appear to do much at all. Bought a load of bags of carbon, aqua medic antired and wondered if anyone could say how good this is or not. Also bought some empty filter socks and ordered some rowa phos to go in them and run along side the carbon when the treatment is complete and I have run the water through carbon alone for an hour. Also considering removing all livestock to a holding tank with water heated to the same temp and a cheapo power head i bought to keep it moving whilst I work and when I'm done using it for that I am gonna stick it low down on the side without a gyre maker to address the dead spot at the other end that no matter how much I re arrange it still remains dead, think it might be because of how shallow the m90 is that it cannot get proper flow. Gonna at some point add a half decent programmable wave maker at the other end to address the dead zone. Now I was thinking to address this further, carbon bags, phosphate reactor (What is the difference between a fluidised reactor and a standard reactor, can't see any difference and wondered whether its worth me spending out the extra for one marked as a fluidised reactor.) I have a budget of roughtly £50ish per reactor plus pump and tubing and substrate. Do not want to use sulphar because I read that it releases sulphar dioxide through use and to use one you have to run the water through a specific kind of reactor after it runs through the sulphar and i just don't want to risk harming my livestock.

 

[gone fishin]

Out of curiosity How old is the tank? Newly set up tanks are prone to a multitude of different algae and cyano. These usually come and go but are painful to look at.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Cyano is going to run through it's cycle no matter what you do, unless you use chemicals like Chemiclean to get rid of it. I personally don't like using chemicals.

What I did was once a week vacuum the cyano and did a 20% water change. It looks like crap but it will go away. Like Tony said you will go through all kinds of uglies that you can fight most of them, others as with cyano you need to just let them run their cycle.

Like Tony said how old is your tank?

 

[PinstripePython]

I bought the tank second hand and it had been running for a year or so prior to my purchase, I transported all filter media correctly and it is producing nitrates, should have mentioned though that when I got the tank it hadn't had a WC in months and had a literal inch of algae on all the rocks, I have since managed to remove most algae of the rocks with scrubbing and a clean up crew consisting of about 10 varied hermit, two pepper shrimp, one cleaner shrimp (Had two but one up and vanished, no sign of death or anything, dead strange, an emerald crab (Intend to add more) a boxing crab abd a feather duster. I was un aware of how bad a condition the tank was in as it didn't look too bad on the listing and had some fantastic kit in it, only had to upgrade the lighting to TMC 900 which my partner set up to do a day night ect. I think the amount of algae death (I didn't know better and scrubbed the rocks in the tank and ended up coating my entire tank in cyano particles. Big mistake but you live you learn. I think this was the main cause of the nitrates getting high, I have moved to twice weekly water changes until it stabilises as the nitrate surged up to 20ppm which was my fault for scrubbing the algae in the tank, clearly caused a great deal of stress. I have been vaccuming the substrate frequently too. My tank is looking a hell of a lot better as it barely has any algae on it anymore but can still see patched of cyano popping up on my zoa that I obviously could only lightly brush so didn't get it all.

 

[Sk8r]

Mostly it's a matter of time. As the tank matures, with attention to good water quality (check my sig line params) it will gradually lose out and go away. No need to get this or that or fuss a lot. Mature tanks that aren't overcharged with nutrients calm down and lose their problem algaes and other plagues. Keep the water immaculate and wait. And be sure your lighting is good: cyano thrives in weird light.

 

[PinstripePython]

The tank came with the cruddy fluval marine light, I was told it was a good light by the guy who sold it to me and I hadn't done a huge amount of research into lighting as I mistakenly thought the light was good, when I caught on that my corals looked very unhappy (I had cyano at this point but in my noobishness thought it was some manner of coral as it looks quite pretty in its initial stages) And didn't realize there was tones of cyano under the very long algae. When I noticed my corals were unhappy I looked about online and bought the best light I could afford from my lfs (TMC 900) and rather then seeking one second hand I decided to go first hand due to needing it fast and not wanting to risk it not being entirely functional or worse being damaged in transit and it was obvious that my corals were in need of good lighting now! One of my hard corals had bleached and since then cyano has claimed all but two of my sps corals and is sharply invading my other corals and is visible on my two remaining hard corals, I have two zoas, one I bought and one that came with the tank, the one that came in the tank is the one the cyano is growing over loads of the polyps hence why I want to use a chemical treatment to kill it and then use nitrate and phosphate riactors plus a good skimmer to keep it away and deal with my high phosphate and nitrate levels.