Struggling with cyano bacteria!!

JC8390

New member
I have a 20long that's been running for about 6 months now. Corals and fish are doing awesome. All soft coral, polyps, mushrooms and xenia. Live stock: ocellaris clownfish, yellow goby, firefish, royal gramma and a 6line wrasse. 10-15 hermits and a cleaner shrimp.

Parameters are: ammonia 0.0, nitrite 0.0, nitrate 5ppm- 10ppm. I have two Koralina circulation pumps at 420gph a piece, a skimmer, and a power filter with some bio media and chemi pure elite in it. Using RO/DI water, at .025 specific gravity. I'm running a coralife t5ho light.

Cyano COVERS this tank. Every inch of live rock and sand bed. I have tried physically removing it by blasting if off with a turkey baster then netting it out. That helps but it comes back. I'm doing 5gal water changes bi weekly.

I've researched and asked questions... before everyone suggested more flow and cleaner water. I cant see adding more flow on top of what I have. Its already hard to place soft corals in a place where they aren't blown to death... and Im using RODI water like I said.

Any thoughts??? One thing that's never been discussed is light schedule... I'm not sure how much if any roll it plays but I pretty much run the lights as I wish. I get up in the morning at around 7:00 and turn the light on then turn it off at around 11 before bed. Too long of a light cycle??

:dance:
 
try cutting your light schedule back to maybe 7-8 hours a day and see how it does. thats quite a long time that you leave them on
 
cut down feeding and run GFO. Thats what i did and it worked. Running GFO in a media reactor will probably give you the best results imo. I'm in no way an expert but this is what I've learned in the few years that i have been in the hobby. I have learned that Media reactor with GFO/Carbon and a decent protein skimmer is your best friend. You don't necessarily need it but it helps out a ton. Good Luck!
 
Man I hate cyano. I had the same problem two years ago. It absolutely covered everything. No matter what it will take a while to get rid of, but what you have to do is

1) Cut way down on the lighting. Try to only have 7-8 hours instead of 11. Corals only need 7-8 hours as well and it will help with algae in the future. If you won't regularly be around to do it you can buy an automatic timer. The extra 5 hours doesn't do anything but help the algae grow.

2) Don't overfeed. You want to keep the tank very clean.

3) Good job using RO/DI water, it makes a much bigger difference than you think. With water changes, I'd try to change from doing 1 five gallon change per week to at least 1 ten gallon change per week, or 2 five gallon changes per week, or anything that you can do to increase the amount of water changes. The reasons for this are (obviously) to keep the tank cleaner but also if you do 2 changes a week the cyano won't be able to grow back as well because you will be sucking it off 2 times each week instead of 1.

4) I never used any, but I think there are some treatments to kill cyano.

Good luck with this! It really sucks.
 
7 am - 11 pm is a pretty long photoperiod (16 hours). Do you have a timer? Like other suggested, I'd cut the lighting back to 7-8 hours per day. Running GFO will help lower phosphates to slow new growth. Keep up with water changes and manually remove/siphon out as much as you can, it should pass.
 


Thanks for the replies...

Feeding: I was feeding way too often in the beginning. Anytime they begged I would feed. Then I backed off to one feeding every other day. I noticed the competition at feeding time got pretty intense, and eventually noticed some of the fish were forcing others to stay in hiding most of the time. So I went to one feeding per day. That has cut out all the aggression in the tank. Everyone is pretty much a model citizen now. I generally feed two pinches of flake about 2 min apart. They are eating both pinches within 1-2min. I rotate two different kinds of flake and throw in some frozen Mysis about once a week. Long story short, I don't want to back off again because it caused lots of aggression/ competition.

Lighting: Great news there.. that's easy. I don't have a timer, but need to get one soon anyway because I will be out of town for a bit. So I will bring the lighting back some for sure. I believe I will have them come on later in the day rather than waking up and turning them on myself. Can anyone recommend a timer? I'm broke so keep that in mind LOL.

If all else fails I'll ramp up the water changes until I find a spot that kicks it. I just hate doing more messing with it than I need to. I don't know that I've ever encountered a fish that really likes water change time lol.. its like givin a dog a bath, just stresses em out. So I hate doing them more than I have to.
 
i just got over a cyano outbreak.
syphon works well but actually bushing the rock will help dramatically.
Syphon, Scrub, Water change, and repeat.

gfo will help also
 
Home Depot sells a super cheap light timer. It has little tabs you pull up or push down for the times, so it is cheap and easy. So I had a biocube with T5 lights a while back and whenever it was time to replace the lights I would get a cyno outbreak. It was explained to me that having dimmed bulbs is the spectrum the cyano loves, I don't know if this is true but every time I would get new bulbs it would instantly clear up. Just a thought.
 
i think i paid $5 for my cheap timer from lowes. It has the push down tabs.... it is noisy though compared to the digital timer I used to have. I'll probably be replacing it eventually because the noise is annoying from the internal clock moving.
 
Well.. Im tired of the cyano lol so as much as I don't want to do either.. I have a timer on the light and running it only 8 hours a day and I'm doubling water changes.
 
The tank doesn't look that bad in that shot. For your next food you might want to switch to pellets. With the pellets, I can see where every pellet drops, and I know that every single one is being eaten. With flake or frozen, they tend to go everywhere, with some of that wasted (unless you have super-high flow and good filtration).

For what it's worth, most of the SPS experts whose tanks I have seen have had some cyano problems, even after decades of experience and the most expensive and fanciest tools, equipment, and foods. It's still pretty difficult to control cyano, particularly if you're feeding heavily. But cutting back on feeding is usually the easiest and cheapest way to reduce nutrients that impact cyano and other algeas.

If you wanted to try another route, something that has been discussed with some other reefers is dosing a competing bacteria, like microbacter7, prodibio biodigest, or zeobac to compete with the cyano for nutrients. Nothing is certain except death and taxes, but it's a pretty good theory, and worth researching. Though it costs money.

I would NOT recommend doing a chemiclean treatment except as a last resort, as it'll kill widespread bacteria, not just the cyano.

I also wonder if those rocks are slowly leaching out phosphates into the water column, and that's why the cyano is only on those rocks (though it's on that pump intake took, so who knows.).
 
The tank doesn't look that bad in that shot. For your next food you might want to switch to pellets. With the pellets, I can see where every pellet drops, and I know that every single one is being eaten. With flake or frozen, they tend to go everywhere, with some of that wasted (unless you have super-high flow and good filtration).

For what it's worth, most of the SPS experts whose tanks I have seen have had some cyano problems, even after decades of experience and the most expensive and fanciest tools, equipment, and foods. It's still pretty difficult to control cyano, particularly if you're feeding heavily. But cutting back on feeding is usually the easiest and cheapest way to reduce nutrients that impact cyano and other algeas.

If you wanted to try another route, something that has been discussed with some other reefers is dosing a competing bacteria, like microbacter7, prodibio biodigest, or zeobac to compete with the cyano for nutrients. Nothing is certain except death and taxes, but it's a pretty good theory, and worth researching.

Though it costs money.

I would NOT recommend doing a chemiclean treatment except as a last resort, as it'll kill widespread bacteria, not just the cyano.

I also wonder if those rocks are slowly leaching out phosphates into the water column, and that's why the cyano is only on those rocks (though it's on that pump intake took, so who knows.).

To keep it like that I'm constantly blasting it off the rocks and skimming it out with a net.. I'd like to get t figured out so that the tank stays clean.

I've thought about going to a pellet but I watch the flake pretty good and the fish don't let much go...and I have a pretty good cleanup crew. The cleaner shrinp and banded coral shrimp are always on the prowl for something to eat.
 


It seems to be getting better now that I've decreased the hours of light it's getting. I didn't want to take it from 16 hours to 7-8 all at once so I'm ramping up to that. Today I turned the light on at noon and will turn it off around 10. Seems to be helping.
 
My tank goes though phases whenever I see it start to breakout I just shut my lights off for 1-3 days run for a week or 2 then repeat. Has always worked for me
 
My tank goes though phases whenever I see it start to breakout I just shut my lights off for 1-3 days run for a week or 2 then repeat. Has always worked for me

I have thought about that, and lots of people have suggested it.. I just worry about the health of my corals and Id miss looking at my fish lol.
 
I did a little cleaning, stirred the sand bed and re scaped a bit. The cyano seems to be better, I'm not noticing near as much on the rocks.



 
I have thought about that, and lots of people have suggested it.. I just worry about the health of my corals and Id miss looking at my fish lol.

It's hard to watch a blackout period but I can say once the lights go back on and the bacteria is gone you will be stoked
 
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