Cyano Outbreak!!!! HELP PLEASE

[helpbrady]

Hello everyone!
I have a 35g hex FOWLR with a serious blue-green algae or cyano problem! The tank is about 5 months old with about 20 lbs of live rock and 1-1/2" crushed coral substrate. Started out with running just a mechanical filter (pengiun 200) and T8 15w 8000k flourescent light. It was doin good for a while until a couple months ago some green algae started appearing. Researched it alot and found out it was cyano, and now its everywhere! So, to correct this problem I researched and talked to so called "experts" haha and this is what I did: 1.) Tried the 3 days of no light which killed most of it but it grew back even worse. 2.) Bought the new Marineland Reef capable LED lighting because I was told I didnt have the right spectrum of light. 3.) Tested for high phosphates (app. 2.0ppm) so I bought a Phosban Reactor and put in some BRS GFO media. Now its at or about 0ppm and again I did the 3 days no light which same result. 4.) Did 20% water changes with RO once a week and a couple 50% changes; vacuuming about 1/3 of the substrate each time. 5.) Bought a circulator pump (700gph) because i was told i didn;t have enough flow. ALL this to no avail now its everywhere.
Feeding every other day: brine, squid, krill all frozen (hense phosphate problem haha)
Water Params:
Temp: 76
Salinity: 1.022... was 1.024 until the latest batch of RO water
PH: 8.2
Amm: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 15-20ish
Phos: near 0
Livestock:
Dogface puffer (I know they will outgrow the tank)
Sailfin tang
clownfish
watchman goby
camel shrimp
brittle star
Equipment:
Marineland Reef Capable LED Lighting 18"
Marineland Penguin 200 w/biowheel
Phosban Reactor w/BRS GFO media
Seaclone protien skimmer (looking for better skimmer)
Aqueon Circulation pump 700gph

Looks much worse in person!!!
Anything to help me out I would REALLY appreciate!!!!

 

[monsinour]

No snails?
Only 1 PH? I would look to adding a second PH lower in the tank as I cannot see the 1 that is in the tank based on pic. Hex tanks, and other special shapes, have a problem with flow.
A tang in a 35? S/He is a baby fish right?
It might be HA and not cyno. But a pic straight on instead of on a downward angle to make it easier to see would be needed.

 

[siptang]

Wow, looks like you did everything in the book and I'm stomped as you.
Monsinuor is right about the current flow, maybe adding a small power head might be an good option. (I have 29 gallon hex myself)
Only other thing that I can recommend is to scrub the live rock.
I know it's bit different but that's what I did for hairline algae problem that refused to go away.
I will keep my eyes out for this thread to see what progress on your tank.
good luck!

 

[helpbrady]

I had 3 turbo snails but they died one right after another when the outbreak got bad... Coincidence??? I havent put anymore in since. Oh! I forgot I have a one blue hermit crab left out of two. I found the one out of his shell. I think the smaller one attcked him becuase he took his shell! haha
The puffer and the sailfin are babies no bigger than 3in long. I plan to build a much bigger system down the road.
I have the powerhead at the top at an angle shooting down. I suppose I could put another one in but at 700 gph the fish have a hard time swimming around as it is.
After the first die off with 3 days of no light I thought I had it licked so I scrubbed the whole tank down including all the rock and the substrate but it just grew back even worse!
Hopefully these help...
The two maxijet PHs are for the phosban and the skimmer. The outflow of both are very little.

 

[helpbrady]

Here are some close ups.
I thought it was Hair algae at first, then after more research I found it could be cyano. I'm still not sure. The one pic has hairlike stuff growing.. haha I have no idea.

 

[slice]

Cyano, no doubt about it. The green flavor, but cyano.
Is your substrate coarse? The first pics almost look like very coarse gravel, not sand. If it is coarse, can you see particles of crud, crap and poo in it?
If it is, you may have a nitrate factory going on.

 

[sparty059]

Definitely following along on this one. I'm having the same problem as you but literally starting to cover the sandbed. It has become out of control in my tank which is why I've decided to start doing 10% water changes twice a week. I'm hoping that resolves the problem but I'm not holding my breath. I've got a feeling it's going to be the same situation as you and it'll just have to be removal of bad rock. However, how do you know which spectrum you need? I'm not sure if this is something I'm encountering now. One last thing, how well did the 3 days of no light work out for you? I'm tempted to do that but I have three corals in my system (Hammer Coral, Sun Coral, and Green Star Polyps). I'm not sure if sacrificing the corals to rid the massive outbreak of green hair algae and cyano is really worth it in my case.

 

[sparty059]

Slice, I have that problem where my sand isn't really sand but a mixture of sand and some other type of "sand" that looks like little pebbles. I can see a build up in my sandbed. I regret buying that type of sand and wish I would have spent my money on the Florida sand instead! What's the solution in that case?

 

[slice]

Lets hope others with more experience will chime in, but when I had a small bout with the red flavor of cyano, it was mainly due to improper flow along with not rinsing the frozen food. I had HA on the rock, cyano on the sand.
I increased the water changes, started rinsing the food well and siphoned off any cyano and all build up of detritus on the sand. Repositioning the powerheads/increasing overall flow will help. Did you also notice your cyano being more in areas with less flow?
IMO, HA and cyano is a natural re-balancing. Nutrients have been added and the tank is merely coping with it the best way it can. Find the source and eliminate/reduce it.

 

[1guydude]

in reef tanks u can turn the lights off one day a week....think of it as a stormy day on the reef. Also try rinsing foods, a said before, just wat i read nothing i have tried yet other than the rinsing. I have a lil GHA! Wat do u have for CUC brady? Try emeralds and snails, the big turbos are wat ive had best experience with!

 

[sparty059]

Ok, so my situation is possibly the same. I have red cyano on the bed, and GH on the rocks. For the most part my tuxedo urchin has chewed up most of the GHA on the most problematic rock, but it is still there none the less causing many problems. I rinse all my frozen foods now every time I feed and make sure I don't over feed as well. The red cyano does show up in the less flowing areas, but I don't really know how I can resolve this situation. I say that because I have a total of four powerheads in my tank right now. I have two on each side, one is a Koralia 1400 near the bottom and closer to the top to move around the water is a K1 (I believe... which is 750GPH). I have a 150G tank and I don't really know how I can add more movement. I may just have poorly place rock work but it seems to be the corner on both sides that get the most cyano. If I don't manually remove the cyano/GHA will it eventually go away on it's own with the water changes and all the right steps? Or do I have to remove the existing cyano on my own to get the process started?
PS - SORRY HELPBRADY - I don't mean to Hi-Jack your thread, this is just a huge topic for me too.

 

[slice]

The flow problem I had caused a build up of nutrients in "dead" areas. This build up was a buffet table for the cyano.
When I say "flow" I do not mean gph turnover, I mean the meaningful movement of water in all areas of the tank.
At one time I had 4350gph turnover in my 47g tank, but flow sucked. Proper flow will keep detritus suspended in the water column until your filtration can get it out. My problem areas were also in the back corners.
If I were you, I would take a toothbrush and scrub your rock of as much HA as possible, while a good power filter is going to take any particulate out of the water. I even took my fish net and swished it around to manually catch as much out of the water as possible. I would also siphon (as in big waterchange siphon) all the crap and cyano off your sandbed. I've done water changes not because I need the change, but to allow this siphoning of the sandbed.
Then do all the nutrient reducing procedures we have discussed.
I would not kill the lights, but thats just me. I've read posts from noted experts say that killing the lights to inhibit unwanted things also inhibits wanted things and the end result may be moot. You gotta fix the source, not just treat symptoms.

 

[monsinour]

I fixed my cyno by moving my rocks around a little and I drastically reduced the amount of phytoplankton I fed to the tank. My cyno is now gone and shows no signs of coming back. Flow + nutrients are the 2 big contributors to cyno problems. Only having 1 HP in a "round" tank makes for intersting flow. I know its 700 gph, but is the flow going everywhere? take a piece of ribbon and cut it long enough so that you can tie it to a rock and have that ribbon stick up about a foot or so. drop the rock down to the bottom of the tank and wait. If the ribbon moves, there is flow. Reposition that ribbon rock in several places. I would imagine that the top portion of your tank has great flow. I would also imagine that the bottom part of your tank has little to no flow. If you can, take the 700 GPH back and get yourself some smallish korilia PHs. Say the evo 240s or the 1's. Set up 2 kinda low in the tank (filter and skimmer can be flow for top portion) pointing kinda at one another.
If taking the 700 back is not an option, lower it down into the tank more so that it just barely makes the sand move. Then raise it half an inch.

 

[sparty059]

See what's just what I don't understand then. I have the two 700gph powerheads at the bottom on each side. Just low enough so it won't cause the sand to stir. Actually, its about a foot from reaching the bottom and then tilted reaching the center of the sandbed from both sides. However, I'm wondering if I place it pretty much on the bottom of the tank a few inches off the sandbed if that might work and as you mentioned tilt it up slightly. The problem is that I have a tall and wide tank its about 2 1/2' tall and 16" deep, so it takes a lot to keep from any dead spots. Especially how I have my rock work placed... as I said before I might just have to re work the whole rock layout... which annoys me but its going to happen soon regardless because of the move. I'm ultimately debating just throwing all my rock out and starting with new rock when I reset the whole tank... that'll be an expensive redo though. :-/

 

[2quills]

Dead spots or not, if you have an uncontrolable cyano problem then you need to track down the source of your high nutrients/phosphates. Sparty, I think you're a perfect candidate for a algea turf scrubber.

 

[helpbrady]

Slice-
the substrate is very coarse and was recommended to keep ph stable. i thought about adding sand over the crushed coral or even replacing all of it with sand but that would mean totally dismantling the whole tank and killing most of the amphipods living in the substrate which there is tons of those swimmin around.
Monsinour-
I think I will try scrubbing all the cyano off the rock and moving everything around a bit to allow more flow through the rocks. Plus I will move that 700 gph down farther down and try a different flow direction. You're right, the top has plenty of flow and the bottom front has some substrate wiggling but behind all the rockwork and in the cavities has zero flow. I don't understand because the cavities with no flow at all have none of this stuff growing on it. It seems like the spots with the most flow around it seem to be growing faster. haha
So lets see if I understand, haha. Being that there is insufficient flow over the substrate and the rock means the detritus and excess food are landing on something rather than being suspended in the water so the filter will pick it up?
I read everyone saying there is excess nutrients in the water feeding the cyano but what nutrients? what more can I test for? should i bother rinsing food even tho I have a phosphate reactor?
I really appreciate the help guys! This stuff is very interesting and fun when everything is working right!! haha

 

[sparty059]

Corey, I wish I could but I don't have any room in my sump for that. And from what I understand I can't keep it in my dt with the canopy on. Is that correct?

 

[2quills]

Quote:
Originally Posted by helpbrady http:///forum/thread/385725/cyano-outbreak-help-please#post_3384146
Slice-
the substrate is very coarse and was recommended to keep ph stable. i thought about adding sand over the crushed coral or even replacing all of it with sand but that would mean totally dismantling the whole tank and killing most of the amphipods living in the substrate which there is tons of those swimmin around.
Monsinour-
I think I will try scrubbing all the cyano off the rock and moving everything around a bit to allow more flow through the rocks. Plus I will move that 700 gph down farther down and try a different flow direction. You're right, the top has plenty of flow and the bottom front has some substrate wiggling but behind all the rockwork and in the cavities has zero flow. I don't understand because the cavities with no flow at all have none of this stuff growing on it. It seems like the spots with the most flow around it seem to be growing faster. haha
So lets see if I understand, haha. Being that there is insufficient flow over the substrate and the rock means the detritus and excess food are landing on something rather than being suspended in the water so the filter will pick it up?
I read everyone saying there is excess nutrients in the water feeding the cyano but what nutrients? what more can I test for? should i bother rinsing food even tho I have a phosphate reactor?
I really appreciate the help guys! This stuff is very interesting and fun when everything is working right!! haha
Probably one of the biggest contributers to cyano is phosphates. The problem is that once it's in your tank it's hard to detect it with test kits because they cyano is actually feeding off of it. So if you're test show up low but you have cyano than you can bet their not as low as you think.
I always rinse my frozen foods because they water that they are frozen in is loaded with excess nutrient. Kicking up the flow doesn't always mean that it will solve your problem. Check your water source for TDS (total dissolved solids) as well. What is your lighting cycle like?

 

[monsinour]

I would imagine that the type of food (non rinsed) and the amount of food (maybe too much) combined with the low flow could be the source of the problem. I would bet that if you rinsed first and cut the food delivery in half + a good syphoning/waterchange + more flow (however that is achieved) your cyno problem would go away.

 

[helpbrady]

Lighting cycle was on about 10 hrs a day but now I only turn it on for only about 3 or 4hrs a day sometimes less.
I get my water from a lfs who claims its RO/DI but how do I test for TDS? is there a test kit? if there is TDS in the water how can I filter it out because thats the only place I can get RO water short of buying my own unit.
I will definitely rinse the food b4 i feed then from now on.