cyno bacteria

[chilly05willy]

Hello,

My tank has this red slime algae that covers rocks, corals and sand.... I know it is cyano bacteria, but I have no idea what caused this. I just tested my water, and it has absolutely no nitrate or phosphate.... I have no clue what is causing this problem. I don't have a lot of it, just some, but they don't seem to go away! And it's killing some corals... If anyone has any suggestions on how I can get rid of it completely, it would be appreciated. I have tried syphoning all of it out, but the next day, more of it just pop up. I'm stuck :(

Will

[chilly05willy]

I have pretty good flow, 1 x 1200 maxi and 2 x 600 maxi on a wavemaster pro and my return has pretty decent flow too (Hyperdrive 18)... It's gotten to the point where I have to manually brush it off every day... Does lighting have anything to do with it?

[brahm]

honestly.. get rid of some fish! Your going to run into the same problem i did.

[chilly05willy]

Yea, I was being a retard when I was stocking up on fish.... Wayyyyyyy too many, but I thought cyano is caused by high phos/nitrates, old lights? Other than the cyano, there's no undesirable aglae in the tank.

[brahm]

Originally posted by chilly05willy
Yea, I was being a retard when I was stocking up on fish.... Wayyyyyyy too many, but I thought cyano is caused by high phos/nitrates, old lights? Other than the cyano, there's no undesirable aglae in the tank.

cyano is caused my phosphates, wich is caused by food, and fish poop, (in most circumstance)

[MrKrispy]

I had a bad bought in my 10g reef (suprise) but I only had a neon goby. I used chemi-clean that stuff is friggin awesome, no joke. One treatment, follow the directions, gone.

AW sells it. $12. Worth every penny.

AND YES, I DID MY WATER CHANGES>

[sdboogie]

When I had a cyano problem, I did a bunch of research. I wasn't skimming and found that dissolved organic material was the source of my problem. I slapped on a cheap prizm and no more cyano. Do TDS meters measure this kind of thing? I also increased my flow and added a layer of more coarse substrate to keep the sand dunes down. This was without fish, just crabs and coral. I can't imagine what a few fish would do to the dissolved organic levels.

[chilly05willy]

Try 13 fish (I'm going to have to bring out my 80g again, lol)..... I have a good skimmer on it, a G2 with sedra 5000, way more than sufficient on a 40g/20sump. Well, I think it has gotten a lot better. I changed 10g of water last night and kept the lights on for a shorter period of time. I'm still confused though, I keep on hearing it is due to phosphates, but I have absolutely ZERO. Oh well, whatever, as long as it's gone and not killing anymore of my zoos, I'm happy. Thanks for helping me out guys!

Will

[wwxc]

Once cyano gets going it doesn't need a measurable level of phosphates or nitrates to keep going. It'll use whatever is left in the tank to "feed" off of. Here's what works:

1. Remove as much detritus from the tank as you can. Excess organics are the number one cause of cyano. I'm guessing you have a sand bed thats clogged with crap with all those fish.

2. Up the flow in areas where the cyano is

3. Keep on skimming

3. Siphon the cyano out of the tank as often as you can

4. Because cyano is a bacteria, it can be killed with antibiotics. Use erythromycin (found in Maracyn I think, or in one of the commercial red slime remover products). This product will kill cyano dead, its up to you whether or not it comes back.

Good luck. If this stuff doesn't solve the problem, then you have a larger problem that will require a more drastic solution.

[brahm]

Originally posted by chilly05willy
Try 13 fish (I'm going to have to bring out my 80g again, lol)..... I have a good skimmer on it, a G2 with sedra 5000, way more than sufficient on a 40g/20sump. Well, I think it has gotten a lot better. I changed 10g of water last night and kept the lights on for a shorter period of time. I'm still confused though, I keep on hearing it is due to phosphates, but I have absolutely ZERO. Oh well, whatever, as long as it's gone and not killing anymore of my zoos, I'm happy. Thanks for helping me out guys!

Will

There are two kinds of phosphates one you can't detect.

[MrKrispy]

I would avoid antibiotics, if you are comfortable with chemicals I am telling you, chemi-clean is amazing. I would avoid siphoning out the cyano too, that will just spread it around. Cyano is VERY difficult to completely get rid of using water changes and skimming.

[wwxc]

So you'd rather have it all in the tank when it dies from the Chemi-Clean? Doesn't make much sense to me.

Because Cyano uses phosphate and nitrate as "nutrients," by removing the cyano physically you'll essentially be removing whatever phosphate and nitrate is now in the Cyano. Trust me, there is plenty of cyano in the water column as it is (its actually a common and natural tank inhabitant), there's no danger of spreading it around any more by removing it.

[nalbar]

phosphate is the key nutrient for all algae's. algae CANNOT grow if there is no phospate in your tank. and phosphate is in ALL organic material. thusly ....organics=phosphate. just because you cannot measure it does not mean it is not there. i got rid of mine with a phosphate pad i picked up at AW. it cost about 5 bucks and i still have half of it laying around. IMO pads are the easiest to work with.


nalbar

[MrKrispy]

cyano isn't algae, wrong argument :)


wwxc, you are supposed to do water changes during the treatment with chemi-clean. That nixes the waste/dead junk. Of course I have a 20g, easier to do 25% water changes than a 300g!

[wwxc]

Agreed, but by your logic you're only removing 25% of the dead junk if it dissolves into the water. Why not get it out of there beforehand?

[Fo8sQuaD]

Eh, as long as your methods work there is no need for argument. To each his own.

[jetor]

Originally posted by chilly05willy
Try 13 fish (I'm going to have to bring out my 80g again, lol)..... I have a good skimmer on it, a G2 with sedra 5000, way more than sufficient on a 40g/20sump. Well, I think it has gotten a lot better. I changed 10g of water last night and kept the lights on for a shorter period of time. I'm still confused though, I keep on hearing it is due to phosphates, but I have absolutely ZERO. Oh well, whatever, as long as it's gone and not killing anymore of my zoos, I'm happy. Thanks for helping me out guys!

Will

Dude Will,

You have WAY too many fish (not sure on size) in that tank .........might as well keep them in a toilet cause that is what you got with all those fish polluting that small water column.........by my count you have 5 more fish than I do and my tank is 5 times the size of yours.......you are going to be fighting a constant nutrient battle (no matter how effecient the filteration) until you reduce your fish load. As far as Chemi Clean goes, it does work well (turn off your skimmer or it will just pull it all out and overflow your cup) but you are not addressing the true problem(s).

JT

[chilly05willy]

The fish I have are tiny. The biggest one is a blue tang, which is still a baby, like 1 1/2 in long. When the fish gets bigger, I'm bringing back my 80.... probably in a couple months.

[BallZDeeP]

yea i have the brown crap too. I am in my cycling phase@2.5 weeks. I have 2 small chromis, turbo, hermits, snails and some mussles. Is this normal for someone going through a cycle?

[MrKrispy]

yup

[airsoftin]

I am using chemi-clean at the moment to get rid of my red slime nightmare. I have turned off the PS but will the sock going into the sump pull any of the chemi-clean out of the water? Also im going on day 3 and there has been no change in the red slime. How long does it take to start kicking in?

Thanks,
Mike

[nalbar]

in two days it should all be gone. if some is still there hit it again in a couple of days.


chemi-clean is the way to beat this stuff. dont scrimp on how much you put it, put more than the directions say. then hit it again if you have to.



nalbar

[SDFISHMAN]

Hey Will I had that problem a few weeks ago.. I called you and you told me to increase my flow in the tank and turn the lights out for a couple days.. I also bought a blenny I don't know if he helped but it was all gone in 3 days.. Turning off the lights did the trick for me..

[airsoftin]

If I turn the lights off for 2-3 days will this hurt any of the corals, fish ect...

[SDFISHMAN]

I was talking to a few prople at the LFS and they said think of it as a storm sometimes its stormy and corals dont get sun for up to a week but don't leave your lights off for more then 4 or 5 days.. I left mine off for 3 days and increased the flow no problems since...

[North]

replace the bulbs if they are old, either get rid of some fish or do more frequent water changse, increase your flow even more! and u shall be good. there can't be any dead spots of water movement, it grows where it can attach.

[MFR]

with a bunch of SPS. Make sure you skim "wet". You should be dumping the collection cup every other day. Also, keep up with the water changes & don't feed too much;). I have always kept a bunch of fish & RBTAS etc., & find when I slack on the above I get a break out.

Best,

MFR

[Reefkeeper]

Hmm...so everyone thinks this chemi-clean is a pretty good way to go. There was a little cyano in the system I bought from the other guy on a few of the LR's. I havent had a true cyano break out in any of my setups in a LONG time. (Since 1991, if memory serves) Thus seeing a little of the stuff in this system drives me nuts.

The only other thing I need to think of doing is replacing the bulbs in the fixture. That is the one problem with buying used, you have to assume that bulbs are about done in these fixtures.

[mramc3]

Will,
I had the same problem with crazy GHA as well with the cyano. It was on my 29G. I did two 5G water changes over a period of 2 two weeks. But my lighting down from 8hours to about 6. After that I got a couple of Emeralds and some turbos for the GHA.

The lights and the overfeeding seemed to be the cause of breakouts for me. I used a turkey baster to blast the cyano off the corals.

I also figured I wasnt skimming to well, so I cleaned that bad boy out and added airstones to the intake chamber of my CPR Bak Pak. My cyano breakout in the tank was completely gone in two weeks.

Just in my experience. HTH. I did not use chemiclean BTW

[chilly05willy]

Thanks for all the info and input :) but this thread was started over a year ago, haha. I don't have any problem with cyano (I have none). I only have 3 fish in my 80 gallon, and 5 fish in a 240 gallon system. I have bare bottom, no sand, so that helps out a lot. Thanks again.

What I did when I had cyano bad:

1. Shut off my lights for 2 days, then only lit my tank 2 hrs a day, and increasing the lighting by 2 hrs a day till it reached 8 hrs again.

2. Added more power heads in my tank, blowing it at my sand

3. Taking the cyano out by net.

4. Stopped feeding the tank for around 3 weeks. No flake, no DTs phyto, etc. I still ran my calcium reactor though, but tweaked the CO2 down a bit

5 When I tore down my old fourty, I got rid of all my fish except for my blenny, sixline and royal gramma.