Hello everyone, new here after being a lurker for years! Long story and a leaking tank later, I have now owned a 32 gallon biocube for ~1 month. Never had an issue with cyanobacteria in my previous 37 gallon standard aquarium, but I am now.
I’ve been battling it for a few weeks now, trying to figure out the root cause and I’m stumped and looking for help. Gonna give as much information as I can, so forgive me if it’s overkill. I just wanna kick this so I can start adding coral for the first time.
Info/my process so far:
-Tank is 8 years old at this point with about 40+ pounds of live rock
-Relatively low bio load- just a clownfish, firefish, and royal gramma. I’m also careful not to over feed
-Clean up crew could use a refresh- currently down to 3 blue leg hermits and 5 nassarius snails
-I do regular water changes and run a skimmer in chamber 1
-Intank media basket is in chamber 2 with chemipure elite, a filter sponge, and matrix biomedia (also just added the fuge basket with chaeto this week to finish my set up)
-I cut my white lights to 7hrs with 30 min ramp, blues are from 7:00am-10:00pm
-Started running the hydor koralia 750-850 to improve flow as my old 425 just wasn’t cutting it
-Have been dosing microbactr7 for about 2 weeks now per instructions on the bottle
Not really sure how to position the powerhead, so this could be part of the issue, there’s definitely lower flow in the corner of the tank most affected. I’ve taken many of the rocks out of the tank, scrubbed them and rinsed them in old tank water, but it just comes back. I’m aware of chemiclean, but it only seems like a bandaid and I’m not interested in it at this point. Any help is appreciated, pictures are attached. Thank you so much!
I’ve been battling it for a few weeks now, trying to figure out the root cause and I’m stumped and looking for help. Gonna give as much information as I can, so forgive me if it’s overkill. I just wanna kick this so I can start adding coral for the first time.
Info/my process so far:
-Tank is 8 years old at this point with about 40+ pounds of live rock
-Relatively low bio load- just a clownfish, firefish, and royal gramma. I’m also careful not to over feed
-Clean up crew could use a refresh- currently down to 3 blue leg hermits and 5 nassarius snails
-I do regular water changes and run a skimmer in chamber 1
-Intank media basket is in chamber 2 with chemipure elite, a filter sponge, and matrix biomedia (also just added the fuge basket with chaeto this week to finish my set up)
-I cut my white lights to 7hrs with 30 min ramp, blues are from 7:00am-10:00pm
-Started running the hydor koralia 750-850 to improve flow as my old 425 just wasn’t cutting it
-Have been dosing microbactr7 for about 2 weeks now per instructions on the bottle
Not really sure how to position the powerhead, so this could be part of the issue, there’s definitely lower flow in the corner of the tank most affected. I’ve taken many of the rocks out of the tank, scrubbed them and rinsed them in old tank water, but it just comes back. I’m aware of chemiclean, but it only seems like a bandaid and I’m not interested in it at this point. Any help is appreciated, pictures are attached. Thank you so much!