Cyanobacteria

[TiffanyNicole]

So we've had our few sw tank setup for long over a year. Exactly how long, I'm not sure. Recently, we've had an abundance of red gunk covering our corals, rocks, the glass on the tank, hob filter, and sometimes even on the fish. From a little google research I believe it may be cyanobacteria. I will post a video with one of my lenses, so that everyone can see it before confirming it's cyanobacteria because I'm not positive.

Once I noticed this stuff forming, our pulsing xenia also stopped being as active and pulsing like it once did. I'm going to provide all the information I think is pertinent and let me know if there is anything I'm missing.

30g tank.

Equipment I'm running-
hygger mini wave maker 1600gph
seachem tidal 55
3x G5 aquastar 95w full spectrum lights (off amazon, smatfarm is brand I guess?...)

Light master is programmed sunrise 1000-1100, sunset 1900-2100.

sunlight 14000k cool white 0%, 450nm deep sea blue+457nm dark blue 80%, 430nm indigo blue 80%, 420nm purple 5%, 3000k warm white 5%, 500nm green 5%

moonlight 0% across the board

stock is an assorted cuc, 1 cc seastar, 1 blue damsel, 1 3 spot domino damsel, 1 clownfish, 1 royal gramma

substrate is crushed coral (honestly don't remember brand but it was some established in bag board at lfs name brand stuff

about 30lb of lr, lots of pulsing xenia, some gsp

water test from today are the following:

high range ph 8.0
ammonia 0
nitrites 0
nitrates 0
calcium 340ppm
kh carbonate hardness 7dkh
phosphates 0
salinity 29ppt

So, I see the calcium is low from what I researched. I also see my salinity is a little low. I went a very long time without doing wc on this tank. Reason being, the nitrates always tested practically nothing. I'm not sure if that's abnormal for a sw tank. I'm well aware that wouldn't be normal for a fw because some sort of nitrates would have to be present to show a full completed cycle. Now in the last 3-4 days I have done 2 5g wc. I thought maybe it was time I started to get on the wc and that would help this cyano go away. The first wc I did I accidentally put enough salt in the batch for 4g and not 5g, so I'm assuming that's the low salinity. I did the proper measurement for the 2nd wc, and I have a third batch of water mixing now, and added a bit extra salt to balance the salinity.

I've also been using a turkey baster to try to remove the cyano from the rock and coral, but I feel like there is so much it's just suspending it into the water until it inevidably lands back where it started because it's more than the tidal could keep up with imo. Should I be doing something to increase the calcium?

The water perimeters don't seem bad at all to me from what I'm reading they should be. Maybe the pH needs to raise a touch, and the calcium needs to come up, the salinity a hair, and the kh maybe needs to come up a little? I'm starting to think it may have something to do with the light settings? Frankly, I have no clue what I'm doing with the light configuration and I tried figuring it out once a while back and it was practically impossible to find direct instructions on what it needed to be so I've kind of tweaked it based on what a lfs guy said a few years back, and it seemed to be okay so I've left it be for a while.

Any input is greatly appreciated. My Tank

I’m very new to the salt water world, but when I had this problem my lfs suggested a conch to stir the substrate, and in two days it was gone!

 

[jonnymod]

I’m very new to the salt water world, but when I had this problem my lfs suggested a conch to stir the substrate, and in two days it was gone!

Hey there. Welcome to the noobs club. Glad you found a way to resolve your issue. I wish it were as easy as adding a critter to rectify my dino/cyano issue, but I'm doubting something as simple as adding a conch would fix everything. The substrate is actually the least effected spot in my tank.

 

[Dburr1014]

See I get you saying if I like the lights leave em, but I rather not have them how I "like them," I rather them setup to optimize the corals I'm trying to keep. Is it not as simple as telling someone the 6 spectrums or colors on the channels and saying "this should be here, and this here" for specific corals? There has to be some sort of formula right?... Like earlier you mention you did something specific with your lights for your sps. Okay, what was it, and how do you know that specific color/spectrum whatever does that? I was always under the impression the lighting was one of the most important parts of sw and corals, but no one seems too interested in what my lights are at.

Well, I noticed you have 12k white lights off. Me personally would have them on.

The major light is blue. Then we adjust the spectrum to our liking.
Is really helpful to have a par meter but most people do not.
I own a PARwise. This shows the spectrum real time as I use it.
It's real handy.
Funny thing is, my tank looks white in person not this blue. Orange filter helps with pics.




Lots of people set the blue, put whites at 50% of the blue setting(or lower %) violet at or near white for the coral pop.
Red and greens 10% or lower than the blue channel.

Here is a screen Pic when I was messing with some T5 bulbs.

 

[jonnymod]

Well, I noticed you have 12k white lights off. Me personally would have them on.

The major light is blue. Then we adjust the spectrum to our liking.
Is really helpful to have a par meter but most people do not.
I own a PARwise. This shows the spectrum real time as I use it.
It's real handy.
Funny thing is, my tank looks white in person not this blue. Orange filter helps with pics.




Lots of people set the blue, put whites at 50% of the blue setting(or lower %) violet at or near white for the coral pop.
Red and greens 10% or lower than the blue channel.

Here is a screen Pic when I was messing with some T5 bulbs.

That's very helpful info! So your par meter, does it have a part that literally watches the tank like a lense, and then it sends the data to your laptop????

 

[jonnymod]

 

[TheMimic]

I can see dinos seem to be the general consensus here, so I don't know how much this will help, but I had an outbreak of cyano a little while ago, and my LFS recommended lowering my (white channel) lights to less than 50% at the day's peak, and adding MicroBacter7. Following the instructions on the bottle, my substrate was cleared in about a week, and not I only have a few stubborn spots on my rock. That stuff is amazing. I recommend it hands down for cyano, maybe it'll help with dinos?

(Sorry if someone already posted this, +1 to their post, in that case.)

 

[jonnymod]

I can see dinos seem to be the general consensus here, so I don't know how much this will help, but I had an outbreak of cyano a little while ago, and my LFS recommended lowering my (white channel) lights to less than 50% at the day's peak, and adding MicroBacter7. Following the instructions on the bottle, my substrate was cleared in about a week, and not I only have a few stubborn spots on my rock. That stuff is amazing. I recommend it hands down for cyano, maybe it'll help with dinos?

(Sorry if someone already posted this, +1 to their post, in that case.)

I'm really not sure if it helps with dino. I feel like the progress is going good so far with increaseing the po4, no3, and blackout. I may have to grab some of that though because as I examine the tank during this progress, I can see a few small cyano spots on the rocks. Since the dino is slowing vanishing, I'm about to more clearly see the rocks, and that's how I notice the few minor cyano spots. Pretty sure it's cyano too, cause it's not like sludge like the dino, it's just a solid dark red color spot on the rocks. I do feel like what I'm doing right now is helping with cyano as well as the dino so for now I'm gonna continue what I've been doing and tweak as I go.

Okay guys, tonight the po4 is around the .25ppm on the chart, and the n03 is around 5.0 on the chart. I went ahead and dosed the same amount again tonight. The coral and rocks pretty much seem almost clear of the dino completely. I do see a few small cyano spots on the rocks. The dino that is attached to equipment and back of glass I went ahead and hit with the baster and dislodged it all tonight hoping the hob would catch it in the watetr column.

Now here's my question. When I check water tomorrow say I'm coming in a little higher (assuming based on current progress) than the 5.0 on n03 and .25 on the p04, do I discontinue with the dosing? And at that point, think it's a good idea to kick lights back on and conitnue to check the n03 and p04? So I guess my question is what my next move needs to be at this point.

 

[Dburr1014]

I'm really not sure if it helps with dino. I feel like the progress is going good so far with increaseing the po4, no3, and blackout. I may have to grab some of that though because as I examine the tank during this progress, I can see a few small cyano spots on the rocks. Since the dino is slowing vanishing, I'm about to more clearly see the rocks, and that's how I notice the few minor cyano spots. Pretty sure it's cyano too, cause it's not like sludge like the dino, it's just a solid dark red color spot on the rocks. I do feel like what I'm doing right now is helping with cyano as well as the dino so for now I'm gonna continue what I've been doing and tweak as I go.

Okay guys, tonight the po4 is around the .25ppm on the chart, and the n03 is around 5.0 on the chart. I went ahead and dosed the same amount again tonight. The coral and rocks pretty much seem almost clear of the dino completely. I do see a few small cyano spots on the rocks. The dino that is attached to equipment and back of glass I went ahead and hit with the baster and dislodged it all tonight hoping the hob would catch it in the watetr column.

Now here's my question. When I check water tomorrow say I'm coming in a little higher (assuming based on current progress) than the 5.0 on n03 and .25 on the p04, do I discontinue with the dosing? And at that point, think it's a good idea to kick lights back on and conitnue to check the n03 and p04? So I guess my question is what my next move needs to be at this point.

As long as you get minimum po4 0.1 and no3 5, you don't have to dose.

 

[jonnymod]

Hey guys. Hope everyone is doing well. So tonight is the 3rd day of black out. Here's the current test results for tonight.

p04 .25
n03 15-20

I'm going to discontinue dosing with neo for the time being as it appears we are where we need to be on those two perimeters.

Let's take a look at next steps....

When I originally tested all the water perimeters the kh read 7dkh. I rea donline ideal marine tanks are 8-12. I do have some seachem reef builder that says it raises kh without effecting ph. Is this something I should start to dose up to the 8-12 range?

The calcium was also at 340ppm and I read I should be shooting for 400-500. Same question. Should I look into one of the chems from the same brand line as the neo I used for p04 and n03 to increase the calcium?

Last question. This one's aimed at you @Dburr1014 . I'd like to get the lights back on and see how we fair. Based on the information you provided earlier in this thread here's what I came up with:

14000k cool white 30% violet 420 violet 410 25%
royal blue 450 blue 470 60% 3000k warm white 30%
violet blue 430 470 25% 500 green 54%

Now am I reading your guidelines accurately?? I set blue to 60% then whites to 50% of the blues, violets at or near blue so a little lower, and green 10% lower than blue so 54%.

I read online a good cycle is 1:8:1 aka 10hr which is in the middle of 8-12hr cycle which is natural in the wild right? So I have sunrise 12pm-1pm 8 hours of day and sunset 9pm-10pm sound okay?

 

[Dburr1014]

Anything that raises KH will also raise PH, even for a little while.
KH 7 is not horrible, raise it up slowly. Max 0.5 daily.

The light numbers look okay except green. I would not put them at 54%

Perhaps that was a typo. 10% of 60 would be 6%

Blue 60%
cool white 30%
warm white 20~25%
violet 20~25%
green 6%

The numbers are not set in stone, play with it if you don't like it.

 

[jonnymod]

Anything that raises KH will also raise PH, even for a little while.
KH 7 is not horrible, raise it up slowly. Max 0.5 daily.

The light numbers look okay except green. I would not put them at 54%

Perhaps that was a typo. 10% of 60 would be 6%

Blue 60%
cool white 30%
warm white 20~25%
violet 20~25%
green 6%

The numbers are not set in stone, play with it if you don't like it.

Okay I tweaked them accordingly. We'll see how it does when they start up today.

So is this keeping reef tanks? And by that I mean constantly checking all these and dosing with various chems to get them where you need them?

channel 1 14000k cool white 30%
channel 2 royal blue 450 blue 470 60%
channel 3 violet blue 430 470 20%
channel 4 violet 420 violet 410 25%
channel 5 3000k warm white 20%
channel 6 500 green 6%

I'm gonna dose with that reef builder to get that kh up a little and honestly even if it does raise ph a hair I think it was a hair low on the initial test.

Should I start dosing to raise the calcium you think?

 

[Dburr1014]

Okay I tweaked them accordingly. We'll see how it does when they start up today.

So is this keeping reef tanks? And by that I mean constantly checking all these and dosing with various chems to get them where you need them?

channel 1 14000k cool white 30%
channel 2 royal blue 450 blue 470 60%
channel 3 violet blue 430 470 20%
channel 4 violet 420 violet 410 25%
channel 5 3000k warm white 20%
channel 6 500 green 6%

I'm gonna dose with that reef builder to get that kh up a little and honestly even if it does raise ph a hair I think it was a hair low on the initial test.

Should I start dosing to raise the calcium you think?

I would dose up the calcium. Not at the same time as alkalinity, wait 20-30 minutes.

Coral take up alkalinity and calcium. The more coral = more taking up = more dosing.
Once calcium and alkalinity are in balance they get used sorta equally. This is why most people test alkalinity once a week and calcium monthly. They may be different rates but close enough rate.
Dose alkalinity in a powerhead or fast moving water to disperse it quickly.

https://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-04/rhf/feature/index.php

 

[jonnymod]

I would dose up the calcium. Not at the same time as alkalinity, wait 20-30 minutes.

Coral take up alkalinity and calcium. The more coral = more taking up = more dosing.
Once calcium and alkalinity are in balance they get used sorta equally. This is why most people test alkalinity once a week and calcium monthly. They may be different rates but close enough rate.
Dose alkalinity in a powerhead or fast moving water to disperse it quickly.

https://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-04/rhf/feature/index.php

Just purchased some brightwell calcion. Will be here tomorrow to get the calcium numbers up. I'm dosing .5 teaspoon of reef builder today to get the alkalinity up. It's a little over the suggested dose since that's for 40g and the tanks 30g, but I went a little over since the alkalinity seemed fairly low at 7.

Lights will be on shortly. Curious to see how the corals react since they're not covered in dino.

 

[jonnymod]

So yesterday was the first day the lights were back up. The tank itself looks a lot clearer. The dino appears to be almost all gone minus the build up on the back glass of the tank remaining some. I'm not sure if that is dino tho or some sort of algae I need to just clean off. I'll provide a little video. There is still little bitty traces of what I think may be the dino sludgy stuff on the xenia but not a lot. My concern is my xenia isn't back to it's once healthy pulsing activity. Someone told me because I increased the flow with the second powerhead the xenia likely won't pulse like it once was because it only pulses in low flow conditions. Is that true?

I did a full water test last night.

kh was at 8dkh or 143.2ppm
calcium was at 340mgL/ ppm
phosphates were still above 0 bubt a little below the .25 line.
Nitrates 20ppm

I dosed another round of neophos at 4.38 to ensure they're maintaining the level above zero, and this morning I dosed to increase the calcium with some calcion.

It seems like a heavy dose but I double checked my math and the instructions. It said to raise X ppm's you want to multiply tank (30g) by ppm increase desire (I shot for 100 so that'd bring me to 440) by .03154. This brought me to 94.62ml. Again, seemed a bit heavy of a dose but I double checked my math and the instructions so I went ahead and dosed today.

I also read up on a product called fuel that's supposed to give corals all the stuff they need I guess? I read a thread were some guy said his xenia wasn't pulsing and he dosed with this and it solved the entire problem. Any thoughts on that product?

I figure one thing at a time so I'll work on the calcium, hold the other perimeters and see how the xenia reacts. Essentially is that fuel stuff adding the stuff we've kind of been working on here, like the calcium, and p04 and n03?

Also, if that stuff on the back is simply algae, I know in fw too much light creates the algae growth. How would I know if I'm providing TOO MUCH light power to this setup? I mean, I do have 3 of those big boy lights on there and they're not elevated from the lids so they are pretty close to the surface of the water.

 

[jonnymod]