Hi, any final thoughts on my fight against cyano before I drop the chemiclean bomb?

[Uncle99]

Four things come to mind.

First
Age.
Your tank is 2 months old so you likely have not yet achieved a population of the good guy algaes and bacterium necessary to outcompete the bad guys, in your case Cyanobacteria.

Second
Phosphate.
Is that 0.01ppm or .1ppm?
If it’s .1ppm that number is perfect, otherwise 0.01ppm is just to low. The other numbers look fine.

Third
Stability.
Are the parameters you post stable, ie, no change from day to day when tested?

Fourth
You doing a lot of water changes, that’s lowering nutrients quickly, Id suck out the stuff into a filter sock, and return same water.

The best way to rid pest algaes is to outcompete them with the good guys. Keep water chemistry right on point with as little change as possible during the day,day to day, week in week out. This is the environment good guys love and they will thrive over time. It’s these guys which keep rocks and sand clean.

Keep lowering (daily) the Cyano with a quick vacum.

If you do this, they will disappear forever and will not return unless your nutrients bottom out, or get way to hi for the coral load.

If you going to Chemi, run an airstone to keep waters oxygen enriched during the clean. Chemi will take out the Cyano but you must have your chemistry in place first, or it will return.

 

[jda]

Also, if you want to get past all of this, you have to let an ecosystem develop. The more that you do to interfere with cleanings, chemicals, meds, media, etc. will just set back the development in like kind, or more. I would get some diverse stuff in there, like live rock, and let it work. There are WAAAAAAY worse things to have than cyano.

 

[dutch27]

The tank is only 2 months old, you have another good 6+ months of cycling though various ugly pests like cyano, dinos, hair algae, etc. while the tank gets stable. Keep up with water changes and manually removing the cyano and eventually it'll go away.

 

[slojim]

in regards to rip-clean, I have a 110 tall with a lot of rock, and thought those couple of bubble algae aren't worth a rip clean - 3 years ago I went down the vibrant route - and it worked, but the after affects were so troublesome and expensive I can honestly say a rip-clean would have been worth it.
I am dealing with a tough strain of cyano right now but finally, after trying everything, am seeing some success. I have rip-cleaned my smaller tank, and the cyano came back quickly - I guess you gotta get every bacterium. So instead:

I have had no bad experiences with chemiclean and have no qulams about using it. So I:
put socks back in and changed them routinely (I'm normlly sockless)
manually cleaned and blew out my rocks (weekly)
dosed with chemiclean, then removed it through my skimmer and added a back of carbon, a bag of phosphate media
followed vetteguys plan, almost - but I had bettr luck with microbelift (man it stinks) and added it in conjunction with a calcium carbonate snow treatment
started dosing chaetogro so green algae would outcompete cyano, and my CUC eats the green
removed some of the larger bottom rubble that my diamond watchman can't stir up - it always seems to be where it recovers first
changed from alcohol/vinegar dosing to straight vinegar dosing
and used only blue light for a few weeks.

 

[MikeCRK]

thank you everyone for the help!

@vetteguy53081
white lights down to 15-20% during the day and I also set acclimation again for 7 days starting from 60%. Again it is Blade Grow, bit different LEDs in it

@jda
I am not afraid of plagues, just need to tame them I am in Ireland I do not have any chance for real live rock I think I might get into the trouble if I would try to import the natural one
I will have a look at BlueVet Cyano Rx - cheers
I have some critters in the cube I am moving then when I manage to catch them on top of it, the cube is running on ocean water, so I can always go and collect some water on the low tide to get pods etc.

@Uncle99
Yeah I am not new to the fishkeeping in general, jus t marine ones couple of months now. So I know what I would do in a freshwater tank, just do not want to risk it in marine one to address your valid points:
1. yup, I am fully aware, just cyano exploded beyond the scale as for me and I can see it troubles corals, so need to act rather quick if I do not want to star from nothing
2. 0.1ppm, again it was almost non-traceable, I pumped it up for that reason to 0.1
3. pH is moving up and down but this is rather normal during the photosynthetic cycle (AIO here), I should have dosing pump tomorrow so will have an option to control that a bit more. There were peaks of N and NH3/4 but that was at start, again all normal when secondary cycle kicks in
4. this is what I do boss When sucking up two buckets of water then only one is fresh made coming back, I syphon bad stuff through the filters and then back to the tank.

yeah I am going to vacuum a bit more and we will see if chemiclean will be needed. I am OK with using it, I was doing it for years in freshwater despite they do not give what is inside of it.

@dutch27 yes, what else can I answer

@slojim baby steps, no revolutions. I already started, so here is my plan:

1. I reduced the light already - less white and set the lamp back to acclimation starting at 60%
2. I am going to suck in as much gung as possible, then the same water back (filtrated)
3. I am going to syphon it more around corals as priority
4. I do not overfeed, but I will reduce the pellet for sure and stick more to frozen food
5. Not touching flow, it is really set well
6. I am starting snow again and keep it that way (dosing pump tomorrow, so no dripper)
7. after few days if I will not see the change then chemiclean or BlueVet Cyano Rx (I like chemi because I know it and it is potent in solving some other stuff as well)
8. after treatment, chemipure blue, active carbon back to the baskets and I will add some bacs after it.
9. If that will not help much lets say in two-three weeks (not control not hoping to eradicate fully) then I will think about rip cleaning sand, it would be a nightmare in my setup and will take long to do, so this is a bit brutal for me

I will keep you posted and will try to share the progress on my build thread: here and this thread keep your fingers and toes crossed

edit: my back already hurts when I think about sucking this stuff again.. I am using air hose on a chopstick to be accurate and not have much suction. xDDD

 

[vetteguy53081]

thank you everyone for the help!

@vetteguy53081
white lights down to 15-20% during the day and I also set acclimation again for 7 days starting from 60%. Again it is Blade Grow, bit different LEDs in it

@jda
I am not afraid of plagues, just need to tame them I am in Ireland I do not have any chance for real live rock I think I might get into the trouble if I would try to import the natural one
I will have a look at BlueVet Cyano Rx - cheers
I have some critters in the cube I am moving then when I manage to catch them on top of it, the cube is running on ocean water, so I can always go and collect some water on the low tide to get pods etc.

@Uncle99
Yeah I am not new to the fishkeeping in general, jus t marine ones couple of months now. So I know what I would do in a freshwater tank, just do not want to risk it in marine one to address your valid points:
1. yup, I am fully aware, just cyano exploded beyond the scale as for me and I can see it troubles corals, so need to act rather quick if I do not want to star from nothing
2. 0.1ppm, again it was almost non-traceable, I pumped it up for that reason to 0.1
3. pH is moving up and down but this is rather normal during the photosynthetic cycle (AIO here), I should have dosing pump tomorrow so will have an option to control that a bit more. There were peaks of N and NH3/4 but that was at start, again all normal when secondary cycle kicks in
4. this is what I do boss When sucking up two buckets of water then only one is fresh made coming back, I syphon bad stuff through the filters and then back to the tank.

yeah I am going to vacuum a bit more and we will see if chemiclean will be needed. I am OK with using it, I was doing it for years in freshwater despite they do not give what is inside of it.

@dutch27 yes, what else can I answer

@slojim baby steps, no revolutions. I already started, so here is my plan:

1. I reduced the light already - less white and set the lamp back to acclimation starting at 60%
2. I am going to suck in as much gung as possible, then the same water back (filtrated)
3. I am going to syphon it more around corals as priority
4. I do not overfeed, but I will reduce the pellet for sure and stick more to frozen food
5. Not touching flow, it is really set well
6. I am starting snow again and keep it that way (dosing pump tomorrow, so no dripper)
7. after few days if I will not see the change then chemiclean or BlueVet Cyano Rx (I like chemi because I know it and it is potent in solving some other stuff as well)
8. after treatment, chemipure blue, active carbon back to the baskets and I will add some bacs after it.
9. If that will not help much lets say in two-three weeks (not control not hoping to eradicate fully) then I will think about rip cleaning sand, it would be a nightmare in my setup and will take long to do, so this is a bit brutal for me

I will keep you posted and will try to share the progress on my build thread: here and this thread keep your fingers and toes crossed

edit: my back already hurts when I think about sucking this stuff again.. I am using air hose on a chopstick to be accurate and not have much suction. xDDD

The drop in light intensity may not be enough as this can be photosynthetic. When you get up in the morning , you will notice its less and increases in growth during the day. You may have t drop that intensity much more and even turn lights off for 3 days minimum

 

[Dan_P]

Hey,

So I have a fresh tank, started around two months ago. Plagues are expected, I managed to tackle dinos and briyo, however cyano is kicking me hard last two weeks and it is not getting better.
I am vacuuming the carpets of it every day, I am doing 10-20% water changes during it.
At start I used soda to raise kH, I used kalk to pump the pH up too (first kalk then soda as soda brings pH down a bit).
Cyanos are back next day. I was trying to at start to wait until the carpet gets thicker and then vacuum it out in bigger batches - did not work.
I reviewed the flow in the tank, increased it significantly - did not work, in fact more cyano is where the current is the strongest!
I am changing filters, have skimmer on... I do not overfeed, there is no gunk gathering in dead spots, I have few hermits, snails and serpent star moving the sand (well recently it is so bad I noticed hermits are rather sticking to the rock)

I was planning to use chemiclean on the 15th, so now I wanted to ask if there is anything else I can do. The reason is, that cyano are making life of my zoas and brain coral a mysery. It is growing over them, some are closed last two-three days...

Here are the photos (I vacuumed day before!):

What am I doing wrong?

water:
kH: 7.5 (I am using Marine Pro salt which is 7.0)
pH: 8.2
NH3/4: 0
NO2: 0
NO3: 15
Ca: 475 (pumped with kalk)
PO4: 0.1 (was zero, I added a bit as some articles suggest 0 P4 could be causing it)


I do not have any more tests.

Help, please.

Yeah, disheartening.

Unfortunately, this seems to be one of the courses new aquaria take. You were dealt the joker and got a giant cyanobacteria growth. It is unlikely you did anything “wrong”. Here is my version of reality

Do nothing but cosmetic remedies. Keep removing it. It will eventually go away.

ChemiClean, yeah why not. There is no known root cause for this type of growth, so don’t waste your time looking for a root cause. There isn’t one.

Rip Clean. If you have the time and energy. It is basically a reboot of your system.

Adjust chemical parameters, mess with flow, tweak lighting, etc. This is low risk tampering with your system and you will feel like you are doing something “healthy” while waiting for the cyanobacteria to go away.

 

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

Personally, based on my limited experience, I would go get some live rock with algaes on it to compete. Worked for me against dinos.

Just a thought

 

[MikeCRK]

The drop in light intensity may not be enough as this can be photosynthetic. When you get up in the morning , you will notice its less and increases in growth during the day. You may have t drop that intensity much more and even turn lights off for 3 days minimum

down to 15-20% with acclimation set for 60%, it is less than 10% white light, so I could see anything when syphoning the cyano hahaha this gunk is best visible in white light

Yeah, disheartening.

Unfortunately, this seems to be one of the courses new aquaria take. You were dealt the joker and got a giant cyanobacteria growth. It is unlikely you did anything “wrong”. Here is my version of reality

Do nothing but cosmetic remedies. Keep removing it. It will eventually go away.

ChemiClean, yeah why not. There is no known root cause for this type of growth, so don’t waste your time looking for a root cause. There isn’t one.

Rip Clean. If you have the time and energy. It is basically a reboot of your system.

Adjust chemical parameters, mess with flow, tweak lighting, etc. This is low risk tampering with your system and you will feel like you are doing something “healthy” while waiting for the cyanobacteria to go away.

yup, this is my plan mainly. will try soft method for few days, it will be visible if any results are there, if no results of very little - chemiclean goes into a play and Rip Clean is the last resort, I started with dry rock and live sand, If i would clean sand and treat it with chlorine from tap water, well. this might be a challenge then

 

[RandyL]

Don't know if it's possible for you, but if you can add a refugium to the arrangement with a bunch of chaetomorpha with some good lighting it will act as a competitor to the cyano and help keep it in check (and other undesirables) for the long run. It's also a very "natural" solution to the problem.

 

[slojim]

When it was bad, I had it coating my algae in my refugium, and in my ATS. I think an important step for me was getting algae to grow in a controllable way on the rockwork, and let it feed my urchin.
Regarding light intensity - I tried going lights off for 5 days and the ambient light kept it alive. This time I covered the tank in black plastic and killed the lights for 5-7 days, then after that I removed the plastic and only turned on blue lights.

At least in my tank, I can see pink fluorescence under blue lights. This is always associated with a patch of cyano. The whole patch doesn't glow. At the start of this, I could identify a lot of these patches - they're kind of cool by themselves. After all I listed, and about 3 weeks of only blue lights, I still can find 2 of these spots. I don't see any cyano in my refugium or ATS. I don't see any cyano in the DT if I turn on the white lights for a minute. I plan to go at least 2 more weeks on blue only, avoiding ethanol in my carbon dose, and dosing the microbe-lift special blend weekly. That will coincicde with a clean-up crew coming out of quarantine (my wrasse is tough on small crabs and snails). I think I'll do one more dose of chemiclean before then.

 

[MikeCRK]

When it was bad, I had it coating my algae in my refugium, and in my ATS. I think an important step for me was getting algae to grow in a controllable way on the rockwork, and let it feed my urchin.
Regarding light intensity - I tried going lights off for 5 days and the ambient light kept it alive. This time I covered the tank in black plastic and killed the lights for 5-7 days, then after that I removed the plastic and only turned on blue lights.

yeah, the sign of green stuff on the rocks is happiness

OK, so three hours later... after syphoning cyano size of a baseball... I replaced filter pads, added 4ml of 6% H2O2 and took a photo to be able to compare:

I could not take all the cyano out... so you can see the pink patches, I took all 'carpets' all long hair etc. It does look good now, not clean, but good, same as it was yesterday lets wait and see

PS. light is to able to work on it and to take a photo when done. Water is a bit cloudy, I tried to vacuum as much sand as possible too. After all I blew remaining stuff with baster, waited a bit to get that sucked out and replaced around 2 litres of freshly prepared water.

 

[Lineatus]

You can get live rock over here, its just a little harder to acquire because we cant grow them stuff like they can in say, Florida.

Either look online:

Live Rock | Rock 'N' Critters

Buy Live Rock for your aquarium today from Rock 'N' Critters, the UK's leading online aquatic retailer! Live Rock helps with your tank's biological filtration - Order online for fast UK delivery!

www.rockncritters.co.uk

Or just grab some rock from your LFS. In my experience, live rock is by far the best way to achieve maturity and get out of the uglies.

 

[MikeCRK]

You can get live rock over here, its just a little harder to acquire because we cant grow them stuff like they can in say, Florida.

Either look online:

Live Rock | Rock 'N' Critters

Buy Live Rock for your aquarium today from Rock 'N' Critters, the UK's leading online aquatic retailer! Live Rock helps with your tank's biological filtration - Order online for fast UK delivery!

www.rockncritters.co.uk

Or just grab some rock from your LFS. In my experience, live rock is by far the best way to achieve maturity and get out of the uglies.

the closest marine LFS is three hours drive and they do not have natural rock just some semi-old marco I live in Ireland. UK is like a candy shop if you compare

and thanks to brexit... well, lets say that shipping live stuff, chemical stuff or equipment is a bit tricky nowadays

 

[MnFish1]

Hey,

So I have a fresh tank, started around two months ago. Plagues are expected, I managed to tackle dinos and briyo, however cyano is kicking me hard last two weeks and it is not getting better.
I am vacuuming the carpets of it every day, I am doing 10-20% water changes during it.
At start I used soda to raise kH, I used kalk to pump the pH up too (first kalk then soda as soda brings pH down a bit).
Cyanos are back next day. I was trying to at start to wait until the carpet gets thicker and then vacuum it out in bigger batches - did not work.
I reviewed the flow in the tank, increased it significantly - did not work, in fact more cyano is where the current is the strongest!
I am changing filters, have skimmer on... I do not overfeed, there is no gunk gathering in dead spots, I have few hermits, snails and serpent star moving the sand (well recently it is so bad I noticed hermits are rather sticking to the rock)

I was planning to use chemiclean on the 15th, so now I wanted to ask if there is anything else I can do. The reason is, that cyano are making life of my zoas and brain coral a mysery. It is growing over them, some are closed last two-three days...

Here are the photos (I vacuumed day before!):

What am I doing wrong?

water:
kH: 7.5 (I am using Marine Pro salt which is 7.0)
pH: 8.2
NH3/4: 0
NO2: 0
NO3: 15
Ca: 475 (pumped with kalk)
PO4: 0.1 (was zero, I added a bit as some articles suggest 0 P4 could be causing it)


I do not have any more tests.

Help, please.

IMHO there is no miracle cure - if you use chemiclean - likely it will be back in a couple weeks. On the contrary - I do not think this is a 'normal' tank cycling issue. I would add more coral - and perhaps more flow.

 

[MnFish1]

More flow will keep it down. It might not be worth it. There is a point to where cyano just cannot grow in the flow.

I have never seen or heard of any real problems from experienced hobbyists if you use the stuff right. It is just temporary. Something else will take over the vacated space if you kill it - this is true whether you kill it, suck it out, clean the tank, etc. The issue is that there is vacant land for things to establish and cyano is quick, dinos are quick and algae is quick, but not as quick as those.

Cyano is not all that bad since it is easier to kill than other things.

In the end, something is going to be a plague until you get other things to grow on those rocks and sand. A pack of life rock from Florida is probably the best spent money - like even 10-15 pounds. Let that stuff spread while sucking out the cyano and stuff.

If you must do this, get the BlueVet Cyano Rx. They at least tell you what is in it and the antibiotic in the stuff is not as harsh on nitrifying bacteria. Boyd have been AHs for decades and have lied about what is in their stuff, so I don't support that - it is likely Erythomycin which is effective at killing cyano, but also other things.

I believe it was suggested that it is not erythromycin - but rather another antibiotic - with a close relationship - either way - both of the medications you quote should have the same result. I.e Tylosin. No conspiracy here. IMHO - there is no undue issue with using this medication. I have no inside knowledge as to what in Boyds vs another agent. The risk is low - per reports - and it works.

 

[CoastalTownLayabout]

Mate, chemiclean should be a last resort. I’d bathe it in a soothing tonic of Irish natural sea water for a few months first.

 

[KrisReef]

yeah, the sign of green stuff on the rocks is happiness

OK, so three hours later... after syphoning cyano size of a baseball... I replaced filter pads, added 4ml of 6% H2O2 and took a photo to be able to compare:

I could not take all the cyano out... so you can see the pink patches, I took all 'carpets' all long hair etc. It does look good now, not clean, but good, same as it was yesterday lets wait and see

PS. light is to able to work on it and to take a photo when done. Water is a bit cloudy, I tried to vacuum as much sand as possible too. After all I blew remaining stuff with baster, waited a bit to get that sucked out and replaced around 2 litres of freshly prepared water.

You have gotten a fair amount of feedback and opinions from people who want to see you succeed at eradicating, or at least controlling the amount of Cyanobacteria in your new tank. I wish you good fortune with this battle, and was wondering if you had tried cursing at it? I did not see any one recommended that tactic but it is usually one of the first things I do when I see an issue in my tanks.

I recently set up a fish tank and I eventually remembered to dial the white light back and that had incredibly positive results for the film of algae’s that had been plaguing my view. I think it will help you also to get this under control and was glad to see that it had been suggested.

I also think that if you get to the point where you are ready to execute the Rip Clean option you might be better served to remove all of your sand bed and replace it with something that is more coarse grained.?! I have never had good results with ultra fine grain substrates.

I hope that other folks to comment on the grain size issue- I could be wrong about this as a factor in your cyano situation and this thread has been very informative and well balanced with suggestions so I hope others will discuss grain size and Cyanobacteria, is it a thing?

Anyway, looking forward to seeing the issue resolved positively and hopefully quickly.

 

[CoastalTownLayabout]

I also think that if you get to the point where you are ready to execute the Rip Clean option you might be better served to remove all of your sand bed and replace it with something that is more coarse grained.?! I have never had good results with ultra fine grain substrates.

I hope that other folks to comment on the grain size issue- I could be wrong about this as a factor in your cyano situation and this thread has been very informative and well balanced with suggestions so I hope others will discuss grain size and Cyanobacteria, is it a thing?

Anyway, looking forward to seeing the issue resolved positively and hopefully quickly.

It’s an interesting observation. Almost feels like there have been some distinctly dominant nuisance issues throughout the evolution of reefkeeping techniques. I do recall a lot of cyano issues during the fine grain / Southdown / DSB era.

 

[Doctorgori]

I don’t believe that blaming or adjusting white light solves anything (in the long run)…
If you ask why aren’t the natural reefs (lit by the white light of the sun) covered in red or green slime?
The Answer is: because nutrients and flow aren’t out of whack…
So there is your answer; Solve the root cause(s), it isn’t lighting…
If you do go the chemiclean route, make sure you have some manner of skimmer shutoff during the inevitable cup overflow…