Cyano Chaos...

[sacrifice333]

I've now owned my tank for approximately two years. I must admit (please no lectures) that I'm not the most well versed reef-keeper out there, but I do try quite hard to learn the art of this addiction.

Anyways... I bought this tank used. Shortly after purchasing it I discoverd that the tank had a serious cyano problem that the previous owner wasn't able to eliminate either.

The tank is a 50 gallon and consists of the following:

One 250 watt MH currently running about 6 hours/day.
Three Actinic Flourescents running 8 hours/day (currently not running).
One Fluval 304
One Remora Pro HOB protein skimmer.
One 5 gallon HOB refugium w/ miracle mud, live rock, & grape grass, lit at night.
Several Powerheads
3" Argonite Substrate
25lbs (?) of coraline encrusted Live Rock

Current livestock includes one tomato clownfish, one cleaner shrimp, a small mushroom colony, and a few baby snails.

I attempt to do a water change / vaccum / cyano suck at least once per every two weeks and have recently been upping the cyano suck and associated water replacement to at least once per week. I have been dosing with Kalkwasser to help ensure a high pH.

Things wrong with the tank that I am aware of that may be causing my cyano issues:
- burnt out actinics
- MH bulb is more than 1 yr old (spectrum may be off)

Sorr this is a bit of a ramble and possibly in the wrong section at that... but please help me?! :confused:

[DanG]

When you say lit at night for the skimmer, does that mean you only run it at night? Cyano is a good sign that you're feeding too much, so cut back on the food and skim 24/7. When was the last time you cleaned your fluval?
How much flow are you getting from your several powerheads?

[Chad]

Test for phosphates in your tank, and your change / makeup water. Consider using RO/DI if you do not already. And as a stop gap , until you find the source of your DOC you can run some phosban, I have found that product to stop my cyano pretty much within a few days.

[Ruth]

That is just nasty stuff and like said above, cut back feeding, probably change your bulbs and then cut back on lighting time, lots of water changes and although I have never used it apparently phosban works. Chemi clean will work as well but it treats the symptom and not the cause.

[reeferaddict]

This is something we all fight at one time or another, repeatedly in most cases.

Start with nutrients, though I would think you refuge would be consuming most phosphates & nitrates. I would ditch the fluval completely, save it for running carbon if you want/need to... and get some more live rock. 1 - 1 1/2 lbs per gallon would put you in the 50 - 75 lb range. If you run out of room in the main tank, you can always put some in the refuge or sump. Flow may be an issue as cyano doesn't grow where you have lots of flow, and then yes... start changing your bulbs if they are that old... change them one at a time over the next couple weeks/month or so, and you can eliminate that possibility AND do something that needs to be done anyways. Personally I hate chemi-clean as I had a crash after using it, but I have also heard people having success as well... just remember that if you use chemi-clean and don't identify the source of the problem, it will be back in short order with a vengeance...

[Ruth]

Ditto on the fluval - I have never had success using canister filters for anything other than carbon. Unless you are absolutely obsessive with your maintenance and have a low bio load you are going to have algea problems in my experience. If you still can't get a handle on it you may want to consider either cooking (see various threads on RC for infomation on this) or just replacing it as it could be that you have a build up of crap in your rocks.

[Doug]

Here is my own view of cyno. Until I went bare bottomed, all my dsb or shallow sb tanks always had a persistant cyno problem. Despite all of the usually suggested fixer uppers. Heck, I ran two 6080 Tunze streams, a huge beckett skimmer AND a large turf scrubber. :D

I would put that to an accumulation of nutrients in the substrate. Which means, as mentioned above phosphate. I would say that substrate in a tank needs some sort of maintaince, either by hand or many animals of some kind.

In my friends 180, this is what we did. First we removed some of the sand and made it more shallow, for easier cleaning if neccessary. When he ran Phosban, it helped somewhat. He has all of the above listed suggestions, including a large beckett skimmer and huge nutrient consuming soft corals.

What ended up giving the best results as adding a calerpa species to his 100g sump and using enough light to compete with his tank. Presto, cyno gone, red turf on rocks gone. I assume that its consuming the phosphate from his heavy fish load, and thus heavy feeding.

Of course one could have a small fish load and feed a lot less, still run a decent skimmer or large water changes and keep particulate material from collecting someplace.

[sacrifice333]

I don't think I'm feeding too much... but I'll cut back.

The bulbs definately need to be changed... I'll try to work that into the budget.

My bioload is pretty light... one fish, one shrimp.

Flow's pretty good... I've currently got 5 powerheads of various power levels, the refugiums flow, and considerable flow from my skimmer & fluval.

I don't think my substrate has too much destritus buildup as I try to vaccum it when I do water changes, maybe I'm stiring it up to much mechanically?!


NOTE: Edited the "lit at night" part from the skimmer to the fuge. The skimmer is run constantly although I do have a new adjustment band on order to dial in my skimming more precisely.