repeating Chemiclean treatment

[Reef Pilot]

So, what are you going to do now to prevent it,... so it never comes back? (This is a test...)


Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’

[asylumdown]

I'm not sure there's much you can do to prevent it from returning to be honest. It's present in tanks with high nutrients, low nutrients, and no nutrients. Cyano bacteria is often the only organism living on the bottom of oligotrophic lakes (AKA nutrient poor to the point of being hostile to life) in the world. People beat themselves up trying to combat this stuff and the advice on forums is always 'reduce your nutrients', which is advice that sounds good in theory, but in practice may actually be beyond the control of the aquarist. Here's my theory:

1. my tank has a much higher bioload now than at any point in its history, and I'm feeding ALOT. I have a shallow sand bed that's never been vacuumed in any meaningful way, and my rocks are all marco rock. I also dose baking soda for alk, which means that the pH of my tank is on the low side, probably around 8-8.1 (though I never actually test it). Phosphate is known to have a strong affinity for binding to aragonite, and below a pH of about 8.4 or in a scenario where carbonate and calcium are not spontaneously precipitating out of solution, that phosphate is exchangeable with the water column to some degree. My tank had very low phosphates, aggressive phosphate export through GFO and very little input of anything organic for months and months, during which time I had zero problem with cyano. Since the spring however, I've been feeding way more, and in the summer I fell way behind on maintenance. It is my hypothesis that my rocks and sand have 'filled up' with as much phosphate as they can absorb, and are now acting as an exchangeable reservoir of phosphate in the aquarium. I think this is a big reason why people can basically starve their fish to death for months and still not see any improvement in their cyano problems, it's possible to build up a bank of nutrients in an aquarium that will outlast even the most emaciated fish.

2. I use biopellets for nitrate control, which they are extremely effective at doing. Cyano is associated with carbon dosing of all kinds, likely because cyanobacteria in the wild have been shown to be highly efficient scavengers of dissolved organic carbon. There's also been a suggestion that at least some types of cyano (I hesitate to say 'species' because "cyano" is in fact an assemblage or many different families of organisms) can fix nitrogen directly from the atmosphere. If you can utilize organic carbon plus have nitrogen fixation capacities, that would equate to a serious competitive advantage in carbon dosed tanks, which I think is supported anecdotally based on forum posts.

3. Cyano has a tendency to carpet specific areas of rocks and sand. I don't think this is an accident. I think cyano blankets areas of rocks and sand that have lots of bound phosphate that is diffusing back in to the water column. By blanketing those rocks, they basically catch it all before it ever gets a chance to meet a particle of GFO, effectively trapping the phosphate in your system. Other research has shown that cyano is hyper efficient at recycling N and C with virtually no losses of those atoms once they scavenge it (likely because a cyano mat is actually a complete, microscopic ecosystem, another reason they do well in oligotrohic environments), so it's not a stretch to infer they do the same with P. I'm not sure if you've ever carefully peeled away a carpet of cyano, but underneath it and trapped inside it is a tremendous amount of detritus. It actually traps sludge which would otherwise get skimmed out. I hypothesis that the presence of cyano bacteria can hinder attempts to lower the levels of available P (which you probably can't ever accurately test for) in an aquarium.

What I'm doing to try and prevent it from coming back - first I'm killing it, shifting the balance of what's available to what. Over the next couple of months I'm going to be changing my GFO weekly instead of monthly to try and draw down the bound phosphate levels in my rock and sand as much as possible. I've also recently started an aggressive campaign of sand bed disturbance to try and flush out stored organics, fluidizing my sand bed to turn it over completely and release as much garbage as possible. I've done this three times now and it's definitely helped (the cyano grows back much less aggressively/not at all in those places), but since I don't have a sand vacuum it's pretty inefficient so I'm going to get one soon. I've also started aggressively turkey bastering my rocks. Finally, While I am suspicious of them in general, I'm starting a dosing campaign of a bacterial supplement that allegedly helps to outcompete cyano bacteria for the organic carbon released by biopellets, and I've removed one of my auto-feeders that I realized was feeding food that mostly went uneaten.

We'll see if it works. It might not. I might be totally wrong about what's happening, or my rocks/sand might have phosphate in them that won't ever diffuse out to be exported through GFO, but remain available to cyano via some pathway I'm unaware of. I'm toying with the idea of switching to sodium carbonate for alk as it will raise the pH of my tank and make my rocks less likely to release phosphate in general. I do know that with cyano present , I test 0.00ppm phosphate in the water, but for cyano to be there, P must also be at play, and without killing the cyano first, trying to do something about it is like trying to run the wrong way up an escalator. It might also be that I just happened to have picked up a kind of cyano that could grow in any tank that could also support corals, and the only reason I'm having a problem with it is because I 'caught' it like the aquarium equivalent of an STD. In that case, the only way to deal with it would be to kill it.

At the end of the day this will either work, or it won't. I'm not going to feed my fish any less because they don't deserve to be punished for something that's not the least bit their fault, so if this is just the result of having too many large fish, then I'll have to learn to live with it. I do plan to remove at least one of them in the not distant future.

[Reef Pilot]

Geez, you do indeed have a very short term memory, or just extreme tunnel vision... Theory is all great and valid. But there are proven practical solutions, too. And really easy and cheap, in this case, as a preventative.
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...947#post858947

And stop making me feel like this...


You have a beautiful tank, despite your cyano and other problems. I'm just trying to help you make it easier to maintain...

[asylumdown]

as a direct result of that thread and the copious amount of reading on heterotrophic bacteria that I did, I changed my tune a little on bacterial dosing, which if you read that thread to the end, I mentioned. I'm still suspicious of them for the reasons that I wrote about in that thread, however. You'll note that I mentioned in my last post that I was going to start dosing a bacterial supplement. What I didn't mention is that I already have been. Microbacter7 to be specific, which I believe is what you champion isn't it? I wanted Dr. Tim's Waste Away but getting it shipped here costs as much as the product itself, so I went with what I could buy 15 minutes from my house. I started at the recommended 'start up' dose for a week (which on my tank burnt through almost an entire large bottle), then down to the 'maintenance' dose, which I've been dosing for just shy of three weeks, so nearly a month total. The effect: zero, zilch, nada. There was no visible difference in the extent or rate of growth of the cyano. If anything it got worse. However, considering that cyano was already established and the balance of power was shifted in its favour, this doesn't really surprise me, which is why, if you'll kindly re-read what I just posted, I said I'm going to be dosing a bacterial supplement after this is over in the hopes that it sets up a new competitive regime. Microbacter7 to be specific, I just didn't think there was a point in naming a brand.

So why exactly do you feel like you're bashing your head against a wall? That sounds awfully painful, I would stop if I were you.

[Reef Pilot]

Yup, I saw that, but you didn't name it, or say how you are using it. That's what I was looking for. I didn't want to say too much in case you were using a different one, which I can't really speak to.

First, MB7 will NOT stop a full blown cyano outbreak, or at least not quickly without a lot of heavy dosing. That's why you have to use Chemiclean to wipe it out (be sure to follow the directions exactly for dosage and duration). So really no point in wasting MB7 at this stage.

But once your cyano has been killed off by the Chemiclean and your tank has stabilized, then start your MB7 dosing (heavy schedule for 1st 2 weeks). It takes that long for the bacteria to get fully seeded. You should see the results in your tank as well, with cleaner water and less mulm and smoother bio pellet tumbling in you reactor.

Then reduce the dosage over a couple days to the low dosage schedule. Keep an eye out to see if the cyano shows any signs of returning. If it does, immediately ramp up to the heavy dosing schedule for a week. In that time, it should be beat back again, and you can go back to the low dosage schedule.

I used to have major cyano problems. But the last time I had to use Chemiclean was over 2 years ago now, and have never had a major cyano outbreak since. And this was despite some other problem episodes with phosphates and algae. I have seen it start to appear a couple times in the past after I was away for a while and unable to dose the MB7 (I manually dose only). But when I applied the heavy dose regime, it would promptly disappear, and I would go back to the low dosage schedule.

In fact, I actually can't remember anymore the last time I saw any cyano start up again, has to be more than a year now. And I now only dose 1/2 the low dosage amount spread over about twice a week. The bacteria seems to be well established, as I haven't even had to clean my bio pellet reactor since last Nov (yup, over a year now), and not had to fill it since then either (down to only a 1/4 cup or so of pellets left). And my nitrates have shown zero for about that same length of time.

So this is why I am so convinced that MB7 works (as a preventative). Also, am not sure phosphates are the biggest culprit either. I say that because this summer and a for a few months, I had high phosphates when I combined another tank into a single sump. That did cause other problems (like algae), but I never saw any cyano. If anything, I think nitrates have a greater effect. I believe MB7 makes your bio pellet reactor more effective (able to consume more bio pellets) which then does a better job of reducing/eliminating nitrates. I had a huge nitrate problem before I started bio pellets and MB7. And have not seen any nitrates register on my tests of over a year now, too. So I don't think all this is coincidental.

Oh, and I was beating my head, because of your rehash (which I have seen over and over) about your theory of cyano, with phosphates, etc. And nothing, or almost nothing about how MB7 (and perhaps some other bacterial supplements) are used to out compete cyano. So to me, it still looked like you were on the wrong track. Sorry, if I over reacted. But I was trying to get your attention. And hopefully I did now.

[asylumdown]

yah sorry if my reply came off as snarky. The tone in my head when I wrote it sounded completely different from the tone that came across when I just re-read it now.

I still stand by the assertion that I am suspicious of products like MB7 for all the reasons I've already listed, but a) I've never tried it and b) I was totally wrong when I said I didn't think any bacteria could still be alive in those bottles. That would have been a true statement for nitrifiers like Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter bacteria, but not for the kinds of heterotrophs that will be consuming biopellets. Whether or not there actually is any bacteria in those bottles, or whether or not they always work the way their producers claim in every application is something that I think still has a lot of room for snake oilery, but there's enough people who swear by them (such as yourself) for me to think it's worth looking in to. At some point we have to trust that people who make the products we use know what they're doing, but so many of those products have biologically meaningless fluff phrases on them like "maintains optimal enzyme balance" that the skeptic in me is constantly wanting to call foul. It doesn't mean they don't work obviously, but still. If this strategy works, I'll obviously continue to use MB7, for as long as it seems to work, even if I'll never be able to say for sure that what I think is happening is actually what's going on.

As for my theory of cyano - well it's changing as I learn more. It's still probably not even close to right, but the only thing I do know is that simply telling someone to reduce their nutrients, be that through more water changes, heavier skimming, or less feeding can result in some very confused and frustrated aquarists. There's way more to it than that, and I agree that phosphate isn't necessarily the whole story, but it's certainly part of it. It's just that when I was reading forums back when I started I came across way too many 1 or 2 sentence statements about the nature of things that were treated as absolutes with no justification behind them. It's why I try and always support what I say with some kind of theory or backup, so that even if I'm wrong, where I'm wrong or how I came to be wrong can be pointed out. It makes for wind baggy posts though.

[Reef Pilot]

Yes, having a theory is better than blindly taking action without any understanding of what you are doing. But as you probably well know, after a theory, comes testing, and properly interpreting the results. And then repeat, and repeat...

In your case, you started MB7 before doing the Chemiclean, which as I said was a total waste (hate to say it so bluntly). The cyano was already well established and being fed by your carbon dosing. Ideally, you are supposed to start the heavy dosage schedule of MB7 for 2 weeks even before carbon dosing. And then gradually increase (bio pellets, vodka or whatever). If you over dose with your carbon, you can be right back to square zero.

And then when you did the Chemiclean you probably wiped out any MB7 bacteria as well as the cyano.

So right now you are at square zero, and how you proceed from this point is most important. Like I said, this is when you need to dose MB7 heavily for 2 weeks. I would even shut down your bio pellet reactor for that time. Because right now it is probably not even working (needs bacteria) effectively anyway, and might just promote again the bad bacteria (like cyano).

Back to the theory and my experience, I have to say MB7 has worked exactly as I expected (and advertised), so I don't think my theory has been far off. What was especially telling for me, is in the past it tried to reappear when I had stopped dosing MB7 (because I was away for a few extended time periods). But after heavy dosage for a week, it would disappear. This actually happened a couple times, and each time I was quickly able to beat it before it got out of hand. But have not seen it for a long time now. Wish I could say the same for GHA and other algae (although I have a theory there, too, and my actions seem to be working with that too, now).

[wreck]

i used chemiclean as per suggested and its been 3 weeks now i think , havent seen nothing, do have a bit of algae now, i need to change my gfo out again.
after 24 hours i still had some cyano , so i said heck with it and left it another 24 and bam, all gone so far. knock on wood

[Aquattro]

I used chemiclean without issue, left in tank for a week or so, no more cyano. works for me. I'm blaming old T5 lighting for it showing up in the first place.

[IanWR]

Thanks again for writing such detailed posts. I feel like reading your posts, esp. those on phosphates, is like taking an aquarium chemistry 101 class. I mean that as a good thing.

- Ian