cyano battle lol

[asylumdown]

I'm going to be the dissenting voice and say that I doubt reducing your nutrients drastically will do much for the cyano.

a) it's commonly reported on fish forums that cyan thrives in ULN tanks and is often associated with organic carbon dosing.

b) mats of cyanobacteria are often the only organisms living in some of the most oligotrophic (i.e., nutrient poor to the point of being hostile to life) bodies of water on earth.

c) 'cyano' is in fact an incredibly sophisticated assemblage of heterotrophic and autotrophic organisms, including prokaryotes, dinoflagellates, diatoms, and cyanobacteria, all stratified along micro pH and oxygen gradients within the mat and fulfilling different roles in what is in fact a mini ecosystem. There is strong evidence to suggest that some assemblages can fix nitrogen directly from the atmosphere. The whole assemblage is designed to be as efficient at recycling captured nutrients as physically possible (i.e., they don't really lose any nitrogen or carbon once they catch it), and to be as efficient at scavenging nutrients such as organic carbon and nitrogen from the environment as any ecosystem can be.

I honestly think the best way to think about cyanobacteria is to equate it to an infection. It can thrive in your tank regardless of your nutrient profile, and has attributes that actually give it a competitive advantage in an extremely low nutrient environment. Once it's gotten out of control, I think hitting it with a chemical treatment is one of your best options. The goal after it's gone is to try and encourage the kind of microscopic competitive regime that favours forms of life other than cyano, which, given the fact that it's such a common and unending problem in the aquarium trade, seems to be incredibly difficult to do.

[kien]

^ Translation: you're ****ed. Don't fight it.

[asylumdown]

hahaha! when it comes to cyanobacteria... I'd say you might be right. If you vacuum as much of it out as possible before you hit the tank with chemiclean, you might be able to beat it back, but it's what comes after that I think we have very little control over. Some people would say to start dosing your tank with one of the pro-biotic solutions available on the market today like microbacter (that's a real thing right?) or Zeoback or something, but I'm uuuuber skeptical of any bacterial supplement that hasn't been refrigerated along it's entire chain of custody. I've tried looking at a few under my microscope and I've never seen anything in those solutions that one could clearly say is alive. Even if they were alive by the time you added them to your tank, the microbiology of bacterial competitive regimes are way too complex and poorly understood for anyone claiming that bacterial product X produces Y effect to have much empirical backup.

At the end of the day, you can't have a problem with problem algae unless you have a problem algae. Why do some tanks get overrun with gross cyano while others look pristine even though they have the same testable parameters? I'd argue part of it is that the species that compose the cyano mat were introduced to one and weren't to the other. If the water can support coral, it can support algae of some kind, but what algae you will have depends as much on the stochasticity of unintentional contamination as your particular nutrient profile.

Ultimately all you can do is try to keep your nutrient profile within the parameters of the system you're trying to emulate and hope for the best lol.

[brotherd]

I have used Chemiclean. It works but is a temporary solution for sure. And...it made my skimmer very angry literally 90 seconds after dosing the tank. I forgot to shut it off beforehand. Next time it occurs Chemiclean will be the last resort. I'd rather try to manually remove it but that is a daunting task too. No matter what, cyano is a b***h.

[intarsiabox]

The only time I've ever gotten cyno on my rock is when I have a sand bed present. I've taken the same rocks and coral out of one tank and put them into a bare bottom tank and that is last I ever see of the cyno. I am in the process of setting up a new tank and am having trouble deciding to go BB or not as I love the look of a shallow sand bed but also enjoy not ever having cyno.

[wreck]

thanks for the replies.

i added chemi clean last night, took the cup off my skimmer and also added 2 airsrtones. man do i have micro bubbles in the display tank now lol. can i put some filter floss in the last baffle of my sump inorder to keep micro bubbles out of my display?

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by brotherd

I have used Chemiclean. It works but is a temporary solution for sure. And...it made my skimmer very angry literally 90 seconds after dosing the tank. I forgot to shut it off beforehand. Next time it occurs Chemiclean will be the last resort. I'd rather try to manually remove it but that is a daunting task too. No matter what, cyano is a b***h.

You say next time, so your cyano hasn't returned yet? How long ago did you dose and how long has the tank been cyano free?

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by wreck

thanks for the replies.

i added chemi clean last night, took the cup off my skimmer and also added 2 airsrtones. man do i have micro bubbles in the display tank now lol. can i put some filter floss in the last baffle of my sump inorder to keep micro bubbles out of my display?

I don't know if I'd worry about the bubbles, it's only a couple of days and they won't hurt anything, but I don't see any harm in the filter floss if it's bugging you. The reason you have to stop skimming is because there's literally not a setting low enough on your skimmer that will stop it from overflowing with that product in the water, not necessarily because of the filtration aspect (though I'm sure that's part of it).

Once the treatment is over and you've done the water change, your skimmer is likely still going to go nuts for a while. I've only used it on this tank once, but after the water change I had to set my skimmer on it's lowest setting and still had to empty the cup a few times a day to get it to settle down.

It would be a good idea to think about adopting a a strategy now to intentionally deal with nitrates. If yours hit 15 (I'm assuming that's measured in ppm), then the tank is producing more of it than it can naturally consume. I mentioned that cyano can grow in low nutrient environments, but it certainly doesn't mind high nutrients either! If you're only relying on human muscle power through water changes and whatever anoxic zones you might have in your rock and sand to do all your denitrifying, you'll need to be very religious about water changes for them to keep nitrates under control long term. Keep in mind that a 20% water change will only drop your nitrates from 15 to 12ppm, and dropping your nitrates to 5ppm in a single shot would require a 66% water change with nitrate free water. If you're going to continue using water changes as the primary tool to address nitrates you'll need to figure out your weekly rate of nitrate production (which will be complicated by any nuisance algae or cyano that will most certainly be taking some of it up), and make sure that your weekly or biweekly water changes are a greater percentage of your system volume than the percentage increase in nitrate concentration each week. There are a bunch of different methods for controlling nitrates in an automated way that work round the clock whether you're on top of water changes or not, but I might suggest not starting any sort of carbon dosing regiment (either solid or liquid) until you've seriously beat back the cyano problem. Adding excess organic carbon to a tank with high nitrate and well established cyano bacteria would be a little like trying to put out a fire by dousing it with gasoline.

Anyway good luck. If it really is cyano, you should see drastic results by tomorrow.

[wreck]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

I don't know if I'd worry about the bubbles, it's only a couple of days and they won't hurt anything, but I don't see any harm in the filter floss if it's bugging you. The reason you have to stop skimming is because there's literally not a setting low enough on your skimmer that will stop it from overflowing with that product in the water, not necessarily because of the filtration aspect (though I'm sure that's part of it).

Once the treatment is over and you've done the water change, your skimmer is likely still going to go nuts for a while. I've only used it on this tank once, but after the water change I had to set my skimmer on it's lowest setting and still had to empty the cup a few times a day to get it to settle down.

It would be a good idea to think about adopting a a strategy now to intentionally deal with nitrates. If yours hit 15 (I'm assuming that's measured in ppm), then the tank is producing more of it than it can naturally consume. I mentioned that cyano can grow in low nutrient environments, but it certainly doesn't mind high nutrients either! If you're only relying on human muscle power through water changes and whatever anoxic zones you might have in your rock and sand to do all your denitrifying, you'll need to be very religious about water changes for them to keep nitrates under control long term. Keep in mind that a 20% water change will only drop your nitrates from 15 to 12ppm, and dropping your nitrates to 5ppm in a single shot would require a 66% water change with nitrate free water. If you're going to continue using water changes as the primary tool to address nitrates you'll need to figure out your weekly rate of nitrate production (which will be complicated by any nuisance algae or cyano that will most certainly be taking some of it up), and make sure that your weekly or biweekly water changes are a greater percentage of your system volume than the percentage increase in nitrate concentration each week. There are a bunch of different methods for controlling nitrates in an automated way that work round the clock whether you're on top of water changes or not, but I might suggest not starting any sort of carbon dosing regiment (either solid or liquid) until you've seriously beat back the cyano problem. Adding excess organic carbon to a tank with high nitrate and well established cyano bacteria would be a little like trying to put out a fire by dousing it with gasoline.

Anyway good luck. If it really is cyano, you should see drastic results by tomorrow.

man thanks for the detailed reply. i am trully not sure what exactly caused my problem, im guessing summer neglets and lack of water changes. also i dont have a tds meter on my rodi unit, im ordering one today aswell as new di filter and also a membrane incase mine is toasted.

what methods do you suggest besides waater changes to lower nitrates? im open to try anything.

[mat20040]

what do you feed your tank?
I used to have a big problem with cyano ( and did everything from high flow to water change) I was feeding frozzen food, since I changed to only dry pallet no more cyano

Originally Posted by wreck

i been battling cyano for a few months now, have had 2 fish die in my tank and was not able to nab them out. my nitrates are 15. phos is undetectable on seachem test kit.

what are your thoughts on chemi clean

coral snow and zeo bak. also zeo cyano clean( i beleive new product)

how do u keep your tanks cyano free??

chris