Houdini Cyano algae - thoughts

[Wheelman76]

Originally Posted by darkreef

My opinion ... Don't use chemiclean ... It doesn't just kill cyano but all the bacteria in your aquarium . So if your dosing carbon you'd have to start all over.

Things to help prevent and rid it.

Get your rock off the sand bed raise it up
Add few more power heads
Vacuum the sand , pick up the rock and vacuum under it .
Goop in the back of the tank makes the cyano pop up in the front of your tank
Blow off your rocks while siphoning
Religiously do water changes up it to 15%
First few days 20% every 24 hours for three days
Buy another bag of sand ... Your going to loose a lot
Use GFO , buy a reactor water changes do nothing for phosphates I find
Get sand sifting critters

I did this and beat it naturally .
I used chemiclean last year and killed my pods and almost crashed my tank and broke my skimmer . Chemiclean is hard on skimmers I went threw two.

Just passing off my experience with it.

Chemiclean broke your skimmer?

[darkreef]

Can I blame it on chemiclean directly no.
But when your skimmer goes wild for two weeks then still after a month your pouring out clean water. Get a mass algae problem cyano comes back . Pop a good skimmer in there and she's nasty in a hour with brown green baby poop .

Not sure if the skimmer was on the way out... It was a cheap skimmer

Made me buy a good one... Worth it in the end

[The Guy]

Originally Posted by darkreef

My opinion ... Don't use chemiclean ... It doesn't just kill cyano but all the bacteria in your aquarium . So if your dosing carbon you'd have to start all over.

Things to help prevent and rid it.

Get your rock off the sand bed raise it up
Add few more power heads
Vacuum the sand , pick up the rock and vacuum under it .
Goop in the back of the tank makes the cyano pop up in the front of your tank
Blow off your rocks while siphoning
Religiously do water changes up it to 15%
First few days 20% every 24 hours for three days
Buy another bag of sand ... Your going to loose a lot
Use GFO , buy a reactor water changes do nothing for phosphates I find
Get sand sifting critters

I did this and beat it naturally .
I used chemiclean last year and killed my pods and almost crashed my tank and broke my skimmer . Chemiclean is hard on skimmers I went threw two.

Just passing off my experience with it.

Ya I agree Chemiclean is a band aid solution and put my skimmer in a bad mood for days after I used it. I use GFO and now using Brightwell's MB7 which seems help keep the cyano in check, oh ya if you got pod eaters kiss them goodbye if you use chemiclean.

I just ordered a Hanna Phosphate tester, no guessing involved using them according to reef-pilot another member.

[Cal_stir]

I've used chemiclean and never had any of those issues, I have 2 pod eaters and lots of pods, you have to turn your skimmer off for a few days and use air stones for O2, Dinos are more photosynthetic than cyano, thats why they appear and disappear with the light, if it's dinos the bubbles and strings will appear eventually, cyano mats hold nutrients and the cyano feeds itself and is less reliant on light.
You have dinos IMO, a tougher fight but winnable, it is important to ID exactly what you have.

[reefwars]

For what it's worth there's nothing in chemiclean that can hurt a skimmer , a skimmers pump works at 100% whether chemi is in there or not.

Also it's known that flow actually spreads the bak not cures it

[Aquattro]

I had some cyano reently and just used chemiclean. Cleared it up right away, didn't hurt anything in the tank, had to re-tune my skimmer for a few days (until after a big water change). Fighting it naturally and winning must be a fabulous feeling, but I'm not inclined to go through all that, so just used chemicals. Worked for me

[carriej]

I'd really rather not use chemi clean, I've been battling it and I think I'm winning... I am not using any phosban or anything like that so that's next on the list.

[Timbits]

Same thing happens with my tank... I see some cyano during the day, by night it's gone and comes back the next morning. Really strange, I've been wondering the same thing........