Cyano? Help please.

[carriej]

So this is my first real issue with any kind of algae, and the tank has been running well over a year so I guess I have been lucky, but this stuff sucks!

I have had conflicting reports from others - Some believe it is cyano, some say diatoms. It's slimy, stringy, and it generally disappears at night... Like totally gone at night. In the morning it's in full bloom. I tried removing it + doing a black out for three days... It came back every day regardless of no light (tank is in the basement - so no residual light). Now it's worse than ever.. Coating mostly my sandbed. The bottom of some rocks are affected but it's mostly the sand.

[Aquattro]

Looks like cyano to me. Lots of threads this year on dealing with it, hit the search feature and see what others have done.

[Reefgoat]

I'm currently dealing with the same slimy nightmare. A large part of the problem for me personally is that I didn't keep the sand clean. Eventually it reaches it's limit as a nutrient sink and starts leaching out nutrients that no amount of water changes can fix. For me the only solution is swapping out the sand which is a dirty, potentially dangerous(for the inhabitants), chore.

If you don't siphon the detritus out of your sand regularly you have had it running just about the right amount of time to start having this very problem.

You should siphon out as much of the Cyano as possible when you do water changes but ultimately you have to get rid of the source of the nutrients or it will never go away. The Cyano may seem like the main problem currently, but it is really only a symptom of excess nutrients.

[brotherd]

I used Chemiclean. Works great.

[carriej]

Seem to have heard and tried a lot of different "methods" but none seem to work. I have starved it, vacuumed it, used more flow, removed it, skimmed heavily, cut back on all foods, more water changes... I can't kill it. I remove it, go check on the tank... Looks spotless. Wake up in the morning, coated again.

How does one keep a sandbed clean? I was under the impression that they should not really be touched or disturbed... It's a 150 gallon system and I only have 7 fish. 6 small ones (two clowns, gramma, goby, pink fairy wrasse, lone chromis) and one medium ish fish a small scopas tang. So it's not a huge bioload... I don't know what gives.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by carriej

How does one keep a sandbed clean? I was under the impression that they should not really be touched or disturbed..

FWIW, I've never cleaned my sand. Tank is 4 years old. Had cyano once due to lighting issues, used chemiclean, cleared it up.

[Jakegr]

I have two sand sifting sea stars the keep my sand bed well disturbed. Very little grows on it... In the areas where the sea stars can't get to, there is a build up of algae/cyano.


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