repeating Chemiclean treatment

[asylumdown]

After battling cyano for months, but consistently reading undetectable levels of phosphate and nitrate, I dosed my tank with chemiclean. I know this is controversial to some people, but in my mind, cyano is a better competitor for nutrients like phosphorous than any GFO resin will ever be, and if there's cyano in there sucking it up the second it's liberated from my rocks or what have you, my GFO was never going to win.

24 hours after dosing when most of the cyano was dead, my phosphate levels went from 0.00 to 0.05 on a hanna checker, so either the Hannah checker is out to lunch or I was right.

I changed my GFO resin and today my Phosphate levels are back down to undetectable levels, but there's still a few patches of cyano left. I look at this stuff like an infection, not an algae, so I want to make sure it's completely gone.

The Chemiclean box says you can repeat the treatment if necessary. I'm assuming that means after the 20% water change. Has anybody dosed a second dose immediately without letting the first dose be 100% skimmed out? So far I've seen no ill effects from the first treatment.

[Delphinus]

Personally I share your intuitions about it being more like an infection and that it's a better scavenger for nutrients and it will outcompete GFO and so on.

When did you run the first treatment? I find that cyano generally will die off in a slow process so if it's only been a few days, wait at least a week, maybe even 2, before deciding on a second blast of it. I've been fooled a few times thinking "oh, it didn't get it all" only to discover a week or so later that it really did work 100%, it just took its time getting there. I suppose a really *awful* infestation may require two treatments back to back but ... I've seen pictures of your tank I kind of doubt it was ever that bad unless you're really good at hiding that sort of thing

Anyhow if you did want to do a second treatment, I myself would be inclined to do so after the w/c.

[Werbo]

I used chemiclean 2 weeks ago. I syphoned out all the cyano I could the day after the treatment and turkey basted the area I couldn't syphon. So far so good. No signs of it returning.

[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...

[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

[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.

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by 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

haha, thanks. trust me though, I'm probably wrong about as much as I'm right lol.

[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.