cyanobacteria!

Hi guys, I am back. Guess what my tank has been doing good, but now I have a Cyano outbreak. I thought it was Coralline Algae but it turned out not to be what I wanted. Now it is time for action. any suggestions?

 

are you 100% sure its cyano? increased flow should help. if you could test your water parameters and post them we can then try to narrow down the issue. what/how many times are you feeding?

 

Fight bad bacteria with good bacteria. I used special blend to win my battle.

 

Here is a few pictures of my tank and its situation...

My parameters are PH 8.2, Ammonia 0.0, Nitrite 0.0, Nitrate 10 ppm, salinity is 1.025, temp is 76f.

I currently do not have a skimmer. I have basic aquarium lighting, 2 t-8 bulbs. 2 800gph powerheads moving the water around. HoB filter with carbon in it. I feed 1 time a day, and it is usually 2 small pinches of pellets and every other day a 1/6 of a frozen cube or less.

 

I recently overcame my battle with cyanobacteria, at least for the time being. It can take weeks to months to conquer but consistency is going to be key to get rid of it. It requires a multi pronged attack to defeat and you need do your best to identify the cause.

The following are some causes of Cyano outbreaks:

Not using or bad ro/di filters
over feeding or too many fish
poor flow causing detritus build up
part of the cycling of a new aquarium
Forgetting to change gfo
ect...

Determining the cause is difficult because there are so many possibilities. As far as treatment goes what I did is as follows. I added a GFO reactor. I believe this helps more to keep cyano away rather than get rid of it. I highly recommend thorough manual removal as a solution as well. Use a filter sock for the time being and empty it often. Blast the rocks clean of cyano every day. I also syphoned it off of the sand bed every day. I did this by putting a filter sock in my sump and putting the outlet of my hose into that, so that the water does not actually leave the system. This helps export the nutrients that the cyano is living off of.

The last part of what I did to rid my tank of cyano, i don't necessarily recommend. I began organic carbon dosing. A lot of people say that this can actually cause cyano outbreaks and there have been many threads on the topic. I feel that carbon dosing alone can cause a cyano outbreak, due to already imbalanced bacterial populations. I supplemented microbacter 7 while dosing vodka and i feel that it helped to further get my cyano bacteria under control.


Hope any of this helps.

 

Just how old is your tank,..?? from the Pic's the rock doesnt look to be aged very long. Or well is very new like a new tank set up .. ? Along with little live stock.

 

added fish to my tank around august. The tank went through the nitrogen cycle in july.

 

How to Get Rid of Red Slime (Cyanobacteria)

Here are a few tips, Zgetman. Best of luck!

 

I do use ro/di water. I think that my problem started with some dyeing snails.

 

I've been dealing with cyano too....it sucks....a lot. I can't say that increased flow is much help, I had my vortech cranked and the cyano just seemed to enjoy swaying around as it continued to spread. I just finished my third round of 3-day lights out. Things finally look way better but I swear it was still growing in the dark.

If you go with GFO make sure you use the correct amount, I overdosed (didn't know any better) and wound up frying my corals b/c the water was crystal clear and there were no more available nutrients.

Best of luck, don't expect an overnight success, and hang in there.