Cyano

[Nick Manning]

Hi guys, any tips for getting rid of cyano? Started in little blobs for a few weeks but now getting abit out of hand, tank is a 3.5 months old, was doing 25 litre water change ( tank is 150l cube all in one sump) once a week, but have recently reduced to once a month as I can’t get my nitrates and phosphates up (nitrates 0 to 1 ppm) and phosphates not registering on salifert test

I’ve got 2 power heads running + 1000l per hour return

Cyano starting to creep onto a few corals, worried it’s going to get out of control

Thanks in advance

 

[Nick Manning]

Some photos of the bad areas

 

[finch137]

chemiclean is about the only thing that helps, then water changes after that to remove the medication.

 

[WillemvdP]

I used ChemiClean and it works really well - did not see any negative effect just follow the directions on the pack. It made my skimmer go crazy so just take of the cup and the overflow will aerate the water as it can remove oxygen from the water. I however had to wait a little bit longer for it to work and also had to repeat it a second time. Apparently World Wide coral uses it regularly due to the positive effect on corals.

 

[Pistolshrimp]

Hi guys, any tips for getting rid of cyano? Started in little blobs for a few weeks but now getting abit out of hand, tank is a 3.5 months old, was doing 25 litre water change ( tank is 150l cube all in one sump) once a week, but have recently reduced to once a month as I can’t get my nitrates and phosphates up (nitrates 0 to 1 ppm) and phosphates not registering on salifert test

I’ve got 2 power heads running + 1000l per hour return

Cyano starting to creep onto a few corals, worried it’s going to get out of control

Thanks in advance

Its normal for a new tank to go through a few algea cycles, I had the same problem with cyano when my tank was around that age too.

I also had the issue of not having enough nitrates and phosphates to support the good bacteria in the tank.

What actually worked for me, was upped my feeding a little and use a probiotic like NP pro, daily or every second day, manual removal and dusting of rocks, especially where detritus settles.

When I would first add the NP, I would get a bacterial bloom followed by super crystal clear water. I still use it everyday.

Now that I am done with that, it has left me with an emerging hair algea problem Lol, now to deal with that.........

 

[Nick Manning]

Thanks for the advice guys, Chemi clean worked like a charm, no Cyano anymore, Now the hair algae is creeping in, Im pretty sure its also absorbing the little nitrate and phosphate i had.. have turned off my skimmer for the last week and still no rise in Nutrients, I was feeding abit of reef roids to up the nutrients but i guess im just feeding the algae issue, Think im going to get a small Tomini Tang and some turbo snails and ride it out, Any other clean up crew recommendations?

 

[Nick Manning]

Its normal for a new tank to go through a few algea cycles, I had the same problem with cyano when my tank was around that age too.

I also had the issue of not having enough nitrates and phosphates to support the good bacteria in the tank.

What actually worked for me, was upped my feeding a little and use a probiotic like NP pro, daily or every second day, manual removal and dusting of rocks, especially where detritus settles.

When I would first add the NP, I would get a bacterial bloom followed by super crystal clear water. I still use it everyday.

Now that I am done with that, it has left me with an emerging hair algea problem Lol, now to deal with that.........

Did the NP pro actually bring up your Nitrates etc? Been reeding up on it this morning it looks like a solution to bring down nutrients

 

[Pistolshrimp]

So Basically, it allowed me to get rid of my phosphates which was the actual issue, previously I was feeding quite slim, so I did not have enough nitrate to drop the phosphate, once I started dosing, I started feeding a bit heavier, this is conjunction with the NP allowed me to maintain very low nitrates and phosphates which helped keep the Cyano at bay.