Cyano

[Tazmaniancowboy]

OK, I have read that cyano will go away on its own in time (with the right water conditions of course)or I can manually go in and suck it out. I have used chemi-clean in the past and it works great, but I do not want to use chemicals any more if I don't have to. I have had no time lately and he cyano has now covered my whole sandbed. When I get a chance I will go in and vacuum it out, but I would like to know what the general consensus about it going away on its own is. I would also like to know if I'm doing the right thing by not using chemi-clean.

ALL opinions appreciated!
Thanks,
Taz

 

[billyr98]

not using chemi clean is good.. you first need to figure out why you have this bacteria in your tank. how is your flow in your tank? how good is the water quality of your ro/di water?

 

[JohnS_323]

I agree with Billy about trying to get away from chemically addressing it. Figure out the source and try to eliminate it. In the meantime, it's a good idea to siphon out as much as you can.

We had a bad cyano outbreak on our 65g tank. It was there for a long while. We had a bad ballast in the light fixture, so our lighting was kind of poor. I'm not sure that had anything to do with it or not but coincidently, right after I replaced the ballast and did a few water changes, it went away. I should add that part of the water changes included siphoning out all of the cyano I could. The stuff I couldn't get to disappeared on its own in a few days. It's been fine ever since.

For siphoning I use length of 1/2" PE tubing. It's nice a rigid and wide enough to suck it down with out binding up too often. If you angle cut the end you can use it to get into tight spots and scrape some stubborn stuff off.

Good luck. I know what a pain it is.

 

[Carlo]

Definitely siphon it out as John suggested. Get as much of it as you can. You don't want it dieing off in the tank.

You got to kill the nutrients. What are your Nitrate and phosphate levels?

Generally speaking you will want to concentrate on removing phosphates. Cyano is aggressive at taking what ever phosphates it can from the water so you need to be more aggressive but working up to it (not to drastic to fast). Check into a GFO product unless you have very high levels and then I'd recommend something else first to reduce the levels to where GFO can work for you without costing a small furtune.

Try skimming wetter to remove more from the water. Try and improve your flow if you can.

Have you recently switched feeding schedules or types of food? Added more bio-load?

I'm not a fan of chemical dosing the tank either and would usually recommend not doing it but chemi-clean has a pretty strong track record for getting rid of the cyano without harm to the tank. It's very rare you hear of a problem that wasn't user created. So follow directions to a T on the product and if you do decide to use it prepare your system ahead of time and make sure your alk is up to at least 9 dKH first since the chemi-clean has been known to drop your alk a little. Just a precaution as this is the only downside I've really read about. Even if you do dose it and get rid of your cyano, without curing the problem you could end up with cyano again so you will want to focus on limiting the phosphates.

Carlo

 

[Tazmaniancowboy]

Thanks for the replies guys. I really thought I'd get more responses though! Where is everybody? Anyway My RO/DI water is measuring 0 TDS. Should I be testing it for anything else? I have been storing my RO water in a brand new, clean 100 gallon rubbermaid stock tank that I will SOMEDAY finish setting up as a sump, and using this water for my make up water. The water was sitting for about 2 months as I used it up. Is there anything bad about that?

My flow has dwindled recently due to 2 of my 3 powerheads crapping out. I did not replace them because I was awaiting the infamous Koralia backorder so I definitely had dead spots and not enough flow in the tank. I now have the Koralia's running so I should be good.

I am running the phosban from the group buy in 2 reactors. Now I don't know if the phosban got rid of my hair algae or the cyano stole all of the phosphates from it causing it to disappear! Or a combination of both. It is amazing though. Maybe Cyano is the key to getting rid of hair algae! Maybe I can bottle some and sell it on ebay or to the many reefers that are giving up the battle of hair algae LOL

My cyano was definitely due to summertime neglect to my tank along with the powerhead failures. It has been in the tank for around 2 months unfortunately, but other than it being ugly, I haven't seen any ill effects from it. :-[ That was embarrassing to say, but hopefully I'll get to siphoning it out next week and get back on track that I was before summer hit! 8)


Taz

 

[Carlo]

Maybe, you say you are leaving it in a 100 gallon stock tank. IMHO this isn't the best thing to do for a couple of reasons.

There isn't a lid (wouldn't think there is)
If it's exposed to light you could get some algae growing in it
Pure RO/DI water is by it's nature ion hungry. In general terms this means the water will try and pull other ions out of anything it comes in contact with including the air. Some people have reported phosphate buildups over time when leaving water sit like that in Rubbermaid containers. So I would run a phosphate test on the water before using it if left to sit that long.

One thing you could do when filling this stock tank up is add a little bit of baking soda or calcium or salt mix (pick on). The water will then have some minerals in it (not 0 TDS anymore) and won't be ion hungry anymore. This is generally a good idea to do. I add about one spoonfull of salt mix to my 44g RO/DI container. This definitely keeps the water from leaching from it's container.

Probably a combination of the cyano and phosban that got rid of your hair algae. Since you're now running phosban I'd try and suck as much of the cyano out of the tank sooner then later before it dies off releasing the nutrients back into the tank.

Carlo