[impur]

I'm on board!!!


I see the cyano on those closed polyps. I'm having the exact same problem. This cyano sticks to the polyps and irritates them. I have to physically scrape the cyano off the individual polyps with a toothbrush as just blasting it with the baster has no effect.

Do you have any other areas with cyano? What are your nitrates? Phosphates? Any recent changes in lighting?

Here's my story. I figure if we get enough stories that lead up to this happening, maybe we can pinpoint something.

My problem began when I put my CA reactor online. It dropped my pH WAY down to about 7.3 at night. That, coupled with the jug of Oceanic i had mixing up at 7.9 pH caused me to switch salts to IO in hopes of getting fresh SW with a decent pH for my WCs. During this time of low pH, i lost a lot of SPS but my zoas and LPS were doing fine. That was fine for about half the bucket, then the salt mixed up at 7.7! By this time, i had cyano, dinos, hair algae popping up, zoas were melting away, LPS closed up and browning, but my SPS were doing incredible! This made no sense to me, still doesn't. I went back to Oceanic and started aerating the fresh SW with outside air. That worked great, i now get fresh SW mixing up at 8.3. But i still had cyano and dinos, hair algae went away almost immediately. After 2 months of daily basting, weekly syphoning i decided to get drastic. I added mesh bags to my overflow drains, added a HOB filter with Phoslock and carbon. On Tuesday that week my light went off and stayed off until Saturday morning. I awoke to a spotless tank. No more cyano, no more dinos, and my zoas all were about half open. I hadn't seen any zoas open except my Nuclear Greens and Purple Deaths for 4 months at this point, so i was ecstatic. The cyano slowely crept back, but only on the polyps like your 2nd pic. Even violent shaking in a bucket doesn't remove this cyano.

I truely think that cyano stuff is the problem. Its not a normal type though, like you stated. We need to get to the root of what is causing this "sticky cyano" IMO.