Cyano Bacteria. How to get rid of it???

[criticle]

How can you remove and prevent cyano bacteria in your tank?

[badgerlaw]

Chemi clean

[rustybucket145]

Manual removal and attention to water quality and flow. Excess nutrients and poor water flow are the main causes. The more you remove manually, the more nutrients you are removing. It may seem like a never ending battle but it will eventually abide.

Also you will need to crank your skimmer up to help you remove the nutrients.

[cristhiam]

Wet skimming should help too and water changes, I've seen it grow in high flow areas too.

[Tony25]

Ive been having the same exact prob. I turned my skimmer up so it skims more wet i used to have it skimming more dry. Also did a 10 gallon water change yesterday on my 55 gallon with ro/di water. And removed some off the sand bed and a little off the rocks. The only way to manualy remove it is with water changes right?

[Misled]

Originally posted by rustybucket145
Manual removal and attention to water quality and flow. Excess nutrients and poor water flow are the main causes. The more you remove manually, the more nutrients you are removing. It may seem like a never ending battle but it will eventually abide.

Also you will need to crank your skimmer up to help you remove the nutrients.

Agree with those above also do you use RO/DI water? If so what are your TDS readings? How much do you feed? What are your parameters?

[alan214]

The age of your tank plays a large role as well. It's not uncommon to have flare ups of diatoms and dinoflagellates for the first year. All you can do is perform your water changes when you're supposed to with RO/DI water from a trusted source.

[LobsterOfJustice]

1. Good flow. Nothing should settle on the substrate.
2. Run phosphate removal media such as phosban. I run the media eventhough I have tested my water with a salifert kit and it read 0. The Algae can be using the phosphate as fast as it's being intorduced to your system, and even small amounts of PO4 (too small to register on a kit) can fuel algae and harm corals.
3. Use RODI water. Check the TDS, your filters may need replacing.
4. Rinse all frozen food cubes before feeding.
5. Keep the sand stirred with a cucumber, conch and/or gobies.

[KyleP]

A good way to remove manually if its on your sand bed is to use a fish net. Just run the rim of the net just under the sand and the cyano is caught up in the net.

[lusenut2]

Are you using a RO/DI unit, if yes check the filters in it, and also step up the water flow where the red is. I used to have the same problems and used Chemicals to take care if it and it always came back. I put a power head pushing water where the red was and it was gone in about 2 weeks. I did 1 water change also.

[northbay-reefer]

frequent water change will get rid of it "the right way"

[JTEAGUE]

Chemi Clean worked for me!

[Tony25]

Originally posted by northbay-reefer
frequent water change will get rid of it "the right way"

How frequent and how much in a 55 gallon tank?

[ErikD]

While I know 0 ppm is the prefered reading on TDS. What is an unacceptable reading to signal changing my RO/DI cartrigages. Would 10-14 ppm be too high?

Thanks for letting me join in...

[blot60]

You can use air tubing to syphon out the cyano.

[douglaslindsey]

Chemi clean does work very good, but you must solve the reason why you got it in the first place to avoid it from comming back. I agree with LobsterOfJustice in avoiding the problems in the first place.

[LobsterOfJustice]

Originally posted by ErikD
While I know 0 ppm is the prefered reading on TDS. What is an unacceptable reading to signal changing my RO/DI cartrigages. Would 10-14 ppm be too high?

Thanks for letting me join in...

This depends on the TDS of the incoming tap water. But in most cases, yes 10-14 would mean the filters need to be replaced.

[mattsilvester]

I haven't read other replies, so this might have been said already.

I had cyno before, after allot of quick fixes that more or less failed, I finally went the hard route, and never saw it again.

First, I physically removed as much as possible. I even resorted to a toothbrush rubber banded onto a 1/2" pipe, and scrubbed and syphoned at the same time.

I then turned off all pumps and let settle, and syphoned off as much gunk from the bottom as possible.

I repeated this process several times over a period of two weeks until it was gone. I found it would come back in certain patches more so than others, after the initial cleaning.

In addition, I increased flow, concentrating ont he area that were previously particularly bad spots.

I added an army of cleaners, mainly snails.

I added a refugium, with macro and 24 hour lighting


It could have been any one of the above that cured it, or it could have been a combination...... suffice to safe it worked, my water quality in general was much improved and I never looked back.

HTH

Matt

[Paliya]

In my tank, cyano comes and goes. I'm not sure why... I'm guessing it has to do a lot with water flow, and dissolved organic matter. Maybe it's just a normal cycle; who knows?

But there is a sea hare that eats it: Bursatella leachii. I just got one for $13 at an LFS. Does quite a number on diatoms as well. Mine has been keeping my sand bed really clean. Too clean in fact, I think they need a tank that's bigger than 50g.

Regards,
-Pat

[foresteronw]

Anyone have a picture of Cyno?

[gman19]

I'm fighting the same battle now in my 100g that's nearly 15 months up and running. Just placed a PhosGard reactor to running yesterday. All other parameters are good so we'll see...