this old reef

S

Saimyoushou

I'm not fully newb, as it may appear, I used to be clydescove- but clyde just died recently and i no longer call my tank that.. change is good :wink:

More than a decade ago, when I did wild/domestic rescue/rehab work, I got a call that a fish tank was abandoned in a home. It turned out to be a 55 gallon reef,w/ about 100 lbs or LR- the water was black and half gone, as it sat in the house, so I really didn't know what it was until I got it home and started digging around in it. I got stung by a dozen different things and I cut my arm on a coral doing that, and I still have the scar.
Anyway, I'd kept freshwater tanks for years(improperly) but knew next to nothing about salt. I just topped the tank off w/ dechlorinated tap, slapped a heater on it and some shoplights, and it stayed like that for 9 years. It had a motley bunch of corals and tangs, and clyde the percula clown. The only fatalities from being left in the dark for weeks were a royal tang and a goniopora that was probably dying anyway..
Over the years the fish and corals died off-except the mushrooms.. from one I now have over a hundred, and clyde who was at least 12 when he died.

So a friend I met who knew a lot about reefkeeping taught me the right way.. and i put a skimmer and PC on it and started doing regular water changes w/RO. It's thriving now except for a cyanob. problem i can't seem to lick. THis pic was taken a couple of months ago.

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Cyano means you are fertilizing the algae somehow. You probably have either nitrates or phosphates at an elevated level in the tank which are acting as fertilizer. You have test kits? Post test results and we can talk.

Ultimately we will need to address ways to avoid build up of both. Right now we have to determine where you are at.
 
my nitrates are 0- i just tested it, but i don't have a phosphate test on hand.. i'll say this, I've had phos-zorb in my filter for months, changed it regularly, and it hasn't worked. After 7 months of it i broke down and tried the commercial cyano killer, to the letter, three times, still nothing. I tried raising my salinity, elevating the light fixture etc. nada.
I have'nt neen using RO lately because my FS moved, I've been using a closer stores 'filtered water'.. but I haven't been using it the whole time Ive had the cyano problem.. so I dunno.
 
I've had better luck fighting cyano (Short term) with the darkness method than anything that comes in a bottle...

Basically, leave the lights completely off for 24-36 hours or so, keeping the tank completely in the dark...

Of course, any of these are just short term bandaids... The real cure is eliminating the food the cyano is growing on...
 
^for some reason, the cyano growth is highest in areas with the most flow.. and I have 5 powerheads in a 40 gal., with lots of countercurrent. The algae develops crazy ghost-like figures and streamers in the current..
 
You can still have excess nitrates and phosphates and have them test at 0. That sounds just crazy, but here's how it happens- they don't stay in the water column long enough to be picked up on the test kit. They're being absorbed as fast as they're being put in.

If you used Serk's method of keeping the tank dark, at the end of the 24-36 hours you would get a reading on the test kit.

Do you have a refugium? That would suck up nitrates faster than the cyano, eventually. You might also want to consider a phosphate adsorbing media in a phosban reactor.
 
Can you post a picture of Cyano please?

It would be nice to make sure we are talking about the same thing. A guy was talking about Dinoflagellates on RC the other day, when in fact he was meaning to discuss Bryopsis. For some reason he thought they were the same.
 
Thats extremelly intersting Ashlar.. i never did fully trust home test kits..

Marc I'll get a picture as soon as my lights come on :) ... heck I didn't know there was anything beyond dinoflagellates myself.
 
Alright here's my slime.. ordinarily i would'nt let it get this far, but in the name of science.. I'm going after a phosphate test today.. but like i said I've had a phiosphorus remover in my filter for months and it hasn't touched it.
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Okay, definitely cyano bacteria. I would siphon out any that you can reach to reduce its population. Usually more flow can help as well.

Testing for Phosphates is a good method all of us should do, but it is possible to get a low or 0 reading with a tank full of algae. That happens because the phosphate is bound up in the plants, as Scott stated a few posts up.
 
I have been using instant ocean.. but Ive pretty much always used it, for years and haven't had this problem. I neglected my tank horribly(by reef standards) for a decade and except for one instance where i had a small attack of slime.. Ive not had this problem

As far as flow goes, I have so much i have to be careful so none of my corals get too much. Besides the slime seems to like the fast flow areas.. like the spouts of my powerheads and the bare spots of rock the current hits hardest.. it makes long streamers and cyano ghosts(i call them) that wave in the current... :(
This started practically the day I put the power compact on there.. its only 96 watts, by far not too much.The curator of reptiles and fish @ the ft worth zoo herself advised me to raise the salinity and the proximity of the light from the surface... which also didn't work.
 
Courtenay, a change in lighting will often cause a rebalancing of things in a tank.

Since you have phosphate removing media in the system, my only other question would be how often do you trim some of that macroalgae on the left? That can be one way of exporting nitrates. If you get them out of the system that will also help starve the cyano.

I would do as Marc suggests and siphon out the cyano you can see, and just give it time. Things will eventually rebalance themselves.
 
google marsh salt study and you will find the results are shocking about instant ocean it came in dead last as the worest salt on the market. :shock:
 
Okay, I have to correct that impression. The MARSH salt study was 10 tanks, not statistically significant. The fact that there was cyano and GHA within 24 hours of filling the tank tells me that there was some contamination. We haven't even seen the actual data, just a presentation at MACNA.

http://www.reeffrontiers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20764
 
Hey all I'm saying is that when I switched from instant ocean my cyano problem went away. I learned about it from Rick when talking to him about my constant cyano issues. I had perfect water conditions and still cyano issues. It was very frustrating :x

So this worked for me and im just passing it forward. :D
 
I had a cyano problem too. What I did was syphon it all out and watch my nitrates. If you can get a lot of it out and get something to stir the sand such as a sand sifting starfish it will help a lot.

BigScott
 
Hehe ok I'm convinced.. I was told Red Sea salt was one of the best.. I'll get a bag and do some water changes and see. Ashlar I think the instigator may really have been the new light.. and now it's just a matter of getting rid of it.
Ive been peeling the stuff off the rocks and bottom and removing it, but not siphoning it.. I just let it get that bad for the photo so ya'll could see what it was.
You know, I've never trimmed my macro, when Ive tried it spews white stuff into the water.. maybe I should just toss the whole bunch of it in the fireplace?
 
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