Algae problem

[tooldini]

My reef is self destructing and I am not sure what to do. I have a major algae problem and I assumed it was cyano bacteria. I tried chemicals to kill it against my better judgement( felt I had tried everything else) Tons of water changes and scrubbing all rocks of the algae. It is mostly burnt orange and dark brown in color. The first item I used was red slime remover. I followed instructions and waited nothing happened so I siphened the substrate and cleaned all filters and power heads.I Had skimmer turned off. I waited two days and used the chemicals again with no results. Now many of my corals are totally mad and mostly closed. I spent probalby 5 hours scrubbing rocks and cleaning yesterday and made the reef look nice again,, just to wake up to the same stuff on everything I had cleaned. I don't have access to RO/ID water so I use city water and let it set for 24 hours. I had the problem before the city water figured I would try a change thinking my well water was the problem. I am gonna move my expensive corals to my wifes nanocube till the problem is resolved. Any ideas ? here are some pics to help you also the really dark red you may see is a dark coraline algae
http://www.hot-gifts.com/saltwater/MVC-358F.JPG
http://www.hot-gifts.com/saltwater/MVC-359F.JPG
http://www.hot-gifts.com/saltwater/MVC-360F.JPG
http://www.hot-gifts.com/saltwater/MVC-364F.JPG

thanks
Jeff

[JPloman]

I see cyanobacteria in every one of those photos.

You are going to have to go to the store (Wal-Mart) and buy RO/DI water. It is the water labeled Distilled or Purified. Each time you put city water into your tank you add in nutrients that are causing the cyano to bloom. Nothing will change until you change the water you are using. The reason is because city water is treated with chemicals that kill bacteria, leaving waste in the water. The cyanobacteria feeds off of this waste.

I would recommend that you do not add any more of the chemicals you used to try and stop the problem. They are a temporary solution and will only result in more problems.

[tooldini]

Thanks is makes sense I didn't wanna use them but I wanted to get rid of the stuff so I could get to the source so it may not have this happen again. I will do that tomorrow and do a water change.

thanks
Jeff

[seaham358]

have you tested your water for phosphates? Nitrates? I'm not 100% sure thats cyno after looking at those pics, its hard to tell.
You should save up and buy a ro/di unit.. there around $100 on ebay, your corals will thank you.
post the numbers when you test the water.

[tooldini]

I haven't tested for phosphates yet,, but I have been testing all along for nitrates, PH,nitrites, and ammonia they have been all 0 except PH= 8.2 I am sure an RO/DI unit is on my list. I have seen nice ones for about 130.00 with shipping thats seems like a pretty good price.

thanks
Jeff

[seaham358]

phosphates is the fuel for cyno, I would test for it and see what you have. Also test your top off water and see if its there also. When I had it bad I was using Kold-steril water and I was just feeding the cyno every time the tank topped off. Switched back to ro/di and all is better. If its bad a phosban reactor is a great piece of equipment and it is cheap also..

[tooldini]

Thanks I will look into a phosban reactor also. I seen them on ebay also Thanks for the help

Jeff

[tooldini]

I would have to say it isn't a slime algae,, Is Cyano bacteria always a slime like algae? This stuff is more like a powder like coating that goes away at night but shortly after the lights are on it is covering most everything. I bought some distilled water and changed out 6 gallons of the 30 gal tank. With 90 pounds of live rock there probably isn't much water volume in there. I have stopped all anti-biotic like treat ment because they did nothing at all. Any more ideas? I am getting an RO/DI unit in about 1-2 weeks.

thanks
Jeff

[tooldini]

I need some more ideas now. I have purchased distilled water and purchased copper and phosphate tests. I tested my well water, distilled water, and tank water which recently had a 6 gallon water change with the distilled water. They all came up will readys of or near .1 on my seachem phosphate test. all other tests are perfect. Now another question about the redslime remover I used and another cyano medicine I used. How long will it take for the medicine to works it way out of the system,, I have since done two nice changes. All of my LPS corals are beautiful but my zoo's and mushrooms look very very bad, could this be due to the medicine? Thanks for any help

Jeff

[robertfah]

I'm running into the SAME issue in my 155g tank. Cyano, everywhere. I syphen it out and the next day it's back (look at www.robertfahey.com/gallery/misc under the fish tank gallery, there's an album, I think the 2nd one, that has images of my algea). I am SOOO sick of it. My levels are perfect:

PH: 8.4
NO2: 0
NO3: 0
Ammonia: .5
PO4: 0
Alk: 5

I've got just a FO tank and my weekly WC's haven't been enough. I tried Chemi-Clean and it cleared up the water for 3 or 4 days, but Cyano was still there. I cleaned my tank too for about 2 hours, scrubbing all the crap off and it still came back. I have a MAG 18b (1800gph) on my return and 2 Maxi-Jet 900 PH's (230gph each) on either side of the tank for flow. The only thing that I think it could be is my clean-up crew is realy small, only 1 Bali-star, 8 blue & red legged crabs, 8 Nassarius snails (big, abut 2-3" each) and 1 Atlantic Sea Hermit crab. I'm thinking I could use more help on that end.

UGH, I just don't know what to do anymore though. Anyone have ANY ideas?

[ColdFish]

I had a serious outbreak of cyano a couple of months ago and am just sharing this for info purposes since I was later told by a number of people that it isn't recommended. I was getting sick of fighting it like it sounds that you are so this is what I did. My tank is a 50 gallon, mainly a FOWLR with the exception of having a few mushrooms and a condy anemone. I would siphon out as much of the cyano as I could. It was easy to remove since it would come away from the sand and rocks in sheets. This did almost no good because with just a couple hours of light it would come back just like before.

Next I added more powerheads. I had one chopping up the surface, and 3 aimed down around the rocks to eliminate as many dead spots as possible. I had some success with this. It slowed the growth way down as it didn't allow it to grow in sheets anymore. It was still there though.

Finally, I had a friend tell me how he had used the Red Slime Remover to get rid of his. I guess this is the "not recommended" part. He let me use his as he had plenty left. I pulled all charcoal, turned my skimmer off, and followed the directions with it. After 48 hours I didn't have a trace of cyano left in my tank and it hasn't come back in the last couple of months.

I did get some small ammonia and nitrite levels a few days after using it, so it did have some effects on my biofiltration, but did not harm any of my livestock. I saw that initially you said you tried red slime remover and it did nothing. Not sure if maybe you have so much of it that it couldn't do the job, or if maybe what you have isn't cyano, but that stuff made an immediate dent in mine. It could have also been that I had knocked mine back with the mechanical method enough so that the red slime remover could finish it off.

[faerykisses]

****, I think I got this too.

Luckily we just won a free DI unit from our LFS when they had a raffle last weekend. Our water is already prepared we are doing the water change today.

Other than really good water changes, is there anything else we can do???

[robertfah]

Oh, I forgot to add that I have an AquaFx RO/DI unit that I make my water with and my filters are new on it, but yet I'm still having this issue with Cyano/Hair algea. I'm ready to get a bigger clean-up crew and bigger PH's and hope that will do the trick.

[seaham358]

tool, if you have any PO4 it is enough to feed the cyno or algaes. It most likely is higher then .1, the cyno is feeding off the PO4 and what it does no consume we pick up with the test..

[tooldini]

Seaham that makes sense so what should we do? Just keep doing water changes and clean rocks and everything else? There is no slime like algae in there just rust colored hair like stuff that goes away at night and reappears after about 1 hour of the lights being on.

thanks
Jeff

[faerykisses]

After doing two seperate 10 gallon (ea.) water changes this weekend, with our new deionized water I have not seen the algae come back.

We re-aquascaped, vaccuumed the sand, cleaned the rocks, cleaned all powerheads and machinery, did the water change, and so far it has not reoccured.

I got a phosphate test and it shows the reading at .6, I know this is high, and plan on doing more water changes this weekend, and buying the phosphate killer bag that floats in your filter....not sure what its called.

We are also getting another powerhead for the right side of the tank so we can create some cross currents to get rid of dead spots.

It was alot of work but I think we might have got it...

Hopefully you have the same results. Good luck...