concerning cyno question

[greatgman]

got a question

cyno is bad in my tank and i cant get it under control
i tried phosban for 2 weeks nothing.
i talked to a not so lfs
and he told me to try to "shock" the cyno with arithmicyn
or whatever that is and handed me a package of maricin plus or so

i havent tried it yet but was wondering
if anybody tried it
so if i tried a antibacterial medicine would i need to tale out all the inverts (snails crabs and shrimp)

 

[Hara]

antibacterial medicines also kill all the beneficial bacteria as well. your tank would go through another cycle most likely or at a bare minimum, have some pretty decent ammonia spikes. you really need to find the root of the problem as the phosban and the antibiotics are just a quick fix. I am sure you have read through some of the other posts on cyano, but have you tried all the suggestions? Limit feeding, increase water flow, siphon out visible cyano religiously, lots of water changes using ro water? I know from personal experience that this is a frustrating problem, but you can eventually get a handle on it by doing the above things.

I realize this does not answer your question about the inverts, but I honestly am not sure about the answer.

 

[haus]

When I started SW I said to myself that I would put NO chemicals in the water. After months of battling with cyno, I broke down and put in chemi-clean. The cyno dissappeared in 2 days, and hasn't been back since. I know...I am weak , but the cyno is gone. I did the pwc, cut back lighting, cut back feeding, all helped, but didn't cure it. RO may have helped but I was too cheap to try it . Good luck.

 

[flanque]

Cyno was particular difficult for me to eliminate. I did a couple of things though which may help you. Each of them helped me in a few small ways.

Firstly I added a product called Stability. It's just a very highly concentrated bacteria suppliment. Adding that took away probably 20-30% of the cyno. This is strange I thought since my amonia, nitrite and nitrates were always at zero and I tested those on multiple branded kits at many different intervals.

Removed the golf ball coral that was dying from the back side first. Seems as though that gave another 5-10% reduction of cyno.

I added a protein skimmer. By far this was the most beneficial. I would estimate around 5% of the problem existed after adding that. It did however take a good 2 months or so for the skimmer to slowly remove it.

Final nail in the coffin was when I moved houses and relocated the tank. All the water and rocks were rearranged and since then I haven't had a trace of it.

All in all I am very glade that I did it "naturally". I went to the extend of buying this red algae eliminator but it required adding partial dosages at different intervals and having a spare tank to immediately remove livestock if they looked sick. It sounded poisonous to me.

If you don't have a skimmer, I would recommend getting one. The benfits are enourmous in my view. The shear amount of glug I have removed from my tank makes me wonder how it survived before without it.. then again, I got cyno so maybe that's the proof they don't last without them.