Help! cyano has taken over...

[cjpf]

I have had fish tanks (freshwater for about 2 years now), however, 6..maybe 7 months ago I started with a saltwater tank. It is a 55 gallon tank, with roughly 50 lbs of live rock. The current stocking of the tank is three green chromis, a six line wrasse, a chalk bass, an orange skunk clown, a diamond watchman goby, a sea hare, a sand sifting starfish and two cleaner shrimp. I also have quite a bit of snails, as i bought a clean-up crew from reef cleaners.org. I battled hair algae, and dino for a while, but that has been cleared for about 3 to 4 months. Now, I have been battling with cyano, and I have no clue what else to try. I read that flow was important, so currently the tank has 2 marineland 1200 pumps and 1 marineland 600. The tank was always kept steady at 79 F, and lowered last week to 78 F in an attempt to control the cyano.

The water parameters are 0 for ammonia, 0 nitrites, and seemingly 0 nitrates. 0.2 phosphates. calcium over 420. My lfs said to reduce nitrates/phosphate i should use purigen and phosguard, both which have been in the tank for two weeks now. the Ph and alkalinity were down, so I have been using eight.four by seachem. Right now, when the lights go off, the ph is about 8.2 and alkalinity is approx 9 dKh.

I also have a 6 fixture T5, with 3 actinic and three 10,000K, with actinic being on from 12 to 6, and the 10,000K from 1 to 4. The tank has a large HOB refugium with chaeto, which almost tripled in size. I perform weekly water changes of 10 gallons in an attempt to get rid of cyano, and these are done with RO/DI water ( I have a unit).

I cut down my feedings from 3 small meals a day, to one small meal, and the cyano keeps multiplying. It started in the rocks, and now has propagated to my sand, and I JUST discovered that is starting to cover the chaeto in the refugium... every water change I have to pick cyano off of my green star polyp to prevent it from dying..

I am not sure what else I can do... I am at a lost. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated... I tried to be as detailed as possible.. Thank you in advanced!

 

[ivan_dalmatia]

Take your rock out and wash it in you water from the tank. Syphon your sand, top of your water, tone down your lights to just actinic for a week or two. Good luck

 

[mr_X]

Don't take any rock out. You are way overfeeding. 2 or 3 times a WEEK is fine. Up your water changes siphoning out what you can with each. It will go away in a month or two. You could also use a product like Chemiclean. It works fine with no ill effects. i've used it here and there over the years and no trouble.

 

[Mr. D]

I just used red slime remover(no red slim just regular old cyano) and it killed everything g in 48hrs

 

[mr_X]

red slime is cyano.

 

[cjpf]

I was trying or avoiding adding chemicals, but I will if I have to, though I wanted to make sure i tried everything before.

I will cut down on feeding, and yes, every time I do a water change, I syphon as much as i can out of the tank. In occasions I have taken the top rocks out and scrubbed them in tank water.. Though it seems to multiply every week...

 

[Sniperhank]

I was trying or avoiding adding chemicals, but I will if I have to, though I wanted to make sure i tried everything before.

I will cut down on feeding, and yes, every time I do a water change, I syphon as much as i can out of the tank. In occasions I have taken the top rocks out and scrubbed them in tank water.. Though it seems to multiply every week...

That is what can end up happening with overfeeding. You started down the right path, just didn't go far enough. I feed my reef tank twice a week one cube of frozen food. I'd suggest using frozen over pellets or flake to also assist with nutrient control.
I would do large water changes during your weekly, 20% rather than 10. This will slowly get the problem under control. This will not be something solved over night and could take a month to get all the built up nitrates/phosphates out of your system.
If you can't stand the look of it, red slime remover will remove the issue...from sight. You will still need to go through the above stated hoops for the same amount of time to resolve the underlying issue of nutrient build up.

 

[saltcreep1025]

wait a sec... you only have your 10k lights on for 3 hours a day? Do you mean normally, or to combat the cyano?

 

[cjpf]

wait a sec... you only have your 10k lights on for 3 hours a day? Do you mean normally, or to combat the cyano?

They were usually on for 6 hours, but now, I have gradually decreased the 10,000K lights to only 3 to deal with the cyano. How long should lights be on for?

I am currently finishing the third day of the lights out. I will have to see how the aquarium looks tomorrow.

 

[saltcreep1025]

Ive only heard of people who have intense metal halide lighting having them on for 6 hours a day. I have mine on for 12.