cjpf
Aquarium Advice Apprentice
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!
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!