updates : daily water changes of 5-20g removed the cyano but as soon as I stopped it returned. Doing a larger 60g water change did not remove it yesterday. 30ml of nopox is dosed every morning.
Water parameters are now 0.05 for phosphates and 10-25 nitrates from the top or 10 from the side (salifert). Phosphates did reach a low of 0.03 but I've since stirred the sand. It has now been over 2 months since I have fed this tank or a fish has pooped in it. I lost a few sps frags and some lps are not happy about no feedings but everything is more or less okay. While I could run chemiclean to get rid of the cyano I do not want to discontinue skimming for 2 days.
I've added more flow to the fuge in an effort to keep the cheato clean and to encourage it to grow. Caulerpa is growing well in the anemone tank and I've had to prune it several times. My haddoni did move which was a bit of a concern but it seems to have resettled in.
I've got 30 more days to get this under control. Unfortunately some of the saltwater I am making has to go to the fish since they are basically in filterless tanks awaiting the end of the fallow period. Besides being super expensive it's very taxing having to change large amounts of water each and everyday and running my ro/do almost all day everyday. I have changed the filters once I got to 1tds and it's back to 0.
I am hopeful that another 100 gallon water change will reduce the nitrates further and some more small daily removal of the cyano will eliminate that. I am still very worried about a) not getting the nitrates down before I put the fish back. b) keeping them down once the tank starts being fed again.
In my 10 years of reefing I've had some really bad crashes but never anything like this, a relatively simple problem that just won't go away.
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