265 gallon setup

[untamed]

I've been so envious of your setup because it started up just ahead of mine, yet you seemed to have none of the problems I went through and be way further along...

I seem to have passed the cyano stage by siphoning it away as much as possible, and doing some sand vaccuuming. It was pretty bad for quite a while. I knew it wasn't my bulbs because they were still relatively new.

The extended siphoning was made possible by rigging up a sort of "continuous flow vaccuum" that pulled from the main tank, dropped it through a cloth filter and returned the water to the sump. That way, I could vaccuum for extended periods of time without drawing out hundreds of gallons of water.

I looked hard at replacing my skimmer with something bigger. In fact, I would have done it had it not gone away when it did.

I also began running some Phosban media right around that time. I could never accurately measure any phosphate, but I figured it wouldn't hurt.

My guess is that you'll get through it and the tank is still relatively young.