Cyano....whats up with that???

[Frankly Canadian]

I had Cyano really bad the redish black stringy kind you are describing and I walked into Red Coral in Calgary and talked to Kevin & Doug, problem solved! First thing I did was water flow Doug calculated what my water flow should be for my 75g tank and wow was I ever short of that, so I bought some power heads and increased water flow by 3,000g/hr Second thing I did was I bought some Coral Snow and I've been using it ever since. Third thing I did was changed the food I was feeding my fish, now I use Phylankton, which has virtually no phosphates. Fourth thing I did was increased my water changes to between 5% & 10% every week. Fifth thing I did was bought two Sand Sifting Yellowheaded Golbies, and they do wonders in keeping the sand clean.
Anyways I wouldn't advise doing the blackout thing because I did it and ya it worked ok for a few weeks but it always came back. I also tried Red Slime by Chemiclean and it also worked for a few weeks, (closer to a month) but it always came back. Myka has a great article on this web site that deals with problem algae’s and cyano, the causes and how to get rid of it. Good luck! Again I haven't had any return for over a year now.

[Madreefer]

If your LFS tries to get you to buy any sand sifters at all don't be tempted to do it. Your tank is not established yet and what ever you put in will die of starvation.

[Frankly Canadian]

The Sand Sifting Golbies was my idea not anyone from any store, however they have been doing great and are little piggies when it come to dinner time. Maybe for someone that is at the height of thier cyano outbreak I would agree with you, but in my case anyways they dug up sand from everywhere especially around all my rocks and if there where any lingering small spots of cyano they sure disappeared fast and that was almost a year ago. Incidently it took probably four months maybe more to get rid of my cyano outbreak.

[MKLKT]

Essentially you want to curb the cause of cyano and it'll clear it up quite promptly, same goes for a lot of algae and imbalances in the tanks. Why bandage when you can stop the injury from happening again?