OKay got cyano now what?

[Reefhawk1]

Sounds to me like you are overfeeding. I feed every other day once a day. You can feed your Regal Tang some sea veggies if you think you are going to starve her. I also only feed mysis shrimp and ocean plankton (krill). I installed a Phosban reactor on my 120 gallon and found it took a couple of weeks to start working well. A little patience is needed with the Phosban system.

I do 20% water changes every two weeks. At that time I make sure all debris are mixed up and removed from my sump and any algae on the hard to reach areas on the glass are cleaned.

Are you using a sump or a canister filter system?

Also What type of lighting are you using halides or fluorescent?

By the way welcome to canreef

[bullit67]

Try cutting back on the lights 11 hours is a lot of light try about 8 hours

[findingnemo1]

What are sea veggies? Never seen them here. I agree they are being overfed. But i am scared she will waste away on me

I am using h/o t5's and i am using a sump with cheato in it. Go figure
I am going to upgrade my clean up crew as we'll this weekend and i will try cuting back on my lights and see if that helps.

If i didn't have to lta's in the tank i would seriously contemplate sucking all the sand out

[krisalexander]

By sea-veggies he means nori a.k.a seaweed. You can buy this at any store a money saving tip is dont buy it from an LFS by it from a asian supermarket. Just make sure it is not flavoured. And get a feeding clip or an elastic band around a rock and put in a quarter sheet or something and you are good to go. Where abouts are you from by the way?

Kris

[Reefer Rob]

Cyano is natural, and a part of all reef tanks. At some point (or points) it will "bloom" and become visible. You need to get your tank balanced with other organisms that out-compete it.

The first thing to do is reduce your photo period by 25% temporarily, then increase it slowly once the cyano has disappeared.

Carbon dosing of some type will help with the nitrates, but the root of the problem is overstocking of nitrate producing organisms (fish) relative to your tanks ability to process them. It's that simple IMO

I don't think your your nitrates have anything to do with the cyano, these are mysterious little beasties. I've had had no cyano at 20ppm, and tons of it with nitrates near 0, just because I changed something that caused an imbalance in my tank.

[findingnemo1]

[quote=krisalexander;235728]By sea-veggies he means nori a.k.a seaweed. You can buy this at any store a money saving tip is dont buy it from an LFS by it from a asian supermarket. Just make sure it is not flavoured. And get a feeding clip or an elastic band around a rock and put in a quarter sheet or something and you are good to go. Where abouts are you from by the way?

Kris i am in Calgary. Need to add that apparently. Okay got the sea veggies thing. I have tried nori with this angel every kind and she still won't touch it. I put it up everyday but the tangs are the ones who eat it all.

Originally Posted by Reefer Rob

Cyano is natural, and a part of all reef tanks. At some point (or points) it will "bloom" and become visible. You need to get your tank balanced with other organisms that out-compete it.

The first thing to do is reduce your photo period by 25% temporarily, then increase it slowly once the cyano has disappeared.

Carbon dosing of some type will help with the nitrates, but the root of the problem is overstocking of nitrate producing organisms (fish) relative to your tanks ability to process them. It's that simple IMO

I don't think your your nitrates have anything to do with the cyano, these are mysterious little beasties. I've had had no cyano at 20ppm, and tons of it with nitrates near 0, just because I changed something that caused an imbalance in my tank.

I will cut back my lights starting today. I have heard about the sugar dosing and have considered it but do want to do a little more research on that. And overstocking with major waste producing fish is an extreme possibility. Although the angel was the last fish i added and that was boxing day and i haven't had a problem untill the last couple days. In this tank i have a male blonde naso tang who eats non stop if i will let him, And a regal tang who is the same and the regal. Time for a 180 or 220. I thought i would have another few months but it appears the naso is getting a little to big already. Its hard to try and figure out if you have done anything different to cause it. And in alll honesty nothing different in the last couple months. So i guess i will just take the advice here and see cross my fingers that it works

[Ruth]

I think you would be just fine to cut back on your feeding as well. You can always pick it back up again if you notice your fish seem to be getting skinny.
You will probably have to upgrade tank size if you plan on keeping the naso - they do get very big. I have mine in a 190g with 2 other fish and it is almost too small - my tang is probably 12-14" long and all he will eat is nori and calerpa.

[Raf]

RR is bang on with that response.


And as for chemiclean, it is safe in reef tanks as long as you dose correctly....it WILL drive your skimmer mad for days if not weeks, so be prepared for that....also, it will get rid of the symptoms, but the overall problem will remain until you achieve that 'balance' that RR talked about.

[Johnny Reefer]

Originally Posted by Ruth

....IME the usual culprit is ...... or feeding foods such a mysid shrimp without rinsing it first. ....

I believe this has been a contributing factor to cyano problems I've had and finally just figured out a simple rinsing method using a small sieve (sp), small bowl and some tankwater.

Originally Posted by Reefer Rob

....You need to get your tank balanced ....

I'm inclined to agree with this. IME, I upgraded from a 135g to a 180g 14 months ago. Twelve months ago, (okay...a year), cyano set in. It was a constant battle until around October/November when it finally showed signs of slowing down. I attributed this to the system being more stable and/or balanced. Perfect, just in time to be torn down again and be moved across town to start it all over again. The move was in December, and sure enough, just like last time, I have cyano again 1 1/2 months later. So everything being equal, I expect it to be a problem until the Fall again when the system reaches a stage of maturity that is not as conducive to cyano. Here's hoping, anyway. In the meantime I plan to approach the current cyano problem differently than last time. Last time I used Chemi-Clean about 5 or 6 times and it just kept coming back. One time it came back only 3 days after a treatment. This time I plan to avoid the Chemi-Clean and just manually remove the stuff and hope the stuff wanes come Autumn, as I suspect it will.

Seems the biggest test of patience is during the first year of a reef system.

HTH and cheers,