Everyones an expert

[dabandit]

Dont take my word for it heres a link. Im not saying adding the nitrate is wrong I am saying overstocking is wrong for obvious reasons I cant believe any of you are arguing this.You want more info telling you there is a safer way just let me know.http://en.allexperts.com/q/freshwate...ted-tank-1.htm oops crappy link,type cyano into the sites search bar should be the first one that comes up,experts name is Nick.

Cheers

[dabandit]

All research i've read says that though cyano can convert it needs to be in a phosphorus rich environment. Like I said remove phosphates/nitrates problem solved remove detrious/increase flow problem stays gone. I'm not trying to start a ****ing contest here just defending my statements. Are these facts not true,they came from your data? Maybe Im reading this wrong

[Samw]

I think the issue is that you accused people of things they didn't do. No one gave advice to overstock the tank and no one gave advice to add phosphates and no one gave advice to use tap water. Yet you are accusing people of that. Here are the posts from the other thread that you are arguing about. The claims that you made about what people said (overstock a tank, add phosphate, use tap water) are not found in these posts and in the thread. And I don't think anyone actually said to add nitrate. They simply made a statement about what is one possible cause of cyano (low nitrate). I think the posts were fairly responsible actually.

Originally Posted by NewGuy

Erythromycin is the active ingrediant in Maracyn and its an antibiotic that people take all the time. I had the same problem in my tank and Maracyn clears it up in a day or two. No need to treat for more than that, just follow the instructions on the box as if you are gonna treat an infection. Maracyn will kill off alot of the beneficial bacteria so be prepared for ammonia spikes and additional water changes. Also, just because the Maracyn kills the bacteria doesnt it goes away. You still have to scoop all that green slime out or it will rot and ruin the water. At first it might look like the maracyn didnt work since its still super thick but you will notice that it does not grow back.

Cyanobacteria could be due to poor water flow and super LOW nitrates (not high) the opposite for most algae. It is also a general indicator that your water is dirty.

Originally Posted by Fishaholic

Agreed - it seems to be due to low nitrates - understocked / startup tanks usually get it. I have a 10 gallon with this problem currently. Frequent water changes just seem to accelerate the growth (Overnight!)

[midgetwaiter]

The problem with the advice dished out on that thread is not that it is wrong exactly but that it is fragmentary and therefore open to bad interpretation. This guys problem isn't really that he has too little nitrate, it is that he has to little nitrogen relative to the amount of phosphate, as made clear in samw's google results. You can fix this problem by either increasing nitrogen (nitrate or ammonia) or decreasing phosphate to get back to a good balance for plant growth. The plants will out compete the cyano and it will die, I imagine everyone can agree that is true.

The problem with I find with internet posts is often the brevity, this is what leads to the bad interpretations. Poster A says "I heard somewhere that you have to increase nitrate". Advice seeker says "How"? Poster B says "Add more fish". = Bad advice.

IMO, it all goes back to the first couple of posts usually. You get a quick put poorly explained bit of info and even if it is technically correct you then get a stampede of supposition and bad interpretation. I think if people took more time with their posts and made an effort to explain things more fully we'd avoid a lot of this stuff.

I don't mean to attack the community for the way we do things either. I dish out aquarium advice for a living, nobody knows better than me that it can be difficult to do well. If somebody came in and asked me this question I could easily spend 20 minutes talking about macro nutrients and the N:P:K balance and it's a comparatively simple subject. This would lead them to walking away shaking their head and maybe retaining a tenth of what I had to say. That would also amount to bad advice and it's something I tend to do sometimes.

All research i've read says that though cyano can convert it needs to be in a phosphorus rich environment. Like I said remove phosphates/nitrates problem solved remove detrious/increase flow problem stays gone. I'm not trying to start a ****ing contest here just defending my statements. Are these facts not true,they came from your data? Maybe Im reading this wrong

Your info isn't wrong it's just incomplete.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Originally Posted by dabandit

Dude I keep fresh water planted tanks for 12 years and have scientific facts to prove me right.

Dude, I've been keeping fish for over 30+ years (fw since 1976 & sw since 1984) and I have 9 years at UBC studying aquaculture. Yet, I still don't know everything about fish.

Fish-keeping is still as much an art as it is a science.

What works for one, may not work for another. Telling people that they are idiots because they don't agree with you is not necessarily a good way to convince someone. As others have mentioned on this thread, there are several varieties of cyanobacteria, algae & other similar organisms. Some do great under one set of parameters (ie. low Nitrogen) while others need different parameters to bloom (ie. high nutrient levels). Therefore, what might stop the problem in one person's tank may not help in someone elses, simply because its a different strain of cyano.

While many reefers use RODI for their tanks, almost no fw aquarist does. Especially for planted tanks, since serious planted tank keepers add all sorts of fertilizers, CO2, etc. to their systems to help the plants thrive under high light. I keep both fw & sw & have only ever made RODI water for my reef tanks, never for my fw tanks. Don't even know anybody locally who uses it for their fw or fw planted tanks & I know a lot of local aquarists. I can see it helping in areas that use well water or the water is very alkaline & they need soft or neutral water for their fw tanks, but I'm not sure whether Victoria's water supply (where the OP is from) is bad enough to require RODI.

Just wondering if you use RODI water on your planted tanks in Surrey, since that's what you're recommending for the OP? I find it enough of a PITA making enough RODI water for my sw, let alone bothering with it for the fw tanks. Surrey's on that water metering system now so that must get expensive with all that wastewater produced by the filtration system. Wasting water is one major drawback of using RODI.

Peace,

Anthony

[dabandit]

Wow. Ok first no I never used ro/di on a freshwater planted tank except while successfully curing cyano.
Second the suggestion he had made was to overstock his tank surelly in all of EVERYONES vast experience this increases amonia to a lethal level in freshwater.
Do you really think overstocking your bio load is a better cure for a newbie than simplly cleaning your tank and running carbon,a perfectlly safe method which many have had success with including myself.

And lastlly I did'nt say that fella was calling me a liar,merelly answering to the fact that I do infact have a clue what I'm talking about.


Hey maybe overstocking can work, perhaps I'm wrong about that,I can admit sure. But I still dont think its a practical approach particularilly for a beginner when a perfectlly safe tried and true method works.

Take a deep breath.....