Hi....If you read the marine posts here, I'm sure that you've seen that Navarre and Parker have suffered some tough times here. Navarre recently lost some fish that were in his tank for a long time and Parker has been pulling her hair out (sorry) over hair algae. Also, see the 'Disaster' post listed above. Well, I'm not immune to 'disaster' either. As you know, I had very good initial success with my 24 month old 24G Nano Cube until my tank suffered two insults, one unavoidable and one an error in judgement. I had achieved the '0' nitrates trophy and diatom scraping was down to almost once a week. Then, like others here, I got nailed.
Insult 1, accidental.....I purchased and acclimated a green clown goby which when released into the tank, bolted for the rocks and disappeared never to be seen again. Several weeks later I had my first cyano. Fortunately, it disappeared with a turkey baster, vacuuming and a great cleanup crew. I posted this pic on the cyano article above of my astrea eating it:
Insult 2, error in judgement.....I purchased a brain coral over the internet and when it arrived, I had strong suspicions that it was DOA. I tried to save it without success and the brain disintegrated and contaminated my tank. The resulting cyano bloom was disastrous. It's not easy to post these pix in front of everyone, but, if this helps someone else, my pride can take second place. Like many others, I have crystal clear water, good coralline growth and '0 params' except for my nitrates which rose to 10 ppm after the brain death (pardon the pun). I have 20X water flow and minimally feed my three small nano fish..by hand sometimes to avoid excess. Even wash off my mysid shrimp to get rid of the liquid. Check out what a dead coral can do to your tank:
Would you believe that these pictures were taken one day after I completely scooped all that cyano off?
So, what do you do? I never added anything to any of my tanks, FW or SW, except buffer. Desperate times require desperate measures. I had that darn E-M tab over the rear chambers of my tank several times, pulling it away and refusing to drop it in. Well, I caved the other day. I started treating my tank. Today is day three of treatment, and, so far, I see 90% resolution and no loss to livestock or corals. I tested my parameters this morning early:
pH 8.0
nitrite 0
ammonia 0
nitrates 10
dkH 10
s.g. 1.026
So far, no sign of loss of my biological filter. I will be back to give people follow-up. I have to do a 25% water change tonite after work and several more days to go. Also, in response to my frustration with this, I posted a thread on cyano, as you see above.
I realize that erythromycin is not the answer to poor water quality, however, if a diabetic patient with out of control glucose comes in with a massive foot infection, you'd treat the infection and then get the 'sugar under control'. I made the decision to do the same. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS APPROACH at the present time as my results are premature and good water husbandry is the primary wat to go. SH
/www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod...=1&N=2004&Nty=1
