Cyano Bacteria Or Something Else?

[Spishkey]

ive just seen this mentioned in another thread and *think* this may be infesting my tank (i have a red slimish carpet over everything at the moment)
but looking at the causes im not sure if it fits. i have plenty of powerheads running,skimmer on, dont overfeed the fish..lights arent on that much....so what would be causing it? shall upload some pics and see if others think thats what i have
im having a nightmare with the tank this week!
lost a new cleaner shrimp yesterday, today all my zoa's are closed and wont open, i suprised the fish seem so happy. had salt level problems and that bubbly green plant stuff is spreading faster than i can pull it out. am nearly ready to give up on this tank!

it looks so terribly awful and dirty

 

[ALW]

Yeh looks like cyano

 

[Spishkey]

how do i get rid of it???

 

[GrayScale]

What are your phoshate and nitrate levels at? do you have any sort of sand sifting cuc? Try moving your powerheads around a little.

 

[Spishkey]

nitrate levels are coming out at 20 havent got my phosphate test yet but it is on order. dont have a sand sifting cucumber but there are some sort of bristle worms in the sand and lots of brittle star fish?

 

[Donya]

Do you have a thread or journal somewhere with your tank details (how long it's been set up, any recent changes, equipment, etc.)? If not, could you describe your setup in more detail?

Looks like its all over everything and not just the sand (unless that's coralline and the color is playing tricks on me...). First thing is to try knocking down the nitrates, which could be as simple as doing more frequent WCs. Also try adjusting flow, since cyano and diatoms both love dead zones of little flow. After taking a stab at the nitrates, Ceriths are a good and hardy CUC animal to help keep the sand bed turned.

 

[ben1987]

can i ask another couple of questions? what are you feeding your fish? is it frozen foods? if so how do you prepare it before adding it to your tank?

 

[Spishkey]

no its not frozen food. we feed marine pellets(?) and flakes..3 times per week at the moment.

the tank has been set up for three years prior to us receiving, but for the last 6 months badly neglected until we picked it up and brought it home (it was at my mans work in the office, the boss was gonna throw it in the skip but we said we'd try and salvage it)
never kept marine before so im still learning. we've had it here about 3 weeks now. we transfered everything here in buckets (water sand fish rock etc) and just threw it all back in to get it set up. its 120L with a filter (containing bioballs, a green pellet type stuff and carbon)theres 3 power heads running, a protein skimmer and a surface skimmer. 3 different lights (on a total of 8 hours a day?) it came with 4 fish (2 clowns, a small blue/yellow fish and an angel?)
we since added a clean up crew (2 hermits, 1 cleaner shrimp and a turbo snail)
everything was going nicely until this week when we noticed the salt level was too high (1028) we've been slowly trying to bring this down with daily water changes with RO water with a lower salt level than normal, it now stands at about 1027/1026
we had the cleaner shrimp die 24 hours after going in, now my brown zoas have been closed for 3 days (the green and the yellow ones are still open)
then this reddish/brown stuff has started appearing everywhere (we had coraline in the tank when it came and scrapped a lot off, but this stuff is more slimey than hard)
ordered some test kits off ebay for phosphate, copper, iron and calcium but they've not yet arrived. only have freshwater testing kits for PH, high PH, nitrate, nitrite and ammonia. i believe the nitrite and nitrate can be used on saltwater?

 

[GrayScale]

does the bioballs have a bunch of stuff collected in them? I would throw those out personally. The ammonia, nitrate and nitrite fw can be used on sw same with the ph. How recently has the carbon been replaced if at all? I would pit some carbon in it, replace the bioballs with lr rubble and continue to do water changes to bring the nitrates and salinity down. Once you get the phosphate test kit, test asap. Cyano can be caused by high phosphate levels as well as high nitrate levels. If your phosphates are high, look into running gfo instead of carbon or possibly rowaphos in addition to the carbon.

 

[Spishkey]

does the bioballs have a bunch of stuff collected in them? I would throw those out personally. The ammonia, nitrate and nitrite fw can be used on sw same with the ph. How recently has the carbon been replaced if at all? I would pit some carbon in it, replace the bioballs with lr rubble and continue to do water changes to bring the nitrates and salinity down. Once you get the phosphate test kit, test asap. Cyano can be caused by high phosphate levels as well as high nitrate levels. If your phosphates are high, look into running gfo instead of carbon or possibly rowaphos in addition to the carbon.

the carbon was put in 3 weeks ago when we brought the tank home and replaced yesterday.the bio balls dont seem to have anything stuck to them at all. there is a green colour sponge under them that has a sort of yellow slime round the edges...?

 

[@ombomb]

have you tested your RO water to make sure it's still effectively filtering?

a good RO unit should leave you with virtually 0 TDS and a nitrate reading of 0, but an old membrane will degrade and become less effective over time

how much water are you changing at a time?

personally i would make sure my RO is pure and do some high volume water changes (40% - 50%) hoovering up as much of the cyano (which is what it almost certainly what it is) as possible as you go. as has been mentioned ditch the bioballs and the green pellets and think about running some nitrate and phosphate removers while you get things under control

don't give up on it, cyano outbreaks are common and can be very aggressive, but they can be overcome almost as quickly as they arrive with a bit of work

 

[simon48]

have you tested your RO water to make sure it's still effectively filtering?

a good RO unit should leave you with virtually 0 TDS and a nitrate reading of 0, but an old membrane will degrade and become less effective over time

how much water are you changing at a time?

personally i would make sure my RO is pure and do some high volume water changes (40% - 50%) hoovering up as much of the cyano (which is what it almost certainly what it is) as possible as you go. as has been mentioned ditch the bioballs and the green pellets and think about running some nitrate and phosphate removers while you get things under control

don't give up on it, cyano outbreaks are common and can be very aggressive, but they can be overcome almost as quickly as they arrive with a bit of work

You could always try zeozym added at lights out along with zeo start.

 

[dannywrc]

mine has finally gone after a couple of months. the rocks now covered in loads of coraline. it seems to thrive under the cyano. i added a diy phosphate and carbon reactor about a month ago which i think has helped a lot. iv also siphoned almost all of the sandbed away where it isnt covered with rock as it was catching the fish waste. Lots of water changes while you are battling it will probs help too.

 

[Lady J]

Bravo to you for trying to save this tank, and with some work I think you can!

Here are some things that will help in addition to all of the other great advice you received (and forgive if I repeat what others said).

1. Take out the bioballs and sponge immediately. In fact, throw them away or use them for golf balls. They have no place in a marine aquarium----nothing but super-duper nitrate factories. Seriously, get them out as soon as you can. You can put live rock in there, or better yet create a deep sand bed and you will eventually have excellent filtration in there.

2. Gently vacuum the sandbed to try and get rid of some of the algae.

3. Change the direction of the powerheads. Put one in the back on the right side and shoot is straight across; put the other one on the opposite side of the tank, again in the back, BUT, don't shoot it straight across at the other powerhead, shoot it diagonally at the front corner of the tank. This will reduce dead spots as it changes the directional flow.

4. Get a phosphate remover as soon as you can and get it running in the tank (put it in where the bioballs were, in addition to carbon or rowaphos, etc.). And, don't hesitate to take the carbon out and rinse it and then put it back in. You can lengthen the life of the carbon by putting it between your hands and grinding it together. This creates new surfaces for it to get more activated. Also, make sure water is running through it so that it is getting distributed throughout your system. If it's basically inert it will have little impact; if water is pushing through it, it will work quite well. Do a good 20% water change and before you dump the old water, take out each rock, put it in the container with the old water, and scrub as much algae off as you can. Obviously, no soap.

5. As the others said, eventually you need to see if your RO water is actually clean. If the membrane is old it probably isn't filtering as it should. If you're in a desperate situation, buy distilled water. Not as clean as RO/DI by any means, but not bad. If you do buy distilled water, make sure it's distilled and not spring water or drinking water as they have additives that could kill much of your tank.

6. Now, here's a big one: turn the lights off for 3 solid days. Seriously, 3 days (in order to do this, you have to make sure you have good turbulence at the top of the tank to keep it oxygenated and to ensure your pH doesn't get crazy low). That algae is being fed by phosphates, nitrates, and light so you must starve it. And, your corals will be ok for 3 days, believe me, they will.

7. If possible, purchase a healthy amount of macroalgae and give it light. The macroalgae will compete with the other gunk in the tank for nutrients, and will absorb some of the nitrates and phosphates thus "stealing" it from the microalgae.

8. How old are the bulbs? As they weaken in intensity, algae outbreaks often occur.

This is off the top of my head so if and when I think of other things I'll try to help you more.

 

[lljdma06]

And a resurrection has occurred. this thread's over a year old. Good advice, what it basically boiled down to is...

Clean the tank... Keeping the tank clean will prevent a lot this stuff from happening. Look how clogged the power heads are. That's gotta cut on efficiency. Look at the gunk on the walls.

Tanks need maintenance.

L