Mega Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover - DIY!
- Thread starter SantaMonica
- Start date
Cyano is bacteria and not algae. Cyano is usually due to over feeding as the uneaten food lays on the bottom and the bacteria is able to pull nitrogen and or carbon right from the decaying food even in a black out. Cyano needs to be in a total black out to get rid of it if its really bad, by total black out I mean the whole tank needs to be covered and the room, it needs to be black as possible as well. Cyano lives with out much light because its photosynthetic, meaning it can remove the food it needs right from decaying matter without the need of light. Even if in a very dim situation cyano can live a very long time, even in a pure black out it can live for up to a week-ish. The best thing to do is to cut your feeding in half and reduce your lighting in the display and see what this does. You might even have to get some stronger light for your scrubber if its brown algae you have growing. I know what you are going through!! I went through the cyano as well.
i know i don't have extra food that hits the bottom, i'm very picky about the salt tank as it seems to be so touchy and i make sure i only put in a few pellets at a time to avoid it going elseware. but maybe my fish are producing to much waste? and my scrubber has a 60 watt compact florecent about 6 inches from my screen with a good reflector and it seems to be doing very well. the algea is green but like i said before it's not stringy. it's like a slimy mat. much like u would see in fresh water puddles or ponds. idk maybe there is some tweaking i need to do. but i'll wait till the new scrubber comes out. also i've added another powerhead to the tank to get more water movement and that seems to be breaking up the cyno pretty good.
well trying something to rif the cyno slowly from my tank, only issue is it kills the live rock but i,m only trying 3 small pieces to seee how it works. but i am boiling it off the rock. doing less then a pound of my live rock but if it works maybe over the course of a few months i will take the rocks that have the most cyno on them and cook it off. but it will be a very slow process
well i took one of my rocks into my lfs and they said it is red slime algae and there is only one way to remove it. they gave me a powerful algae killer that is reef safe that only targets cyno and red slime algae. 2 grams of this stuff treats 300 gallons so pretty potent stuff. so i'm givin it a try and seeing if it will get rid of this nasty stuff. wish me luck lol
this stuff says it's safe for beneficial bacteria as well as coraline algea. i've noticed nothing to change so far with my water except a spike in nitrates. it requires a water change after 48 hours and i turn on my skimmer for a day and dosed it again. maybe 1/4 of that red algea is dead after a week of treatment. it's slow but working.