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What do other people use for nutrient control? My Saga

Raddogz

Raddogz

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What I also wanted to fit was other than water changes.

I have been having a terrible time with cyano in my fowlr at work.

Here's the specs :
155g bowfront
30g sump
4 x 96w PC lights
ER 6-1

An assortment of a dozen fish ranging from two inches (clowns) to six inch Emperor Angel.

Now before anyone goes off on a tangent, I would like for this discussion to not be about brand A is better than brand B because of X

I have been battling cyano since last August.

Yes, we are using RO/DI and I do change the filters out every six months. Containers for the water are Brute 30 something trash cans for commercial use - in my case bright yellow.

At first I was having some success with Chemi-Clean, and it would slowly go away and then it would come back again. So I decided to add another protein skimmer (ER 8-2 - wasn't using it at the time), thinking two proteing skimmers were better than one. Again, it would slowly go away, and then it would come back again.

After three months of this. I decided to reduce the feedings down to every other day, and limit how much my sales staff would be allowed to feed on the weekend (they sometimes like feeding the feedng too much).

Well, that wasn't working either so I decided up the water changes to every other week (thirty gallons) from just once a month. That seemed to help, but it would invariably come back <sigh>.

I was talking to a fellow reefer about this and he suggested that it might be possible that the cyano has just simply developed an immunity to the chemi-clean and needed something more aggressive.

Oh, I should add I even tried ozone just to see any results in cyano. I tried this in combination with the skimmers and less feedings. The water got clearer and simply made the cyano more apparent.

So out of desparation I started wandering the dark meandering path of the Vodka method. I don't drink and was trying to figure out I was going to explain to my controller why I needed reimbursement for a bottle of Vodka for the fish tank....yeah....right.....like that was going to go over real well.
I started looking a little further and noticed that some people were having success with plain old c&h white sugar. Heh??? Hey, we have lots of that in the coffee room.

For those that do not know about the Vodka method. It is a way (no, not a be all end all solution) to control nutrients by providing bacteria the fuel to begin multiplying and consuming excess phosphates and nitrates. The inherent danger is if you fuel the bacteria population too much it will also consume the oxygen (as in all of the oxygen) in the tank as well - thereby asphyxiating your livestock.

Okay, so I started dosing the sugar with the food about a half teaspoon per day along with the food. That didn't do anything. So as of last week I upped it to a tablespoon, and then slightly increased to a two tablespoons every second day.

The cyano started dying back which is great. The water is cloudy so you know something is going on. I am back down to just the one skimmer (the bigger skimmer goes back to my tank at home), and cleaning it out every day. I have a total of two powerheads which add water movement, as well as a 500gph powerhead pointing at the water's surface from the bottom.

So what kind of methods are all of you using? Opinions and suggestions are welcome.














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Mmmm, I'm not suprised the medication (Chemi-clean) didn't work in the long run. I've never advocated it's use. Your simply masking a problem and making for an even bigger one.

You failled to mention a few key factors with cyano bacteria, how much flow is in the tank and your ALK/PH. I've found by simply upping your ALK/PH as well as a very kicking flow in the tank, cyano will disappear after a few months.

IMO a 6-1 is suitable for a 50 - 80g tank. Why not use the 8-2 mentioned in your post?
 
The 155g tank is not really my tank it's my employer's tank. I just do the maintenance on it -- heh heh spend other people's money for this addiction.

Hmmm...I haven't measured alk and ph in awhile. There seems to be no dead spots and plenty of flow (I think it's a quiet one 6000 - I wasn't involved in the tank start up - another story for another day). The rock work is going down the middle of the tank and is pretty open in my opinion. I'll try to take pictures tomorrow.

Any other ideas out there?
 
No Powerheads, your relying on a single source for the water movement?
 
Ah, a RIO, that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling :D Ooops, thats the stray voltage nailling me and the seized impellar heating up :D

I still have a few RIO 90's kicking, so I'm not one to talk.

OT: my buddy has 4 MJ1200's on a RedSea wavemaker. After a year and a half with it, all but one of the blades of all the MJ's have sheared off. He was wonderring why his cyano was taking off again, until he figured out about the impellars :D
 
That's true - guess a big part too.

This tank is located so the public who walk by can look into the back of the tank, and clients can appreciate the front of the tank as they are waiting. The green film algae is not as bad either right now.
 
Eileen:

If there is a place in the tank that the cyano always seems to congregate, I would agree that more flow directed towards that area would help.

If it tends to congregate on a rock, you could take that rock out, scrub it with a brush and put it back. I once took care of a problem that way and and after a few scrubbings it never really came back.

My asterina starfish have made trails through cyano and have completely cleaned it up in the past; but, you may not want the little babies in your tank. I once had a decorative coral that came with a tank that I bought. As it changed from bleached white to a piece of live rock, it went through a cyano phase, I used to put the asterinas on the old coral and they would clean it up. Eventually, the cyano went away and never came back.

Do you have chaeto in your sump? If you don't, it would help pull nutrients that the cyano needs out of your system.

Best of luck,

Roy
 
Actually, the cyano would congregate on the certain spot of the sand. Even I would point powerheads and returns into those spots seem to fuel the cyano vs. getting rid of it.

It used to be I could point the return into the trouble spot and it would go away, but it now seems to be not the case any longer.

I have asterina's in my 58g right now, and seem to cause no issues other than they are multiplying like rabbits.

The sump is not lit - and limitations in budget/office politics (remember this isn't my tank) does not allow for the sump to be lit.

All good suggestions people! Thank You!
 
Seems like people more often than not lecture others for being "bad" reefkeepers when the issue of cyano treatments comes up. Definately make sure to have good flow, high enough pH, no dead critters or food spiking your nitrates, and siphon or manually remove any loose cyano.

Even if you get all those factors under control, it may take months to get rid of your cyano. I think what can happen is that manual removal breaks up the cyano, and some of it always remains and disperses/dies. Then the released nutrients just becomes more food for the remaining bacteria.

To me, it's not a reefkeeping sin to use erythromycin after you've controlled for all other factors. Erythromycin kills the cyano, and your skimmer will pull out the released organic compounds before they can be reassimilated into new cyano. Same difference as your idea about using alcohol/sugar. So as long as you're not introducing additional food for your cyano, you're good to go.

I had a way bad cyano problem in my 80g softie tank. Well, the wife's tank. I maintain the tank, and she feeds it... or more like she FEEDS IT. Well anyway, after straightening out the overfeeding problem, the cyano would just not go away. I ended up researching on antibiotic treatment and tried it out on the tank. That took care of the problem in about a week, and it hasn't been back in over half a year.

If you want to give it a try, here's some info that I've been sharing with people:

I'm thinking you might want to wait on the erythromycin because the red slime is just from the slight overfeeding and the skimmer being off. You might be able to get rid of the remaining cyano by siphoning it out and increasing the water flow. If that doesn't get rid of it, then try the erythromycin.

The brand we used was E.M. by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals. Very inexpensive compared to Red Slime remover and Chemiclean.

When using E.M., you dose at 1/3 strength. The directions say 1 tablet per 10 gallons, so you would use 1 tablet per 30 gallons of actual system volume. If you use just slightly more, it shouldn't be a problem. The erythromycin is safe for your biological filtratration even at full strength according to the product info.

If I remember right, the med affects mainly gram positive bacteria, and also gram negative that are facultative anaerobes. The gram negative non anaerobes which are your nitrogen cycle bacteria aren't affected. Cyano is gram negative anaerobe.

When treating your tank, you leave the skimmer off and run without carbon. Open up the capsules to dump in the med. That way you don't have the extra gelatin capsule dissolving in your tank. Put the med in your tank some place where the fish won't chomp on the particles. You could try to dissolve it in some tank water before dosing. I just put mine in the sump.

You do the treatment for 3-4 days straight. Prior to each successive treatment, you run your skimmer for an hour or so to pull out the dead dissolved slime. Your skimmer will pull a lot of water, so you'll probably have to adjust the air and/or water flow to skim a little drier. Make sure you're around when the skimmer is on, so you can make adjustments or top off the water as necessary. Turn off the skimmer when you're ready to dose.

After your last dose, just let the tank run without skimmer for the rest of the week. You should be seeing the cyano disappear by now, if not sooner. After 1 week, you can run your skimmer for about an hour each day to pull out the dissolved slime. You probably will need to gradually adjust your skimmer back to normal settings over the course of the second week. You could skim out about a gallon of slimey water each day.

2 weeks after the start of treatment, you should do a large water change, 40% or more. Then you can put your carbon back, and get your skimmer adjust back to it's normal settings if it's not there yet. Mainly, you don't want to reset your skimmer too fast, too soon, because you'll come home to find half your tank water skimmed out onto the floor.
Click to expand...
 
Btw, with the E.M. treatment, you don't even need a kick ass skimmer. I used a modded Sea Clone, and I had to tune it way down so it wouldn't overskim on an 80g tank!
 
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