Cyano help

Well, here's a pic of our FO with serious cyano coverage--sort of a purple color...



Flow, and alkalinity were our problems. Once we corrected those, the cyano just melted away.

I have pink & purple coraline growing on all surfaces in my tank (except sand) including the glass. As for the cyano, along with the increased flow, I would reduce feedings, increase water changes and use RO/DI water for top offs and water changes.

Brian

Not by looking (though I've never seen wavy coralline), but definitely by touching. Cyano will come up as chunks, and is velvety soft. Coralline is always a rocky, hard surface, that comes up in flakes, and with a bit of effort.

If you have a serious cyno problem you can use a product called chemi-clean. I had it real bad before I switched to RO/DI water. Once I determined that my water source must be the problem I hit my tank with one dose of chemi-clean and the cyno disolved in 2 days. I did a real big Ro/Di water change and use that water exclusivly now, and I've not had problems with it again.

All my research has show than chemi-clean is totally safe for a reef tank, and while I have limited corals it didn't harm any of them. Also crabs, stars, and snails all did fine with it.

So if you know why you have the problem, but you don't want to wait a month for it to go away naturally, this is a quick way to clear it up. But it will come back if you haven't found out why you have it in the first place.

Guy

I agree with the others about the nutrient and flow issues. What are your nitrate and phosphate levels? It seems to be a problem with newer tanks that have passed through the initial cycling stage but haven't completely settled down.

If you have little patches, scarlet hermits will eat the stuff. Probably not their first choice, but they will make it go away.

as a newbie I'm still trying to identify all this stuff. I have had some growth of filmy red/purple stuff. Acted like algae in a way, but I was aware that some of the stuff that grows this way is actually bacteria. Could this be cyanobacteria?
I am keeping it under control. Increasing circulation in the tank, increasing my hermit crab population, a couple of voracious urchins, plus.... daily housekeeping on my part. I wipe off whatever I can reach w/o totally disrupting things, then leave what I can't reach to the critters.
Its sort of a pain, but it seems to be working... the amount of new growth actually decreased significantly with a little persistance. Hey, its better than real housework!
PS I have no nitrate, but do have a minimally elevated phosphate of 0.25. My values were verifed by my LFS.

cyano bacteria/algae?

First please clarify--bacteria or algae. Another forum refers to it as algae and here it is referred to as bacteria. In addition to water flow and phosphate, nitrate levels, they suggested using a turkey baster to lift it off the surface of the sand. This seems to disrupt the sand much less than syphoning. We added a Zoo-medic wave maker to increase water flow, and almost immediately the algae/bacteria turned brown. My question is now how to get it out of the area between the front glass and the sand. Any suggestions?