Cyano

Hi ATS forum :)

Well its been a good while since I put up my ATS and I am very pleased! I had problems with red bubble algae and they are all gone now! Also coraline algae have sprung up everywhere and covering stone, glass and powerheads... Thank you Santa Monica for a great job and pioneering (is it called that? Not english speaking here :P )

Anyway - I have now a little problem with Cyano in a corner of the aqarium on the sand. I have never had problems with this type before, but where wondering if the ATS somehow is pulling things out of the sand feeding it? Or? And I am right when I say that the ATS will eventuelly take care of this cyano right? :?:

Again, thanks to Santa Monica, my corals are looking good, feeding frequently in the watercolum. :mrgreen:

PS. My snails wanted to forward a bounty on your head for removing their main source of food :lol:

Cyano is the last of the algae to survive. They still need phosphate, so keep it low and the cyano will fade away too. It may even come back a little one a year, but the lower you keep your phosphate, the less it will come back.

You can always feed more, to keep the snails happy :)

I have a cyano outbreak now too, probably due to the amount of feeding and dissolved organics in the water. It's mostly all over the sand but it's on the rocks in areas as well now. Hope my ATS design (like my 4th) starts kicking it's @$$ soon

What are N and P?

0 and 0 according to API test, my PH was down which I didn't notice but I buffed it back up. Feeding 1 mysis shrimp cube and herbivore/omnivore pellets daily. I did add a large bag of fluval carbon into the ATS bucket but thats all thats running. I dose b-ionic too but I've been doing that. Wonder if it's my display lights??

No, it's the phosphate (since cyano makes it's own nitrate). It's just not near enough to zero yet. Let it weaken another week or two, then siphon it out and see if it comes back.

will do, I'll post some pics later for future reference, you da man SM

Also be aware that cyanobacteria and algae can exploit substrate sources of N and P. If, for example, the cyano or algae has attracted a lot of sediment or got some sand grains wedged in, it will be much more resistant to lower water column parameters. These sediments and/or sand will give them a direct P mainly, but also some N. So if you have a patch of cyano sitting on a pile of detritus, it will be a lot harder to get rid of. Just something to think about.