what causes cyano growth?

[cowboycove]

hi everyone. i just noticed a few spots of cyano growth. any idea what usually causes it? does it just grow. or does it get introduced then spread? any idea on getting rid of them now before they take over. i just saw a for sale post last week and all his coral were covered and over taken by cyano. or looked like it.

i have a few spots that look violet in color. then i see 1 patch of the same color that is patchy/fuzzy looking. someone told me they grow in low flow but the big patch is directly in front of a powerhead.

ive been dosing vinegar. im not sure what kind of bacteria that feeds. hopefully not cyano.

thanks

 

[Goober]

From what I understand about cyano, over feeding is a big cause of it, that or using tap water. I've seen a few posts about turning off all lights for a couple days to get rid of it also

 

[Lexusman25]

Excess nutrients from over feeding, red lighting, and old bulbs can cause cyano.

 

[Justin]

nitrates and phosphates

 

[BeanMachine]

nitrates and phosphates

This... me not using GFO through a reactor and my feeding habits is my issue with it... but from what I read its one of the most efficient bacterias as far as growing on very little available nutrients. I still get it from time to time so I use the red slime remover every once in a while.

 

[lowbudget]

yes it can spread.

 

[nasotang]

Pretty common to get cyano outbreak when dosing carbon such as vinegar. This happened to me when using bio pellets and dosing microbacter. Think it went away following chemiclean and getting the bio pellets colonized...

 

[cowboycove]

i only feed a pinch of pellets once a day. no red bulbs. purple, coral, and blue +.

my nitrate and phosphate has been pretty good lately. but i havent checked it for maybe 2 weeks. i got a pair of harlequin shrimp recently. they killed my big sand sifting starfish on the second day. maybe thats raising the nitrates/phosphates.

ive tried leaving the lights off for 2 days when i had some green algae. didnt seem to help at all. ill have to google red slime remover. kalk paste kills everything. should i try to cover the few areas now? and should i stop dosing vinegar or maybe dose less? currently doing 20ml daily in 150gallon.

 

[Justin]

Isn't your tank still new?

 

[cowboycove]

Isn't your tank still new?

yeah. 6 months running but everything was transferred over from my old tank which was also running 6 months.

 

[Goober]

Red slime remover works great for an easy fix, but it'll come back if the cause isn't rectified

 

[ColorfulReef]

try red sea nox/pox, works great for me!!!

 

[ep3n3wp]

I had an issue with it before from over feeding and being lazy... I got completely rid of it by cutting back on feeding and doing a water change(5 gallons in my 75 gallon tank) every 3-4 days for close about 3 weeks...

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[cowboycove]

Ill try feeding once every 2 days, no vinegar. And more frequent small water changes. Maybe my phosphates and nitrates are high. Ill test. I kinda fell into that vinegar dosing stuff and stopped testing when everything looked good.