Me:1 Cyanobacteria:0

[gqsmoothster]

Well, it's finally gone. For some odd reason I started to collect cyanobacteria on one certain rock, and then it spread to the sand bed and then crept all the way across my tank, covering the entire sand bed with a 1/2 inch thick mat of the stuff. The whole process took about 2 weeks. I couldn't stop it! Well, I decied to take drastic measures and performed the following:

1. Use a wooden stick to slowly break up the mat every 3 days
2. Remove all filter floss and sponges
3. Raise the salinity slowly to about 1.024-1.025
4. Purchased two crown conch
5. Added a batch of Gracilaria to the refugium with bright florescent light 14 hours/day
6. Reduced photoperiod of main tank to about 6 hours daily
7. Was very mindful of not overfeeding (possible underfeeding during this time)

Even though I was tempted, I didn't use antibiotics or other addtives. The whole thing is now officially cleared up 2 weeks after I initiated measures.

I'm posting this because I was so frustrated by the whole thing that I want other newbies out there like me to know that certain things actually DO work, even though they don't seem like much. I'm happy to say I'm back to 8-10 hours of light in the display per day now and everyone's happy. Thanks to all from this forum for your input.

[lobophyllia]

thats a great idea. my tank was recently overun by cyano just all over the sand bed,and if it wasnt cyano on the rocks it was hair algea. bought a kole tang and in about 3 days all the hair algea and cyano was gone. my tank is clean for the very fist time .

[gqsmoothster]

Just as an aside, I have a Scopas tang and it likes to nibble on the rocks where any green algae grows, but it doesn't/hasn't/won't eat any cyano. That would have been nice.

[scubadude]

Even though I was tempted, I didn't use antibiotics or other addtives.

Kudos to you gqsmoothster!

I totally shy away from additives that break down cyano too....It is NOT the best way to treat the problem, however just to let others realize that it can be used in extreme cases and I have had personal success with "Slime Away" it will break it down (you will want to remove as much as you can manually first though) and dissolve it into the water column and it will make your skimmer go bezerk! If you do use it be prepared to do many water changes within 24 hrs to dillute your water down as it will be in the water column basically invisible to the naked eye. It can be used but I highly recommend it as a last resort, no telling what kind of chemistry is going on in your tank when you add it to your system....could be forcing it back into another cycling mode! If it is growing on the SB in layers which can be a royal PITA but I have seen tons of macro life living in these layers of cyano (bristle worms, pods etc) this is part of the maturing process so it can a very important process to let it be and ride the bloom out too