It's time to clean the tank when...

[sihaya]

... your clown fish start bonding with the stringy cords grown by the 1.5 inch thick layer of cyano growing on your sandbed. :eek3:

[wozza]

haha yep

[smidoid]

Ewww.... I'm having trouble starving mine! Any other suggestions for getting rid of it?

[Poseidon]

That is funny!

I just spent the better part of an hour pulling Valonia, and Chaeto out of my display! YUK! I also cleaned out the Tunze, and now I have a sandstorm!

[sihaya]

Haha... I just pulled out a bunch of macroalgae too. So don't get me started on how much I HATE calurpa!! I swear it's worse than aptasia. It's just sooo evil.

Marc- I'm sure everyone (including myself) will tell you that 1) occassional cyano blooms are normal but 2) a continuous cyano problem is due to a nutrient inbalance of some kind.

Personally, I've never been an aquarist to get my panties in a twist over algae. I totally over feed my tank. So I just let it all grow (coral, algae and all) until I can't see through the glass anymore (or the clown fish start bonding with the cyano ;) ), then I scrap everything off the glass and suck it all out in a water change. Funny thing... the algae stays off the rocks and corals for the most part. That's why I don't worry too much about it.

Plus side of over feeding my tank... I swear I actually have a tiny piece of carnation coral (rock hitch-hiker, I'd never buy one!) growing in my refugium. I'll have pics in a few weeks when I can prove it.

[sihaya]

Actually though, I don't usually have cyano in my tank. It's just because I recently had to replace the entire sand bed (thanks to my tank leak). So I've been getting all kinds of crazy algal blooms on the new sand. It just happens to be cyano this week. Who knows what it will be next week?