Tank Problems (cyano, crab deaths, tissue necrosis)

[Jasontkd]

hey all, I am having some trouble with my 29 gallon. I have cyano bad. It started as a small patch. I blew it off and syphoned, and it came back stronger and worse. much more spread out. So, I did a really thorough cleaning. I scrubbed it off the rocks and syphned everything. it has come back even worse. it is getting everywhere. I ordered some cyano grazing snails and a cyano grazing conch from pacificeastaquaculture.com, but they won't get here till Saturday.

anyhow, I am worried about the health of my sps. I have one frag that is having some tissue necrosis. it is not rapid, but I don't know what is causing it. I hav it mounted to the side of a rock sicking out horizontally. The necrosis is on the bottom where it doesn't get light. is this the cause? about 3-4 weeks ago i ordered a bunch of frags from pacificeastaquaculture.com and was really pleased with them. However, one of those frags had a bout of RTN and I couldn't save it. could they be related?

Oh, and I have noticed lately that my crabs are either molting or dieing. there are little bodies lying around. Now, I have no idea if they are dead or not because I have empty shells laying around that I put in there, and they hide all over the rocks anyway, so i can't really get a count of them


anyhow;
temp: 80
salinity: 1.025
Ca: 410
Alk 10.3
mag: 1350
pH 8.3

I have a CSS 220 on there and it is skimming well, so i am not sure what could be causing all of this.

Sorry that I am jumping around a lot, just trying to figure out what is wrong
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[TTSupra]

Some people leave their lights off for a while. I left mine off for 2 1/2 days and it cleared out most of my cyano. Try testing your phosphates, that's what my original problem was.

[Jasontkd]

I don't know that I can leave my lights off. I have quite a few SPS.

what do you do about phosphates?

[rustybucket145]

Lights off will be fine. Wont' hurt the corals. But... it won't fix the problem, it will just bandaid it. You have to find out what is causing the cyano. If it's a new tank it should be expected for a short while. If it's an established tank you really need to find out what's going on. Do you use RO/DI water ? Tap water?

[SlowCobra]

A friend and I just had a dinoflagellete(SP?) outbreak both of us have a substantial amount of SPS. Over 50 different items in my tank and he lost count at 110 in his tank. I went 2 1/2 days with ZERO light. 1 day just actinic. Then slowly eased back into the regular lighting schedule. I had no losses to speak off. He lost a couple items but also had mistakenly forgot to swap some heaters around as he cordoned off several parts of his system. Basically had a temp swing the tank wasn't use to. Overall though when the lights came back on, it honestly is the best our tanks have looked in a while.

Just my 2 cents.

[shootist]

If it is truly out of control and you are losing corals over it I would go with the chemi-clean. I treated mine a couple of weeks ago and havent lost a single tank inhabitant. I was very leary of using any sort of treatment or chemical,but after I lost hundreds of dollars in zoas and was looking to lose the rest I figured I really didnt have anything to lose. Within 36 hours every bit of cyano was totally gone. In another 2 days I had zoas opening that I havent seen in over a month. I know there is always an underlying cause,in my case the wife confessed that she had been feeding the fish and Im sure it was way too much way too often,Ive cured that by hiding all the food. Make sure you follow the instructions to the letter. Also when you turn the skimmer back on it will go crazy for seeral hours so bear that in mind. I truly hated to use chemicals to solve my problems but my back was to the wall and so far I am thrilled that my tank is living again,hope yours comes out the same way.