OwenInAZ
01/23/2008, 02:01 PM
Hey folks,
I have a 2.5 gallon nano that has been up for around 5 months. It was set up with live sand and live rock from my father-in-law's 90 gallon, so it was more or less cycled from the get go.
I have a fairly good bioload in it -- soft corals comprised of zoa's palys and mushrooms. I have several hermit crabs and snails, and one red stripe goby.
The lighting is a coralife 18W 2x 50/50 actinic/daylight, which runs 10-11 hours each night. There is no filter 'fuge or skimmer, water movement is achieved through a Rio 600(?) and a Koralia Nano marginally opposing each other to get turbulence instead of laminar flow.
I feed every few days for the palys and fish -- home-made food (blenderized raw squid, clams, oysters, whitefish, shrimp and nori) -- a very small amount to avoid overloading the system.
The water parameters look good, according to my test strips:
0 Nitrate
0 Nitrite
Alk somewhere between 180-300, I'm guessing on the higher end
pH ~7.8
This brings me to my question:
I'm having an outbreak of cyanobacteria. I bought the koralia nano to try and improve water movement in the worst affected area, a dead spot in a corner. It's been in there a few days, and the problem seems to be getting better in that particular area. However, I can't practically blast every surface with water flow. I thought I'd read somewhere that at pH>~8.0 cyano is inhibited. My suspicion is that my low pH is caused by increased CO2 concentrations in my house during the winter, which in turn lead to increased carbonic acid in the water.
Has anyone else heard the bit about cyano being inhibited by higher pH? Does anyone have a suggestion on how to dose a tank that small to raise pH? I work routinely with small volumes (I'm a microbiology grad student), so I'm comforable with small doses.
Sorry for the really long post, thanks in advance!
I have a 2.5 gallon nano that has been up for around 5 months. It was set up with live sand and live rock from my father-in-law's 90 gallon, so it was more or less cycled from the get go.
I have a fairly good bioload in it -- soft corals comprised of zoa's palys and mushrooms. I have several hermit crabs and snails, and one red stripe goby.
The lighting is a coralife 18W 2x 50/50 actinic/daylight, which runs 10-11 hours each night. There is no filter 'fuge or skimmer, water movement is achieved through a Rio 600(?) and a Koralia Nano marginally opposing each other to get turbulence instead of laminar flow.
I feed every few days for the palys and fish -- home-made food (blenderized raw squid, clams, oysters, whitefish, shrimp and nori) -- a very small amount to avoid overloading the system.
The water parameters look good, according to my test strips:
0 Nitrate
0 Nitrite
Alk somewhere between 180-300, I'm guessing on the higher end
pH ~7.8
This brings me to my question:
I'm having an outbreak of cyanobacteria. I bought the koralia nano to try and improve water movement in the worst affected area, a dead spot in a corner. It's been in there a few days, and the problem seems to be getting better in that particular area. However, I can't practically blast every surface with water flow. I thought I'd read somewhere that at pH>~8.0 cyano is inhibited. My suspicion is that my low pH is caused by increased CO2 concentrations in my house during the winter, which in turn lead to increased carbonic acid in the water.
Has anyone else heard the bit about cyano being inhibited by higher pH? Does anyone have a suggestion on how to dose a tank that small to raise pH? I work routinely with small volumes (I'm a microbiology grad student), so I'm comforable with small doses.
Sorry for the really long post, thanks in advance!