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choirboy
01/14/2014, 05:31 PM
my water is always ro/di. tank is 1 yr old. light mixed coral and 4 small fish. 58g oceanic.

nitrate 0, phos 0, alk 8-10, kh 450-480, temp 78, ph 8.2, sg 1.024 - 1.026 These have not changed for the past six months.

Been through all the usual algaes and all disappeared. But the last 6 weeks or so, I get this stringy brown cyno which dies quickly, a day or 2, and then just lays around on the rock. ugly. have to blow it off daily. makes a snow storm for a few min in my tank. filtration is ok but doesn't seem to remove much, most of it heads straight to the bottom or back into the rock. I have 2 pheads 1500gph total, a hob skimmer, and a small whisper hob with a cartridge for mechanical filtration. Light bulb is 6 mth old phoenix 14k de mh.

What is causing it? NO EXCESS NUTRIENTS are ever in the tank.

and

How can I get it out?

degibson84
01/14/2014, 05:36 PM
the algae or cyano may be masking your nutrient levels

choirboy
01/14/2014, 05:46 PM
it could be? but for the 4 months before this problem, I had none of this. And I had the same water readings those months as well.

degibson84
01/14/2014, 05:48 PM
what skimmer are you running?

choirboy
01/14/2014, 06:03 PM
its an AquaMaxx HOB-1. Supposed to be good, seems good to me, had a deltec hob 6 or 7 yrs ago, that was a little better but this one seems ok to me.

disc1
01/14/2014, 06:05 PM
Don't just blow it around, siphon it out.

choirboy
01/14/2014, 06:13 PM
if it keeps up for another month or more, it will be a real big pia to siphon every day or 2 and make water to replace. Though to be honest, I am almost ready to do just that anyway. I can't figure anything else. I cut lights back 1 hour, then 2, I took off strainer on hob whisper, I use a net to collect it when I blow it off, but it just KEEPS COMING. Why does it keep on coming?

skidoctor
01/14/2014, 08:17 PM
It keeps coming because you have nutrients in the tank that it lives on. Increase flow, keep up on water changes, run gfo.

kga943
01/14/2014, 08:40 PM
check your tds coming from your ro unit

MSreefdoc
01/14/2014, 08:48 PM
Speaking of the RO unit, have you ever changed the filters?

disc1
01/15/2014, 01:01 PM
if it keeps up for another month or more, it will be a real big pia to siphon every day or 2 and make water to replace. Though to be honest, I am almost ready to do just that anyway. I can't figure anything else. I cut lights back 1 hour, then 2, I took off strainer on hob whisper, I use a net to collect it when I blow it off, but it just KEEPS COMING. Why does it keep on coming?

There are nutrients in the system. The cyano grows and assimilated those nutrients. You kill the cyano but don't remove it. The cyano breaks down and the nutrients go back into the water. Now there is once again a high nutrient load in the water. Go back to the beginning of this paragraph and repeat.

Until you remove the nutrients, either by siphoning out the cyano or using some other method of nutrient export, this cycle will continue to repeat.

disc1
01/15/2014, 01:03 PM
Just killing something isn't enough. You always have to figure out what to do with the body.

ken6217
01/15/2014, 01:24 PM
Do you have sand or bare bottom tank?
Ken

choirboy
01/17/2014, 01:34 PM
Thank you all for your time and thoughts

Here are my answers to the last several posts

I keep the flow high (higher than I want) or about 30X my 58 gallons to help
I use ROWA gfo always and change it every 2 - 3 months
I do 15% wc EVERY 2 weeks, NEVER miss one

My TDS out of my ro/di unit are .000 and meter is good I believe (have cross checked it with a couple lfs in town)

I changed the 3 filters and the 1 di resin cartridge 5 mths ago

I have started siphoning the cyno out. Hope it helps

If there is no change in the next month, I'll cut back my lighting slowly.


Can there be significant nutrients in the tank that don't show up on the basic 6 tests (kh,ca,ph,phos,ph,nitrate?)

thank you all again.

Squidmotron
01/17/2014, 01:37 PM
You have actually perfectly described dinos. And they frequently survive in environments with little to no measured nutrients (at least of the variety we normally measure).

brandon429
01/17/2014, 01:56 PM
we need



pics

choirboy
01/24/2014, 08:17 PM
Ok, you're right, I do need to post a couple pics.

This pic was taken last week about 2 hours after I completely sucked out the cyno. So this is about two hours worth of buildup


http://littlereefs.com/skimmer/dailycyno2.jpg


This next pic was taken just before lights out about 8 hours later.

http://littlereefs.com/skimmer/dailycyno1.jpg


I think it is some type of brown cyno. It comes daily, and I suck it out daily. Nutrients by tests are at 0. If they are not 0, they must be close. I feed every other day. Corals and fish are happy I think? At least they all look healthy and behave well.

What could be causing it?

Tzwizzle
01/24/2014, 10:06 PM
Looks like dinos.....if it is dinos I think you have a battle on your hands. I've heard that they can thrive in extreme conditions depending on the flavor you got. If nothing else works I've heard one thing to try is increasing your nutrients a tad and letting other/easier to control algae get the food first. Just throwing ideas out at this point.

petere1989
01/24/2014, 10:09 PM
ya dinos. good luck. i had to break my tank down mine got so bad. They like water changes so if your doing lots of water changes, that will just make it worse.

choirboy
01/25/2014, 07:39 AM
well s***. I have had fish tanks for 35 years. Never really heard of this problem (dino's) where there is little you can do to fix it. Just never hear about it. Especially one requiring starting over.

If I can't make it go away in the next couple weeks, I'll put my old 120w cf light over it. I'll give the few corals I have away, (one is a beautiful and large bright orange Yuma :( and keep the light down low for as long as it takes.

thank you all. if anyone has any other ideas, I'm all ears.

thanks again.

bromdad
01/25/2014, 08:20 AM
Dinos are a pita. If you have a sand bed, I would remove it as it is holding nutrients. You are not measuring the nutrients because the dinos are sucking them up. Feed less. Skim well. Continue gfo and carbon regularly. Try hydrogen peroxide after you research it or an ozonizer if you have one. If the rocks have phosphate it may leach back into the water. You may want to acid treat some of the rocks at different times to avoid loosing your bacterial filter. Scrub them. Then treat with 3% muriatic acid (Dilute the normal 15% found at pool supply stores.) Take appropriate care not to breath in the fumes. After twenty minutes remove the rock work and rinse and soak thoroughly. If all fails, you may have to take the tank down and sterilize it. Use one cup of chlorine (pool supply) per gallon and then treat with sodium thiosulfate and rinse well. Bring the water it is soaking in to a pool supply store and make sure no chlorine is detected.