cyano

.05 ppm Phosphates is high??? tested tonight.. it was .02ppm on the hannah meter. most if the cyano vacuumed out tonight. gfo has been running.

 

Well, the ocean averages about .005 so, at .05, your at 1000% of that LOL. However, if this is the hanna PO4 meter, it is accurate, at least according to them to +/- .04 + 5% of the reading. So, a reading of .02 even, just means your somewhere between 0 and about .06, if it is that accurate. Cyano is a better phosphate test, as if you have "growing" cyano, you have excess phosphate. I quoted growing, because cyano can store tons of phosphate for reserves when phosphate gets low. That is why lights out, chemi-clean etc.. is often needed to get rid of it. If it doesn't come back, and no other algae pops up in it's place, then your PO4 is probably sufficiently low. If if does grow back, then there has to be excess PO4. I'm not sure exactly what the limiting value for typical cyano is, I'd guess under .03 or so. So, your probably getting close.

 

ill keep burning it off. I put 6 table spoons of GFO in the reactor and have it slowly tumbling.... get to 0.00 and cut it off.

 

You can try and siphon out what you can to remove the algae in the short term and adding more flow via powerheads as suggested should help too. Cyano problems are usually caused by aquarium water with excess nutrients like phosphate, nitrates etc. In the long term you may have to examine how you care for your tank. There are some commercial dry foods also contain excess nutrients and other undesirable things like nitrates, phosphates etc so I strain/rinse my fresh/frozen foods before feeding my tank. You may want to consider feeding your fish less often. Also using RO/DI water and a high quality salt with little if any NO3, phosphates etc like Tropic Marin will really help too. Adding a phosphate remover and increasing flow in your tank may help too.

 

I don't know if you feel like reading this thread.
http://www.3reef.com/forums/algae/there-anything-else-cyano-likes-112588.html

In the end, I used red slime remover. Cyano has been gone ever since. I also stopped doing water changes and began feeding more, in addition to removing my SCWD and removing additional power heads. Go figure, my tank is cleaner than it's ever been and has been this way for almost 2 months.
My weekly maintenance is to change out my filter sock (which I now wash in bleach) and add a small amount of phosguard to it, and I rinse my sponge in my opverflow box.