Cyano / Diatom

Well my tank is 4 months old and i had my diatom outbreak not to long ago. No i have what looks like cyano outbreak. Im a little worried becasue its on my wall and sand. Is this normal or is this bad? I only feed my fish every two days. My levels are perfect. I see my crabs eating it off the sand but its pretty much everywhere. My snails were eating it off the wall except they stopped and its a lot on my back walls. What should i do? Is it my light? I run it for about 8-6 everyday. Or could it be to close to the tank? I did a water change a week ago.

 

what type of lights?

very typical of under yr old tanks. try carbon/gfo to help eliminate.

are you using ro water?

 

t5 ho lights. Aquablue and blue special. And no i haven't been but on my next top off and water change i will. And if it is normal i will let it run it's coarse.

 

If you put someone elses live rock in your tank when you were cycling it and you experienced allot of die off, that led to the diatomes outbreak, and then other. You should be fine, should get a nice clean up crew, my tanks right at the end of its cycling and I've only had it up 17 days. It's only a 29g AIO, but I've got diatomes everywhere all over the sand bed. Once the diatomes goes away you'll start too see allot of normal alge growth. I also am picking up an RO/DI pretty soon just to be certain that its not coming from my tap, although I've heard it can break out even in the cleanest of water.

Your tank sounds like its on its way though just get some alge cleaners, and some scrapping tools. I've also been running my lights on 6 hour blue acy., 8-10 hours white 10k

 

Diatoms are normal on a newer system.Once they have consumed all of the silicates they will disappear.(Silicates are present in the SB)I would try to manually remove as much Cyano as is possible.The use of RODI water will help as using tap water will contribute to the problem.Doing weekly WC's and the use of GFO or other form of Phosphate reducing media should help.I would run the lights for no more then 8 hours total.Good luck.

 

It can. I have a 4 stage RO/DI unit and had the same issue. The problem was that I got cancer and wasn't doing any maintenance at all, so my tank went into the toilet. Now that I've gotten better, I ordered in a new set of RO/DI filters and new salt and I've done only a few water changes and it's already going away.

It's sort of like starting completely over. Once your water parameters get out of whack, it just takes time to get them all back into whack. Don't rush it. Just get your RO/DI going, do your 20% monthly water changes and before you know it you'll have it all gone and have nothing but good stuff left behind. The tank will take care of most of it without your help if you're using good water for your changes.

Just don't make the mistake of rushing it. Time cures all things.

 

Yeah I had a larger tank a few years back and even with store RO water from like Wal Mart I didnt see any outbreaks in alge, and I had a pretty skimmpy cleanup crew/fish tank. Even with awesome T5 lighting I didnt see any outbreaks other then natural purple/red alge growth on the tank and rock. Vinnyboombatz's right though as soon as the silicates are consumed it'll go away, mine happened surprisingly quick, about 12-13 days into a new tank. So if you see persistent outbreaks in it, then you need to check your water and filtration system/clean up crew method.