Green hair, cyano, clear bubbles

Hey folks, I need help getting all of this under control. I've got a 12 gallon biocube and I'm tired of the pests.

My whole sand bed that isn't covered by any rock is covered in cyano. I pull it off and within a few days it all comes back. I've got green hair algae growing in a few places on the live rock. And I've noticed in a few places in the tank I have clear bubbles on a few rocks. I'm not sure what the clear bubbles are.

In my filter chambers I've got an InTank media basket stacked with filter floss, phosban, and purigen. Then in chamber 2 I have a mini fuge with some cheato and a small light. Chamber 3 I have a bag of ceramic bio media and the return pump.

I've tried using the cheato and the phosban to help fight this off but it doesn't seem to be doing any good. Is the bio media at the end helping or hurting?

I'm doing weekly water changes of around 15% to help fight this too.

I don't know what else to do.

 

What are you parameters? Ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phos, etc.
How old is your tank?
What lights are you using and how long is your photoperiod?
How much flow do you have in your tank?
What kind of livestock and CUC do you currently have??

All thsoe answers will help us help you

 

Start doing 25% water changes every couple of days for a couple of weeks
that will bring down those levels

 

Im in the same boat. My aquariums only 3 months old I cut back on food and picked up on the water changes. Seems to be helping. I also bought my own 5 stage ro/di and started making my own using instant ocean. Seems to be helping!

 

Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate - 0
pH - 8.0
Calcium - 460
kH - 6
Phosphate - .25 (although could be 0, I'm no good at reading that one and every reading I've ever taken has been .25 so either I read 0 as .25 on the API test or it's been constant for over almost 2 months)
Salinity - 1.026

As for flow I've got the stock return pump wich I understand is around 100 gph and I've got a Koralia 240. The tank is 6 months old or older and I've had it for around 2 months I think. I've added a few pounds of live rock and it's around 13-14 lbs now.

The lights are the stock PC bulbs, one white one actinic. The photoperiod is 10 hours.

Livestock is one firefish and CUC is 4 nassarius snails, 2 astrea snails, 2 red legged hermits, and two blue legged hermits.

I'm using RO/DI water I buy from the LFS to do top off's.

I had so much cyano on the bottom that the firefish wasn't coming out of his hole (which is near the bottom). Now that I've cleaned it all up he's out and about again.

I also have 2 trumpet coral frags, green star polyps, and a rock with mushroom's on it.

I also realize that although I'm getting low nitrate and phosphate readings, those numbers may be false because the algae and cyano are eating up the excess.

What are the clear bubbles?

 

It's hard to know for sure, but clear bubbles do turn up in a tank from various sources or at least they do in mine. I just blow them off so they don't become something. I blow them with a turkey baster along with detritrus (I never know if I spell that word correctly ).

 

The bubbles are likely just trapped nitrogen bubbles from the de-nitrification process.

 

Ok, I'll stop worrying about the bubbles then. Now all I need to work on is the cyano and the green hair algae.

Is the ceramic bio media helping/hurting/no difference?

 

I had similar issues when I cycled my little 30 gallon tank. As for the cyano, use a turkey blaster to blast out your live rock frequently. Also check for dead-spots (no flow) in your tank and try to move your live rock/power heads to eliminate them. Keep up with water changes as well. Watch feedings closely to make sure your not over feeding as well.

 

Test the LFS's water before putting salt in it- make sure it's actually good RO/DI- small RO/DI units are around $100 shipped.
Test that water and also let us know please, good luck.

I used to have cyano- but no more since my DIY reactor I run a little 'PHosGuard' in.
I realy don't have any other ideas to add other than checking the LFS's water.

Good luck, and stay with it, it'll get beat