Cyanobacteria on sand and glass

[Banana Man]

Hi,

I'm about 12 months into my tank and have recently seen a Cyanobacteria outbreak occur. I'm fairly sure it is Cyano... I clean the back of the glass weekly but now there is a brown algae build up that when I wipe it off it appears like a brown gooey type substance. There is a small bit on the sand but the glass is getting a lot of it. For some reason it doesn't appear really on rocks or coral. My phosphates are at about 0.06 and my nitrates are at about 0.8. My nitrates were at zero so I have been dosing small amounts of nitrates daily to bring it up slightly.

Why would a Cyano outbreak occur when Phosphates and Nitrates are are as they are? I heard it could be Glucose in the water. Has anyone else heard of this or how I can test for this?

Thanks!

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

It can come from anything. I have recently had the same issues, I had aefw's and killed them off. When I placed the corals back in the tank, I lost a lot of pods which I believe triggered it. Did you stir the sand bed or anything like this or change flow?

 

[Banana Man]

My sand sifting Goby started moving all the sand in the tank around his burrow about a month ago which might have triggered it. Will it sort itself out or will I have to do something for it?

 

[ErinCahir]

If you're still adding nitrates, I'd stop. You're feeding the cyano at this point.

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

My sand sifting Goby started moving all the sand in the tank around his burrow about a month ago which might have triggered it. Will it sort itself out or will I have to do something for it?

I kinda let it grow so it peals off with a turkey baster and then suck it up. It's not the end of the world, a little ugly and will be fine

 

[Banana Man]

Thanks. I might try stopping the Nitrates as well. If I don't dose Nitrates my tank goes to zero Nitrates all the time though for some reason no matter how much food I put in. I was told by everyone working in my LFS that having Nitrates at zero will cause an imbalance and it will cause other types of Algae. There seems to be debate about this though as I see many people on here with zero Nitrates and no issues with it?

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

The only way to have 0 nitrates is to have a bare fish tank or dosing vodka.

 

[Banana Man]

I get zero Nitrates in my tank unless I dose it and I don't use anything for Nitrate control. I test every week with my H2Ocean and have got my LFS to test it twice on their kits to confirm at different times. They have never seen it before either so their is something strange going on in my tank that I can't figure out.

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

What are your phoshates? Are your test kits micro test or big 5 to 10 ppm? If you have fish, you're not at 0.