Never Ending battle with Cyano/Dinos

[Northstar24]

First, this is going to be a long post, thank you in advance to all that read it. Second, I've been battling Cyano or Dinos (not sure which - opinions on what it is are 50/50 and John over at ReefCleaners has told me that Dinos are just another form of cyano). I've done tons of reading, and tried many things (more on that below) but it seems that for every patch of this crap I suck out of the tank, two patches form immediately after. This seriously has me considering pulling the plug on the tank.

I'm really looking for feedback on what I have done so far, and what I need to keep doing to actually make some progress on this

First, the Specs on my system
180 Gallon with Lifereef Sump/fuge/skimmer
Lights 3 150W MH and 8 39W Actintic T5's
Flow: Koralia 1040 and Koralia 1400 + return flow

Fish
Naso Tang
Hippo Tang
Kole Tang
Sailfin Tang
Potters Angel
3 Green Chromis
2 Ocellaris Clowns
Yellowtail Damsel
Male Lyretail Anthias

Inverts
100 Nass Snails (recently added to stir sand more throughly)
100 Cerith snails (recent added to stir sand and clean rocks)
30 Turbo snails
~50 Dwarf Ceriths - not sure how many are actually left
30 blue leg hermits
15 scarlet hermits
Brittle Star
Cleaner Shrimp
Coral Banded Shrimp

I have a few corals, but several were lost due to the cyano, all I have left is the following
3 Medium Zoa colonies
Acan
Small patch of Green star polyps
Green Slimer Acropora

Tests from this evening
Temp 78
Salinity 1.025
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0 (due to algae growth in tank and fuge, not sure what the real value is)
PH 8.3
Phosphates 0
Iron 0
Alkalinity 8

What I've tried over the last two months

I'll start with my source water. It comes from my well, then goes through a 6 Stage Water General RO/DI unit. I've tested the source water for everything from ammonia to phosphate and iron - it comes back clean for all of these things, which leads me to believe it is not my source water.

The tank was started in August of 2010 with un filtered well water, I suspect there was some iron in the water at that time. Since then, I have made enough water changes with RO Water to replace the tank volume at least twice, if not more.

Over the course of the two month war with this crap, I tried a 4 day black out followed by a water change - this really did not do anything. I've also run phosphate sponges and Poly Filters in my sump to try and pull out any heavy metals or phosphates present (even though tests are negative for source water and display tank)

I am currently syphoning this stuff out as fast as my RO unit makes water, roughly 10% every other day. It doesn't seem to matter much, as about a half hour later, you can hardly tell I syphoned anything out

I know that it wouldn't solve the source, but I even tried the chemi clean stuff just to try and get ahead of the crap in the tank - its currently covering everything, sand, rocks, glass, corals - pretty much everything but the fish. After the 48 hour treatment, I did not see any sort of improvement in the tanks condition (this is what leads me to believe that is actually dino's I'm facing and not cyano)

At this point I'm at a loss, other than to continue water changes and syphoning the crap out. I've been doing this for almost two months now and it hasn't improved, I think its actually gotten worse. I cut down my feeding to every other day and I use a turkey baster to blow the rocks free of deitrus every day

I'm struggling here and looking for some suggestions from my fellow Living Reefers!

 

[little_fish]

Pics of the stuff?

But my suggestion would be to get rid of several fish, get more flow in there, and replace your bulbs. Also look into adding a scrubber or heavy duty skimmer + fuge.

 

[carter]

yeah you have a few too many fish and crank the flow way up lights are ok youre at 4 and 1/3 watts per but you may need to change out some bulbs a bigger fuge and skimmer set up might help but really its a hard call
pics please

 

[little_fish]

I was suggesting new bulbs because they do go bad, and getting cyano or algae can be a sign that they have gone bad.

 

[Northstar24]

I've got an extra Koralia that moves 2700 gph. I was originally using it but it was blowing the sand around pretty good. I'll play around with it and see if I can get it in the tank without creating a sandstorm.

I'll look into replacing the bulbs, that was one of the other things on the list from my research that I haven't tried yet. I'll likely get some Phoenix 14k MH bulbs and some ATI bulbs.

I ran my stock list past a few local reefers and they did not think that I was over stocked - that being said, I could try and remove some of the fish (Likely the Damsel and the Chromis - possibly the Anthias)

 

[little_fish]

Well i tend to think a tank is overstocked when you are having the issues you are having, even if its a much smaller number of fish than you could typically have in a tank that size. But i see no reason why you cant work back up to that number of fish once you get the nutrient thing back under control.

And maybe put that power head lower in the tank but point upwards to its not pointing at the sand.

But i would replace your bulbs asap

 

[Northstar24]

Thanks for the suggestions Hannah. I'll make a few changes and keep you posted

 

[supernatureal]

I will say one thing don't go and change everything at once as it could cause a different problem. Try one thing at a time. Since you have a bigger power head I would try that. If the power head helps but blows around to much sand the maybe multiple smaller ones would work better. Give it a week and see if that changes anything. Depending on how old your bulbs are that is what I would try next. If the are ready to replace you could order them while seeing if the extra water movement helps. If taking out a fish the chromis and damsel are going to have less of and impact as it would be getting ride of one of the tangs (which is I know hard to let go of but you could always replace later on). Tang = more waste compared to 3 Chromis and a damsel.

 

[sen5241b]

Although your water may have excellent quality there may be crud in ther rock that the algae can grow out of.

 

[Northstar24]

The extra flow definitely makes a difference. I'm also looking into replacement bulbs