yet another cyno Q.

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mercenary-grunt

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should i have stopped my c-balance dosing? i stopped when i saw that my cyno was getting bad, but and havent started it back up sence the cyno started to go. kinda afraid that it will help fuel it. and what about phytoplankton?? should i wait longer before doing corals. and i havent been able to keep any type macro alge in my sump, (havent tryed in the 180 yet. every plant type thing died in the 80g i had before this one).
 
should i have stopped my c-balance dosing? i stopped when i saw that my cyno was getting bad, but and havent started it back up sence the cyno started to go. kinda afraid that it will help fuel it
Not sure what this is. If it is liquid food or such, could be the fuel. If it is chem dosing, prob not

and what about phytoplankton??
Yes, deff fuel. I started out using it and other liquid foods, never was good. Always had problems. Funny, I stopped using that stuff and things got better. Only use what is needed. Live foods are the best. I like pods, good food for all. Fish and corals, system in general. Pods are the only "food" I use, but I only have 2 fish, and corals.

should i wait longer before doing corals.
depends on how old your system is and water perameters?

and i havent been able to keep any type macro alge in my sump, (havent tryed in the 180 yet. every plant type thing died in the 80g i had before this one).
macros need food and light, some are better than others. some you should beware of. I have tried them, sometimes it works out, sometimes it don't. Water changes are the best for keep water in check


Any info on your system would help.
 
c-balance is dousing. my system has been running for about a year and a half. thats total thru all the upgraiding of tanks. i need to check water prams. ill have to take water to lfs. and i have 2 marineland 1200 (2600 gph total). i have a iwaki return pump that is 1300. so i guess current circulation is 3900. but every other time ive checked my water its been in line. i thought that i need to add some phyto for to help kick start that process. and to help keep that on my coral/ anemones.
 
caulerpa is one to watch out for, some can lead to problems. chaeto is a good one, never had luck with it, some say it needs to tumble.

As far as I've been told, man can not bottle LIVE phyto, yet. So, any dead food will dirty your water. You don't really jump start for corals. It is more of a maturatiy thing. Can you see pods and little critters crawling on your rocks, glass, anywhere? When these little "bugs" are sustained, then you should have a mature system. Although, moving and changing things does interupt things alittle. That was a hard one for me, but after not touching anything and letting it be, i found it will maintain itself (with water changes).
Most corals don't need tobe feed. lighting is a big part.
A healthy system will feed the corals with free floating plankton, nauplii, snail spwan, etc..... Mostly things you can't see or test for. I DO NOT FEED MY TANK. Anytime I have ever tried some kind of food, it never ended well. Just live pods.

Some use marine snow and swear by it and others have good luck with similar products. If your goal is corals, then don't add any food unless needed, usually not. Start small and hardy. DO YOUR RESEARCH BEFORE YOU BUY, another hard lesson but worth it, if not for you then the animals you wish to keep.


And still not sure what c-balance is? is it calcium?
 
C-Balance from Two Little Fishies is a two-part, calcium and alkalinity maintenance system that adjusts calcium, magnesium, and strontium ions to natural seawater ratios, and achieves a balanced ionic residual. Makes replenishment of calcium and alkalinity easy, and keeps your calcium and alkalinity in perfect harmony, assuring the optimum conditions for growing stony corals and coralline algae.

- Dr.'s Foster and Smiths
 
CIMG8493.jpg



heres my sump. can i put this skimmer outside the sump and put in macro? i dont know what size this sump is.
 
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C-balance should not fuel cyano, not a food.

The rubble rock in your sump will, acts like bio-balls. they will trap detrius and nastyness. This will be a good fuel source, and without a light source will show up in your display. from time to time they will need tobe cleaned. I would clean with WC water, in a bucket, swishing around to rinse. then clean the bottom. It is just easier to have a whole peice of rock that can be blown off with a power head or turkey baster. If you have enough LR in your display, the rubble ready shound't be needed. If not needed, slowly over time remove alittle. Don't clean them off like you would bio-balls, best to keep in water and not left in the air. Personally not a fan of trickle system sumps. But they can and will work.

Is there a light source? If not macros Will Not grow, only fade away, turning back to nitrates and phosphates, causing a fuel for cyano and undesirable algaes (hair).
 
you mentioned taking your water to the lfs? do you not have testing kits? This you will need to keep corals. And if you can"t test for that c-balance, then i wouldn"t put it in. How do you know how much is needed. If you don't have LPS or SPS or clams, then you should be able to keep cal and such in check with weekly water changes (10%).
 
I have some caulerpa if you want to try it again. It has always grown awesome for me. I have it under a 23W 6500k compact flourescent light bulb from lowes in a standard utility reflector.

I would stop dosing phyto right away.

As for taking the skimmer outside of the sump... if there is an overflow on the skimmer for some reason and it is in the pump, it will keep the water in the system. If it is outside and you have an ATO, you could be asking for trouble (like trido is going through right now with his tank crash if you are reading that thread...)
 
Cyno can be a pain but not hard to get rid of. Its all about limiting nutrients when it comes to any form of algae which cyno partly is. Once nutrients are available then algae will grow as it uses it as a food source. The fact that you didn't have much success with a macro may partly be because it was out competed by another algae (possibly the cyno) for the available nutrients in the water column. When I had my cyno and hair algae out break, I harvested it in my sump where I made conditions more favorable for it to grow there rather than the main display and eventually it grew only in my sump and no where else. Each week, I removed most of it which exports all of the bound up phosphates, nitrates etc that it used for its growth out of the system and i just allowed it to continue to grow back. Eventually as the tank matured it grew less and less until eventually it stopped growing altogether and I was able to remove the light from my sump and never had algae issues thereafter. It's all about finding that balance. You limit nutrients and your on your way to getting rid of algae. I saw mention of rubble in your sump and would have to agree, it can cause water quality issues because as the rock sheds, the detritus will just accumulate in there shooting up nitrate and phosphate levels so personally I wouldnt use it. Liverock would be better served kept in the main display IMO. In the sump, it would require additional maintenance which isn't necessary.

As for the C-Balance, I use to use it to dose my tank. the thing with it though is you have to test regularily to use it. It's hardly ever a 50/50 dosage between the two bottles and I'd run through one bottle a lot quicker than the other. Also, as you add in more corals or some start to grow, the demands for alk and calcium change so you have to adjust accordingly. Same with removing corals so if you aren't testing your water regularly I wouldn't dose either of the two to be safe because you won't know what is going on.

Lastly, when it comes to corals, you want a matured system which comes with age. The tank has to find it's balance and the fact that you are having issues with cyno means water quality isn't optimum just yet. You can do a test for nitrates today and read zero and think hey! I have no nitrates but it wouldn't be an accurate reading. Any time you have algae growing, nitrates are present as it uses it as a food source for it's growth so you end up getting a false reading because the nitrates are bound up in the algae, but the fact that the algae is still in your tank means it's not doing you much good so you need to export it by manually removing it. Over time as the bacterial colonies multiply, your nitrate levels should drop and the algae should subside, but it takes a bit of effort on your part not to over feed the tank, allow waste, un eaten fish food, detritus etc to accumulate in the tank because all that will do is shoot up nitrate and phosphate levels fueling algae to grow.

Just a few thoughts for starters. I'd hold off on corals for now and get your water quality in check first. It took me one year to add my first coral so it does take a bit of time some times. :)


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it dawned on me yesterday that for about a month i was running my 180g system on 440w and 1300gph!! i think that i found the reson why i got cyno. i havent added phyto yet, i thought that would cause the cyno to grow more. i think that i am going to need to get a bigger return pump tho.i was told that the live rock in the sump would aid the bactireas growth to keep the system running better.because it increases the over all amount of LR in the system.
 
it dawned on me yesterday that for about a month i was running my 180g system on 440w and 1300gph!! i think that i found the reson why i got cyno. i havent added phyto yet, i thought that would cause the cyno to grow more. i think that i am going to need to get a bigger return pump tho.i was told that the live rock in the sump would aid the bactireas growth to keep the system running better.because it increases the over all amount of LR in the system.

Not necessarily especially if it is just rubble. Sometimes the negatives to using rubble in a sump far out weighs any positives if simply for increased surface area for bacteria to grow. Technically, the rock your display holds should be more than adequate to biologically filter your tank. If not, then you probably have too high of a bioload. As for flow, yea cyno loves low flow areas. You increase the flow to a particular area it is growing and usually it disappears. Flow is very important. It keeps waste in suspension in the water column to be either filtered out or used up by corals. With minimal flow, the waste just settles and rots. I ran roughly 4,000 gph of flow in my 38 gal cube. Nothing settled in there :p


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You are saying your return pump is 1300 gph? Is that after deducting for hear pressure?

Honestly doesn't sound that bad to me. Don't want it too fast, should match what your protein skimmer, etc. can handle.

What do you mean 440W? 440W of what? Heaters? Lights?
 
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