Green slime algae

[Lucas]

Anyone have any luck with a natural way of beating green cyano. One of my tanks got dinos, after a long battle I've beaten them. Now I've been battling the green stuff for 5 months. I don't want to dose anything and risk dinos returning. I'm getting sick off scrubbing the rocks with a tooth brush. I cut light cycle, increased flow and scrub once a week. My levels are spot on. The only change within the 5 month battle was I decrease no3 to 2ppm to slow down the growth of the cyano.

 

[MofoCorals]

More flow... the green cyano only grows in dead spots in my 180. Normally I’ll use a power head on blast the rock/soft coral with it to remove the bacteria where it grows... Chemiclean is the rout to go it you want it gone for a bit.

 

[Chris A.]

Do you dose any amino acids vitamins or carbon? Cyano is a bacteria that feeds off of carbon sources not always related to low flow areas or it wouldn’t grow on powerheads

 

[Lucas]

I run half a cup of activated carbon from a reactor. No amino acids. I try and keep it simple. I was dosing po4 and no3 to beat dinos. Once they were stable and dinos were gone I weened my tank off. Instead of dosing I managed to keep stable levels with feeding and light skimming. But the feeding probably helped the green grown. So now I feed less dose no3 if need be. This has been my routine for the past 3 months. Its still growing on high flow areas.

 

[Chris A.]

What is your po4?

 

[Lucas]

2ppm

 

[Den2636]

https://www.uwcmn.com/vibrant-liquid-aquarium-cleaner. .. Works well!

 

[Chris A.]

You should try to reduce that a bit. I’d say a good starting point would be >1. I know it’s hard to go back down on it after dinos but try taking it slow and compare the po4 to the Green cyano week by week and see if there’s a correlation between the two.

 

[jah-hoeva]

I could not get rid of it either. Bit the bullet and ran a dose of chemiclean and it never returned.

Didn’t bother fish or any of my anemones or coral.

 

[Lucas]

Thanks for the insight. I might battle till the new year then see where I am at then.