Yes that would certianly lead to a sudden spike in nutrient levels as it decays and releases all the nutrients stored in it, back into your water coloum.

Small frequent water changes is a good thing. They will always contribute to lowering your nitrates and other nutrient build up in the water from the tank. However one or two doesnt really do much for you given your current conditions in the tank. Doing a couple of 2 gallon water changes with fresh Salt mixed with R/O water a week for a few weeks should do your tank some real good. Its a slow gradual process and a pain to do but you will likely find the results well worth your while in the end.

There is likely one of your problems, inadequate clean up crew. You seem to have enough Hermits but your seriously lacking on snails. I nassarious is not nearly enough. I would suggest another 9 Nassarious or Cerith snails and 6-10 Banded Triochus/Astrea or better yet Margarita snails. Why so many snails you may ask? Well not all snails are created equal. Some have a tendency to clean the glass and rocks and some have a tendency to clean the sand bed. You need both, especially right now. None of them will do much to eat the Cyno, but they will go a long way in preventing the conditions in your tank that favor Cyno and algae growth in your tank. Clean tanks have very little nutrients in them and therefore minimal algae issues. Your water my be gin clear but that doesnt mean it ain loaded with high nutrient levels.

Removing all of the Cyno will defintiely be a step in the right direction. Removing this while it is in "full bloom" is as effective as removing algae from your fuge when it has grow a lot and gotten think and you tear about half of it out and throw it away. The same pricipal is at work here, your just doing it with Cyno and Hair algae instead of Macro Algae from your fuge. Dont let the Cyno "die off" and "go away" on its own. When it dies off it is realsing all of the stored up nutrients back into the water coloum which will fuel a new bloom in a day or two.

Good! Not a fun way to spend your lunch break, but much better than the option of looking at a faltering tank all day. Keep it up and the hard work will pay off. It just takes a while. Nothing good happens in a SW tank fast.

I was suspecting all along that you had less than optimal water flow in the tank although you never posted (or I over looked it if you did) what the water flow charatristics where in the tank. This is something that will also have a profound effect on Cyno in the tank. If you have adequate water flowing in the tank and no dead spots then this will keep deteris (sp?) suspended in your water coloum (sp?) where your filter can suck it up and trap it in the filter floss or what ever means you are using for mechancial filtration. When you clean the filter which should be often, especially at this point you are removing this crude instead of allowing it to decay and load your tank up with DOC's (Disolved Organic Compounds) such as protiens, Phosphate ect... .This doesnt mean go an add a couple of Maxi Jets pumping 300 gph to your tank. Thats insaine and the wrong kinda water flow to use. High volume in a wide flow patterns does more good for you than high flow concentrated in a narrow stream pattern such as you would get from a typical power head.

Here is an example of what I am talking about. I have a 10 gallon AGA tank with a AC 30 filter and in addition to the 150 gph of water flow this puts out I am using two Koralia Nanos. For a 10 gallon tank that is adequate filtration and the nice wide flow pattern of the Koralia Nanos which move 240 gph each. This equates to a fairly gentle but brisk flow of 630 gph.

Now thats what I am talking about. Bio-Balls in a SW tank often leads to a Nitrate issue. They are great for providing excellent surface area for bacteria that deal with Ammonia and Nitrites but the other edge of this double edged sword is that after they get a build up of film on them it creates a huge "Nitrate Factory". This is why you likely cant get your nitrates down to 10 ppm or less where it needs to be for corals in your tank.

If you have the correct spectrum of bulbs and they are not due for a bulb change..., in your tank, cutting down the photoperiod will get you minimal results. First of all Cyno doesnt require light, its bacteria not algae. Most nucense(sp) alhgae gets plenty of ambient light from its surrounding such as light comming in a window accross the room of the tank or when you trun the lights on in the room so you dont trip over that sneaky ottoman.

It takes more than this to have corals in a tank. Stable water parameters that are not within acceptable ranges in water with high nutrient levels does not make for a suitable enviroment for corals. You started this tank on 25 May 09 if I read the replies right and here it is 23 June 2009. I say this not to be mean but this tank was never ready for corals to begin with. Im not sure it was finished cycling, but with no parameters to look at over the last 4 weeks I cant say for sure. It takes about 28-45 days for a tank to truely cycle and start to settle down a bit. It takes another 4-8 months for the tank to run its course, mature and start to settle down and sabilize. During this 5-6 month period of no corals and in a tank this size no more than one fish you have plenty of time to deal with the various stages your tank will go through as it matures. During this time you will see a diatom bloom that will develop first and go away in a few days, you will start to see a little powdery green algae develop on the glass and the snails will deal with this. You will see some hair algae develop possibly and your clean up crew will easily deal with this in short order. If you have a bout with Cyno it will likely show its ugly sinde at this point. With minimal fish, minimal fish food going in the tank and no other live stock other than a clean up crew this should be a short live battle that you easily win. If you had an adequate clean up crew in the tank to begin with you most likely would have avoided this fun little stage. And finally as your tank began to mature and stabilize you should have started to see some nice growth rates of coralline algae. At this point you would be more than ready for possibly a second tiny fish or some coral additions without upseting the balance of your tank.

But hey thats just my opinion. But that opinion is based off several years of experience and success at this. Yeah, sure you can find someone that will disagree with my opinion, its easy to do. Just look around on forums long enough ro head down to the LFS and find a sales person and they will hook you up with a different version of "the story". But do some research and you will find a lot of merit in the points I am trying to make here in an effort to help you out in the right direction.

Thanks for all of that. I did order a bunch of cerith snails the other day because I read they eat cyano. I will get some more nassarius snails this weekend but no more turbos, that thing was too big and pretty much useless IMO lol.

My amonia has been at 0 for about 3 weeks at least and my nitrite has been at 0 for a couple of weeks. I got a diatom bloom a couple of weeks ago that lasted about a day or 2. I checked my phosphates and alkalinity before I got my zoas and those all checked out fine. The calcium was a bit low but I used Kent Nano Reef and got the calcium back up and everything tests fine now, other than somewhat high nitates (20) that I think were caused by the bio-balls and crap in that chamber.

The LFS guy that had a nano up there has been guiding me through this slowly and he said averything looks ok to put some soft corals in. Until the cyano outbreak the zoas on one rock all looked healthy and happy but the other rock only had one that was happy, the rest barely opened. I tried moving it but that made that one happy one close up so I moved it back and he opened back up fine. I hope that one makes it.

I am now possitive though that it was the macro die-off that caused it. I am keeping a close eye on it and so far all the macro now look healthy and green. I did find alot of crap on the bottom of the chamber where the bio-balls were and I think it was crap that circulated when I planted my macro. I cleaned that out along with the return pump chamber where a little more of that crap was. Where the bio-balls were I now have a filter over that area and I will clean it daily. I may use that area for a protien skimmer in the future. Saturday I will do another 2 gallon change and my cerith snails should be here by then. Although they did say the ceriths may be inactive for a couple of days after I get them. I sure wish I read about them when I first got the outbreak lol.

I forgot to mention, I got a new pump a couple of weeks ago that pumps 780GPH (head pressure) from my fuge 2 feet below the DT through a split loc-link with a flow adjuster in-line. I had it at about 3/4 open before due to noise but now I am not worried about noise so I opened it up more. It is really pushing the water through now. I am not sure exactly how much is it pushing through but there is some nice flow.

Well the cyano is getting under control and the zoas are starting to open back up. One horrible thing that happened was my overflow was causing tons of micro bubble, but I now have fixed that by adding a ball valve to the overflow pipe. I also found that black turbo snails dont last long in my tank but at least the hermits and peppermint shrimp eat well. Who doesn't love a nice dish of escargot lol. I did have a horrible accident with my larger shroom. It detatched so I glued it back twice but the third time I just let it sit where it wanted. I didnt realize that the power head would eat it. At least thats what I think heppened since its nowhere to be found at all.

Mushrooms will often do this its not that unusual. Sometimes things in the tank change and they decide to detatch and move/drift else where. Dont be so sure its in the power head it might have been pushed under the edge of a rook or a nook or cranny in the rock workl and just not be visable.

with the missing mushroom chances are you would know if it went through a PH i had an anemone go through mine, that was some of the cloudiest water i have ever seen, you would know

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It has become more than a hobby! My 29gal Dream Reef DIY Build

I cannot say for sure that its gone but I have lifted several rocks on top and looks all over under and behind other rocks and its nowhere to be seen. It may show up.

It's hard to tell because it disapeared after I did a cleaning and accidentaly disturbed my sand in the fuge and the water was cloudy after that. Hopefully it will drift out and attach to something lol.

Ok the cyano is almost all gone and my fuge is taking off. I went to the LFS and talked to the guy that sold me turbos and he cant figure out why they would die like that, maybe tempurature. He said my water is fine and if something like copper was killing the snails then the other inverts would be dying also.

Besides that all my zoas are opening now and they are opening alot more than the first week or two I had them before the cyano snuck in and I only lost one zoa though the hole mess. The tiny baby moshroom also seems to be doing good. I also got two more small corals this weekend.

Here is my shrooms I picked up yesterday. They opened up huge shortly after putting them in. I counted about 8 shrooms on that one rock while they were still closed up, plus a clam on the bottom lol. Hopefully one or two will migrate somewhere else.

Sounds good about the corals and glad to see your getting the upper hand on the battle with Cyno. Its a tough thing to deal with and it takes some time.

Thanks. It took just under a couple of weeks to get it under control and it seems to be slowly going away. The caulerpa is getting pretty big and the chaeto seems to be growing also. Hopefully those will take over using up the nitrates and phosphates instead of the cyano. I am also getting some more cyrith snails in this week (hopefully) and they should do alot better than the black turbos that keep dying. I do have a nassarius snail in there thats been fine for a couple of weeks and is still perfectly fine so I am hoping that the turbos died due to being from a colder region or something.

ok so now that the cyano is dying back I am getting a rise nitrates even after changing 2 gallons. I removed a sponge filter from the overflow and changed my filter in the sump hoping that it will help some. Other than that everything looks good. I noticed my peppermint shrimp cleaning a clam that came on the underside of one of my shrooms so I figured I would feed him while he was out. He went crazy for the brine shrimp but after he was done he was picking at my larger shroom. I wonder if some of the brine shrimp got on it and he was just cleaning it off. Whatever he was doing was sure ticking off my shroom though because that thing basically turned inside out. Eventually the shrimp left and the shroom opened back up but there is an area on the edge of the shroom that looks irritated where the shrimp was picking at it. Hopefully he will be fine.

Here are a couple of pics of my other corals.

After changing the 2 gallons on Wednesday and removing that sponge filter my nitrates are back down to 20.

Now that things are a little more "normal" (whatever that means lol) I decided to mess with that rock with the shrooms on it. There were at least 11 shrooms of different sizes and colors on there so I decided to try moving a couple. Last night I took two off the rock. I dont think they liked that very much but they also werent getting very good light. After reading alot of different threads about them I decided to try just forcing them off the rock and putting them on another rock with wedding vail material loosely holding them on. I read it take about a week for them to stick to the new rock. If this works I will move a couple of the others.

My peppermint shrimp stopped picking on the large shroom and he now knows when and where dinner is since I target feed him. My wife got a kick out of watching him eat. Tonight I will try to get picks of him eating.

Wow..

Ok I havent updated in a while so here are some pics.

Thanks for the updates I was starting to wonder if you had fell off the edge of the earth and needed us to send out a SAR mission to look for you and do an extraction!

I like that little sump. Is there a chance you got more pictures of it? It looks like something you put together yourself and I would be interested in knowing a lot more about it! I would like to get a better idea of its layout and design.

I designed it after a couple of dfferent sumps I saw online. Here are the plans and pics from start to finish, although I have not gotten the skimmer yet. It has evolved over the past couple of months and now has a bigger pump and I put a piece of plexi-glass in to keep the water from plashing by the intake of the pump and creating tons of bubbles. Feel free to use it and modify it however you want.

I have been AFK for a while due to work and being on call for a few weeks straight. I finally got a little time to post. Alot has happened since 7-10 besides the pics I posted.

My peppermint shrimp got sucked into the sump... three times! The thrid time he made it all the way to the pump then... well you get the picture. I ended up getting an emerald crab after that. I named him bulldozer after he showed me his demolition skills on my loose frags. Shortly after that I got a nice $40 anthelia that bulldozer ended up destroying. When he got done there were 2 large and 3 small anthelia left. I put them in my other tank in a little hatchery and now it is coming back nicely. I decided not to put it back in with Bulldozer. Maybe I will put a small frag in there later but for now it is staying put. I also picked up a rock-o-shrooms last weekend with 2 striped brittle stars hitch hiking in the holes. I put it in my main tank until one of them relocated then moved it into the tank I am setting up for my office. I now cant find the one in my main tank but with the rock work I have it's no suprise. The one in my office tank is still in the hole it started out in and I am beginning to think it cant get out lol. I wonder what can be done if it cant get out, I guess I could break the rock but I would risk killing it. I will just wait and see. I got the brain coral I showed above and I was thuroughly entertained by watching it eat a couple of mysis shrimp. I posted a video below, enjoy.

how is the tank doing? havent herd from you in a long while

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It has become more than a hobby! My 29gal Dream Reef DIY Build

Sorry, I moved over to the NR forums. There are alot more people active with nanos over there.

Quick update though while I am here. I got tons of SPS now and I still have the same two LPS and I have a few more zoas.


































Here is my trumpet eating











Burp!



Here is a shot of my zoas in my second tank in my office




This is my cabinet mod

wow! Very cool. It looks like you did it up right. Excellent pictures.

what is that?

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