Cyanobacteria: What is it? How to solve it.

Cyanobacteria - cyano - is actually a really interesting creature. Not quite a plant, we think it turned into what we call Chloroplasts today long ago. We think that cyanobacteria was responsible for much of the Oxygen that caused a great die off of anaerobic bacteria early in earth's history.

Today, cyano is responsible for things like red tides and killing thousands of fish all over beaches each year - and it also shows up in our aquariums whenever we have a nutrient imbalance. If you're overfeeding or make a sudden change (like suddenly increasing nitrates) you may notice a cyanobacteria bloom. These usually are not harmful, but you may want to adjust or slow down changes that you're making to avoid unsightly cyanobacteria growing in your tank.

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Images are from Wikimedia Commons, and freely licensed for use.

[karennation]

How are you able to syphon out? Keep clogging the syphon water changer I use?

[yaminaboub-jolb]

I am watching this for my botany exam not to fix my fish tank i don't even have a sish tank 🙃 but that's a really fascinating topic

[WickedEfie]

Very informative video, great work! :-)

[ArrickthaRed]

It's funny you did this video today. I just used Chemi clean this weekend for the first time as I was just tired of fighting cyano. I can say it worked as advertised. I was sceptical as I have been in the hobby 20 years and have seen a lot of miracle cures that don't work but I gave this a shot and it did work in a day and a half. My skimmer is still not right and I had to throw in an air stone but it was really very easy. Wish I tried this month's ago.

[Val_Halla]

.03 nitrates?..wow that’s pretty low isn’t it?.or did you mean to say phosphate level ?
Cheers and thanks for the great info 🙏

[fuffoon]

With high nitrates and phosphates I had a lot of cyanobacteria. My current tank has no detectable nitrates and 0.04 phosphates and there is plenty of cyanobacteria. It gathers in low flow areas and just as much in high flow areas. The well lit parts get a good coat and the shaded areas do also. Its diminishing slowly, faster now since I installed a 55w UV.

[joec]

Chemo clean works!!! But as you say the skimmer becomes immediately over active. They recommend first turning it off.

[davidwaters]

What is youre opinion of brown algae on my rocks been fighting this battle for a little while now my nitrates are around 5 and phosphate is around 0.4 sps is growing best it ever has tanks 1 year old

[ReefMan]

Trying a new color space setting on my camera this time to enable HDR output for my channel. Seems like I need to bump up the overall brightness quite a bit - this feels really overly dark. I also need to back up from the camera so that I'm not just a giant talking head!

[tasanastasi]

My Nitrates are 25 and Phosphates 2.5 , yes i am scared ... probably need to do a water change, its been 8 weeks so far ..testing to see if i need to do so many water changes everyone is saying you should

[Extrasolar]

Thx man! So basically the human gut is like a fish tank. If the nutrients are out of balance then bad bacteria start to grow and cause an outbreak just like Candida does in our body.

[williambrock]

Should you lower your lights it’s you have Cyanobacteria?

[VikingTokyo]

Just get a few conches (Strombus alatus). They are great cyanobacteria vacuums

[atfinthehouse]

Interesting and informative videos. However, dry. Suggest better photography and better real life, tank examples. Keep working on it. Address other natural management of reef tank problems.