Hi there,
Not sure I can offer any definitive advice or an 'answer'. My nano reef is also suffering from a cyno problem which I am also trying to sort out. Like your tank it is 6 months old. Now in both cases it could simply be the natural maturation process (marine tanks can take over a year to mature and bed it) so it could sort itself out in time. In the meantime you can try the following:
- Feed less
- Reduce the light/photo period
- Increase number/volume of water changes
Basically keep doing what you are doing until whatever nutriants are causing the problem are used up!
One question - what skimmer do you use in the tank? A good skimmer can help to reduce the waste nutriant load, especially when using a lot of frozen foods. Given your size of tank you would want one rated for 500L+ to be on the safe side.
Wayne
Tank1: 125L Tropical. 1 male betta, 4 scissortail rasboras, 3 neon tetras, 4 glowlight danios, 1 candy stripe loach, 1 female bristlenose, 6 amano shrimp.Tank 2: 65L Nano reef. 6kg live rock, 96w T5 lighting, 3 x turbo snails, 5 x red-legged hermits, 1 x peppermint shrimp, 1 small pistol shrimp (hitch-hiker), two percula clowns, 1 neon goby, 1 sun coral, 1 clove coral & 1 tree coral
im using a red sea prism skimmer
its on 24/7, and i would turn it up for a couple hours after feeding, and then down a bit after
i know they get slated abit for not being the best skimmer, but we bought it before we really knew about skimmers
i have thought about buying a new skimmer, tho this one does seem to be getting stuff out of the water, but maybe not enough as needed to be really effective?
ive also added a mithrax crab and a scooter blenny today to see if they can turn the sand over abit to help, my snails and hermit crabs stay mainly on the rock and back of tank!
Hi, never heard many good reports about red sea skimmers BUT, I've never owned/used one either. When I was working in a marine centre we mainly sold TMC V2's, Deltec Mce-600/300 etc and aquamedic skimmers.
It's been over 1 year since I was there now though so not sure what the latest products are out there but if it was me I'd be looking into getting a new skimmer.
You shouldn't have to keep altering it so I'm pressuming it's not doing what you want. I know there are cheap alternatives to the V2 skimmer and look very similar but if either are not sumped (visual reasons) then I'd probably opt for a Deltec mce600, had one on my old system and was great.
There is one thing to note though, when I had the red algae problem I found doing more water changes actually seemed to feed the red algae. I got rid of mine by just letting it go and burnt itself out. Every system is different though.
hi thanks for the further advice, i think i will not do as many water changes, and will go back to doing it once a fortnight, i,ve been manually sucking the algae out on a daily basis with a syringe, and looks better and not as much water being taken out as well.
Ive also added some cerith snails to help turnover the sand and keep it cleaner.
wouldnt be getting a new skimmer for a few months tho, cos we plan on a new bigger tank with a sump in december, and plan to upgrade our skimmer then, Ive had a look at the skimmer and it seems to be taking more gunk out, so hopefully wont be long until the algae burns itself out and goes away!