The Puffer Forum

I'm having a major cyanobacteria problem in my brackish GSP tank. It's all over everything. Once I upgraded my lighting from .75WPG to 2WPG to get rid of the diatoms, the cyanobacteria decided to take over. I scraped it out and blacked out the tank. I'm going to open it up in about 3 or 4 days. I'm hoping that will do something since the lighting seems to have triggered it. I added an extra airstone to the tank as well.
Anyways, does anyone know a good way to get rid of cyanobacteria? I'd rather not take the erythromycin route. My puffs would not appreciate having to go through a cycle.

Other than manually removing it and doing a full scale blackout, there is nothing you can really do other than the medicine. Cyanobacteria is present in every aspect of life from water to soil and sometimes it has just the proper nutrients to bloom. Changing the lights and doing the black out should do the trick. You can also remove larger pieces of it using a python.

Nerite snails and adding plants like Java fern and Java moss might help in the long run. Mollies seem to like eating it as well. But, initially you will just have to clean it off. Topping off with RO water might help as well. Sometimes stuff in the tap water will trigger a bloom, but from what I've read old lighting is usually the trigger.

I already have java moss and java fern in there...

Will my puffers eat the nerite snails? And can they live in 1.008-1.01 SG?

I was thinking maybe getting some phosphate removing filter media could help? I'm a bit confused if I should treat this stuff as algae or not...

Anti-phosphate media helped me deal with cyano when my nano reef had a bad outbreak. But you may want to see if you actually have high phosphate levels in your tank, first.

Nerites usually breed in brackish waters from 1.005 - 1.010, so I think they should be fine. The shells on Nerites are super hard, so unless the puffer can flip it over, usually they are safe. I have five in my GSP tank.

You could also vacuum your substrate more often to remove phosphates from decaying food.

Ok. The problem would be finding nerites...

I vacuum half of it every water change (weekly)
I suppose I could vacuum all of it weekly.

I used to vacuum it everyday before, after I had the initial bloom. Because cleaning the cyanobacteria off by hand sucked. But, after the tank got older, now I only vacuum it once a week.

OK, looks like it's time for some extra waterchangin'! lol
The blackout ends tomorrow (started friday night). I'm so excited to see my puff babies again.

Let me know how the blackout went.

I opened up the tank. My puffers are looking good, still had white bellies and all. No algae to be seen. I'm very pleased with the results. My puffs each got a big ramshorn, they were very excited I'm hoping this will take care of the CB, but if not I guess I'll have to try to find a phosphate test and see what else I can do.
Well, off to do a water change!

Good to hear.

Well, I hope that will take care of it.
Cyanobacteria is a permanent battle for me for over a year... Before you start messing with phosphate buffers and nitrates, read this thread. It turned out to be a disaster for me!
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=11446&st=0&sk=t&sd=a
I hope your problem is solved though!

I've had a group of DPs kill off a couple of nerite snails I had in a matter of a month or so. They basically just poked at anything and everything that came out from under the shell to the point where they just died off.

Besides, they don't eat cynobacteria. Nothing seems to. Blackouts or hitting it with some maracyn for a couple days is your best bet.