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Cynobacteria, since it is a bacteria, itself is toxic.

[link=for further reading]http://itself is toxic," style="COLOR: #EB4288[/link]

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[link=H2g2]http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/upgrade.html" style="COLOR: #EB4288[/link] 2005 Don't Leave Home Without it[/font]

Well, Mouse, that's a belief that you, and probably many other hobbyists share...

I personally, after many bouts with plants that caused more harm than good, couldn't bring myself back to the live variety.

I suppose it's a challenge to keep live plants living and thriving but I must admit I was a complete failure at it, especially with the algae problems they produced.

Thank god there's no plastic algae.

--garyroland.

As a newcomer to live plants, I thought that NitrATEs should be kept at 20-30ppm, and it is OK to have less than that.

I would not ADD any NitrATEs to a tank with an algae problem. . . .

Did I miss something?

Thanks and all best,
Joe

You've missed a bit Neon Man ,
I'll try to give you the condensed version.

BGA, or cynobacteria is NOT a traditional "algae" ....it's partially a bacteria, so reducing nitrAtes just accelerates its growth. Cyno has been known to usually show up in low to zero nitrAte tanks.

Increasing nitrAtes to the 10-20ppm range is sometimes necessary in heavily planted, or even moderatly planted tanks with heavy nitrAte consumers.

^_^
H2g2 2005 Don't Leave Home Without it

Last edited by Babelfish at 27-Oct-2004 14:29

Thank god there's no plastic algae.

lol.


Anyhoo, I'll be going to the LFS to pick up some flourite (replacing the pea gravel), and I guess I'll pick up a powerhead while I'm at it (maybe rig up a quickfilter to it as well). I've totally scrubbed off the driftwood, and in the process, demolished my anubius roots. Hopefully, the green nasties will go away afterwards.

Dump the plants, Noodles, and all will be well...

Plant lovers are just gonna love me for that.

--garyroland.

My nephew's 10 gallon has cyano in it and it has never had live plants. They are all plastic. But, this cyano is dark red - at least, I believe it is cyanobacteria.

I was going to use erythromycin until someone reminded me that dead cyano is toxic.

I've got to go over there tomorrow and do some serious maintenance. Everything but the fish and gravel are coming out and getting bleached. I'm going to take my diatom filter and run it while I scrape the walls to pick up what will be floating.

I'm glad I found this thread because I forgot about the phosphate. I've got a test kit for that and I'm going to check that and nitrate. Last check on nitrate was about 15ppm.

All he has in the tank are three danios and two cories. He does 7-10 day water changes at about 20%.



Last edited by Cory_Di at 27-Oct-2004 21:41

Cyno isn't just blue/green....while BGA may be easy to type it comes in other colors, and the algae part is often misleading....@least IMO&E in dealing with explaining to people on the board.

SW tanks (from what I've read, since I don't do the dark side ) often have problems with a red cyno.

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[link=H2g2]http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/upgrade.html" style="COLOR: #EB4288[/link] 2005 Don't Leave Home Without it

True. You can have cyanobacterium in tanks without plants...

Sometimes it's brought in from fish purchases when the hobbyist dumps the fish and water that contained the bacterium into his/her tank.

The bacterium may also exist in tap water, the reason cyanobacterium reappears after being killed off by antibiotics.

Anytime cyanobacterium is killed off by antibiotics a sizeable water change should take place just in case. As of now I have no definite proof that dead bacteria of that species are toxic.

--garyroland.

Cup_of_Lifenoodles,
Something I forgot to ask, how long have you been fighting with it.... it doesn't take long @all to become frustrated, and while yes, dosing an antibacterial (since cyno is both algae and bacteria) will help remove it, you just have to make sure that you don't let it re-establish itself in the tank. You'll also quite likely damage if not kill off your biofilter (no you really can't remove filter media to another tank since that's "infected" too).

Plant Brain helped me out last january when I returned from 3 weeks away to find BGA established in 1 and making headway into another tank. Lets see how much I can remember :%).

Step 1 Blackout to try and "kill" as much as possible. Turn off CO2, stop ferts for 2-4 days. Keep surface agitation and water circulation to a max with airstones and submersable powerheads

Step 2 Removal, of as much of the BGA as possible, yes difficult to remove boogers from water. I removed the driftwood from the tank, scrubbed it down, rinsed it off and placed it back in.

Step 3 Keep nitrAtes up in the 10-20ppm (I know your's are there now ) range. And keep up water circulation. Once you've started up any CO2 again you'll of course want to stop the surface agitation, which is one reason why a submersible powerhead comes in so handy. I wouldn't reccomend ferts until you're not seeing much of any signs of cyno.

It took me over a month of attention to the 10 to get it back in line, not perfect, just not compleatly covered in the gunk. If I slacked off for a few days, or missed dosing nitrAtes it reestablished itself. The point?.....Cyno needs multiple approaches, and it does take a while to get rid of, I spent about 15 minutes attending to some in the 20 this morning , I'd missed 2 days of KNO3, and don't have the BN yet.

^_^
[link=H2g2]http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/upgrade.html" style="COLOR: #EB4288[/link] 2005 Don't Leave Home Without it

Well, here's the new tank:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v398/Kleevage/tank3.jpg

Flourite's been added, and daily water changes. I didn't have enough money for a submersible powerhead, though.

The vals, bacopa, red cryptones, and the swords are hanging in there after a good scrubbing.

rosses fingers:

WOW! I gotta say that's a great piece of driftwood :88).

Try online @ [link=That fish place]http://www.thatfishplace.com" style="COLOR: #EB4288[/link] or thru [link=big Als]http://www.bigalsonline.com" style="COLOR: #EB4288[/link] for submersible powerheads, IME the water movement really is key to helping fix this issue.

my fingers are crossed for ya too!

^_^
[link=H2g2]http://hitchhikers.movies.go.com/upgrade.html" style="COLOR: #EB4288[/link] 2005 Don't Leave Home Without it[/font]

Blue/green alga:

"Any of a group of photosynthetic microorganisms now usually classified as bacteria (division Cyanobacteria) or sometimes as plants (division Cyanophyta). Also called blue-green bacterium, cyanobacterium."

"Toxic"?? Hardly.

Blue-green alga: (Cyanobacterium)

"Algae or seaweed are aquatic plants of simple structure. A prominent type of algae are emerald or blue-green algae, offering nutrients of perfect composition and full-value proteins. Forty-to-sixty percent of their dry substance content is made of small size molecules, rendering them easy to digest."

"Blue-green algae contain numerous vitamins, minerals and the full range of essential amino acids, therefore they have excellent regenerating and immune stimulating effects, helping fight infections caused by pathogens. As an excellent iodine substitute, in some cases they may normalize hypothyroidism."

"They contain iron in organic complex form, which makes them one of the most outstanding natural source for iron supplementation."

I always said there's nothing like a blue-green salad with a little Russian dressing to start a meal.

--garyroland.

--Vero Beach, Florida.






Last edited by garyroland at 29-Oct-2004 16:45

I agree with Gary. Not all cyano is toxic. Can't quote exactly, but Diana Walsted says the same thing, although she does warn that it can be sometimes.

In "Ecology of the Planted Aquarium," she mentions an incident in which she scraped a bunch of cyano and her L. lelupi started going crazy, trying to jump out of the tank, darting around, scraping their gills... It wasn't until she removed them to a different tank that they stopped the odd behavior.

If anyone has that book handy, correct me if I'm wrong about the details of the story. It's been a couple years since I read it...

Blue-green alga should be a vegetarian's dream...

Just about every nutrient that's imporant for health is in the alga.

Some soy milk, a soyburger, a dish of blue-green alga followed by a yogert custard and you're off to Healthy Heaven.

Is your mouth watering yet??

--garyroland.

Plastic plants? Come on...........
I have a story for you:

For cleaning algae off plastic plants: 19:1 part water: bleach mix, soak for 10 minutes, rinse, add dechloro to rinse water, return to tank(no rinsing needed). Later in a day or so, the gunk will fall off all on it's own.

I use this method to clean my plastic fish in my planted tanks. Many are very life like.

Don't folks have plastic fish?"

They don't need "dosed" or fed
They all get along together
Never get diseases
I have trouble over stocking the tank
They don't jump out
They don't eat my plants
They are easy to catch if I want to move them from one tank to another
I can keep them the same size that I bought them at
Keeping real/live fish is too hard and you need RO water and a magic wand
Some people just have a "scaly thumb"(all my live fish turn brown and die)
Plastic fish never hide when you come up to the tank
They never move in front of a plant when you go to take a photos
There are no expensive plastic fish
There are no wild F0 plastic fish
You can pet your plastic fish
I can paint them any color I like(even that attractive gaudy dinner plate color)
Plastic fish never eat one another
The fish "fertilizer" is too expensive(1$ for a meal of live Brine shrimps?)
They do as well in Saltwater as they do Fresh water
High CO2 has no affect on them.
They never sleep and look pale
They live a real real long time
The cat will not hit the glass or try to eat them unless it's a very frisky kitty
You know how big they were when you first bought them

Regards,
Tom Barr

Any of you wanna eat some Oscillitoria splendes, I'd like to see you:-)
Eat a big o helping.
Spirulina vs Oscillitoria

Is a bit like saying Broccoli vs Water hemlock are both okay for you. Don't ask Socrates about hemlock.

This genus*(Oscillitoria)is very toxic to most organisms
Whether it's killed any fish, I'm not sure, but it bugs folks and the plants in the tank so it's gotta go.

Blackout is cheap, fast and free.
It works specifically on BGA(this one genus which is the main (99.9%) genus we see in our tanks.
Spores take about 20-35 days to colonize and suitable habitat(your tank)and are airborn.

KNO3 keep it from coming back.
BGA's have little reserves, plants have lots.

If plants had issues with 3 days of blackout, you could never ship any plants via the mail:-)

The end result also will make your tank look better by dosing these nutrient additions, doing water changes and algae removal.

Antiboitics are like going to the bathroom and not wiping.
The blackout "wipes".
It removes the waste.

Regards,
Tom Barr

Good grief...

My plastic fish keep eating my plastic plants.

--garyroland.

Hi,
Gee Dad (Gary), I thought you wern't going to mention
our age...
For those of you who are interested, I offer this site
on the fossil record of cyanobacteria:

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanofr.html

Fasinating reading.

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

What exactly have you tried?
And what's the nitrAte Level.

I fully understand how nasty, smelly, evil, dispicable, and hated the stuff is
and I was close enough to adding meds to the tank that I actually ordered some (the LFS's couldnt' keep it in stock ) but I was able to succeed thru increased nitrAtes, and water circulation. IMME those are the two most important factors in treating it.

If you do take the drug route, remember that drugs arent' the answer to everything, you need to adress the root cause of the cyno .

^_^
*Proud member of the Committee for Sig Line Restoration*[/font][/font][/font]