Cyanobacteria: gearing up for the TOTAL blackout

aunt kymmie

After all the water changes, pruning, adding new plants, changing the lighting schedule...I'm no closer to getting a handle on the cyanobacteria outbreak I'm experiencing. After rolling around treating the tank with Maracyn I have decided to use the black out method instead.
I'm a little worried about where I read the massive die off of cyano can have an negative affect on my fish. As this is my Discus display tank I want to be very careful. Do I perform a major water change prior to blacking out the tank, keep the tank in total darkness for four days, unwrap after four days and do another large water change?

I re-read the prior thread regarding this and if I'm reading it right, four days should do the trick?

Outbreak of Cyanobacteria- help!

redchigh

Have you tried carbon?

With the total blackout, you need to remove as much of it manually as possible. Personally, I'd do a water change in the middle of the dark to be safe. (Or just test the water).

Be careful scraping it- I scraped off some BGA, and THAT's what killed my green terrors- allellochemicals....

aunt kymmie

Please tell me how carbon will kill the cyano? By removing all the excess organics the cyano is feeding from??

Blaxicanlatino

id like to know how this turns out. I have a bit of this stuff in my 2m 10 gallon tanks but its only in the filter outake (water the water leaves the filter). i simply scrape it off.

cmc29

I've done a total blackout before with success. here's a link with somepictures Starting my Blackout....gonna miss my tank for 4 days...

Pictures of my tank after 72 hours of total darkness


I trimmed as much out as i could. Then did a 50% WC. Then blacked it out. After it was all done i couldn't see trace one of any cyano. The hardest part was not peeking.

I did not have any really sensitive fish in my tank at the time of blackout. I feel that's at least worth pointing out

SinCrisis

I have never done a blackout, but even with maracyn treatment, there is a period where the cyano just dies in mass and pollutes your water so i would recommend a water change for both methods in case you change your mind later and use maracyn.

redchigh

I've had a couple algae outbreaks (green water was the worst), and all I had to do was run carbon in the tank until it was gone...

Pretty sure it removes all the nutrients, iron, and DOC from the water. My plants also suffered, unfortunately...

Tanks been green-water free for over a month now.. Might be worth a try.

aunt kymmie

The more I read the more I don't know what to do. Maracyn is out, as it'll kill my bio-bed. The black out, while it may kill the cyano, doesn't get to the root cause of why it was there in the first place (excessive organics?) and I'm told it'll just come back if I don't get to the source.

I had pulled out a bunch of Anacharis when I had fully pruned the tank back two weeks ago. I had placed all the Anacharis in a bucket out on the patio with the idea to get to it and see if I couldn't salvage some of it. After sitting in that bucket on the patio for two weeks (I had forgotten all about it) it was algae free. Causation, correlation, coincidence or none of those?? Now I'm thinking UV sterilizer...

cmc29

the blackout won't completely solve your problem, but in my case it killed out the cyano in my tank. After the blackout i had to dial down my lights, start adding ferts and add co2 to get everything in balance. It's all about the balance as you well know. For me it was easier (and more sightly) to get rid of the stuff, and then work to figure out what was out of whack. Thats just my thoughts on the issue, but i'm just an amateur. I'm sure whatever you decide to do will be the right thing.

aunt kymmie

I just want to go back to the way it was! Two years and all of a sudden?? I don't get it. Something, obviously, has changed, but I don't know what. I do not want to have to go the CO2 route, that I do know. Still trying to figure out how everything got so out of balance here... *sniffs*

An amateur? You got rid of cyano, are running CO2 and have an algae free tank. Amateurs can't to that!!