Need Help With Cyanobacteria

[t3ch]

Hi everyone,

I need your help to get rid of a very annoying outbreak of Cyanobacteria in my planted tank. It's filled with that nasty green stuff in my sand, on my plants and on some glass surfaces. I've tried to vaccuum out everything I could but it just keeps coming back. Do you have any tricks to get rid of it?

[jvision]

Are you fertilizing, do you have CO2? If YES to both, here's how you get rid of it:

1) do a 50% WC, sucking up as much as you can

2) Double dose KNO3 and black out for 4 days

3) after 4 days, do 50% WC, sucking up as much dead crud as possible

4) Double dose KNO3, and make sure your CO2 is at least 20ppm

If you're not adding fertilizer or CO2, you should start... and you can use H2O2 to spot treat it.

[Psylant]

Are you fertilizing, do you have CO2? If YES to both, here's how you get rid of it:

1) do a 50% WC, sucking up as much as you can

2) Double dose KNO3 and black out for 4 days

3) after 4 days, do 50% WC, sucking up as much dead crud as possible

4) Double dose KNO3, and make sure your CO2 is at least 20ppm

If you're not adding fertilizer or CO2, you should start... and you can use H2O2 to spot treat it.

This is literally perfect advice. Manual removal of as much as you possibly can substantially increases your odds of this working.

[t3ch]

Thanks for your replies!

No I don't inject CO2 and I only use liquid fertilizer

[jvision]

No source of carbon is one of the main issues. It's the most important nutrient plants need, but it's often the last thing people provide. Adding CO2 will not only help your plants grow, it'll also reduce/eliminate your battle with algae.

[t3ch]

I've never really had an algae problem but only this annoying slimy bacteria. For CO2 I was aware it would need to be in the equation eventually but I have very few plants at the moment so didn't believe it was required for only a few.