Sick of Cyanobacteria

Nemesis, good kalk should have almost no p and if your water id RODI then 99.9% is from food and food that has been pooped out. The amount of algae we have is directly proportional to the inputs (simply put, food), and the amount of water changes or other nutrient reducers (traditional/biological: live rock, sand beds, algae scrubbers; chemical:GFO, carbon, biopellets, sulfur reactors, skimmers). Dilution is very helpful too, but even that can become saturated and its limited by the removal mechanisms capabilities.

Nutrients in, nutrients out. Its that simple.

One more thing. If your cyano is occurring in the first few months, don't sweat it, thats the norm. Keep addressing nutrients in, export as much as possible and increase flow (and i guess batch kalk dosing).

 

Nemesis,

Regarding setup of dosing pumps: dose on satuday, next saturday test alk and ca. Calculate the difference. Run your doser (water works) for one minute timed to see how much is actually dosed/ minute. Divide how much alk or ca is needed by pump rate to get total minutes per week. You can then chop this up into how ever many dosing times you want per week.

You will need to periodically adjust using the same method, but adding that to the old minutes per week. Make sense? Easy. Shoot for the middle and its not a big deal if you are high or low. Plate corals are the best indicator if your alk is off, euphyllias second... This is if u slip and don't test