how to get rid of purple hairy like algae? Cyanobacteria??

[madugo]

from my past experience, wc is not really gonna work for cyano...

[soymilk]

What kinda cuc do you have? What's your bio load? How often are you feeding? How's the flow on your tank? Is there any dead spots with no flow?

Do you notice un eaten food or lots of detritus on the sand?

[dthang8]

Well honestly, it cant be the water from City Pets. Cuz I set up my nephew's Nano 29g (SAME tank) at SAME time, use SAME water from CP, and do a WC at almost the same time (I actually been doing my tank with MORE WC than his and with CP water too). So that narrows down that its not the water from CP. I've had to suck out the cyano with turkey baster EVERY DAY. Is there any other solution? Do I need to put in some med? Im feeding once a day. There's no waste food cuz the food gets eaten with 2 mins. It can't be the flow cuz its the EXACT same tank. So what now?

[soymilk]

from my experiences, water from city pets was very inconsistent and I usually would get heavy algea growth in just 1-2 days. Not to mention my corals would react negatively, they would shrink up and not come out for a day or two. Now I can't say this will happen to everyone. I had a 10 gallon tank, so small differences in sg/mix would end up being a big difference for my nano. Every person's tank will be different, making your own water just eliminates one possible cause. Houston tap water has alot of phosphate floating in there. Maybe it's just me that had problems with cp water. All I know is after I started mixing my own water, water changes didn't affect the corals as much. For me it was a vicious cycle. I would scrub and clean tank, change water, algae bloom, snails eat algae, poop settles on the sand bed, cyano eats poops and grows. Repeat.

Not to be mean or anything, but your two tanks might be the same model. They are NOT the same tank. Differences in live rock, live sand, cuc, and bioload from fish, as well as feeding routine will make a big difference in what happens in your tanks.

The amount and quality of live rock makes a difference too. The live rock helps break down nitrates. The shape also makes a difference. Weird shapes that have holes and gaps could cause detritus to fall in them. I had a problem with this is my last tank. There were gaps behind live rock that I could not get to. After a while I noticed a lot of detritus behind there, then slowly cyano took over that area. Getting rid of cyano is not going to be an overnight thing. The only thing you can do is try to find the cause, stop it, and getting rid of the current cyano. The next thing you should do is to test your water. Test for nitrate and phosphate.

I used 1/8" air line hosing and I vacuumed cyano every day for 2 weeks. I adjusted amount of food I fed the fishes. I added extra flow to dead areas, not to mention bought more cuc to help clean the sandbed, started using more carbon/purigen, reduced my lighting periods, lastly I bought A skimmer to get rid of the supended organics floating in my water. I can't tell you which of these actually did the trick, all I can say is from my experience, doing all these thing dramtically reduced the growth of cyano in my tank. The only area cyano would grow is places I couldn't get to with my vacuum line.

[dthang8]

Well, I've been sucking out the cyano with a turkey baster everyday now (including sand which i leave out in sun to totally dry out for like 2 days). I'm mixing my own water now since I had a water system put in for the whole house. This will be my second batch of my own water (planning on WC tomo night). I've got about 5 bumblebee snails, 4 hermit, 5 snails, and a serpent starfish. Honestly, it looks like its a little better but I'm still doing WC and sucking out them things for few more weeks until I don't see it anymore. And I do scrub and clean my tank everyday.