# cyanobacteria & purmycin



## AdrianT (15 Sep 2014)

Anybody have experience treating a tank with purmycin? I've got an outbreak of cyanobacteria, presumably from low nitrate levels and potentially ammonia at some beginning stages from the Aquasoil. I hear it's 200mg for 10 gallons (45 litres). Is that correct? Thanks. I assume I've correctly identified the problem. This stuff comes off fairly easily in one's fingers, but grows back fast and is spreading. I see I have some hair/thread type algae growing too, and some green spots on the glass.

I'm told purmycin is going to kill the bacteria in my filter, another person says no. I have read about "blanketing" the tank to keep it dark for 4 days, not sure about that. And another suggestion is peroxide. Not to sure who to believe so I've come to this forum.

The tank is 260 display (1320mm long) with a 60 litre sump below. Was dry started using ADA Aquasoil for 3 weeks and been running 4 or 5 weeks now. CO2 is pressurised with a DIY inline reactor. Lights are 3 x 54 Watt T5's, (two 8800K Radiums, and one Grolux) and photoperiod is 8 hours. Using the EI technique, but been slack in the beginning and wanted things to settle a bit so hence my thought about low nitrates. Currently have about 20 shrimp, 6 galaxy rasboras and one small dwarf bristlenose pleco. I also have a Twinstar Nano running from the time it was filled. EDIT: I also have a wave maker running, so circulation is not a problem at all. 

Pic of the algae:





Pic of the tank. Plant growth is about double since this photo was taken:




Thanks,
Adrian


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## mr. luke (15 Sep 2014)

Id personally not add permucin based on the fact it may or may not upset the balance in the tank.
Part of the diet of your shrimps will contain bacteria that will also be affected by this method of treatment.

Your tank will not suffer from performing a blackout at all.
Id recomend you syphon as much of this out as possible and cover the whole tank for a few days, no peeking either


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## Tim Harrison (15 Sep 2014)

That's erythromycin estolate, which is an antibiotic, it works by interfering with bacteria protein synthesis, so yes it will kill the cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) but I should image it will also kill all the other "friendly" bacteria in your tank and filter.

Using antibiotics to control cyanobacteria is a practice that's often frowned upon for various reasons; personally, I'd try other methods of eradication first like a blackout. There's plenty of info on the forum, use the search function, or if that doesn't work use Google and add UKAPS to your search parameters.


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## Vazkez (15 Sep 2014)

Hi there,

+1 to blackout your tank and not using nukes on tank.

I had problem with cyanobacteria as well and one more tip for you is when you dose NO3 is worth to dose it directly on it.

Vazz


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## AdrianT (15 Sep 2014)

Thanks for the info so far, much appreciated! 

I've done 3 days worth of purmycin thus far, so I guess some damage has been done, to what, I don't know. Hopefully the algae.


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## ian_m (15 Sep 2014)

I would say BBA due to way way way too much light in Watts and far too long time period. You are vaporising your plants, plants dying, algae living off dead plants, you have a wonderful algae feeding station. The plants are starving given that light level, even more so you say you are not dosing full EI. You will have initially got tremendous growth, as plants use their stored food to keep up with your light level, then slow growth and algae as you are not feeding the plants.

260litres -> 38US gallons with 162Watts gives 4.2Watts per gallon, which is in the higher end of high light category.

Anyway the chart below from http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showthread.php?t=105774 is a rough handy guide to light level.





You need to initially reduce light level, try one tube (or block light from tubes) for say 4 hours with full level CO2 and EI dosing. Slowly increasing light power and time over a period of couple of  weeks/months.

In the meantime a 3 day blackout will help, but generally the BBA will have to be pruned away. BBA on rocks/wood/equipment can be killed with Excel, but if you have shrimp be careful about overdosing Excel.


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## Julian (15 Sep 2014)

Definitely caused by too much light. 3 day blackout will get rid of it, but I guarantee it will be back in less than a week if you don't fix the lights.

It's hard to know if you have too much light with all these pictures of amazing aquascapes that are brighter than the sun. I had a revelation when I visited an LFS that had a planted tank set up, it was amazing to see how LITTLE light there was. I actually asked the shop keeper if the lights were broken...


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## Chris Jackson (15 Sep 2014)

I've had 2 outbreaks of BBA in a tank I've run for many years...both times it recovered when I upped the ferts and reduced light. The first outbreak was very informative as I tried to fix it with lots of water changes and no ferts....that made it worse in spite of all the wisdom at the time (2000 ish) suggesting it was due to too many nutrients. Eventually I went online, and discovered Tom Barr...problem solved. Syphon it off daily and get those plants growing with plenty of nutrients. Mine cleared without a blackout but that maybe a faster approach.


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## DrRob (15 Sep 2014)

For me, that's BBA, as stated above, turn down the lights. I'd be shutting down one of the T5's and dropping the photoperiod to about 4-5 hours and then building back up again.

For reference, for cyanobacteria, erythromycin will work, and will work well.

There's a big however though......
General experience is that the filter bacteria will be ok. Maybe not great, but OK, the above reference to nukes is valid though, as it'll kill all sorts of other things, we use it to kill all sorts of higher infections that just bacteria, including amoebas, so it's going to have an impact on the ecosystem in your tank.

It also does absolutely nothing to solve the underlying problem, it kills the cyanobacteria (amongst other things) and releases all of those nutrients that you don't want back into the tank, doing nothing for the nitrate levels. So it'll just come back if you don't fix the why.

Finally it's another step towards the building up of bacterial resistance, albeit a small one, and if we can find other ways of getting rid of bacterial based problems by solving the causes, rather than reaching for the antibiotic answer, then we'll get to keep the nukes for use later when we really need them.


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## AdrianT (16 Sep 2014)

@ian_m . 260 litres does not equal 38 US gallons... It's 68,7 gallons, giving 2,36 Watts/US Gal. All my research and forum suggestions (from another forum) said my lighting level was at medium. This is the first time it's been suggested that my lights are too much, if anything I've been getting flack saying I have too little light. I stand corrected however, and hence find myself here asking the same question. Thoughts?

I have wrapped the tank and will open up on Friday after work. 

A mate of mine put in the 3x 54 W T5's into Relux using a standard Osram fitting (HO), which the program has from a drop down list, took about 5 minutes for him to do in Relux. I don't know how to use the program, but it is free if anyone wants it go and download. Anyway, people get excited about science, so here are the results for my tank. This is based on a maintenance factor of 0,8, which means 20% of the light would be lost because it is old. A more realistic approach as they won't be 100% for long  Observe the pretty pictures. *It is purely for interest... as it wouldn't take into account water blah, blah, blah*


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## ian_m (16 Sep 2014)

AdrianT said:


> @ian_m . 260 litres does not equal 38 US gallons... It's 68,7 gallons, giving 2,36 Watts/US Gal


My bad, sorry, but still high. The main give away is in your photo, BBA due to plants dying caused by , in your case insufficient ferts and too much light.

What is your CO2 levels like ? I assume with your reactor your have achieved a yellow'ish drop checker all over the tank ?


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## DrRob (16 Sep 2014)

For what it's worth, I wasn't calculating anything much. I was just going from experience that 3 T5's that close to the surface would make an algae fest in my high tech tanks. I'm pretty certain it could be done with careful tuning but I'm too often late home or absent for a couple of days to get that right (although I do have pumps for the EI). I've seen 3 T5, and 4 T5 sets work nicely, but they were suspended a fair way higher above the tank, which gave far better spread into the corners, but needed those extra tubes.


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## AdrianT (16 Sep 2014)

The water in Cape Town is really soft so drop checkers stay yellow even with CO2 turned off. 

BTW, we're not talking about BBA, this is BGA. And BBA according to my understanding is fuelled by inconsistent CO2 supply and lack of flow, neither of which are a problem here.


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## ian_m (16 Sep 2014)

AdrianT said:


> And BBA according to my understanding is fuelled by inconsistent CO2 supply


Definitely looks like BBA to me.
http://www.theplantedtank.co.uk/algae.htm
The BBA I have had, in the past, has varied between black hairy stuff on hardscape, like in the web site above (easily treated with Excel) to a fine black film completely covering the leaves. If left long enough on plants it does start to take on hairy appearance, but I generally removed the leaves before this stage. It was due to too much light and poor CO2 in certain places. I reduced light, added a power head to improve flow and removed covered leaves and the BBA went away.


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## ian_m (16 Sep 2014)

Found this old pic of my when set up. Too much light and poor CO2 flow, lower leaves going black with BBA. Got much worse than this before I got it sorted it.
[URL=http://imageshack.com/f/cawp20130325020j][/URL]


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