One of the most common reef aquarium problems is the presence of a "red filamentous" bacterial infection. By newcomers, the bacterial infection is often mistaken as an algal bloom. It's incredibly common. My experience is that the problem is quite easily be solved using a treatment that I'm told (by forum posts here, here and here) is an oxidizer and NOT as it is commonly mistaken to be, an antibiotic treatment. There's nothing I know about oxidizers that can't be found on wikipedia. Of course, being quite cheap, I'd love to know the chemical makeup of "Chemiclean" so that I could buy it bulk, but it's a small price to pay to know that I'm getting a safe treatment for my system.
I have used this stuff for four years without a problem. Of course, bringing up the use of chemical treatment in a reef aquarium causes a flurry of responses. Most of them are of the "religious" type. I was recently told that using Chemiclean would cause the bacteria to mutate and develop resistant strains. Yep, that might happen if it were even an antibiotic AND it was used constantly. The picture below is of the Baltic Sea during a cyanobacteria outbreak.
As you can see, the problem is a bit larger than my aquarium. I'm not looking to create any dents in the ecosystem.
But, I'm off topic. My theory when it comes to "cyano" outbreaks is that they are the result of the bacteria hitchiking its way into my systems on the livestock and that once treated, it doesn't just "magically" appear in a system. I tried the "hard" version of treating cyano in the past. That includes increasing flow, massive water changes, lights out treatment, purchasing larger skimmers, and doing everything that you should normally do with a reef aquarium anyway. I've had cyano in poorly maintained systems and in my most perfectly maintained systems. Once I was given a piece of coral by a local reef keeper and I took it knowing that I'd end up with an outbreak of cyano soon because his systems were just swimming in it. Guess what, I did.
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