9,685 views
Cyanobacteria itself is what its name indicates, a bacterial colony that develops in the aquarium. You can also find them in nature, obviously, but it is in our reef where it harms us the most. Cyanobacteria is capable of generating different toxins with which it defends itself, being indigestible by the animals in the aquarium, not to mention the capacity for adaptation it has and the ease with which it suffocates animals and corals in our aquarium. It is common because it is common all over the world, in stagnant waters, in ponds loaded with nutrients, in any humid place like a fountain in a park. There are many types and colors of cyanobacteria, although it is the red one that usually appears in our aquariums, but you can see grey, green and even yellow ones. They do not only exist in the marine environment, far from it, and they have been inhabitants of this world for many millions of years. You cannot avoid them appearing in your aquarium, you will have them sooner or later, even if they are not visible, but you can prevent them from ending up in a “boom” and covering all your rock. Knowing that they will be in your aquarium sooner or later, the perfect conditions must be given for them to appear exponentially. Aquariums with a lot of nutrients (especially phosphate) are the ideal places. If we add that the temperature of our aquariums is usually warm and stable, with weak and poor quality internal circulation, together with poor lighting or a poor water replacement system, they will undoubtedly appear. There is a way for this bacterial colony to proceed. Firstly, taking advantage of the strong presence of phosphorus and establishing itself in a point where circulation is poor. If the conditions are bad in general, it will appear in several points in the same aquarium. At first it consumes the phosphates completely, giving confusing results in the tests, making the hobbyist believe that it is not possible for it to leave, since the phosphates are at zero. This is just an illusion, the phosphorus is trapped by cyano and consumes all that enters the aquarium through food or poor quality in the water replacement. Then the nitrogen fixation begins. First, it consumes all the nitrate in the aquarium, giving another false result in the tests, zero in everything. It doesn't end there, because even if you don't feed the fish, even if you don't throw in any product that generates phosphorus or nitrogen, cyanide is capable of fixing the gaseous nitrogen that enters the water, and our atmosphere is rich in it, so it never stops growing until it ruins our hobby.