High Tide Aquatics

Cyano bloom caused by harvesting too much chaeto?

Wondering if anyone has run into this. I started my tank sometime at the beginning of the year. It's an IM Nuvo 30L AIO and in the back compartments I have:

- Filter baskets in 2 corners compartments running filter pads, carbon and Seachem Phosguard
- 2nd right compartment - IM Ghost Skimmer (which I need a lot of help on but some other time).
- Center compartment holds heater, water pump and recently added a 9V UV sterilizer to control algae (been a week or so)
- 2nd left compartment has the refugium with chaeto (I started by purchasing a small amount of chaeto from LFS). I have a cheap light which does a fantastic job of growing it.

My tank was doing pretty decent for the most part but about two weeks or so ago I noticed that my chaeto had grown dense in the compartment and was literally overgrowing in my main sump chamber. I bet it quadrupled in about 2.5 months - awesome, right? and pods galore (literally crawling over everything). But again it was too much and since it was overflowing I decided to cut it down to 1/3 or 1/4 and give rest to my LFS.

I suddenly started seeing nasty cyano bloom all over the place and just would not go away after cleaning day after day. And now I'm also seeing some other type of algae - looks like green tuft. I'm dealing with this and plan to do a treatment of Chemiclean to get rid of it. I think I can take care of that. But here's my BIG issue.

1. I think the cheato removal threw the Phosphate balance out of whack and caused my P04 to spike - it went as high as 0.13 (I'd down to 0.07 after I changed phosguard). But I NEED to get my chaeto to grow in order to control PO4. BUT I'm also seeing a lot of algae (slime type) in my fuge and I keep pulling off some strands of cheato which are getting mushy. There is still good amount left but it does not seem to be "thriving". I need to get PO4 under control and can't seem to think of anything other than adding a media reactor but really wanted to keep things simple and avoid additional equipment if possible.

2. I used to see a lot of pods which kept fuge clean by clearing off other algae from the chaeto. BUT I am not seeing any more pods in the refugium. I am hoping they are still there and/or going through some kind of cycle that I keep hearing about.

So here's the question: Has anyone dealt with this? How long will it take for me to get my tank back in balance? Do I take the plunge and add a media reactor?

Lesson learned: DON'T BE LAZY and only take out small amounts of chaeto out of your refugium at a time.
 
Same thing happened to me. I cleaned it up and boom, bloom. I was also dealing with a dyno bloom too. I got rid of the dyno, now the cyano is out of control.
 
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