Red slime..

[Slocumc]

I cant seem to get red slime out of my tank it just keeps coming back. I do water changes every week. Any one have some tips to get rid of it?

I use ro/di water (Now) about two weeks.
Lights are on 12 hours a day.

[bnumair]

chemi clean. it will rid it and maynot ever come back but also check u magnesium levels.

[briankmarsh1980]

Cut your lights back to 8 hrs. You are probably over feeding. A reactor running GFO will help. And depending on how long you have had high phosphates/nutrients your rocks are like sponges and suck that stuff up. So even when you address the nutrient issues your rocks will slowly leach it back into the water.

So find what's causing your high nutrients and stop it lol
Keep up with your water changes and manually remove as much of the cyno as possibly and it will eventually go away.

[skrillnet]

Please do not use any of the commercial products to remove it. They will nuke your bio filter most of the time. Which usually translates to stress on the tank.

How old is your tank? What type of skimmer? Depth of sand bed?

Also as said before watch your feeding, and use some type of filter media to get rid of organics,phosphates and nitrates (GFO, Chemipure, carbon, etc).

Also increased flow will go a long ways to get rid of and control the spread as well.

Water changes water changes water changes!!! Without a doubt the most helpful thing to get rid of it is manual removal. Use a siphon vac and pull that stuff out of your tank along with some "dirty" water.

I just went through this with a tank, and you can beat it with nothing but water changes it just takes longer.

Good luck! Just make sure it doesn't encroach on any of your corals. If so just direct some flow in that direction. Cyno hates flow.

[Slocumc]

Thanks for the info! I just did another water change, scraped it off the rock and picked it off the sand and moved the power head around so will see what happens now..

For the tank info:

Ruining for 3.5 months
14g Biocube stock /w 5.5 fuge
Carbon filter
No skimmer
Biocube power head

[briankmarsh1980]

Your tanks pretty new so the cyno is a narmal stage in a cycle it takes a year for a tank to mature. You really need to get a skimmer.


EDIT: with a tank that small you really need to be on top of things you have no margin for error things can go out of wack with in hrs just an FYI

[AaronM]

Cutting lights completely for 3 days worked well for me. I put a cloth over my tank too...and hardly fed. What 's in your tank? Doesn't really matter, 3 day blackout, like overcast whether, doesn't hurt coral, fish or CUC, but seems to hurt photosynthetic and like quicker generation cyano.

You can use GFO in a bag too...as long as its in flow.

[Chris27]

Getting rid of cyano doesn't happen overnight, the battle can last for a month or two, or even longer. If you've been using RO/DI for two weeks, that's a good start....but it won't solve the problem immediately.

Cyano grows quite well in the ocean, typically in shallow lagoonal areas that get blasted with sun and are protected from waves. It doesn't grow very well on a reef that gets hit with waves all day..... so knowing that, re-think your powerhead placement, and ensure that there aren't any low flow spots in the tank. Combine that with manual removal via. small weekly water changes, and you should have it licked naturally in just a month or two.

I've used the different red-slime removers, they used to be an antibiotic that can affect the bio-filter, but they now take a different approach, so that's not a concern any longer. While the products do typically provide short term results, cyano most oftentimes comes right back within a month. Flow and nutrient control will take care of it....eventually....just be patient and use some elbow grease.

[gooberz]

Could be a flow issue as well.. Is there enough circulation in this tank?

Henry