Red slime away?

[Salty Cracker]

I have been fighting a losing battle for a couple months wirh heavy red slime. I have tried lights out for three days, reduced feeding, water changes...etc. So now red slime remover was just mixed and hit the tank. Fingers crossed!

[Sisterlimonpot]

ah man there were other options before resorting to an antibiotic.....

Not to sound like a proponent of Dr Tim products but when you find something that works why change it?

I would've recommended using refresh and then waste away. there's a wonderful article on his website urging not to use antibiotics... This is an all natural way to get rid of cyanobacteria by fixing the underlying problem and not just treating it with antibiotics

[mcgyvr]

"lights out" should say.. absolute darkness..
Literally wrap your tank..so NO light.. even ambient room lighting can make it not work against cyano.
That along with siphoning out as much as you can will take care of it..

but hey.. slime away is in.. so still siphon out as much cyano as you can as often as you can during your water changes..

[jetmart]

Originally Posted by Sisterlimonpot

ah man there were other options before resorting to an antibiotic.....

Not to sound like a proponent of Dr Tim products but when you find something that works why change it?

I would've recommended using refresh and then waste away. there's a wonderful article on his website urging not to use antibiotics... This is an all natural way to get rid of cyanobacteria by fixing the underlying problem and not just treating it with antibiotics

Do you have a link for this info?

[FraggledRock]

do u have a skimmer and do you over feed?

[FraggledRock]

do you have good flow in there? minimum 20x water volume

[FraggledRock]

sump?

[Salty Cracker]

Skimmer yes. Good water flow yes. Over feed, no. No sump just a hob refuguim on a 50 gallon breeder. I even changed out the t5 bulbs.

[Sisterlimonpot]

A lot of times it's just the trapped organics in the rock that promote the cyano outbreak. Light's out, high flow only masks the problem. the goal is to remove the food source or add something beneficial that can compete with cyano's food source.

Originally Posted by jetmart

Do you have a link for this info?

Here you go.

[Crusinjimbo]

I found the red slime remover stuff to work reasonably well if you siphon first and roll right into a three day lights out after the third/fourth day of treatment. It doesn't fix the problem but buys some time to id and act on the cause, excess mutes. Hate lookin at that red crap in my tank. Good luck!

[Salty Cracker]

Well into the 12th hour with the lights out almost 80% gone. Going to keep the tank in complete dark for a week. I have a few tanks so I just transferred live stock and corals to a new tank.

[Salty Cracker]

Even with the gfo cranked up it did not help. Phosphates were through the roof.

[laga77]

Beating red slime should be about what you can take out of the tank and not what you can put in.

[FraggledRock]

get some small clean up crew to get in the rock work.

you can never have too much cleanup crew

[FraggledRock]

where is the cyano growing?

a particular isolated area? or your whole tank?

if it is isolated, before doing anything analyze its growth pattern, compare it to your flow

right now I have a small patch of cyano directly under my LEDS and in between two rock structures, that tells me there is too much light feeding it and not enough flow to bother it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haeGClOZkuE
]
cyano doesn't appreciate high flow.

you can never have too much flow imho.

what do you have for flow?

[PeterHall]

My cyano doesn't mind high flow. I've noticed it grows in high light areas so I've cut the overall time period by an hour. With larger water changes it seems to be helping

[Tsancho82]

Originally Posted by FraggledRock

you can never have too much cleanup crew

Not True, You could overstock CUC, like turbo snails. They need a lot to eat to keep from starving and overstocking creates to much competition and they die off. Sometimes you don't even realize it because they are upright in the sand bed until you smell it from them decaying in the tank causing an even worse spike in nitrates and adds more issues then cyano could ever do.

[FraggledRock]

Originally Posted by Tsancho82

Not True, You could overstock CUC, like turbo snails. They need a lot to eat to keep from starving and overstocking creates to much competition and they die off. Sometimes you don't even realize it because they are upright in the sand bed until you smell it from them decaying in the tank causing an even worse spike in nitrates and adds more issues then cyano could ever do.

ok in that case yes, turbo snails can run out of food (mine did) but having a snail die and getting eaten by clean up crew is better than detritus building up in a dead spot for a month. although I am not saying you should overstock immediately, once you get a solid team going adding a few here and there isnt an issue.

[Salty Cracker]

The slime took over the whole tank. Live rocks, coral, sand bed. I have a great cleaN up crew. I have a feelung the small amount out dry rock that I cured for a few months and added is leaching bad. Tank is covered now. My live stock and corals in a holding tank for the next weeek. My concern now is I have a hob refuguim and want to keep the light on to get the cheato growing. Will that defeat the tank being coverd? Or is it best to kill the refuguim lught as well? I plan on a 10% water change in a couple days as well.

[Salty Cracker]

Tunz 130 wavemaker for flow.