Looking for a little advice on red slime

[Isaac]

Hello all,
I just finished reading the article on red slime and I wanted to see what advice anyone might have. I own a 65 gallon reef tank, it has been running for approximately six months. I have two clowns, blue tang, two damsels, a cleaner shrimp, serpent star, handful of snails, and a few different types of corals. The system equipment I have running are, two hydor pumps a two and three, protein skimmer, and a canister Eheim pump.

Maintenance wise I am cleaning the filter and doing twenty five percent water changes every two weeks. I also am adding a little calcium and alkalinity to the water every morning. The water I use for water changes are the five gallon jugs from the store.

My issue is that the infamous red slime returns at the end of every week. Then continues to build up very high until I do a treatment every month and then the cycle repeats. I read in the article about draining the thawed frozen food from the store and will start trying that and see if that helps. As it is I only feed about once a day with the frozen food I like to switch it up and do flake food every other day.

My question that I have for everyone is does anyone believe that the canister filter may be the root cause of this problem? Or is anything else that I have been doing might be the cause?

Thanks for reading and any help you may be able to offer.

 

[melosu58]

I`ve never had it in my reef tank but I did have it in the eel tank. I always tried to siphon out as much as possible. Excessive nutrients are one cause. That could be from phosphates which comes from food, and Nitrates which come from the end of the nitrogen cycle. Another thing is are you using tap water. If you are than you are adding the fuel source to the cyano. Just thinking out loud.

 

[mdaniel2882]

I finally solved (after 6 months). My tank gets a fair amount of light in the early morning. covering the tank when the lights were off so the extra light could not get it and no more cyano

 

[cmor1701d]

Great that you found that. Seems whenever I am home during the day it's cloudy out. Though last week I found that for a shot while the morning sun cmae through the small ardch window at the top of my door and hit my QT tank. It wat the last week or QT so I didn't bother making a similar mod, but will if I ever need to use that tank again.

 

[Isaac]

Fantastic! I will give that a try

 

[Isaac]

To go along with this topic I am very curious to see if anyone else here has any experience with canister filters in a saltwater tank? I am wondering if going with a sump would be step in a positive direction for the tanks health?