Red SLIME :(

[Salt4Us]

Been battling this for a month and it isn't going away. I've cut down on feeding a LOT, once a day in the morning and it's only flake or pellets and some mysis shrimp a couple times a week for the scooter since he has his supply of pods .

My question is this we've tried the cutting down food, repositioning the PH's and everything, right now we have 3 ph's in there, 2 are on a wavemaker.

The red slime is all over the BACK of the rocks and in areas that I can't get it off with a turkey baster, it's also on sponges and on some of the unopened zoos, all over my pipe organ (grrr) basically everywhere, I've tried blowing it off and then sucking up the debrie in the water, now it's made it's way into the fuge onto the macro algae that is growning in there.

We aren't really big on medicating the tank, but something tells me I'm going to have to find something safe for everything in there except the red slime. There are two that DFS sells http://www.drsfostersmith.com/produc...=6&pCatId=4121

but if you notice it says they can't ship it to California

Anyone have any ideas of what I can do short of stripping this whole thing down and getting a bigger tank hehe John would kill me

btw we do use RO water, I thought it was RO/DI but he says it isn't.

-Kaurene

The product does work, even though it does not solve the problem, it sure makes things look better while you find the solution.. I think you already have, by the RO and not RO/DI. The DI part of the filtration removes more phosphate, nitrate and silicates that the RO lets through.. Try getting a Nitrate and Phosphate sponge and see if that helps... The problem I found is, while it takes the Phosphate and Mitrate out of the water column, it is still abundant in the substrate and is constantly leeched out into the water column.. After a while, the substrate will be rid of the PO4 and NO3, and the red slime will decrease.. I am battling it also, and I believe this to be the case....JME

PS. Maybe one of us can mail it to you

[loganj]

Originally Posted by timbo2

PS. Maybe one of us can mail it to you

Great minds think alike or something to that effect

[ReefRaff]

I use chem-clean myself. It seems to work ok, and is cheaper.

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/produc...=6&pCatId=4122

[Salt4Us]

Ok thanks! I don't understand why they won't ship it to California, but then I know they said that about Clout too and I ordered it and they sent it to me, weird.

LOL thanks Logan and Tim!

Reefraff, I think we may go that way, being we can't afford a DI thing on our RO system right now.

Thanks everyone!

[Hara]

i think medicating the tank is a big mistake imo....i battled it for ages, but perserverence pays off. use airling tubing and do a thorough job of sucking it all up, then leave your lights totally off for 4 days. Then half lighting for a couple more days.

[michealprater]

I always had great luck by just adding more actinic light. Red slime does not grow well in blue spectrums. I have always kept a ton of actinic light on my tanks and have not had a problem with red slime since.

[ReefLady]

I'll just throw in my 2 cents here....

We fought cyano in a *major* way a few months back. Reducing feedings didn't help, changing/adding water flow helped minimally.

First, check your phosphate level. If your phosphates are at all elevated, your cyano problems will be endless.

Also - age of lights? Part of our problem was letting our VHO's get too old. Our main problem was not knowing that our RO membrane needed to be replaced (failure to TDS test often enough - lesson learned).

ANYWAY, we fought a looooong battle, finally threw in the towel, and dosed Ultralife Red Slime remover.
Worked great -- cyano dissapeared totally ... for a few weeks. Yep. How horribly discouraging.

If you don't eliminate the cause, the antibiotic will NOT help you. The only thing that finally solved our cyano issue was continual, rigorous maintenance, we did twice-weekly 10% water changes, siphoning out any existing cyano for almost 2 months. Make sure your bulbs are not old, water flow/current is good, feeding is no more than necessary. Use a refugium for nutrient export if you can, and skim like the devil.

Just a side note. If you do dose with a cyano remover - be prepared ... you will need to turn off your skimmer, and you will need to find a way to somehow maintain your pH. Ours dropped out of sight. We had to kill the ca reactor, drip kalk like it was going out of style, added a couple PH's to the display - and even threw venturi tubes on those for oxygenation - even then, we barely saw a *high* pH of 7.9.

Good luck! Cyano has got to be one of the most frustrating things in this hobby.

[Salt4Us]

Before we start adding/dosing the tank we'll try running just the actinic lights & increase the wave timing for the power heads. We already increased the timing for the ph's & it seems to be helping a little bit. Our lights aren't that old. We just replaced both PC's in the last 2-3 months. We'll also try to keep on top of cleaning the slime off in hopes of eventually getting rid of it.

[beachbumin]

I had lot of luck with the CHEMI-CLEand did not notice any ill effects. I am also against using excess chemicals but this was a necessary evil!! Good luck with the slime!

[Hara]

my cyano lived with the actinics on.....only total abscense of light killed it.

[troutman11111]

i can't take it any more. why does everyone use chems in there tank. red slime is not a problem to get rid of! true about the phos, but even with a reading of 1 phos you can still get rid of it within 1 week. i have proved it over and over again. turn your protein skimmer up to max, what i mean is most have a cup of some sort with a rubber gasket, make the water level 1/2in above that. you will have to empty it daily and clean the throat area good. that stuff will turn brown within 2 days and gone in a week with no darn chems. if not ;your skimmer is to small for your tank. i myself use a red sea prizim 100gal skimmer on a 75gal tank. 8O

i can't take it any more. why does everyone use chems in there tank. red slime is not a problem to get rid of! true about the phos, but even with a reading of 1 phos you can still get rid of it within 1 week. i have proved it over and over again. turn your protein skimmer up to max, what i mean is most have a cup of some sort with a rubber gasket, make the water level 1/2in above that. you will have to empty it daily and clean the throat area good. that stuff will turn brown within 2 days and gone in a week with no darn chems. if not ;your skimmer is to small for your tank. i myself use a red sea prizim 100gal skimmer on a 75gal tank.

wow, that is strange.. could you explain this is full detail so that others like myself that use skimmers larger than the capacity of our tanks and still have it, can understand that theory?

I am willing to bet a skimmer alone, is not going to resolve a bad outbreak of Cyano... I have a 125 gal skimmer on my 55 and it puts out mean goo.... and the cyano is still there even with under 1.0 PO4. To say that skimming alone will get rid of it is not accurate IMO

Cyano takes diligence and patience and good RO/DI water. Over time, it can be dealt with..

I know a few people that have SW aquariums that started from scratch with nothing but RO/DI water and DSB, with quality LR, and never have had it...

Everyone's system is different and they will have different means of resolving their cyano problem... That is precisely why they make RedSlime Remover, because it is a PITA to get rid of.

***Edited*** Just noting I am not an advocate of using RedSlime Remover..

I am with Teri when she says that eliminating the cause, hard work and a lot of water changes is really the recovery procedure..

I believe that once it is in the tank, it will pretty much be there forever, waiting for the time when a slip up in maintenance hits and then it will rear its ugly head again...

Speaking of Cyano, I had bad bulbs in my canopy, so, I purchased 2 - 96 watt 10,000K PC's to replace the old 6700K's. Now my Red Slime has turned itself into Green Slime....LOL....This stuff is freaky.. I can't believe it.. it loves the new lights... LOL.. When the new bulbs arrived, I got home from work and commenced to change them out. I had about 4 patches of Red Slime about the size of a new dollar coin... I thought to myself, hmmm I am going to see just how the new lights will affect it.. LOL all the way to the bank...The next day I get home from work to find that the Red patches, (remember the size I mentioned) were a 5" wide strip 48" long all the way down the front of the tank and up the side of the glass... The only thing is, it was a Dark Bluish Green....darned this stuff is worse than the Red ever thought of being... It is a PITA.. Just thought I would share...On the lighting old and new thing....

[troutman11111]

have you ever tried my way? the goo you are getting is alright, after the fact the red slime is gone. your collection cup should be dirty liquid and not goo. true, you will have to make more saltwater to make up what you are dumping. 2 times a day should do it. i will take that bet that skimming will beat red slime. i have done it on my tank dozen time's in 12 yrs. and my freinds tanks also. lighting of a 96watt smartlight pc 50/50 on half of the tank prduced red slime in 2 weeks,the other half 1 250watt mh had none. i'm sure lighting has alot to do with the outbreak, when i took off the pc and put the mh back on the red slime just started to vanish. i had to add that about the light. i never had mh lights till recently so i can still say max skimming got rid of it before the mh and when i had them. myself and my freinds have got the 2lbs live rock per gal in our tanks, overflow to refugium,protein skimmer,and powerheads only. ro water and a cal of 440-460, kh at 12-13. eliminating the cause sure helps , yes it is in your tank always waiting to come out just like ich. ich is another one myself and my freinds have beatin.

[Salt4Us]

You know troutman11111 you just may have something there, we had adjusted it so that we had the thick stuff where as before when we didn't have the red slime we were emptying it every day because it was full of green water, and because it wasn't extremely full I have been guilty of not cleaning the cup on a daily basis like I was before, so it's open full, but plus we have been sucking up the red slime with a turkey baster twice daily, like reeflady said it's just extra maintenance and boy did my hand get a cramp from the turkey baster!

Thanks for all the help from everyone, it seems to slowly be going away.