cyano
 

I am battling red slime these days. My tank is only 6 months old. I've been told many things. To leave it alone and it will use up all the nutrients and die off. To turn off the lights and kill its food sourse. To not overfeed.

My nitrates are at 5 ppm and my phosphates are undetectable with Hagen test kit. So there could be a little bit but nothing to strain about.

I chose the wait it out method. Since im not getting any company for a while. And I like the fact that even though its ugly and bad it is using up its nutrients. My question is that there are a ton of bubbles starting to form undeneath the red slime. Are these bubbles bad for the tank? Should I be doing something else, like maybe trying to suck it out. I have a fine dsb 4" and I dont really want to disturb the sand too much, or accidently suck a whole bunch up. I do top off with Ro water now (since 2 weeks ago).

Are there any critters than eat red slime algae?

Any suggestions, flames, comments would be great :)

Mark

I would be sucking out the red slime whenever you see it, and that would remove the bubbles too.

If your tank is 6 months old, just let it run its course. You could lower your feedings and lessen your light cycle for a while if it is really troubling you, or invading corals.

You could also add a UV sterilizer.

How long have you had it for? If it is just a while, wait it out for a bit.

I would recommend adding a UV or overskimming the tank. Sorry i didnt see what kind of skimmer you had?

Steve

My skimmer is a prizm pro deluxe. It is rated for 150 gal, but im pretty sure its too small for my tank. I am getting a sump and a reciculating skimmer, in july. It's been building up for a good 2 weeks i would say.

How big is your tank? The prizm is a weak skimmer IME, likely a contributing factor to your cyano.

re cyano
 

I have been told that cerith and black turbo snails will eat the cyano..just so you know.
I have a tank that is set up for about a month and a half and I am having the same problems.
I am also getting a large crust of crap(not sure what it is) on top of the sand bed.
I have been just sucking it up and trying to see if that works.
It looks like crap and I don't know what else to do.
Once again, outsmarted by a micro-organism.
Neal

Keep vacuuming out the red slime and keep up with RO water changes. Watch out how much and frequently you are feeding. Make sure you rinse the frozen food in RO before you feed (if you are feeding frozen). Try and only feed every second or third day. Make sure you overskim the tank, even if it is pulling out some tea coloured water.

Let us know how it goes!

Steve

chemi clean is the answer for you it's quick simple and works great and costs less than $20.00.
I have used it many times on customers reefs etc and never had any problems,
also agreed the prizm is a weak skimmer,might want to think about upgrading in the future.

Thanks all for the quick reply's. I'll try everything to get this under control. This chemi clean..... is that just a quick fix? I know my skimmer isn't that great, I am upgrading soon. Sorry for all the questions but what would be the purpose of rinsing the frozen food?

Thanks again :)
Mark

The purpose of rinsing out the frozen food is to get rid of the excess nutrients in the frozen water/juice that would otherwise end up in your tank.

Your choice on chemi clean, I prefer to get rid of the cause, it is just a quick fix, it will come back. But some people get rid of the cause as well, and use it to make their tank nicer in the meantime. I just dont like adding chemicals to my reef.

How big is your tank? What is your stock like?

Tank is a 90 gal. I only have 2 blue damsels and 1 yellow tail wrasse. 40 lbs. live rock so far, 4 " dsb. 3 maxi jet 1200's, skimmer and fluval 404 adding flow as well. Fluval has no media in it, except phosphate sponge.lighthing is outer orbit 48" 2 x 150 hqi , 2x dual actinics 95 watt i think, moon lights. Total 530 watts per gal. Issue got worse when new lighting came but i expected that. Wouid it hurt anything to just shut the lights off until the red is gone?

I also just put in some red garcilia??? spelling? Just in the main tank until I get a sump on order for July. Is that even going to help the problem. Thought it may compete with the cyano for nutrients.... I dont really want to shut the lights off for that reason. I dont want to kill my nice macro algae.

Your bio-load is small, just keep up on water changes, and add more live rock, im sure you know you need more, 90-150lbs or so. Add is slowly or cure it in a container first or you will spike your tank with die-off from the rock.

For 3 fish they won't need much to eat, you are probably over-feeding. Feed small amounts, and make sure they eat it all, then give them a bit more.

Keep your lights on.

How often, and what % do you do water changes currently.

Well for the first 5 months i probably only changed my water 4 times at 10%. But In the last month I have changes 10% twice with RO water. Do you think a really big water change is in store for me?

No need to do a dratsic water change just because of cyano.

What you do need to do is a 10% change every week. Other than that keep everything the same and the problem should go away on its own. (do increase your rock if you are going full reef though) Especially with a weak skimmer, you should be doing weekly water changes.

You can also run carbon.

When you get your sump running, consider a macro algae fuge, and something like an ASM skimmer.

Definately wouldn't hurt to do up to a 50% water change and try to suck up all the cyano you can while you are siphoning water out. You can take a turkey baster and really blast your rocks to disturb any cooters and put it into suspension to be siphoned out.
IMO Hagen test kits are not that reliable but in any case cyano is said to feed of phosphates. If you are getting a zero reading on your phosphate test kit that is not uncommon in a tank with cyano as the algea is using all available phosphate to sustain itself. As a rule of thumb if you have cyano you have phosphate.
As has been said cut back on feeding and if you are feeding frozen food what I do is let it thaw out in a piece of paper towel and then scrape the food particles into a shot glass of RO water and rinse it a bit and then pour that again through a piece of paper towel and then mix that food with some tank water and feed to tank. Frozen foods are notorious for containing phosphate. With what you have in your tank it wouldn't hurt to cut back on you lighting period. Your probably just fine with your Halides on 4 hours a day or less. I have cut back on the time my halides are on but more for heat control. I just make sure they are on when I am home so I get to enjoy it.
HTH

The sump I am getting is being built custom by a guy from saskatoon. It will have an in-line fuge, and a recirculating skimmer built into the sump. I can't wait to get it. Hopefully my algae woo's will be over. I plan on growing some kind of macro in the fuge.

I will continue to do 10% WC weekly and vacuum the crap up. I did see a nitrate drop form 5-10 to 5 in a month. So that's a good start i guess.

Stuff just looks so ugly !!!

Thank you again for all your help. I'll keep you updated for sure :)

Mark

I would investigate a brand-name skimmer to use, or at least find out the exact specs of the skimmer this guy is building for you.

Recirculating just means that one of the pumps is taking its feed water from the skimmer body, not from the sump.

Skimmers that come with sumps are notoriously weak, but if this is custom it might be fine. Just find out what style of skimmer it is, the pumps being used, etc.

His skimmers are based on a recirculating and inline design. This is the most effective and efficient skimmer design. It will have two valves for adjustment, one will control the water flow through your skimmer and the other will control the skimmer water level height. The pump in the skimmer is a sedra 3500 needle wheel.

I trust in him that this is a good choice, he has done many many before. Does this all sound good to you guys?

With a sedra 3500, that should be fine for up to about 110 gallons, check out a G2 on www.asmskimmer.com

I would get a bigger skimmer than that though, in case you want to upgrade to a larger tank in the future, or hook in more than one tank to a common sump. Ask him to upgrade to a sedra 5000 at least, the G3 is ASM's most popular model good up to 180g. Plus I don't think you can over-skim.

What is going to feed the skimmer water, the drain line from the tank, or another pump?

I havn't got the final design from him yet. There is going ot be an overflow box from the tank down into the sump adnthen into the skimmer, so I would imagine right from the tank. I could get some stuff changed too, he is just in the process of engeneering my sump now. I will ask him about the bigger sedra model. Shouldn't be too much of a jump in price you would think.

Yeah I would get as wide and as tall a model as will fit under your stand. I love my needlewheel skimmer with 3 sedra 9000's bubbling away.

He is probably feeding the skimmer with your overflow water, with a valve to controll how much of it goes into the skimmer. That is perfect, sounds like a good designer. Also make sure your sump design takes into account microbubbles. You also want to make sure that if your overflow fails, your tank can take up the volume of water in the return section of your sump so you don't overflow.

Very informative. I'm having a cyano problem too, and I will definitely start rinsing out my frozen mysis. At first, I thought the "juices" would be good for any filter feeders in the tank. But now that I know I'm adding phoshates, I will definitely take more care. I hope that helps my situation.

Wow your skimmer sound like a pretty mean machine :)

Thank you for all the tips, I will certainly asses everything you've mentioned to me.

This forum is great, thanks again for the quick responses. I will be posting again very soon....

Mark

No problem, and welcome to the forum. There is a great community of reefers in Calgary that come on here too, for group buys, and getting used stuff.

Not wanting to push the chemi clean due to it only being a quick fix,all sound advice in regards to finding the root of the problem first,but if you want it gone within 24h try the chemi clean,ive used it at home on my seahorse tanks which do not use a skimmer and have not had any problems with cyano for over four months after useing it.

Actually I might try the chemi clean because my fix is coming (sump,skimmer,fuge) I'm just weary about puting chemicals in the tank.

Just do the water change after treatment and everything will be fine,i have never heard of any negative effects and we sell alot of it.

I fought Cyano in my nano for ages to no avail. I tried Chemiclean once about 8 months ago and I haven't seen any cyano since then. Everything in the tank stayed very happy (except the cyano). Just turn off your skimmer for a day or two as it will overflow like crazy and aerate the tank by some other means.