How to get rid of these red stuff?
 

Hey guys,

Some red stuff start covering my sand bed , I wonder how could I get rid of them.
They look like Caroline algae but on the sand instead of glass or rocks !

http://i735.photobucket.com/albums/w...62D9C4AD0C.jpg

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more flow and less nutrients

Its cyano. Is your tank new?

nutrients is controlled ,this is my Seahorse tank and I spot feed them so no leftover food , but I can't increase the flow because of Seahorses. I wonder if I could get something to eat them


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It is not cyano and it's is not a new tank , they just showed up!


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They are on the lowest flow part of my tank, everywhere else is ok


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sorry, but it is cyano.
easiet way to get rid of it is to siphon it off with a hose of some sort

Hummm :( what should I do ?


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I do but they keep coming back


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It is cyano. It does just show up when the nutrients get too high or not enough flow. The seahorses and corals all exhaust nutirents into the water and if you do not have enough flow, it settles on your sand bed.

Since you cannot increase the flow, siphoning it would be your best bet. It can also occur if your light bulbs are getting too old. Do you run GFO or anything like that?

How long has the tank been setup?

Run gfo to lower your phosphates

Also, what type of sand did you use in your tank? It may be difficult to siphon properly if it is not a coarse grain.

I took over the tank , I have it for 6 month but it's running with same sand and live rock for over 4 years, and they just showed up


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You are right it is not easy as the sand is really fine


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You can pick it out by hand as best as you can. Are there any powerheads in your setup? Once you manually remove it, you can move a powerhead closer to the area to increase the flow in that part of the tank.

Worst case scenario is to use Chemiclean but that is only a temporary fix. It will come back if the root of the problem isn't fixed, and when it does, it gets harder and harder to remove.

And make sure you are using RODI water so that you are not adding any excess nutrients into the tank.

Thanks for the help, currently I remove them with hand
Could I get something to eat them?


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Try to siphon out what you can and do a few water changes. It should help out tremendously.

I don't know of anything that eats it.

Get some sand sifting snails or a diamond goby. My goby won't eat the cyano, but does keep the sand clean of debris. I've got cyano on my rocks and I've been blowing it off and syphoning it out. I have also changed the flow in my tank and this seems to be helping. You may not be able to add more flow, but you can change it around to avoid "dead" spots.

not really, if your persistent it will go away, it does not dissapear overnight(well it does but comes right back lol) it takes a few approaches. one solution by its self usually does very little, its a combinations of approaches.


water changes, running gfo and maual removal. like mentioned after doing this do a dose of something like red slime remover etc.

a blackout is also effective.

i never get cyano and i run a nutrient rich system where i target a precise amount of nutrients for coral growth, its not always the nutrients that cause cyano.

things like snail spawns, decaying matter and bad lights can all cause it too.

its always been believed that low flow triggers cyano but were finding out that high flow doesnt help but makes it worse. there are people with sps dominant tanks filled with vortecs that still get cyano like i said the reasons it shows are many and so the approach to getting rid of it has to be many as well since its hard to target exactly what causes it as each tank is different.


if over feeding and low flow cause cyano then i should be covered in it , when i first got into reefing i battled it in every tank , now that i have a solid routine down i havent seen it in years regardless if its a new tank or old one(i too bought a running 5yr old tank and kept the sand)

Be they showed up I saw couple of my snails releasing white stuff in the tank . They did it about an hour and the water gets abut white !! That must be the cuse then!

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Some claim blue and red Hermit Crabs will eat it, however, all crabs are selective eaters and will eat what they want, when they want...

I suggest purchasing some Nassarius snails as well. They are sand sifters. They will not eat the cyano but they will eat the left over food particles, etc. as well as stir up the top layer of your sand bed.

I do have couple Nassarius, I am thinking about buying fighting conch


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I've got a large patch of cyano in my tank on my sandbed. It started while I was on vacation and was not dosing ZeoBak. It is in quite an open area of my tank, which has moderate flow.

I couldn't get any ZeoBak yesterday (and I'm out), and I couldn't find any Microbacter7 (I know I saw it locally . . . I just can't remember where).

I picked up some of Instant Ocean's "Natural Nitrate Reducer" (a polymer) and "BIO-Spira" (live, nitrifying bacteria) as I felt those could be beneficial in reducing the nutrients and thus the cyano. I dosed 50ml of the nitrate reducer and 20ml of the BIO-Spira to my 55 gallon system last night (shut off the skimmer for two hours afterwards).

This morning, the cyano had reduced by about 50%. Maybe it is just coincidence . . . but I'll be dosing 20ml of the BIO-Spira a day for the next two weeks.

yup i can guarantee it, in my old zoa tank the only time i got cyano is when my turbos were spawing, when the babies were born i would get a worse out break.

how long have you been having this issue with cyano?? i would wait a bit and do what your doing before adding any chemicals. i can almost bet its the b reeding:) cheers

sounds expensive:P

what are your no3 and po4?

It was! Over $40 for both bottles.

:lol: I normally dose nitrifying bacteria, so I'm okay with that expense (I see it as a little bit of insurance). The nitrate reducing polymer isn't something I would normally use, but that was a 1/3 the price of the BIO-Spira so I figured I may as well try it in conjunction with the bacteria.

i know they put way to much of a cost on this stuff, funny you can buy a 5g bucket of salt for $40 and a small 50ml bottle cost an arm and a leg lol

use some GFO to lower your phosphates and use some Red Slime Remover. It is safe for coral but be carefull if you have real sponges as some sponges live in symbiotic with cyanobacterias inside of them.

I never had a problem using that stuff with all of my sponges but it could affect some sponges.