Red Purple Slime Algae

[Sean]

My first tank failed because of red slime,

I'm no expert but I can tell you what not to do from my experience, i'm just kind of putting this out for the newbies like me that had problems finding a solution on the net soo this is what iv learned from my mistakes.

Don't run to the store asking what you can do to fix the problem, I wasted way too much money on chemicals and equiptment because the guy used sales tactics on me. Search the web and if you feel that perhaps your equiptment is whats lacking then make the decision to purchase.

If your tank is real new (doesn't help the above fellow) restarting is an option, Its amazing how much money you can spend trying to keep 2 fish and a corals in your tank when sometimes the best solution is to find them a new home for a little bit while you clean your tank and start again. Spending hundreds of dollars on a fish that cost you 19 isn't my idea of a good time.

Don't go nuts and suck all the water out of the tank trying to clean it everyday. This usually ends up making your tank cycle again and you have a bigger head ache.. I also suggest finding a small tube for sucking up the slime, the larger ones can drain your tank faster then you can suck the slime up.

don't stress over not having the light on for its exact rotation. You can easily cut back with little stress on the habitants. Try shaking a few hours of light off every few days. If you don't see any improvement cutting the light off for 3 days as said above should help. I suggest cleaning the tank before you cutt it back completely. Reasoning for that is you won't be fighting with it multiplying while the lights are off and also if it starts up again you can pay close attention to see where its building up. If it seem to originate from a certain part that could be a clue that you need to investigate and clean that area of the tank.

Cut back on the amount you are feeding aswell.. Sure its nice to keep everything nice and full but what comes in comes out.

[petzoo]

Originally Posted by truperc

Chemi Clean is a great SHORT TERM solution to your problem, I have used it on my customers tanks to get rid of the slime. I agree with the others posting here but if you want to get rid of it in a hurry, then deal with the source of the problem. Just my $0.02

I agree, chemi-clean is awesome stuff but some caution should be used. It is important to do a water change after it has done it's job. It is also very important not to use carbon or ion exchange resins like chemi-pure at the same time as it will rapidly remove the chemi-clean before it has a chance to work. The stuff is expenisive but it sure works well!

[fishoholic]

When we had a smaller tank we used chemi-clean and it worked like a charm, however after awhile it would start to come back. We got use to adding chemi-clean (with no adverse affects to fish or corals) whenever the cyano showed up and it kept it in check. However on our 230g the chemi-clean didn't work at all.

Got some good advice from a LFS and started to add a magnesium supplement (Kent Marine Tech-M) to the tank, this helped a lot but there was still some floating around in the tank. Cut back our lights by two hours a day (every day, used to run 2pm-11pm now 4pm-11pm) and since we started doing this the cyano is pretty much gone.