Bright orange slime

pixelhustler · May 6, 2022

What is thing orange slime? It settles in dead spots around my tank as well as pumps and high flow areas in my sump.
Doesn’t look like cyano or diatoms, which I do have in my nano jellyfish tank I recently set up and plumbed to my main tank. It’s bright orange like the flesh on a ripe cantaloupe melon. Is this some sort of bacterial growth?

mynd · May 6, 2022

To be honest even this is a first for me. I have never run into the problem of ORANGE algae. However, others have and I don't want to redirect to another site, but the information after my reading poses some interesting thoughts.

How to get rid of orange algae in a fish tank – Gardenyak

gardenyak.com

Can you tell me a little bit about your tank and the setup? lighting, sump, fish, food supply, parameters of the water, and of course if you have a skimmer? Maybe we can find the hick-up

Reefer Reboot · May 6, 2022

Algae or sponge? Hard to say from the pictures. Also google Hymeniacidon and look at the image tab. Let us know what you think.

pixelhustler · May 6, 2022

Reefer Reboot said:
Algae or sponge? Hard to say from the pictures. Also google Hymeniacidon and look at the image tab. Let us know what you think.

Originally I thought it was clusters of heavy bacterial growth. I don’t think it’s an algae but that sponge looks quite similar in color. Maybe not the same species but I think you might be on the money as I have tons of sponges and filter feeders.

mynd said:
To be honest even this is a first for me. I have never run into the problem of ORANGE algae. However, others have and I don't want to redirect to another site, but the information after my reading poses some interesting thoughts.

How to get rid of orange algae in a fish tank – Gardenyak

gardenyak.com

Can you tell me a little bit about your tank and the setup? lighting, sump, fish, food supply, parameters of the water, and of course if you have a skimmer? Maybe we can find the hick-up

75g LPS dominant reef with a sump and a secondary 10g nano jellyfish tank plumbed into the same sump. Moderate lighting peaking at 150 PAR at the top. I’ve been running UV 24/7 for the past couple of months.
Very high nutrients (ie I overfeed) but my nitrate stays at <7 due to sulfur denitrator, and phosphate is typically <.1, but lately I’ve been battling an imbalance and had to tune my GFO again so it hovers at .2-.3 and slowly going down. I do have a lot of sponges and filter feeders - they have taken over most of my rocks along with cassiopeia jellyfish in the polyp stage that have also exploded in numbers when I started feeding small particle food. Could very well be a sponge as Reefer Reboot said.
I’m going to cut down on feeding but I worry about my smaller fish (pipefish, yellow clown gobies, mandarins) not getting enough, since all my other fish are wrasses. I’m down to 1x of pellets (auto feeder) and 3x homemade frozen cubes (standard size)

Solga · May 6, 2022

Just a thought, but I got some live rock from GLR & TBS ... Both of those had rock that has, what looked like, an orange slime on them. A few times a week, the 'slime' opens up and has these tunicates that pop out that look like the cylinder on an old revolver... If I can find a pic, I'll post it.