Red slime??

[Jason_1990]

you can barely see on camera it looks worse in person. I just cleaned up the sand the other day. An this dark red almost purple carpet takes over my sand bed. Nothing on the rocks, my water quality tests are great. I been siphoning it out during water changes. Stiring up the sand during the week. But it keeps coming back. Very annoying. A goby works great if they would stop jumping out of the tank. I put a 2nd powerhead in this 36 gallon bow front to be sure its not waterflow. Phos an nitrates dont move off 0 on test kits.
Do i need to go dark for a day or 2?
I dont want to use chemicals... but ill consider if i have too.
And feeding is once a day.

 

[Ranjib]

Cyano. Is your tank new? They generally represent some chemical imbalance/stability issue. Very common in first year of the tank. Also check your flow..

 

[mcarroll]

my water quality tests are great.

Eehh....

Phos an nitrates dont move off 0 on test kits.

You can't grow proper algae (neither green nor coraline) without nutrients. Back off of all your export methods and/or start dosing fertilizers for N and P.

And feeding is once a day.

Make sure you're feeding your fish adequately.

Sometimes once a day can be OK, but many fish need more frequent feedings to thrive.

What fish do you have? How long have they been in the tank? What are you feeding them?

 

[amazongb]

There’s a pretty large thread about cyano on this site, it’s many pages, I’d take the time to read through it.. in a nutshell, your 0 phosphate reading is caused by cyano consuming it.. check your rodi system and anything else that might be adding phosphates.. I had the same problem and what fixed it was one round of chemiclean followed up with regular water changes and sump cleaning..not suggesting chemiclean without reading the cyano thread I mentioned.

 

[Jason_1990]

Eehh....



You can't grow proper algae (neither green nor coraline) without nutrients. Back off of all your export methods and/or start dosing fertilizers for N and P.



Make sure you're feeding your fish adequately.

Sometimes once a day can be OK, but many fish need more frequent feedings to thrive.

What fish do you have? How long have they been in the tank? What are you feeding them?

6 line wrasse, clown, and small salfin tang.
Water chemistry is pretty stable week to week. LFS dose the testing for me. I ocxasionally will test if i think i need to correct dosing ect.
The last thing that went out of wack was salinity by a few points. Nothing crazy. I do regalur 5 gallon water changes weekly. Along with protien skimmer an socks. An ocassional carbon.
Tank will be a year old in october.
I do 1 cube of mysis daily an sea weed couple times a week.
Now i dont make my own water ive come to trust the local LFS an i like going every week to see new live stock so i just pick up water too.

 

[Jason_1990]

You suggesting i cut water changes till i can read nutrients in my water?

 

[mcarroll]

Sailfin?!?!?! In how big a tank?

Sounds like you're on the right track with feeding at least.

Consider branching out from mysis to include some marine food...ideally some live food too.

 

[Sailingeric]

Yesterday I officially declared my battle with cyano over. It took about 3 months to beat as there is no over night fix. I cut my feeding back, reduced the light time down, vacuumed the sand of the cyano, used phosphate remover in my sump, got a bigger pump to have greater turn over in my tank and got a sand sifting gobie. It took time but slowly reduced down to nothing and I am not sure if anyone thing I did would beat it but I figured I needed to fight from all fronts and it worked. I just hope it stays that way

 

[Jason_1990]

Grats on the cyano battle!!!
Lol here is my tang! Healthy looking one to me. He dont grow very fast.

 

[Jason_1990]

I feel like fish grow to there enviroment. I had a yellow tang in a 55gal for 3 years an he never out grew the tank. Maybe im doing something wrong.

 

[mcarroll]

Yes.

Fish ought to be able to grow to their potential.

Fish experience stress and their immune systems suffer for it, not at all unlike us.

Check out How behaviorally complex are marine fish? and Why do the tang police exist?

Here's my take in a nutshell...

A fish in an ultra-confined space is going to be more stressed than one in a bigger space. Simple as that.

A sailfin can grow to over a foot in length – much larger than a yellow or other common tang.

For that matter most Yellow's never attain their full size either.

There should be no wonder that tang's are known as fragile ich magnets – it has to do with how we keep them so restricted.

Folks who succeed with them do so in spite of these things – and mostly because they've done a great job minimizing and removing stresses where possible AND done a great job with feeding, which keeps the immune system fueled.

What happened to your 3-year old yellow, BTW? Sounds like you don't have him now?

 

[Jason_1990]

I ended up having to sell everything to move. There was a guy who wanted him along with the other fish for his 125 that he was setting up along with other equipment. So he is in a good place now.
Its only a mtter of time before i take the dive an go big in this hobby. There are lots of rigs out there for like 5k an you get everything you need on the equipment side. Just need to get a more long term living situation. But this system ive learned how to grow sps an hopefully how to kill off cyano.
Any do you think chemiclean would knock this out? I dont see why it would come back. Or why very clean water will cause such a ugly out break.
Ill have to read that article about cyano an make an educated decision.

 

[coralbeauties]

My tank was starting to slowly get a blanket of red slime. My phos was reading only .05 which I felt wasnt that bad. I started to dose lanthanum phos remover and within several days I started to see a reduction in the slime. It has been a week or so and it isnt all gone yet but has been slowly reducing. So it almost has to phosphates causing the slime.
Jeff

 

[ZoWhat]

I should change my avatar name to Vodka/Vinegar Dosing Dude

I'm 15+ yrs into reefing and after fighting NO3 PO4, algae of all kinds..... I finally gave into the idea of carbon dosing.

I've have two epiphanies in 15yrs:

1) how did I ever reef without an Apex controller?

2) why did it take me so long to figure the key to keeping corals is supercharging good bacteria via carbon dosing?

My preferred method is a 50/50 shot of vodka & vinegar after reading from Randy Holmes Farley that Nopox is basically that 50/50 dose.

I'm forever until I die vodka/vinegar dosing bc a have a coral 99% dead. It's now worked it way back to 50% alive bc the supercharged good bacteria is giving me great salt water





.

 

[mcarroll]

Any do you think chemiclean would knock this out? I dont see why it would come back. Or why very clean water will cause such a ugly out break.

Chemiclean is in a class of products I like to refer to as miracle cures. As such, the following applies: If it seems to good to be true, it probably is. I'm not aware of any exceptions to this rule.

Cyano is in the atmosphere, so you cannot get rid of it. It's one of the most prevalent things out there.

The reason it's in your tank is because y0u have a nice home for it that it likes. This consists of room to grow, light and nutrients.

Speaking of nutrients...

There are essential nutrients that everything needs to grow – even cyano. These are things like Carbon, Nitrogen, Phosphorus, etc.

NO3 is a form of nitrogen.

PO4 is a form of phosphrous.

NO3 and PO4 are some of the more highly used forms of those elements. But they are far from the only forms of those elements that can be found in the tank.

Cyano is unique in it's seemingly infinite ability to find and use nutrients. Remember I said how omnipresent it was? That's just one part of its strategy...it's actively looking for a home and nutrients all over the planet. It's doing the same all over you tank – all the time. Cyano was there at the beginning when "nutrients" was probably a very limited proposition...it had to be flexible.

So why doesn't cyano grow everywhere we look if it's everywhere and it's so good at finding nutrients?

Good question.

The reason is that all life that came after cyano (which is practically everything) has had to compete with it just to survive.

So things like other algae and corals are able to compete, but they do not have cyano's seemingly infinite abilities re: nutrients.

Without going into infinite detail, that's the crux of things.

If you want something other than cyano to grow, then you need to supply "easy" nutrients like nitrates (no3) and phosphates (po4).

When those basic nutrient supplies actually become limited for "other algae" you'll see the superior abilities of cyano come to play – finding nutrient sources that are there, but simply unavailable to other algae.

So the answer is to keep nutrients within a reasonable balance.

Removing nutrients that appear to be excessive with media is a problematic way to achieve this.

Adding nutrients that are apparenly missing is often a better strategy.

 

[iDeath]

Cyano is ancient and everywhere. It's not a big deal, everyone gets a bloom now and again. Sometimes I overfeed the tank and then I see a touch of cyano. To combat that I just trim the fuge (it is often too packed at that time) and cut back a bit on feeding.

 

[Jason_1990]

So less nutrients is the key. That is what im getting from you guys. Also Chemiclean is a miracle fix, my lfs even said he wouldnt do it.
So here is what im gonna do
1) add a bag of chemi pure elite
(I cant trace the po4 in my weekly test an niether can my lfs. So i need something that is constantly taking trace amounts of po4 out of my system. this product has rave reviews so its my main source to combat this)
2) take a look at my light cycle. Shorten by an hour if needed. Im at 10 hours now. But it only peaks for hour or two.
3) continue my weekly water changes(5 gallons for total 40 gallon system)
4) if i see some progress or none with the first couple steps, i heard conch snails are excellent sand sifters.
5) if that fails take a look at food an cut back to every other day.

If all that fails....
Carbon dosing??
Lol we will see

I hope this works I think im hitting this problem on a couple diffrent fronts. So we will see ill keep posted in a week or 2.