ahhhwwrrr red slime

[bodasafa]

i set up a 20 gal. nano its cycleing with live rock and a few inverts (4 blue hermits 6 nassarius snails 2 turbo snails 1 green crab) bigger clean up crew on the way when tank cycles but anyway i seen some red slime on some of the rocks and i was wanting to get rid of it went to l.f.s. man told me to do 25 % water changes once or twice a week until it is gone (will this work) since i do not like to put cemicals in to my tank unless it is nessacery l.f.s. tried to sell me red slime remover i am thinking it is not so much a cem. but an antibiotic since red slime is cyanobacteria so the question is the hard hay water changes and a lot of them or the easy way red slime remover i am not sure what would be better for my tank now....




p.s.
i herd that red slime builds an imunity to the antibiotc and if it comes back it will be almost imposable to get rid of


P.S.
this is what part of the alphabet would look like if Q and R were eliminated
ha ha ha ...

 

[chkltcow]

Red slime while cycling is a fairly normal sight, so don't get too worked up over it. In the meantime, use a clean new turkey baster to blast it with water and suck it out.

How many powerheads do you have in your tank, and what's the water turnover rate on them? Red slime usually forms where water is stagnant in a tank.

 

[bodasafa]

just one power head but it get a good curent going it is like 90 gph i think it is out of my 75 gal tank i did not have it on for a while though i just turned my proten skimmer on yesterday and my power head was turned on two or three days ago i was waiting for the tank to cycle some one told me that proten skimmers a lot of water movment would slow down the cycle....

so basicly you are saying just do water changes when needed and the red slime will take care of its self...it is just something that happens in new tanks some times?


how long will it take to go away do you think??

 

[chkltcow]

Water movement is crucial to saltwater tanks. With so many sessile inverts, you need water movement to carry their food and nutrients around. The general line of advice is 10x the volume of your tank per hour... thus with a 20g tank and a 90gph powerhead.... you're not even close. Add another powerhead to the tank to get some water circulation, and that alone will help cut down on the red slime algae.

Suck up the red slime algae that's in there now, get another powerhead, and run the skimmer. Those drastic water changes should NOT be necessary in a saltwater tank.... and are in fact the reason why people run skimmers and deep sand bed/mineral mud filtration, to have a way to 1) skim away dissolved organic compounds before they can become ammonia and enter the nitrogen cycle... and 2) to create a filtration system that can get rid of nitrate once it has been created by means of anaerobic bacteria.

Just keep in mind, if you bought cured live rock.... there's really not gonna be a "cycle". There should already be enough bacteria in the LR to handle the ammonia and nitrites already. With cured LR, you can stock your tank the next day, albeit lightly. There should be no reason to have left the protein skimmer and certainly not the powerheads off. I'm not sure who gave you that advice... but hopefully Navarre and GreatLakes can come help out a bit in this thread too.

 

[Navarre]

As has been mentioned, your water turnover is very low.. it needs at least 200 gallons per hour and this will helkp somewhat.. even then you will get dead spots etc. Treat 200 gallons as a minimum and try to aim for even highe rif possible.

 

[hyrookin]

just to give you something else to consider,
but NOT until you have fully researched it yourself, as I never like
to recommend chemical treatments, there is a product called chemi-pure
used to remove red cyanobacteria.

I used it about 3 years ago in my 55 gallon, and it worked very well,
with no adverse affects to my tank--but keep in mind I have a FISH ONLY
tank,and have never had corals in it.

maybe someone else who used this product can give you additional info.

 

[Navarre]

I have never use that product but i have used a similar one called "Antired"
It works extremly well indeed and is supposed to be reefsafe. However, when i usedit i did lose my Dendropnethya within a week and my starpolyps never reopoened. All my other corals were fine (i never had hard corals at the time though).
It mighthave been a coinsidence that these corals died just as i dosed the tank but both of these corals were looking fine and healthy before this.