Brown Hair Slime Algae

[piranha_trader]

Its overruning my tank and its disgusting. On some corals at any chance it gets.


Not sure what the issue is because I use sea water from the Ocean (live in Hawaii), have a anti-phosphate pad in the filter, and dont overfeed the inhabitants (1 maroon clown and 1 black clown goby...its 13 gallon Nano). Have a CUC of hermits and ocean snails (small ones) but they dont seem interested.

It recedes at night but grows like a weed when the compacts are turned on. Its disheartening.

Looking to hear from the residences here on any tricks to get rid of this stuff. If you know of a particular CUC that eats the stuff, that would be very helpful.

Mahalo

 

[SkiFletch]

Cyanobacteria Mahalo, a very common foe. Let me guess, your tank is somewhere between 1-4 months old? Cyano is common in new tanks and nobody's ever really been able to prove WHY. It's a nasty pest algae because it is able to use so many different nutrients for fuels, including to some extent atmospheric nitrogen. Unlike other higher organisms, cyano thrives in water of changing conditions (temp, pH, nutrients, etc) which is usually the case in a new tank. The bad news, it may get worse before it get's better. Ultimately though, it will use up whatever it's eating for nutrients and starve itself to death. You really have 4 options at this point now that the bacteria has taken hold (feel free to use a combinatino of these):

- Vaccum it out of the tank daily. This is a form of nutrient export in and of itself (cyano grows, uses nutrient, you remove it, thus removing nutrients)
- Black out the tank for 48-72 hours. Literally turn the lights off and cover it with a towel. Cyano is photosynthetic with a HIGH metabolism and will perish easily without light for such a duration. Other organisms (corals, coraline algae, macro algae, etc) will be fine.
- As a last resort you can try red slime remover or a similar antibiotic treatment supposedly targeted at cyano. Take care though cause you do risk harming your nitrogen filtering bacteria, or creating an antibiotic resistant strain of cyano, both bad things



As a personal aside, I wish some genetics supergenious could engineer a bacteriophage to kill this stuff. Alas, I can dream

 

[piranha_trader]

Yeah Ski you guessed right. Its approaching 3 months now. Strange Mahalo is part of the scientific name because there's nothing I want to thank it for.

Its an absolute scourge.

So turning off the lights for that long will not harm the inhabitants huh? Well I'll try it but something tells me it'll grow right back.

Is it damaging to corals by chance?

Oh and thanks so much for your informative post. It was very helpful.

 

[SkiFletch]

Anytime. Some strains are toxic to corals, some are not. Either way, it can overgrow corals and physically smother them to death. Try and keep the off your corals if possible