Giving Up on this Hobby......Red Slime Algae Won't Go Away

[sporto0]

Your tank is 5-6 months old, this is a common occurrence, if you only have 3 fish & feed every 2-3 days, this bacteria problem will go away on it's own, everyone has given you proper suggestions, it needs nutrients to grow for sure, but it is also one of the oldest life forms in the world, so it is very good at adapting to it's surroundings. If it's any consolation, my tank was 10 times worse than your pics & it went away on it's own after 3 months or so, it gradually covered less area until it was just gone. One thing I know you did not do correctly was use the Chemi Clean per the instructions, because you must treat for 48 hours & then do a water change of 20% before retreating again, you gave up after 1 day, this stuff works, I have used it in the past with great success, but you must follow directions & keep up with it. Good luck & if this little bit of Cyano is making you want to quit, you may want to rethink your strategy.

 

[jscarlata]

patiecne my man, patience...I ran into this too, and as many have said, my outbreak was far worse. i didnt get much on the sand, but it grew all over my rocks. It was my own fault...i was feeding too much, and vodka dosing so my tank was crystal...then i went on vacation for 5 days and to make it easy on my buddy watching the tank i removed my filter sock and didnt have him do the vodka...when i came home i could barely see through the glass. It took almost 2 months to eliminate, here is what i did:
1)-small water changes every other day, large water change on the weekend. Water changes were done by using a small diameter hose to siphon the slime off the rocks, the small diameter took longer to fill my buckets and gave me more time to siphin.
2)blackout the tank for 3 days - immediatley follow with a water change
3)only run NON-DAYLIGHT lamps after the blackout for another 2-3 days
4)RINSE your frozen food REALLY well
5)limit the amount of dry food going into the tank
6)put a Phosphate removing media in a reactor
7)start a bio-pellet reactor

I had done the water change thing for a few weeks with little change; after my first blackout period it went away but then came back shortly after. I decided to put both reactors online and then ran only my non-daylight bulbs for a while. After a few weeks running the reactors the cyano was gone...

Do some research, apparently cyano doesnt bother anything int he tank, it bothers US because we have to look at it

I had gotten rid of the cyano

 

[excitedforfish]

Thank you so much everybody. I will buy some more nassarius snails and see if that will help. I am just concerned now that it is not red slime and is dino.

 

[sneaton]

an easy way to tell the difference is that cyno will come off in mats when you grab it and dinos are like snot and disentegrate....ive had both ...also dinos are stringy

 

[excitedforfish]

Okay so I just decided to get my hands a little wet and went in the tank with a net. I scraped the slime stuff lightly and it came off as a mat and THEN sort of disintegrated within the sand. Red slime, or dino?

 

[cherubfish pair]

Okay so I just decided to get my hands a little wet and went in the tank with a net. I scraped the slime stuff lightly and it came off as a mat and THEN sort of disintegrated within the sand. Red slime, or dino?

How's the tank doing?

 

[benningtondt8]

If you went BB that would help alot. I had the same problem a few years ago, then i decided to just siphon it all out with water changes and go BB. It will take awhile to get all of it. Ever since then cyano is no more! I know alot of people like the look of sand better, but the look of red slime or dino covered sand is way less appealing if you ask me.

 

[jdm1114]

Gfo

 

[navywife]

i live in Bremerton, there isnt any LFS near by where do u go to get ur corals? Im new to the area my husbands in the Navy only been here a few months.