Help! Killer fast growing brown slime ----Carbon Dosing???

[rishma]

I have a brown slime problem. I think this may be the stringy bacterial bloom that people talk about when dosing carbon.


I tried dosing vodka several months ago, I stopped after the brown stringy bloom started. I have done massive water changes and it wil not go away.

If i turn of the circulation pumps, you can literally see this stuff grown in front of your eyes. when i put some in a glass, a a clear substance with tiny suspended brown colonies grows with amazing speed.




Any ideas for eradication are appreciated.

 

[rishma]

nitrates ND with salifert. Unsure about phosphate, I have a test kit on the way

 

[JCTewks]

sounds like it might be dinoflaggeletes (sp?) are any of your snails dying when they touch it? I battled dino's for 6 months long before starting C dosing....The only thing that finally kicked it was doing SEVERAL 3 day blackouts! water changes will actually feed dino as it uses silicate as a food source...every new water change brings new silicate with it.

can you get a clearer picture? the pic you posted looks similiar to what i experienced.

Although, I have never heard of dino blooms as a result of dosing a C source...but I guess it's plausible

 

[rishma]

sorry, the picture stinks. I'll try to get some more when the lights come on. The snails do not seem to mind the slime, though they do not eat it. I have seen bristle worms eating long strands of it.

I grows so fast is has damaged several of my SPS that are not in high flow areas. it is stringy when the flow is high, but turns globular if the flow is off.

 

[rishma]

more better pictures

 

[BadRoma1]

I would actually do a water change with RO/DI water and syphone out as much as I could. then I would doze Chemi-clean. even though it look brown, I would try to take care of it as it would be red slime, because I can't even think of what else I would do. I was wondering why you are dozing vodka. how often do you do water changes, what is your live stock, how many gallons tank that it, what your feeding habits, what your water source, and what is your flow in gph total?

 

[rishma]

I have done quite a few water changes since this brown stuff appeared, up to ~40% at one time. I typically change about 10-15% every 2 weeks. I use reefcrystals salt. I have tried to suck out the brown slime, but it comes back immediately.

I have an RO/DI and the water has 0- TDS. I run matrix carbon (changed every 3 weeks). The system is 90 gallons, with a pair of bengaii, pair of orchid dottybacks, pair of ocellaris clowns, and a pair of clown gobies. I feed 4 times per day. The main tank is bare bottom but I have a small DSB in the refugium (10 gallons) located downstream of the skimmer (H&S A150). The tank has pretty good flow with Tunze 6100.

I have a few SPS (monti, birdsnest, acros), a colony of RTBA (they keep dividing), and a few random zoas.

I was dosing vodka as a carbon source in an attempt to shift to a bacterial plankton driven system.

thank you for the suggestions.

 

[JCTewks]

It really sounds like Dino's to me....do you have ZEObac and Pohls CoralSnow? You could try dosing the two of those together like Zeo folks treat Cyano....but if you don't have them, don;t buy them just to try.

Like I said earlier, multiple 3 day black outs and ZERO water changes was the only thing that allowed me to regain control of my tank with dino.

The only thing that has me puzzled is that dino is typically poisonous to astrea snails...I witnessed on several occasion putting snails on patches of Dino (before I knew what it was and what it did to snails) and the snails literally rolling over and dying immediately! are the snails you have astrea sp. ?

 

[BadRoma1]

try chemiclean. i know that with red slime i wasn't able to do anything but use chemicals. and the way it comes back right away sounds just like red slime. check your light bulbs too. don't doze vodka, because it sounds like it did something to your tank

 

[JCTewks]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12983447#post12983447 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by BadRoma1
.... don't doze vodka, because it sounds like it did something to your tank

I doubt that vodka dosing in itself is the cause for whetever this outbreak is!

Rishma: How long has your tank been setup?

 

[rishma]

this tank has been running for almost 2 years. The rock is from my previous tanks, 4-9 years old.

I have bio digest but it has not helped.

I guess I'll try the lights out approach for a few days. dont you think that will stress out my corals?

 

[JCTewks]

it will not stress them too bad, no more than a few days of dark when a hurricane goes over the reef...when I did it the corals actually seemed to have a better feeding response, and better color AFTER the lights out period.

 

[JCTewks]

it seems the combination of the bacteria when dosed with an aggregate like coralsnow is the trick to killing cyano with the ZEO system....but, like I said, it looks like Dino to me!
are your snails astrea's? they are the only ones that were killed off by dino in my system. if you have other species of snails, try getting an astrea from a friend or LFS, put the snail on a patch of this stuff....if it rolls over and dies immediately, you'll know it's dino! and if you have astreas in the tank, grab one off the glass and put it on the "gooey stuff". I had astrea's in my tank during the dino outbreak, but they never left the glass, and died when i put them on the stuff.

 

[rishma]

i do have a couple of astreas. They seems unaffected my the slime. I hate to place them directly on it as a test. I have had these guys a long time and they are really big.

I am going start a lights out trial later this week. I'll let you know how it goes.


Anyone else have ideas?

 

[ed4]

My thoughts & suggestions...

I had an outbreak of this mess + cyano in fuge. Here's how I dealt with it:

-Since you mentioned the use of Bio Digest (Prodibio), make sure you're dosing the Bio Digest first, then the bac food a few days later (Biotim or vodka). For the first 2 biweekly doses, and like a fool, I dosed the food first, then the bacteria on the same day. I winessed an epic outbreak the next day.
-I'd skip the vodka dosing for a week. Let the Bio Digest compete w/ the dinos (or whatever you have in your tank) for nutrients, hopefully killing off the slime in your tank. If you have Biotim, I'd suggest going 1/2 dosage until this stuff clears.
-I blacked out my tank for 3 days, lights off & covered the sides w/ taped towels.
-Tiny fiter bags w/ high quality activated carbon were placed on top of bad spots.
-I stopped dosing supplements, except Alk, Ca & Mg.

This stuff syphons out easily, but to my fustration, it'd grow back as hard the next day.

The stuff above worked for me in a week.

What do the rest of you think?

 

[ed4]

-I'd skip the vodka dosing for a week. Let the Bio Digest compete w/ the dinos (or whatever you have in your tank) for nutrients, hopefully killing off the slime in your tank. If you have Biotim, I'd suggest going 1/2 dosage until this stuff clears.

Remember to dose Biotim after the Bio Digest. I'd suggest the 1/2 way point in between your Bio Digest dosings.

 

[rishma]

good suggestions, all. Ed - it sounds like you successfully eliminated the stuff.

I think I'll try a multi pronged attack. I have not dosed vodka in several weeks, thinking it may have been the cause.

here is my plan:

I am going to run fresh carbon starting tonight. tomorrow, I will run the lights as ususal. Tuesday I will discontinue lighting for 3 days and dose bio digest.

I will turn the lighting back on on friday, slowly adapting the corals. depending how things look, I may dose a carbon source next weekend.

thoughts?

 

[JCTewks]

Sounds like a plan! remember to do NO waterchanges...if it is dino, the water changes will add fresh fuel and you'll see an increase in slime again!

One other thing i would do is set your skimmer to run a little wetter during the blackout...that way it can strip the dying material from the water column. I would blast the rocks regularly with the ol' turkey baster during the blackout too. ou also might want to implement some form of mechanical filtration to remove suspended particles.

 

[rishma]

thanks. the skimmer takes water directly from the overflow (100%), so particles are skimmed out pretty good.

I'll blast the rocks daily.

 

[ed4]

Great advice from Jeff.

I also threw in some Cerinth Snails from the display down into the fuge. I doubt they touched my dinos but they cleaned up the remaining cyano. These didn't croak at the end of the ordeal.

I wish I had some way of rewarding these lil guys. I guess they were just happy enough to get back into the display