Red Slime/Cyanobacteria Question

[Itchy Trigger]

I have a patch of red slime/cyanobacteria growing on my sand bed. The tank is currently fallow, but I'm sure the problem was caused by overfeeding the inverts that are in there now (some LPS, crabs, etc.). Nitrates were a little high (just checked). So I'm doing a water change now. I'll cut way back on the feeding and bring the nitrates down with a few water changes... My question is, should I do something to eliminate the slime on the sand? Or will it disappear on its own once proper parameters are reestablished?

 

[100%hydrophylic]

More flow would help, and manually removing it wouldnt hurt either.

 

[Itchy Trigger]

More flow would help, and manually removing it wouldnt hurt either.

Thanks. I'll try siphoning it out on the next water change. And re: flow, yeah, it's actually growing on the shielded side of a large pillar of rock. So there's good flow around the sides of the pillar, but a bit of a dead spot right to the side of it. Tank is 75g and has two MP10s and a 1200 gph Koralia on it.

 

[loves2reef]

I hate cyno, best thing to do with it is chemiclean it.

 

[Sk8r]

Turn your lights out, and protect the tank from window light. The stuff is prevalent everywhere there's water to grow in, and it only needs carbon, water, and light. A 3-day lights out once a month will usually fix a mild case pretty soon, but you also need to have your skimmer running to uptake the dieoff.

 

[triggreef]

I had a good bit of red cyano, I vacuumed as much as possible and it eventually went away on its own mostly. There is a bunch of it in my sump still. The red in my display was exchanged with bright green cyano. I did nothing with that and it pretty much went away on its own as well.

 

[Itchy Trigger]

Turn your lights out, and protect the tank from window light. The stuff is prevalent everywhere there's water to grow in, and it only needs carbon, water, and light. A 3-day lights out once a month will usually fix a mild case pretty soon, but you also need to have your skimmer running to uptake the dieoff.

So you would recommend this over using something like ChemiClean, correct?

 

[Itchy Trigger]

I had a good bit of red cyano, I vacuumed as much as possible and it eventually went away on its own mostly. There is a bunch of it in my sump still. The red in my display was exchanged with bright green cyano. I did nothing with that and it pretty much went away on its own as well.

Letting it go away on its own sounds great to me. The tank is approximately 5 months old, by the way. Could a little red slime just be part of the maturation process? I did vacuum a good part of it out, and will do another water change tomorrow, siphoning more out and further reducing nitrates.

 

[CaLevi]

If you leave the lights out for 3 days, is there a concern for any corals? Still new at this, I thought they needed light, so my worry was 3 days was a bit much.

 

[Xavibear]

If you leave the lights out for 3 days, is there a concern for any corals? Still new at this, I thought they needed light, so my worry was 3 days was a bit much.

3 days of lights out will not harm your corals.

 

[Dan_P]

How old is the set up?