heavy nasty red slimy crud

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wbrown

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Got something developing I have not seen before, and it's pretty agressively
covering the rock and corals in one of my tanks.
I've tried an algaecide treatment, and I've cut back on MH's to 2 hours a day to slow it down/ (It HAS slowed btw) Now I want to get rid of it.

This tank is over a year old, nothing new added in several months. Params are stable, with ph running at 7.8, salinty at 0.26 SG.
I've been manually removing this crud with a turkey baster and netting the fragments as best I can to remove.
Best I can describe it without a photo is a dark red velvety appearing heavy bodied stuff that simply covers anything it touches.
Afraid to transfer anything out of the tank to quarantine or another tank until I can ID and/or wipe this out.
 
Just sounds like an agressive cyno situation.

Try this......

In one end of my vacuum hose the discharge end, I frayed the pipe with a razor blade, cut slits verticuly (just realized I'm in IE instead of Mozilla, as verticuly didn't auto correct and I don't know how to spell it, oh well, no time to spell check this post, lol), anyway, doing this turns one end of your hose into a small brush. During a regular waterchange/vacuuming, when I have a cyno issue, I'll spend the first few minutes vacuuming with the frayed end of the hose in the water, and gently scrub the rock and walls of the tank until I get all the cyno off, then I turn the hose around, add the vacuum tube, and vacuum the substrate. This works great for manual removal.

Beyond that, get you a good media for phosphate control, check the TDS of any new water going into the tank, and step up those water changes (using the metod above) until the problem goes away.

Off to work....
 
Yep, cyanobacter. Manual removal is good.

Check nitrates and phosphates - that's what feeds it, along with light.

Best time for manual removal is at the end of the photoperiod - that's when it's at its thickest. It will "die back" a bit overnight/in the dark, so you get the biggest bang for your buck when its had all day to grow.

If your lamps are old, it may be time to replace them.

Assess how much you are feeding and how often - including liquid coral foods - overdoing those can bite you in the rear.

Raising your magnesium (esp. if it's low) will help the good stuff out-compete the bad stuff.

Removal is only half of the equation. Figuring out the cause and solving that is the other half.

Jenn
 
Jenn has it right.

I had an outbreak of this in my freshwater tank due to my sister-in-law overfeeding the tank while i was on vacation.

Perform large water changes each day and manually remove as much as you can during the water change. That should get your nutrient levels back in line. You should see it disappear in a week or so, if you're diligent.

An Excellent</em> write up on what it is, and how to avoid it can be found here:
a>
 
I had it growing on my Chaeto as soon as I got it. I siphoned most of it with a turkey baster and started running Chemipure and Purigen and that seemed to help a lot.
 
I've read from a very well respected reefer that keeping your pH above 8.0 is important for controlling cyano.
 
8.0 ain't achievable on my side of the state, source water is 5.3 at best, I already have to aerate 8 hours to get 7.8. Using ro/di tds is zero, silicates, and phos reads zero also when I've tested, which is not regularly..
coral food probably it, been broadcast and spot feeding for several weeks..(wifey insisted):)
I have some direction now, thanks!
 
You can get some seachem 8.3 buffer to help out with the pH.....but yeah I have some cyano in my sump.....started running matrix and seagel.....and a polyfilter.....and about to throw in some chemipure........also keeping your Ca and dKH up along with Mg will help out with the pH and that in turn will help with the cyano....and when ya do the water changes try to suck as much out with the hose as you can.....assuming that's how you do them....good luck.....
 
JennM;475238 wrote: Yep, cyanobacter. Manual removal is good.

Check nitrates and phosphates - that's what feeds it, along with light.


Assess how much you are feeding and how often - including liquid coral foods - overdoing those can bite you in the rear.

Raising your magnesium (esp. if it's low) will help the good stuff out-compete the bad stuff.

Removal is only half of the equation. Figuring out the cause and solving that is the other half.

Jenn
Click to expand...


remove your nitrate & phosphate issue.

Also, you can raise your ph by adding a kalk slurry 2 x's daily.
 
Oh and some of my family lives over there btw....lol.....off brown rd and off mike padgett hwy
 
rolo65;475360 wrote: You can get some seachem 8.3 buffer to help out with the pH.....
Click to expand...
^^^
+1

You didn't post an alkalinity (hardness) measurement, but you'll want to test for that to dial in how much buffer to use (alk and pH are related). Putting buffer in your top-off water is one way to go.

I shoot for an an alk of 8 -9 dkh. I'd say 8 - 12 dkh is acceptable... there may be other opinions.
 
rolo65;475364 wrote: Oh and some of my family lives over there btw....lol.....off brown rd and off mike padgett hwy
Click to expand...
hey,thats exactly where i live!hey Wayne, been a long time since i talked to you.cyano must be making its rounds,but im about to kick it.faulty skimmer pump in my case,wouldnt produce consistant skimmate for several weeks,so i got another.
 
ya reeferman, we need to get together soon. :)
Ordering glass this week hopefully for coral tanks if my CAD guy finishes the dimensioning for the cuts..

We've been doing 4gal water changes daily for so long I pretty well quit worrying about regular testing of the tank parameters as a whole. Talked to the wife in more detail, and she's been dosing coral foods..(unsupervised) betting the source of the imbalance is due mostly to this.
I'll run a full panel of tests while mixing another 40ish gallons of SW, and see what the phosphate level is in the tank to verify. Phosphates were starting to climb in source water, so went all RO/DI to strip it, tds readings on RO has been zero. Changed to a refractometer from swing arm hydrometer a couple months back, as I found both hydrometers were reading substantially different. I half expected to see some reaction to the corals with the change in salinity and the resultant stability after W/C's, the cyano is the biggest visible change to date.

Ph is a result of a deep well, and from all I've been able to determine is simply a result of CO2 saturation. I did buffer source water for a period, and had a catastrophic precipitation of calcium as a result of Overdosing. I now decant and aerate the water for at least 8 hrs to overcome the 5.3 and this brings it to the previously mentioned 7.8 to 8.0 range.
I may work on dosing the SW in the barrel to get close to 8.3 during this W/C and see what blows up in my face. :)

thanks for all the responses! I've been busy with work and only getting around sporadically to check the place out anymore.. Need to schedule a visit to ATL in the near future...
 
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