saltwater question

[nacra99]

Re: saltwater question

It's cyanobacteria. "red slime algae"

It is introduced to a tank through cross contamination, new liverock etc. Sometimes it may lay dormant in live rock / sand only to be activated when the sand or rock is stirred up.
It is not always indicative of bad water quality as often suggested.

Looks like a fairly contained infestation in your tank. See if you can slowly lift the entire mat out of the sand without it falling apart. You might (if are lucky) get the whole thing and that may be the end of that.
Otherwise, it's a little harder to get rid of in SW than in FW, but treatment is the same with antibiotics.

Do a search of cyanobacteria in this forum. Treatment has been fairly well documented.

[nacra99]

Re: saltwater question

Oh.. and make sure you have a good skimmer or at least be prepared to do waterchanges following treatment. Your water may have a slight red tinge when this kind of bacteria dies.

[dblondfemme]

Re: saltwater question

ty very much
*reading the website now*

[eklikewhoa]

Re: saltwater question

From my limited understanding of the stuff.....

The "red slime" or cyanobacteria is cause by more than just a few things...

Low flow which leaves dead spots.
Excess nutrients from overfeeding/overstocking.
Uncured Live Rock which leach phosphates.
Newly setup tanks will go through this phase.
Not enough water changes(which should be the cure to just about all problems).
From what I understand lighting has less to do with it then the above reason.


Try adding a small powerhead to the tank and do a water change.....and the chemical used is Chemi-clean which works but is only a band-aid.

[JandJ]

Re: saltwater question

The "red slime remover", or "white powder" is actually your best bet.
Most new salt tanks go through a cyano bloom and I have always used Red slime remover to take care of it. Once you take care of it, it only comes back in areas of low water movement, high nitrates or phosphates etc., like EK said.

Are you using RO/DI water to make your salt water? This is very very important to keeping algae at a minimum in a salt tank.
It is hard to trust most stores making RO or saltwater as they infrequently change their RO/DI cartridges.

I use a TDS meter, total dissolved solids, to check the water if I have to get it from a source other than my own RO/DI.

[dblondfemme]

Re: saltwater question

this isn't really a new tank...just a moved tank.  It already had algae and had been set up for more than a year before it's move.

[eklikewhoa]

Re: saltwater question

With the move of the tank you could have killed off a good amount of denitrifying bacteria as well as disturbed the year old sand bed which would have released detritus as well as exposing the anerobic bacteria to oxygen which would have killed it off.

If you recently set up the tank in your house then give it some time.....do a few water changes with good water (RO/DI, Distilled from water mill, etc) and throw in some chemi-pure to speed it up some if you want but you still need to extract the nutrients that are already in there.

Seachem Purigen will help too.