3 year old reef reset = red slime?

[dennis210]

I recently reset my 210 to make room for more coral placements. I removed all corals and rocks. Got rid of problem occpants. Sold ortraded most all softies that had sweepers. Tank now zoas & palys, sps, lps, with a few mushrooms. Lots more room for placements. Now however really fighting red slime problem. Are the powders and other chemicals for control of red slime really reef safe? Way to much $ tied up to loose tank. Let me know if you have used red slime control chemicals - thanks in advance. Dennis

 

[fatboyjoe]

I know how you feel. I had a perfect tank for 4 years, not one problem. then I decided to change out half of my sand bed for a more coarse grade of sand. that was months ago and I have had all sorts of algea problems since. hair,cyano and diatoms. there's a lot of nasties lurking in old sand beds. I used turbo snails for the hair algea and chemi clean for the cyano. I dosed the chemi clean full strenght, two treatment in a row. I had no problems at all with corals or fish.

 

[dennis210]

Thanks Joe, your answer was what I was looking for - someone has done it and used what I was thinking about. Will go buy the chemiclean tomorrow when LFS opens. Thanks again!

 

[paintballer768]

Chemi-clean will only treat the symptoms, and ya gotta follow up on the water changes it says. I recommend using chemiclean and still tryign to treat the source.

 

[dennis210]

The only source I see was stirring up the old sand bed. Flow amounts the same, all live rock back in tank, flow patterns probably changed but cyano growing on everything. Gonna try the chemiclean today, will follow with waterchanges. This isn't even close to my first rodeo, but I have never gotten or seen cyano this bad. Blow it all away , bubbles reform, next day redslime!

 

[fattony]

The source of the problem is Phosphates in you sandbed. Even though you may not be able to test and get a reading for them, you definitely do. Any form of Cyano or Algae is caused by one source, Phosphates. Improve flow a bit and vaccum the sandbed to get rid of the Cyano. Frequent large waterchanges will make it disappear over time. It takes a while and some dedication, but you can erradicate it without chemicals (besides they are just treating the results of the problem not the eproblem itself)