rob johnson
New Member
Ok guys, I have read every post on Red Slime on this board and I want to try to get an answer thats specific to my tank if I could. I have asked every fish store in town and I get all different answers... I'm gonna try to be a detailed as possible for you.
I have a 175 gallon tank that has been setup now for about 6 months. Fish include: 1 tomato clown, 2 domino damsels, 2 three stripe damsels, 5 clarkies, zebra eel, banded eel, yellow tang, blue tang, niger trigger, royal gramma and and small psuedo. No fish is over 3" in size. no live coral, all dead. We started out with the included lighted system (4 minis, 2 blue, 2 clear).
the normal brown algea comes and goes and brushes off easily like dust.
Tank also has a large RedSea skimmer.
We changed the lights to 2 6' VHO bulbs, not to imply or push anyone to saying that our light change has caused this, its just thats when we started to get this dark redish carpet like, even stringy airbubble trapping algea. And only seems to grow where the light hits the corals.. they are completely clean on their undersides.
The guy that helps us keep the tank says its just harmless natural algea. He also mentioned that different lights brings different algea. I described this to a fish store owner yesterday and she totally discarded the "light change" theory that I was explaining to her... She said its red slime algea and sold me some Chemi Clean and said it would be gone in 48 hours.
Well it has been 24 hours and it just looks stringier...
Its not like this stuff it taking over the tank... its mostly near the top, the closer to the lights, the more there is and the heavier it is... It comes off fairly easy if i pop the bubbles trapped inside... even revealing perfectly clean coral underneath the blanket of dark red brown.
I just want to be sure that I identify it correctly and do the right thing... my salt and nitrate levels are seem fine.
Is this Red Slime? or just something else?
And whatever is it seems to grow quickly, we do coral changes and it starts appearing within a week or even days... I see other salt water tanks that have the same coral and rock in them for long periods of time with little or no algea growth...
Just need some good advice..
Thank you
I have a 175 gallon tank that has been setup now for about 6 months. Fish include: 1 tomato clown, 2 domino damsels, 2 three stripe damsels, 5 clarkies, zebra eel, banded eel, yellow tang, blue tang, niger trigger, royal gramma and and small psuedo. No fish is over 3" in size. no live coral, all dead. We started out with the included lighted system (4 minis, 2 blue, 2 clear).
the normal brown algea comes and goes and brushes off easily like dust.
Tank also has a large RedSea skimmer.
We changed the lights to 2 6' VHO bulbs, not to imply or push anyone to saying that our light change has caused this, its just thats when we started to get this dark redish carpet like, even stringy airbubble trapping algea. And only seems to grow where the light hits the corals.. they are completely clean on their undersides.
The guy that helps us keep the tank says its just harmless natural algea. He also mentioned that different lights brings different algea. I described this to a fish store owner yesterday and she totally discarded the "light change" theory that I was explaining to her... She said its red slime algea and sold me some Chemi Clean and said it would be gone in 48 hours.
Well it has been 24 hours and it just looks stringier...
Its not like this stuff it taking over the tank... its mostly near the top, the closer to the lights, the more there is and the heavier it is... It comes off fairly easy if i pop the bubbles trapped inside... even revealing perfectly clean coral underneath the blanket of dark red brown.
I just want to be sure that I identify it correctly and do the right thing... my salt and nitrate levels are seem fine.
Is this Red Slime? or just something else?
And whatever is it seems to grow quickly, we do coral changes and it starts appearing within a week or even days... I see other salt water tanks that have the same coral and rock in them for long periods of time with little or no algea growth...
Just need some good advice..
Thank you
