Red Algae Taking Over

J

jbhumphreys

Guest
Recently I have had a lot of Red Algae growth in my tank. It's getting thick on several peices of dead coral, and some spots have bubbles in them. Looks kind of like red slime. Is that bad? Everything else seems to be perfect in the tank. Is there anything I can get that would help eat the red algae? My shrimp and snails don't seem to eat any of it.
 
I'm going through this as we type. It's from a number of things: lighting, overfeeding, lack of water movement, even poor water conditions.
Give more info on your set-up and let us know how your tank is doing in the areas just mentioned and we will get you through this.
 
J

jbhumphreys

Guest
My tank is a 55 gallon. Substrate is Crushed Coral. Wet/Dry filter. There are currently 1 cleaner shrimp, 3 pepermint shrimp, 1 anenome, and some snails in the tank. 11 pounds of live rock. Water quality is good, with Amonia at 0, nitrites o, and trates at 0. I moved all of my fish out of the tank a few weeks ago into my quarantine tank. My Hipo tank came down with ich so I decided to treat all the fish with hyposalinity for 1 month. I recently replaced my 2, 15 watt lights with 2, 32 watts lights.
After doing some searching I found that the Red Slime is probably from to much phosphates in the water. Also found information on a Red Slime Killer chemical that you can buy at the store. Anyone used any of these before. I recently added about 5 gallons of tap water and removed 5 gallons of salt water to lower my salinity. It was creeping up. Could have to many phosphates in my tap water. Could also be from poor water movement. Probably should add power head to increase water movement in the lower part of the tank. Right now the Wet/Dry return in pointed at the surface area to move that water.
 
I'm going to test my water for the phosphate(sp) reading. Your cc my be the problem. You know it traps uneaten food. Most people perfer dsb. I have a dsb, but I like the cc look much better and you should vacum it constently. I guess you do since your water perameters are perfect. My nitrates are at 140 and I'm always changing my water, I just can't get it down. Any suggestions? It's mainly high because of my 8 inch Mappa Puffer. I'm thinking of trading him in.
 
J

jbhumphreys

Guest
I have shrimp in my tank that do a great job of finding any food that hits the bottom. Also have lots of snails and an Urchine.
That puffer probably does contribute a lot of waste. What type of filter do you have? I have a Wet/Dry with a built in protein skimmer. I don't think the protein skimmer really works though. Have yet to see it collect anything in its cup. I am also up to about 20 pounds of live rock, which I have been adding very slowly. My crushed Coral bottom is very thin, maybe half inch to an inch. I want to switch it out for sand, but when I went to my local fish store they told me I only wanted to have an inch of sand at the most in the bottom. When I told them I wanted a 4 inch DSB they said it would be nothing but trouble to maintain. So now I am debating CC vs. sand.
 
J

jbhumphreys

Guest
Forgot to mention I washed all the red slime off my rocks and corals and then added this stuff called Chemi-Clean that is supposed to kill all the Red Slime Algae. Will update you on if it works or not. Put it in yesterday and it does seem to be working.
 

dueces

Member
I am having the same problem. Did Chemi-Clean work for you. Are you also get alot of green algea?
 

tang-go

New Member
Hello everyone, am curious about the red algae, (I too am new to this hobby), is that what is on the glass of my tank...is red, circular, some are tiny red circles, others are larger...I have tried to scrape them off, but they are like cement. The only thing scrapping seems to do is make them a lighter red.
 
Top