Red Slime Algea is starting to take over my sandbed

[tjkohler]

I've reduced my feedings dramatically (once a week now) and I've been sucking up the red slime. It seems to come back stronger after I suck it all up. I thought I would be removing nutrients by removing the stuff. What else, non chemically, should/could I be doing?

 

[diceman]

I went out and bought some Mexican Turbo Snails from this site. I had the same problem as you and after I got them in no time the slime was gone and my tank is clean now. My opinion they are the best in getting rid of red slime without using chemicals.

 

[tjkohler]

Hmmm, I have turbo snails in there right now. What's the difference between 'regular?' Turbos and Mexican (besides the tequilia)?

 

[simm]

All I have ever used was CHEMI-CLEAN. Works great. But you said nothing chemicaly so as Dice said snails work.

 

[diceman]

Best way I could tell you is the Atlantic turbo/Astrea is small and does most of its eating at night. Lets say it is a push type lawnmower. The Mexican Turbo or Trochus is a huge snail that is always moving. Lets say it the John Deer of snails in high gear. That's the best I can come up with. I have both in mine and if you buy some from this site you will see the BIG difference between the 2 snails.

 

[iechy]

I was nervous to add any chemicals too but I added chemi-clean two days ago anf it is gone and everyone else seems happy. I didn't want to try it but it was taking over. I'm keeping my fingers crossed

 

[tusken]

Are you skimming? Doing water changes?
My turbos never touch the small patch of red slime in my tank.
Feeding once a week is cruel IMO.

 

[pyro383]

If you have plenty of live rock that help hide critters and such, then pick up a horseshoe crab. I had a red slime problem also. I need to feed heavy for the boxfish, added more ph's fow water movement which helped abit. After I added the horseshoe crabs the bulldoze the sand nicely. I have a deepsand bed that consists of fine sand layer on the bottom 2" and live sand as the top 2". They only stir the top 2" so my critters are still in the sand. Also speaking to a few people, it seems that horseshoe crabs eat detrious and don't really seek the critter and even if the did, they can't get to them that is in the rockwork

 

[coorsxman]

i had the same pro also i got turbo snails they took care of it with in weeks also i stired up my sand alittle

 

[q]

Try this:
1) Reduce the time your lights are on.
2) Change out your water. It deosn't have to be one huge change just get a fair bit out over a period of a week or two.
3) I have noticed that no matter how much water flow you can have stuff always gets trapped somewhere. I had dino and the way I finally kicked it was to blow off my rocks and gently try to stir up the sand in caves and/or crevaces ( don't shoot a hole in your sand bed) with a turkey baster.
4) Make sure your bulbs are not old.
5) If you have a sump you may want to clean it out also just incase.
Hope it helps

 

[coorsxman]

turkey blaster hehe...i also use the powerheads to blasted the rocks ...

 

[zack schwartz]

hey to u people who use chem clean what does it to. Is it suppose to be harm ful???

 

[jonthefb]

i too have used chemi-clean with great success. it is specifically designed to target cyanobacteria and remove it from a tank. i dont know how it does it, but it works, as long as you follow the instructions. it is not harmful to fish or corals, and as i said i have had great luck using it as a prophylactic.
i have also had great luck with cerith snails attacking redslime algae. they cant tackle the large turf algae, but definately do a number on the micros, including cyano. maybe try some of these guys, and reduce your light cycle, and increase circulation (kinda hard in a 10 though, i know)
good luck, and keep us posted
jon

 

[n2deep]

Are snails OK to have with Puffers and triggers? or will they eat them?

 

[zack schwartz]

Most likly they will eat them u may try one or two but most likly well eat them,

 

[reef fool]

try ROWAphos. It brought my phosphates down from +.025 to 0 in 6 hours! and has kept them there for 2 days now! Red Slime is history. No phosphates-no slime! No side affects to my corals or fish!!!

 

[rsd]

I too fought red slime for a while. Chemi clean will get rid of it short term, but doesn't solve the problem. My situation was brought on by hi phos. and high cilicates. Used phos-gaurd while changing water out for RO/DI water and have never seen slime or hair algea again.
Good luck.

 

[surfnturf]

I have read information that pointed to a possibility of improper lighting contributing to cyanobacteria. It seems that cyano prefers a spectrum of light different than optimum for things like corraline. I had been using 9325K GE AquaRays (spectrum peaked at 545nm which is perfect for Cyano) and within 2 weeks of switching to a Coral Line 10,000K it vanished. I didn't do any major water changes during that time, just enough to keep the nitrates in check, with tap water, not ro/di (FOWLR Tank). I've never seen any of it come back running the 10,000K lights. Just a thought, really it's a combination of things, but if everything else fails to work, check your lights, they may be of the wrong Kelvin or reached their end of life (flourescent lights shift in spectrum over time, they still produce adequate light, just the wrong spectrum). Also, when you buy lights, check the LFS and look at the package, many of them have a graph that shows the peaks in the spectrum of the lamp (one for each phosphor I guess) and make sure that none of the peaks are around 545 nm.