Red slime.

My tank has been up and running since the first week in January. The last month or so I have started getting a lot of red slime algae. I thought it was coralline at first but nope it's red slime. I had a cheap Aquatop skimmer that I replaced on sunday with a reef octopus bh100ss. I also have a HOB filter that I put Cheato in yesterday with a homemade light box on top of the filter. It's a 55 gallon tank with no sump. About 50 lbs of live rock. My ammonia, and nitrites are at zero. My nitrates are between 5 and 10 ppm. Haven't checked my phosphates yet. Don't have a test kit for that but plan on getting one tomorrow. I do a 10% WC every weekend and have always used water from my RO/DI. I was feeding way to much so I have cut back to a half frozen cube every other day. Also cut back on the light times. I have 6 fish. Coral beauty, two clowns, royal gramma, six line wrasse and a valantini puffer. One Sally light foot crab. Put five snails in saturday but the puffer will take those out soon enough. Any ideas what else I can do to help get rid of the red slime ? Sorry for the long post but trying to explain what's in my tank and what I've tried so far.

 

are you running any carbon or phosphate remover like GFO or phosguard? Your improved skimmer will probably help as well. I know people recommend that you manually remove as much as you can and siphon it out when you do a water change. I also know there is a product that I've seen mentioned on here...perhaps others can chime in....

 

I'm not running carbon or anything. I thought about getting some carbon but really dont know where I would put it. I'm hoping the skimmer breaks in pretty quick. I graze the top of the sand when I do my WC. I took a few rocks out and scrubbed them in a bucket of RO water but it's already coming back. I doubt the Cheato has been in long enough to make a difference yet. Thought about getting somes red slime remover but I'm trying to avoid that. Also my fish have done great from day one. No deaths but no corals will open in my tank. So something isn't right somewhere. Not to worried about getting anymore corals yet but do want to get this algae under control. Think next WC I'll scrub all the rocks with a toothbrush.

 

Sound s like your taking the right steps,increasing flow should also help if you can do so.Cyno does not like flow.Red slime is a stage that most new tanks go through,my tank had it at about the four month mark.I dosed microbacter7 and kept up with weekly water changes and it passed in a couple of months.I'm not sure if the microbacter7 was a help or not but it didn't hurt anything.My corals were all fine and water clarity very good.

 

Yeah I think I'm going to just keep doing what I'm doing. Give the new skimmer time to break in and give the Cheato time to start doing what it does. I have two power heads. One 950 and one 750 gph. The HOB filter does around 300 gph. I may need to get another power head. Currently have one on each end of the tank. May need one on the back wall also. Temp runs around 78-79. May need to lower it some.

 

I wouldn't lower the temp....78 is just fine.

 

Would it hurt the live rock if I took it out and scrubbed the red slime off in a bucket of RO water ?

 

Yes, it will kill the beneficial bacteria.
You can use some tank water when you do a wc and scrub it in tank water.

 

Cyano is easy enough to remove manually. Use a siphon tube or something of that sort

 

+1
turkey Baster and siphon tube to suck it out.