Pleasantly Surprised

I hate to disagree but i doubt that... the bacteria that are consumed actually do not come into contact with the internals of the body. the digestive tract is considered the "exterior" of the body still until a food (nutrient) permeates through the intestine. There is no way that a living bacteria can permeate through the intestine. Additionally, some animals such as cows and other plant grazers, get no energy from the plant matter they eat... instead they get all their energy from the methane producing bacteria that degrade the plant matter inside of their stomach, lumen, and intestines. As the bacteria die, the intestine absorbs the essential amino acids form the bacteria, not the plants. similarly to fish, the bacteria consumed will not infect a fish. the only way to infect a fish is to penetrate its outer mucosal film and then the skin to be introduced to the blood stream. Just spreading some interesting knowledge so everyone can say they learned something today

 

Whew, I got so worried after I read about their fox dying. I actually got a stomach ache worrying all day at work about how the whole time I was there my new fish was eating itself to death. I'm relieved and smarter after reading that

I may try chemi-clean in a few weeks if I can't get this stuff under control cause it's ugly.

K+ for the information

 

so when humans get bacterial food poisoning it is a intestinal tract or linked in part infection? sorry to go off topic, but that is cool, I thought it spread through the whole body and all that...intestinal defense?

 

OK back to your Cyano – a few things have been mentioned on this thread so I would like to pull it all together and review the causes and solutions to your problem.

Lighting, degraded lighting spectrum gives rise to all sorts of algae and cyano (this is assuming you have a correct spectrum to begin with.

Excess nutrients – NO3, PO4 and DOC are the main contributors to red slime. The immediate fix would be a phosphate sponge, nitrate sponge, skimmer and performing water changes and do not over feed. To avoid you should use RO/DI for your make up water and quality salt mix.

CO2 build up – caused by low flow and poor oxygen exchange. Carbon Dioxide builds up and fuels the growth of all sorts of unwanted growth.

Now with that in mind NinjaBum – your efforts of manually removing the cyano is in my opinion doing more harm than good. Absent of aggressively resolving the underlying issue(s) I would leave the cyano alone as its basically resolving the issue for you naturally. In essence you have an unsightly refugium inside your display tank. If you remove the cyano your tank will get an increase in the cause which will negatively impact your corals and fish. Lets assume you have excessive nitrates, your Cyano is munching daily and if you test they are relatively low – now lets assume you do nothing to resolve the nitrates and you weed out the cyano…your nitrates are going to climb and cause poor water quality for your fish. Of course doing nothing is a horrible idea, so please don't consider it.

I would suggest removing it manually if you are concurrently attempting to resolve the issue at the root.

BTW – the reason you should manually remove the Cyano when aggressively attempting to resolve the issue is to avoid the effect of the die off, oxygen depletion.