Chemi-Clean

Red slime remover called chemi-clean says that after I do this in the tank I need to wait 48 hours and then do a 20% water cchange....Just for shear knowledge what happens if I skip the water change? Is it mandatory or just standard procedure?

 

all the nutrients that were in the bacteria, were freed when the bacteria disolves. probably giving you a parameter spike and causing a algae bloom.
i would do more then a 20% wc. theres a reason you have the bacteria problem in the first place.

 

The reason I have it is because I was new to the game and got a cheesy lfs that sold me a rock with what he said was coralline but was really cyano. I have had cyano since my diatom bloom in the cycle....I got it under my thumb once but my substrate and rocks leached phosphates so its back again....

 

You probably would have gotten cyno anyways, most people at some time do. I currently am battling a small outbreak. It probably means there is an underlying problem, too much feeding, light, old bulbs, not enough flow. However, if your tank just cycled, it can be part of a normal algae bloom. Using chemicals is a last ditch effort. It will help for the immediate time, but it will be back if you don't find the source.

 

Lights are always under rated as being a problem. lights are good for hours, so if you run them more often then they need replaced a little sooner than you think.

 

The thing with cyano is that it is a question of when you get it, not if you get it. When a tank gets old, you get old tank syndrome and it will happen. When a tank is new, you probably will get it. Chemi clean, Red slime remover, etc are all band-aid fixes, the problem will come back unless you find the real problem. When you use chemicals to fix the problem, if you don't get rid of ALL of it, meaning spores and lingering cells, what you will end up with is a mutated and extremely resistant strain to the medication you added the first time. Kill its food source and it will die naturally. If you don't have light sensitive coral, try killing the light for a couple days to see if it helps. If not, it may be in your water or fish food. One thing to keep in mind is that *everything* contains phosphates (yup, even our $80 buckets of Tropic Marin Reef salts has it), we just have to minimize it as much as we can.