Red Slime looking Stuff.

Three weeks ago i had a problem where i had a heater in my 29gal BC shorted out. It smoked the fish, made the water smell like burnt hard plastic, an raised the temp to 94. I have removed everything that died all the fish, some how all the inverts made it. 2 emrald crabs, a bunch or blue leg and scarlets, an assortment of snails, a pin urchin and one coral banded shrimp. I have done every other day water changes of 5 Gallons at least. Added a sock full of charcoal carbon in the sump flow. and a sock filled whith phospates remover,
How ever i am having these bloom of red slime algea in my tank. I took a water sample to my LFS and the only thing he seen was a PH that was low of 7.4. Right now as i Write this the paramaters are Nitrate 20 ppm, Nitrites 0, ALkalinity 300 ppm and Ph of 7.4. The guy at the LFS was not real sure what it was growing in my tank but since i have had mass deaths in the tank he though it might be a Bacteria, (forgive me but i can not even start to spell the name he told me.) Told me to remove as much as possible, and do water changes. well today i removed all the rocks except the ones that my feather duster is stuck to and the one the urchin is wedged in an cleaned the tank. i scrubbed the rockes with a tooth brush an rinsed with warm fresh water. I still have them removed in a black trash bag with some clean salt water in to keep moist. Then i clean the 2 rocks in the tank an used my substrate cleaner to clean sand of any of the red slime stuff. I filtered the water through 2 filter socks an also poured through my filter in sump. I did this as best as i could would say i have removed 85 % of the stuff. Was wondering if there was any other things i could do or if there was any inverts that will eat the stuff. I have noticed emerald crabs an hermits eating but not sure if they are eating the red slime or the actually good algea growing on the rocks.

 

Cyano is most likely what you have, it is a bacterium. You will need to get your pH up. Increase your circulation through out the tank. And continue to work on the results of the previous problem.

 

+1 cyano

 

Thanks for your advise. I have moved my koralia 2 down lower in the tank so it is circulating the water over the sand more. This is leaving the rest of the Bacteria in once corner behind the rocks That i have suctioned out since i have seen it accumulating. I will keep on doing this as much as possible. I have added a PH increasser trying to get my Ph raised, and have reduced my lights to about 5 hours of attinic and out of them 5 hours 3 of them are the day light bubls. Will this affect my corals, I have a Hammer that has four branches and a Frog spawn and a zoos button. Now my zoos have all been closed for a week or so have they gone into a dormant state or are they dead? They have not lost any color. They look just like they did when they would close at night. still the same grayish blue color. Thanks for any advise. Any think that will eat this stuff also?

 

I agree. More than likely it's cyanobacteria.

 

Ok i have read up on it an it is Cyanobacterium. Now short of any of the things i am doing now that will help. Any Inverts that will help eat it.

 

Cutting back your light cycle will bother your corals. Do it slowly and in small increments, .5 to 1 hour, then cut back again in a week. The zoos may not come out until your pH is recovered.
Many snails like astraea, cerith and trochus species will eat it.

 

Ok thanks once again. I have also noticed with all the frequent water changes the frog spawn and hammer have not been coming out fully. After removing all the rocks i am down to 2 cerith snails 1 large turbo, 2 small turbo 3 astrea and 3 margarita snails. I will Make a trip to the LFS an get more snails. maybe another emerald I have only found one out of the 2 an they are small any ways the size of the dime.

 

Emeralds will eat just about any nuisance algae when small.