Red Slime

Hey John, I have been fighting a fairly annoying cyano outbreak for about a month now in my 55g reef. I have done the following to fight it over the past few weeks:

- began rinsing frozen food in RO/DI water
- cut back feeding to every other day
- upped my WC from 5g to 10g per week
- have been running Chemi Pure Elite in my reactor
- siphoned and picked out any cyano I could every day
- thinned out my fish to lower bio-load
- thoroughly cleaned my skimmer and koralias of any gunk
- upgraded my circulation & adjusted flow in the tank
- slowly cut my light cycle back from 10hrs to 7hrs

I have finally seen a break in the cyano just yesterday. I believe mine was linked to the NA in my tank. I was a bit overstocked so my NA would hang between 10-20ppm with normal WC. I got some good pointers on here, that even though I was reading maybe 10ppm, the cyano was most likely feeding off part of the NA that wasn''t registering in my test. So, my NA was most likely 20+. After thinning out my stock and taking the measures above, I think I'm finally going to beat it.

I did buy some Boyd's ChemiClean but was hesitant to dose. Being able to know I can beat it naturally helps me feel more confident it won't return.

best of luck, it's a pain, but it does get better!

 

Thanks MoJoe. Thanks to everyone who responded to my plight. Because of the forum, I'm now much better armed with info/advise and ready to fight the good fight.