What causes red slime?

I am still battling red slime. I recently took a lot of my rocks and cleaned them. I cleaned the slime off my substrate and off the back glass. It's been three days now and this morning I woke up to find red slime spots on my cruched coral and LR. I am doing a water change tomorow and will suck the slime out. But what keeps it comming back? I will test my water tomorow also. As of monday my water tested fine. My nitrates were at 20ppm, but that was it. I can keep getting rid of it, but I want to stop it at the source.

Thanks for the help.

 

Usually more flow and lower nitrates. You can use Chemi-Clean red slime remover.

 

Nitrates, low flow, silicates, and phosphates all feed cyanobacteria.

 

4phish

I recently had a outbreak in my 60 - I added another wave maker 3000 lhp and a sachet of Purigen into my filter
red slime gone within 2 weeks and the fish are wearing shades, Haiwian shirts and carrying surf boards - wow its like totally gnarly dude

Steve

 

I am battling cyano now as well.

I added flow to my tank to make it around 20x turn over, and even pointed the added 850 gph K3 at the areas with the cyano. It seems to be coming back regardless of the flow.

I have no nitrates, the sand is 100% aragonite, so no silicates, and I have no phosphates either.

I have been told that low PH will enable cyano, as well as low alk. I have had the tank at 8.2 since day 1, but ca and alk were a bit low until I started to dose to get my calcium reactor locked in. Alk was as low as 8.xx before doing alk and the Ca was like 380, prior to adding turbo calcium as well. Now the alk is like 10 dkh, and the ca is like 410-420. Also the rocks are all old established LR, and the sand was all new , minus a little existing LS from my 90g I transferred to the new tank.

I will be buying some chemi clean tomorrow, but keep in mind that chemi clean will get rid of red slime, but if the root is not taken care of, it will come back. I think I have eliminated the source of the cyano bloom, but I won't know for certain until it does not come back. I know this is more of a time issue and it will go away on its own, but I hate the way it looks, and want it gone now.

 

put down the rum steve.

 

your nitrate levels and phosphate levels mite look good but they may not be....the red slim feeds off the nitrate and phosphate as its produced so you may never see it but it still is there....try a phosphate pad in your filter, it may help....i had the **** for the first year of my tank.....some tanks just take longer and yeah the chemiclean works, gets it to go away completly for about a couple of days.....Good luck

 

Thaks for all of the replies. Some real good tips.

 

Silicates can come from many sources. Food, water source, etc. Also just because you are testing zero for phosphates and nitrates does not mean they are not present when you're having a bad algae outbreak. The algae can use it up faster than you can test for, giving you a false negative. If you truely had no phosphates or nitrates, there would be no way cyano could develop Just something to keep in mind.