[magglite]

Hello everyone,

I am hoping some one can help out and tell me what this stuff is that’s growing in my tank. I have hit it with red slim remover and have done large water changes and nothing seems to really be working.

This is on a 75 gal 3 month old tank. About 70 lbs of live rock and about 3 inches of live sand.
Here are some pictures...

Starting on the Left this picture shows a lot of red and brown this stuff is slim with bubbles and it grows from the rock to the sand.
Next picture shows more of it, but it looks to be attaching the 2 pieces together.
The middle picture shows a nice purple rock with white stuff growing on it. This stuff is discoloring the rock.
The 2nd to last picture shows more red slim.
The last picture shows something in yellow as it could be some type of coral.. Not sure

anyway if anyone can tell me what this stuff is that would be great.. also if it s bad how to get rid of it...

oh one more thing I have these small shrimp looking creatures that hide under my mushroom and move about the rock after dark

[Ninong]

I can't make out any of your pictures but from your description, it sounds like cyanobacteria. Run a search on the board using that word and you will get lots of hits.

The tiny shrimp are probably amphipods -- good guys!

[returnofsid]

I agree, it's Cyanobacteria, which is a bacterial gunk, as apposed to an actual algae. I wouldn't use the red slime remover if it were me. I had this same problem with one of my tanks. I manually removed it whenever I was able to and it just came back. Finally, someone told me that Cyanobacteria loves low flow. Reef tanks usually need moderate to high flow. I added another powerhead and aimed it towards the problem areas. After manually removing it one last time, it never came back. Try increasing or adjusting your flow. The white stuff is something I'm unable to make out in the picture. Could just be where something is inhibiting the growth of coraline algae. In the last picture, you have what looks to be a green algae. Possibly hair algae. Emerald crabs may help...a lot of people don't want crabs of any kind in their tanks though. Do you have any snails yet? Look into a reef "clean up crew." Don't be conned by some who are selling Nassarius or Obsoletus snails as algae eaters though. They aren't. They do a great job of stirring, sifting sand, and consuming detritus but they are also a carnivour and it's not uncommon for them to be a lil' predatory against one another. Do some research into the following snails. Mexican Turbo, Trochus, Astrea and as I mentioned above, Emerald or Mithrax Crabs. These all do a pretty good job of eating algae. Are you using RO/DI water? That's also something I recently started doing and it's helped tremendously.
The lil' shrimp you're seeing are most likely Amphipods, Copepods and Mysid Shrimp. These are all great lil' critters that you want lots of in your tank.
Don't despair, the algae problems you're encountering are something everyone battles now and then, especially with a new tank like yours. Keep up with water changes, using quality water, check out your amount and direction of flow for possible adjustments and look into a clean up crew. You'll get it worked out.

[sihaya]

I agree that you have some cyano... but that second picture from the left looks like sponge too me. It's a little hard to tell though.

[zhenya]

Originally Posted by sihaya

I agree that you have some cyano... but that second picture from the left looks like sponge too me. It's a little hard to tell though.

Yep, looks like a sponge to me as well. First image is definately of the cyanobacteria. Small patches of it is nothing to freak about and some dilligence in manual removal usually helps. I have a patch in my tank that appears and disappears all on its own about once or twice a year. When it rears it's ugly head I just syphon it with turkey baster off the sand and make sure there is no food or detritus building up in that spot. Couple of weeks later it usually subsides and disappears.

[magglite]

Thank you guys for your Help. Sorry about the pictures.

I have currently 2 emarld crabs and a sally light foot, 12 astrea snails and 12 blue leg hurmet crabs, plus a tang they all have plently to eat. lol I have done a 20% water change and sucked all the red slim stuff up off the rocks and some of the bigger patches of the algae. so hopfully this will help it out. im going to do about a 10% water change every week for about a month and hopfully i can get it stable.

I use RO water. I was considering a UV unit. good or bad? or not really needed?

[returnofsid]

UV can be considered good AND bad. For starters, it'll only kill things that are in the water column. It won't kill anything attached to fish, rock, glass or substrate. On the bad side, it'll kill EVERYTHING in the water column...including good things. Most people who use it do so for 2 reasons. They use it as a water polisher and as protection against parasites or other bugs. Problem with using it against bugs is that for a large part of the bugs life cycle, it's not in the water column. It's either in the substrate spawning or attached to the fish. UV will reduce the problem though. For use as a water polisher, UV does a great job of combatting diatom algaes that tend to keep the water from being crystal clear. You can do the same thing with a HOT Magnum filter using the micron filter. The HOT Magnum w/micron filter will also do a great job of filtering out parasites and bugs down to about 1 micron. So, to answer your question...UV are considered great by some, bad by other...but I don't think anyone considers UV absolutely essential.

[magglite]

thanks for the info.

ok i dont know whats going on with this. But, I did a 10% water change and i used RO water and premixed all my salt and made sure salinity was good before adding to tank.

once i added the water. the zenias (sorry about the spelling) shrivaled up and my snails started pushing out of there shells and fell off the glass or what ever they were on.

my fish are fine and i didnt have one emerald crab so far die ( not sure if thats related to the other stuff going on)

can anyone tell me what might be causing this. Also i checked my water for
ph-8.2, nitrites-0, nitrates-0, amonia-0, phos-0. readings are next to the
name.

so im not sure whats going on. I did have a cucumber i havent seen in days.. might have died?? could that be giving off toxins?

can anyone help out?