[MatthewR]

Hello, I have had my tank running for over 3 months now and with in the last 2 weeks, I am getting what appears to be red hair algae? It is acuatlly really dark, almost purple in color. It is on my crush coral bed, and forms long stringy strans that sway in the water. My clown fish love it, they acuatlly keep trying to host with it. I have tried turning off my MH for a few days while keeping on the blue lights. This didn't help any. I will be cuting back on there food. to once every other day. Should I turn off all the lights for a few days? My hermit and snails don't touch the stuff at all. I tried to pick up most of the coral that it was on, and it only covered the parts that I stirred up the next day. My water Parms. are all within the same that they always are. I do use tap water with prime, and hopefully going to get a Ro unit very soon. Is there anything else that I can do to stop this, and make sure that it doesn't happen again, or to make it go away faster?

[bri74]

not sure. I got the same problem on a year old tank but with LS

[cokipoint]

I also have the same problem. I have what appears to be red hair algae on one rock in the center of my 150 gallon tank. My tank is 4 months old.

[jimw369]

wrong post.

[MatthewR]

ok, I tired turning off my lights for a couple of days, and feed them every other day and about half of what I normally do. The algae looked like it was dieing off. Which is a good thing. So I started to bring the lights on longer. Still not feeding as much. I moved the rocks around, trying to get them in better position for flow and looks a few days ago, which went pretty well. But now where the algea was dieing off, it bloomed back up again. I was wondering if PRIME goes bad. The one I am using is from someone else. And it smells so bad, that when I use it, I have to put the top back on ASAP. I know I shouldn't be using tap water, but it has a filter on it, and I low on cash right now. I am planning on getting a RO/DI unit next month. It is my number one thing. Any suggestions????

[bri74]

I use a mightymite ro with di added I tried to find a link but cant. Its super small and portable I only hook it up to the sink when needed. They had an store on ebay The compay is called air,water,and ice,inc

[das04j]

sounds like cyanobacteria aka red slime. Are you using tap water? what are the phosphates and nitrates. Scrap and syphon as mush as you can. Adjust your powerheads for adequate flow, stop using tap water if that is the case, dont over feed. Try those things and see if that helps.

[MatthewR]

ok my phosates are between 0.0 and 0.25. My nitrates are between 5-10. I have adjusted the water flow alittle more, and still cut back on there feeding. I will try this for a few days and see where it goes from there.

[MatthewR]

Ok, My water Parms. are pretty good. The nitrates are from 5-10 and the phostates are between 0-0.25. I probably need to get more waterflow, so I am going to pick up a Hydor 2 today and put that in the tank. I have only a 75 Gal. tank, so I think a level 3 whould be too much, as I will be putting 2 of them in. I can't get a ro/di unit yet, probably when I get that extra money from uncle sam, I should be able to get it. I hope that will work. It really makes my tank look like crap.

[das04j]

Ufortunately you will continue to get red slime if you are using tap water. The slime is keeping your phosphates low as well as the nitrates becuase that is what they are consuming. Once you scrape the glass and rocks and clean as much out as possible then take a measurment about 6 hours later or during the next photo period to see where they measure up. If parameters are higher then your prior reading than this is the case. You may want to consider a phosphate reactor (around 40 bucks) or by the very least a ferric oxide media (i use pura phoslock).

[teriyakithunder]

Originally Posted by MatthewR

Ok, My water Parms. are pretty good. The nitrates are from 5-10 and the phostates are between 0-0.25. I probably need to get more waterflow, so I am going to pick up a Hydor 2 today and put that in the tank. I have only a 75 Gal. tank, so I think a level 3 whould be too much, as I will be putting 2 of them in. I can't get a ro/di unit yet, probably when I get that extra money from uncle sam, I should be able to get it. I hope that will work. It really makes my tank look like crap.

I currently use tap water and a few years ago i had a real bad outbreak of the red slime algae so i bought a filter with a UV light inside it and now i barely get red algae at all. the uv light kills the micro organisms that produce the red algae. i'm going to start to use filtered water so hopefully my algae problems will go away.