Clean Up Crew

[nickys609]

HI! I am looking for a clean up crew that would be good for taking care of "slime" on the substrate. It is greenish black in color. The gentleman at fish store said that he believes the slime is red bacteria? And said that we can adjust the lights and siphon it out and there is a chemical treatment we can do if we wish as last resort. Siphoning hasn't been working great because we have sand substrate and we are getting a lot of the sand and little slime. We would prefer to get rid of it naturally. All our numbers are good except the calcium and alkalinity are a little low. (we are slowly dosing that up). We have a cluster of zoas, another stony coral that has soft stalks with green fringe on each stalk (I can't remember the name), 2 blue damsels, a yellow tang, 2 clowns, an arrow crab, 4 hermit crabs, 2 turbo snails, and a cleaner shrimp. Oh and we have a hitchhiking bivalve in our zoas. Any suggestions on what we can do would be greatly appreciated.

 

[maleks.reef]

HI! I am looking for a clean up crew that would be good for taking care of "slime" on the substrate. It is greenish black in color. The gentleman at fish store said that he believes the slime is red bacteria? And said that we can adjust the lights and siphon it out and there is a chemical treatment we can do if we wish as last resort. Siphoning hasn't been working great because we have sand substrate and we are getting a lot of the sand and little slime. We would prefer to get rid of it naturally. All our numbers are good except the calcium and alkalinity are a little low. (we are slowly dosing that up). We have a cluster of zoas, another stony coral that has soft stalks with green fringe on each stalk (I can't remember the name), 2 blue damsels, a yellow tang, 2 clowns, an arrow crab, 4 hermit crabs, 2 turbo snails, and a cleaner shrimp. Oh and we have a hitchhiking bivalve in our zoas. Any suggestions on what we can do would be greatly appreciated.

Nassarius snails and a sand sifting starfish (if you have space for it), both will keep stirring the sand slowly and eating what they find in it.

 

[bnord]

pictures with white light would help but sounds like Cyanobacteria - which is a common occurrence in the transition to stability in a tank - most off us have been through it. Look at pictures on the web to see if that makes sense

There are no reliable CUC members that will eat it,, but some cucumbers/conchs etc that stir up the sand will help. - but these need to eat stuff in the sand so hope the tank is mature

Indeed siphoning can and does help, get e Pyton type tube and control the flow to leave the sand .

More flow helps as well. see if it accumulates in the eddies in your tank

Last resort is not a real last resort, as Chemiclean will do the trick and most who have used it have not suffered in the mid to long term - me included

Best of luck

 

[ying yang]

Yeah nassarious snails and a conch or 2 to keep that sand stirred depending on the size.
If it is cyano,I read it likes low flow so upping the flow may help also

Edit:depending on size,I meant to say depending on size of tank.
Always do research before adding anything to tank

 

[dwest]

It sounds to me like you have someone that knows what they are talking about at your fish store. That’s great!

You had good responses already. But be careful with sand dwellers as I have no idea how large your tank is.

I personally would suck it out, and add more flow if possible. I have been reefing for a long time and never had a tank completely devoid of cyano. I also would not add chemicals to try to remove it.

 

[nickys609]

Here are a couple of pics. We have a 32 gallon. You can see where i have done the siphoning yesterday in the 2nd pic (the right side of the tank) it was covered.

Yes, the guy at the fish store has been a great guide through everything. He's very knowledgeable and you can tell he is very passionate about what he does.