brown stringy cobweb slime

[bigronbo]

I just started getting this about a week and a half ago. It is a brown stringy cobweb cooling stuff getting all over everything. why isn't my skimmer pulling it out and what secreets it or causes it? never had it befor. i blow it off with the baster and net what i can but more comes. any ideas?

[Troylee]

Dinoflaggets "spellIng" there a pain man... If it gets out of hand you will need to black the tank out for a couple days with a blanket and no lights..... Do a google search it could help ya more than I can lol....
I had them one time and I did nothing about it and it took months for them to go away...
They supposevely arise from silicates..... Hth

[bigronbo]

what will a blackout do the the rest of the stuff in my tank?

[Troylee]

Brown it out in a worst case.... I would try getting a silicate filter for your rodi unit and do some water changes first...

[bigronbo]

i blew it down and sucked it out with a 20% waterchange 12 gallon change in a 55. I get my water at wal- mart ATM from culligan. Havent beed able to afford a RO-DI yet. I have a lot of tds but just gave the tank a dose of vodka after the waterchange.
do you think it can be from the liquid plankton food?
I'll do another 10-15 gallon change with another blowdown.
any other additives or something to kill it or someone to eat it?

[Troylee]

Stop feeding the corals and cut back on feeding the fish... Less nutrients the better untill it burns out....
Vodka will fuel the problem so stay away from that.... If you wanna dose some thing try mb7 "microbacter7" it will increase the good population of nitrifying bacteria and help the situation...

[bigronbo]

thanks

[reefkeeper01]

Look-up http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-11/rhf/index.php, it can be a bit too detailed but it gives you a detailed understanding. In addition, to the treatment suggested above, increasing the PH, getting a micro filter and switching your water source. When i did not have an RO I purchased water and encountered a problem as well. Changing providers fixed that problem until I got my RO.

Good luck.

[RickMartin]

It all comes back to water quality. And getting a good start is very important. I mean buying a RO/DI unit and staying on top of the DI resin. New reefkeepers have no problem spending 100 or more on a coral and yet wont spend the money to provide those expensive corals with a good RO/DI set up. What you want to start with is ultra pure water and you simply can't get that from machines in parking lots.

The second problem is feeding your corals. Stop. Corals will do much better not being fed, than they will in a system that is being over fed, even if its just barely over fed. And those liquid foods are the worst for polluting your system. Most if not all photosynthetic corals will do fine, even thrive without being fed.