Jon Lazar May 12, 2006 Share May 12, 2006 I'm posting to warn others of the possible result of dosing Ultralife Red Slime Remover, especially if you have red flatworms. As background, I had a mild cyano problem in my tank and wanted to eliminate it. I vacuum the stuff up, I've reducing feeding and increased water flow, and I do weekly changes with RO/DI water only and have a 55g refugium full of chaeto. My system is a 125g dispplay with a 55g refugium and 40 g sump, and my bioload consists of a purple tang, two oscellaris clowns, and 4 green chromis...not what I would consider a heavy bioburden. I'm not big on chemical treatments, and I realize red slime is a symptom, but I wanted to attack the problem on multiple fronts simultaneously. I researched Ultralife Red Slime Remover online and it looked like people have had good results with it, so I decided to give it a try. I estimated how many gallons of water I have in my system, and added the recommended number of scoops per the directions. That was Saturday morning. Sunday morning I looked at the tank and realized something was very wrong. Every coral was completely retracted and looked very unhappy, and the water was way too cloudy. I closed the valves to isolate the refugium and did a 50g water change on the display tank and started running carbon. By late afternoon I had made another can of RO/DI and did a 30g water change on the refugium and reconnected the two systems. I knew I was likely to lose some corals, but it was worse than I thought. I lost two gorgeous 5" blue crocea clams and every acropora in my tank. A bunch of beautiful corals I got from Tri Bui's tank are dead: blue oregon tort, a Steve Tyree purple-tip table, and a tan acro with green polyps (hispida?). Those of you who have been to Don's know how nice those corals look. I also lost a colony of green bali slimer and red pocillopora, a generic purple tipped acro, and a deep purple acro tenuis colony. I have several monti caps, and while all the colonies survived they each lost large portions of tissue. The monti digitada was also affected, losing a lot of tips. I have a large bright orange monti digi colony that lost about half it's tissue. By now the tank chemistry has settled down and the LPS and soft corals look about normal. One thing that I did notice is that I haven't seen a red flatworm anywhere, and I used to have a significant population. So I suspect that the Red Slime Remover killed the flatworms, whose toxins then killed the corals. I don't know this for certain, but I think it's worthwhile to post and warn other to be cautious. Happy reefing, Jon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gadgets May 12, 2006 Share May 12, 2006 Jon I am so sorry to hear that. If you are in the DC area you are welcome to some free frags. Shoot me a PM when u are ready to come by. Hope everything works out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dzekunoi May 12, 2006 Share May 12, 2006 Sad story! Hope everything is under control now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eve May 12, 2006 Share May 12, 2006 Jon - sorry to hear this - consider an "informal" tank tour to Gaithersburg and get some nice frags :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ominojacu May 12, 2006 Share May 12, 2006 I'm posting to warn others of the possible result of dosing Ultralife Red Slime Remover, especially if you have red flatworms. As background, I had a mild cyano problem in my tank and wanted to eliminate it. I vacuum the stuff up, I've reducing feeding and increased water flow, and I do weekly changes with RO/DI water only and have a 55g refugium full of chaeto. My system is a 125g dispplay with a 55g refugium and 40 g sump, and my bioload consists of a purple tang, two oscellaris clowns, and 4 green chromis...not what I would consider a heavy bioburden. I'm not big on chemical treatments, and I realize red slime is a symptom, but I wanted to attack the problem on multiple fronts simultaneously. I researched Ultralife Red Slime Remover online and it looked like people have had good results with it, so I decided to give it a try. I estimated how many gallons of water I have in my system, and added the recommended number of scoops per the directions. That was Saturday morning. Sunday morning I looked at the tank and realized something was very wrong. Every coral was completely retracted and looked very unhappy, and the water was way too cloudy. I closed the valves to isolate the refugium and did a 50g water change on the display tank and started running carbon. By late afternoon I had made another can of RO/DI and did a 30g water change on the refugium and reconnected the two systems. I knew I was likely to lose some corals, but it was worse than I thought. I lost two gorgeous 5" blue crocea clams and every acropora in my tank. A bunch of beautiful corals I got from Tri Bui's tank are dead: blue oregon tort, a Steve Tyree purple-tip table, and a tan acro with green polyps (hispida?). Those of you who have been to Don's know how nice those corals look. I also lost a colony of green bali slimer and red pocillopora, a generic purple tipped acro, and a deep purple acro tenuis colony. I have several monti caps, and while all the colonies survived they each lost large portions of tissue. The monti digitada was also affected, losing a lot of tips. I have a large bright orange monti digi colony that lost about half it's tissue. By now the tank chemistry has settled down and the LPS and soft corals look about normal. One thing that I did notice is that I haven't seen a red flatworm anywhere, and I used to have a significant population. So I suspect that the Red Slime Remover killed the flatworms, whose toxins then killed the corals. I don't know this for certain, but I think it's worthwhile to post and warn other to be cautious. Happy reefing, Jon Sorry to hear the news, thanks for sharing it with us though, everyone is happy to post when there tanks are doing great, but it's post like this that have the most to teach us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ne0eN May 12, 2006 Share May 12, 2006 Hey Jon, Sorry to hear the news. Hope you get things under control. You can always get a frag of the monti digitata I got from you. And more Xenia when you're ready. Just let me know. -Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gastone May 12, 2006 Share May 12, 2006 Jon, sorry to hear about the crash. If you ever need some water in an emergency let me know. Garrett. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sugar Magnolia May 12, 2006 Share May 12, 2006 Sorry to hear about your losses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Lazar May 13, 2006 Author Share May 13, 2006 Thanks for your encouragements and kind offers, and I may may take you up on your generosity at some point I'm going to hold off adding SPS back to the tank for a while, but I did find a handful of polyps left on one acro frag, which I'm using that as the proverbial canary in the coal mine. The good news is the cyano and all my red flatworms are gone. I may dose flatworm exit in a week or two just to make sure there's no stragglers. Happy reefing, Jon Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Caribbean Jake May 14, 2006 Share May 14, 2006 I can relate to your pain after the Flat Worm Exit debacle I had few month ago. Hope for the best and keep going with water changes as frequent as you can. Let me know if I can help with some frags (millipora, slimmer, monitpora ) Jacob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarosh May 20, 2006 Share May 20, 2006 John after my crash I finally limited it down to the Red Slime Remover as well. I had used it on my smaller 30 gal system with great resultes. But when added to my 90 gal tank a few weeks later I had the same results. Slightly cloudy water then mass coral death. That was some time ago and I'm still fighting the effects. Some days are better than others, but I've already gone through 2- 5 gal buckets of salt in water changes and been running fresh carbon every other day. Hope you get your crash under control. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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