Salvage Livestock from a Brother's tank with Red Slim?

[mrhoney]

I have a 112 gallon tank with 30 g sump. It is a new installation, It has just finished cycling. I have 100 lbs of live rock, 60 lbs of base rock and live sand - nothing else. I cycled the tank using the raw shrimp method.

My inspiration for diving into this hobby was my brothers marine system. It is only 25 gallons, but was very well kept. This unfortunately has stopped. He has had an attack of Red Slime. He has treated it in the past and cleared it up with treatments that were supposed to keep it clear for 5 years, but after two months it has returned. He no longer wants to keep his tank and wants to just kill it off.

Should I just have him kill it off? Or in using a quarentine tank - should I go ahead and take the live rock he has, the mushrooms, some soft corals and few fish remaining - get them healthy in the quarentine tank and then move to my newly cycled main tanK? Can I tranfer it over to my main tank and treat it there - since there is nothing else there except live rock & sand?

Please advise - as I was able to get him to agree to delay taking any further action (other than the current neglect) futher until this Monday - not giving me a lot of time for specific research.

My inclination is to have him kill his stuff off - as I don't want to introduce problems right away into my system with my relative lack of experience.

 

[returnofsid]

IMO, I'd attempt to salvage it all. Red Slime (cyanobacteria) isn't very hard to eradicate. Increased flow usually works. I'd scrub all the rock with a stiff toothbrush, or something similar, rinse it real well with saltwater, and put it in QT. Good flow and a few water changes, and it'll be good to go.

As for the fish, if these fish are compatible with your future plans for your tank, go for it. Same with the corals. Keeping them all in QT, until they're healthy is a good idea.

 

[busdriver]

what he said!
it is easy to get more flow by moding a maxi-jet or getting the mod kit.
sure flow sales the kits for you can make them.

 

[trido]

Id take it all too. Cyano is easily taken care of by good tank maintanance which your brother isnt doing anymore.

 

[mrhoney]

Thank you all for your responses - I'll take it all!

 

[Darthv247]

fighting that **** myself . I have a Bio-cube (i know noob right) with some lps and softies in it. the corals are all doing great ive gotten lots of growth out of the xenia, star polyps and acans. the rock is coloring out everything is fine except for the sand bed. I had to point the output from the sump at the glass because it was causing to much linear flow over my acans etc. Since then ive gotten a ton of red slime on my sandbed which is only an inch or so thick. so ive been siphoning it out with my weekly water changes and i pointed a korolia 1 at the sand bed some hoping this works. Ive been stirring the sandbed as much as possible without disturbing anything.

Maybe ill just split the output with some loc-line.

 

[Sascha D]

If you're afraid of what of the stuff you'll get off his rocks, then you can boil/bake them or otherwise just kill everything. Since you have live rock already it shouldn't be a problem of needing the bacteria. Just make sure you take off anything you want to keep, like corals. After you do that, it'll be just like adding a bunch of base rock to your tank, I mean its only like 20ish pounds right? It wont affect your system very much anyway. After that you can take the corals and put them in Q/T with treatment.