Help with diatoms

[Ryan Avery]

Hello all,

I have a red sea reefer 250 that has been up for about 5 months. Its a mostly acro tank with some lps. All coral are thriving. The issue that I'm having is what I believe to be diatoms. Everyday I get home from work to find the glass is heavily coated in brown with lots of kiss marks from my Kole tang lol. I have a 5 stage rodi with 0 tds. I also have another tank with no algae issues so I'm fairly sure its not silicates from my water. I am thinking its just part of the tanks maturation process but any insight from any of you would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for reading.

dosing aquaforest 123
alk: 8.0
Ca: 410
Nitrate: 2
Phosphate: 0.03

 

[Ryan Avery]

Anyone

 

[Ryan Avery]

This thing on?

 

[vetteguy53081]

I would suggest to reduce white light intensity a little and add more snails such as Turbo, astrea and trochus. If ou can find a fellow reefer with stomella snails to give you a few- theyre excellent in keeping glass clean.
IS YOUR TANK AT OR NEAR A WINDOW?

 

[Ryan Avery]

thank you for the response! No it’s not near a window. I would need 500 snails to keep up with this lol. Clean the glass and it’s back with a couple hours. I will try lowing the whites

 

[bobssecrtsn]

A good photo will help us ID what problems your having. A microscope will be best to ID as well

 

[NS Mike D]

fiwiw, since I sarted dosing bacteria, phyto, upping my pods and dialing down my lights my glass is much cleaner and corals are happier. . While my NO3 and PO3 are high, you would think the glass would get worse. Also I got my hands on a PAR meter and now are running my lights at 50% in line with the corals I gave in my tank.

I believe what is happening is the increase in macrofauna is leaving less opportunities of the nuisance stuff to run unchecked and less excess light is working in my favor . Cleaning glass used to be a daily task. Now I can go 3-4 days before it bothers me. I'll go a a week in-between back wall cleaning.