Diatoms, oh my **** Diatoms

[pumarjr]

Ok, my tank was established in january of this year, all has been and still is fine, i never really noticed a cycle even tho I used all new stuff, new marco dry rock, well, take that back I used 40 lbs of live sand. I never had that brown diatom outbreak until now, I just did my WC on saturday and my gravel and glass are already turning brown again, Sheesh! Levels are what I would expect, - the brown diatoms. Another funny thing is that my tank has never, not once shown Phosphates, 0, nill, Nada, Zelch. why? I thought at first it may have been my Elos test kit, nope, I bought a brand new hagen PO4 test kit, completely clear there as well. I perform my WC's with R/O water, the filters were just changed and my TDS Shows 0 on my handheld unit. here's the rest of my parameters .
SG - 1.026
Temp - 78
ORP - 400 and steady
PH - 8.24 (Avg 8.19)
Nitrates - 0
Nitrites - 0
Ammonia - 0
Mg - 1400
Cal - 420

 

[VegasRick]

Have you changed your DI lately? Silicas have a weak ionic bond and are one of the first thing show up when the resins are exhausted. And Silica fuels diatoms. Also at 9 months its about bulb change out time

 

[pumarjr]

like i put in my post, ALL filters including the DI resin has been changed, 0 on my TDS, No bulb change out for me yet, running LED's. Fixture is 7 months old.

 

[Reef Breeders Verified Sponsor]

Thats red slime algae, not diatoms. Do you have a fuge? Chaeto usually does the trick.

 

[islander84]

Well its kinda hard to tell in the pics but I've had both diatoms and cyano....for the diatoms run gfo and/or drip kalk the both remove silicates by bonding to them and then picked up by skimmer......for the cyano I starved them out by dosing MB7 read instructions on bottle it works.

 

[CHSUB]

0 no3 and po4 and the advice is GFO and check TDS for silicates to help control diatoms, cyano or more filters like a fuge. Possibly a bulb change because a shift in spectrum might have caused algae…..no mention of possible total tank crash because of low nutrients and dinos, maybe because those thing were not “invented” yet?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

0 no3 and po4 and the advice is GFO and check TDS for silicates to help control diatoms, cyano or more filters like a fuge. Possibly a bulb change because a shift in spectrum might have caused algae…..no mention of possible total tank crash because of low nutrients and dinos, maybe because those thing were not “invented” yet?

I think you win a prize for reactivating the oldest thread I’ve seen. Last post was 14 years ago. lol