Do diatoms make bubbles?

[Resilient]

I have been battling dinos for a couple months. Recently started dosing silicates. After the most recent 3 day blackout I was pretty sure the dinos came back. Brown was coating the sand and rocks and bubbles were forming on the brown mat.

But it was less stringy than before.

I tried to sample some with a turkey baster and checked it under the microscope. It appeared to mainly be diatoms.

So now I am wondering if there is a mix and I just didn't see the dinos in there or if diatoms tend to form bubbles.

They do still seem to dissipate somewhat at night which still seems to indicate dinos to me but I couldn't find any under the microscope when before there were many.

 

[Subsea]

Yes, diatoms do produce bubbles primarily as a byproduct of intense photosynthesis, where they release oxygen. However, Dinoflagellets also produce bubbles.

 

[jdpeters]

I have been battling dinos for a couple months. Recently started dosing silicates. After the most recent 3 day blackout I was pretty sure the dinos came back. Brown was coating the sand and rocks and bubbles were forming on the brown mat.

But it was less stringy than before.

I tried to sample some with a turkey baster and checked it under the microscope. It appeared to mainly be diatoms.

So now I am wondering if there is a mix and I just didn't see the dinos in there or if diatoms tend to form bubbles.

They do still seem to dissipate somewhat at night which still seems to indicate dinos to me but I couldn't find any under the microscope when before there were many.

When I first had signs of dinoflagellates i wasn’t experienced with them, I thought it was just algae “pearling” like we would call it on the fresh water side. I’ve been fighting it since may ~ and finally starting to really tip the scales.
Worth noting UV wasn’t exactly a silver bullet. I stopped doing water changes, kept my phosphate around .03-.05 and nitrate above 5ppm. Lots of cleaning filter socks and manually siphoning the snotty bubbles out. Someone told me that once I was towards the end of it other algae’s would appear. They were not lying lol.
I was happy to finally get all the hair algae’s, bubble algae and even cyano

 

[Resilient]

bubble algae

Careful what you wish for on that one. That is the only thing I haven't ever really been able to beat on my 40 gallon that went through all the worst things.

I bet if it were a bigger tank and I could put a rabbit fish in there or something I might have been able to beat it, but for now I just gave up on rock structures because everything needs to come out every month or so and be totally hand scrubbed. So it is all just individual rocks.