Dosing silicates but lacking diatoms

[robwcormack]

I’m battling multiple types of dinos (primarily LCA) and started dosing silicates as recommended by the Mack’s FB page to get them up to 2ppm which was supposed to in turn cause a diatom bloom. Maybe I’m being impatient, but I expected the diatom bloom to happen fairly quickly. I dosed enough according to the instructions to get 2ppm a week ago. 2-3 days later still not seeing much in the way of diatoms, I tested silicates with Hanna checker and got a reading of 1.5 so I calculated a small enough dose to bring it back up to 2. Today, still seeing very little in the way of diatoms I tested silicates again with Hanna checker and it reads 1.95. According to the stuff I’ve read, I was under the impression that the diatom bloom should happen pretty immediately and I would probably have to dose silicates almost daily. What am I missing here? For what it’s worth, I just got ICP-MS results and everything shows fairly good except iodine says critically low. Overall 88% score though and all the main stuff is perfect. My sandbed judging by what I can see at the glass looks awful all the way down and I’m seeing a good bit of cyano in it as well. I haven’t vacuumed it because I’ve read not to. I have used a long feeding baster to squirt a good bit of pns deep cycle down in the sand and in the crevices of my rocks a couple times. Dosed microbacter 7 pretty regularly, though I’ve slowed down on that since dosing the silicates, and also dosed some the the red PNS bottle. A day or two before dosing the silicates, I hit the tank with some AF Life Source as well. I have a reefmat, skimmer, and UV (plumbed in sump because unfortunately I don’t have room to do directly in display) going as well as media reactor with activated carbon I started a few days ago.

 

[Bear22]

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[Jimbo327]

For me, it is 2 fold. It is encouraging something else to grow, while at same time killing the dinos to make room for that something else. Adding silicate just give the fuel for diatoms. It'll take a couple weeks for diatoms to grow. And you still have to do the other part, which is actively killing the dinos (UV, filter, blackout, etc.)