Glass gets dirty extremely fast <24hrs

[Pennekampdream]

My 20 gal nano cube gets its glass surface dirty extremely fast. When I say fast I mean less than a day. About 6 hours after cleaning it’s already showing a little bit. I swear if I sit in front of the tank and stare hard enough, I can see it growing.

I’m not really concerned about it getting dirty. I just want to know if it’s a bad thing.

I perform a 4 gal water change weekly. I feed mysis shrimp once a day. I dose microbactor7 once a week. Started using reef-roids about a month ago once a week. The reef-roids amount is about a quarter of the recommended dose.

In case it helps these are my parameters:

Alkalinity 7.4 dkh
pH 7.5
Nitrate 0 ppm
Salinity 1.025
Phosphate 0.14 ppm
Calcium 408 ppm
Magnesium 1250 ppm
Average temp 77.5 F

Redsea 50 LED running 80%blue/10%white for about 10 hours.

Filtration: sock and skimmer

Livestock: 2 clown fish, 1 sixline wrasse, 1 coral banded shrimp, 1 pincushion urchin, 1 sand shifting star, 1 Red Sea star, and about a dozen mix of snails and hermits

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I think it means that algae and everything else in the tank, such as corals, have what they need to grow and it isn’t a bad sign, IMO.

I cannot tell from the picture, but when viewed like in the picture, does it look more green (algae) or golden brown (diatoms). I could switch mine from green to golden brown by dosing silicate, and if it is always golden brown you may have a silicate source in the tank that you might deplete or cut off (such as tap water).

 

[Kingsley_Reef]

Reef life….

What about your clean up crew?
Could cut your light schedule to 8 also

 

[Pennekampdream]

I think it means that algae and everything else in the tank, such as corals, have what they need to grow and it isn’t a bad sign, IMO.

I cannot tell from the picture, but when viewed like in the picture, does it look more green (algae) or golden brown (diatoms). I could switch mine from green to golden brown by dosing silicate, and if it is always golden brown you may have a silicate source in the tank that you might deplete or cut off (such as tap water).

It’s always golden brown

 

[mmorrison55]

I could switch mine from green to golden brown by dosing silicate, and if it is always golden brown you may have a silicate source in the tank that you might deplete or cut off (such as tap water).

What does this mean? How do you identify the silicate source and can you treat for it or it will just eventually deplete on its own?

 

[DanyL]

It usually leaches from rocks and sand on new systems, otherwise it’s likely coming from your RODI - but there are other possible sources for it, like supplements, salt, etc.

Once you find the source and cut it off, it’ll get depleted by the diatoms and they’ll disappear by themselves.