Goodbye dinos. Hello diatoms.

[Keko21]

Definitely not my first rodeo with silica dosing for dinos, but dang these diatoms took off quick!! And not a dino under the scope to be found! Now just to wait this diatom bloom out and back to business as usual.

 

[bkwonnn]

Same
Here !

 

[EricR]

Cool,,, any quick notes on how much and how often you're dosing?
Are you testing and targeting a specific level?
*just curious since I'm planning to start dosing silicate and wasn't really planning on testing ... couldn't find any detailed thread that you posted if you did

 

[bkwonnn]

My nitrates were super low. Like 0.
added silicate removal because I thought it was diatoms.
also did alot of water change and vibrant. That was counter productive I think in hindsight. Also vibrant kills starfish and other soft type of animals, maybe also snails. Also the silicate removal tanked my PH. When I removed it my ph jumped by 0.5.
the algae never went away so I did more research and suspected it to be dinos now, Because of the low nitrate. Dosed nitrate, and added beneficial bacteria quit aggressively. don’t over do it too much because it can deplete the oxygen for the fish. now I have .2 phosphate and 20 nitrate.
new algae is forming Now. I believe GHA and diatoms.
I ordered a lot of urchin and snails for CUC. Will let nature take its course now.

 

[bkwonnn]

Did not dose any silicate

 

[Keko21]

Overall, raised it to 2ppm with spongexcel and I use the Seachem silicate test. Thats really just to make sure im in the ballpark- its a color test so grain of salt. That said if you dose according to the instructions on the spongexcel you should be fine. After that I usually throw in another 50 drops (90gal system) every other day until I see them really take off. It's totally a gut feeling use the force kind of method lol, but it has worked for me with no issues.

I've since scrapped the glass and done a 30% water change as I've taken like 50 samples from all over the tank and I haven't seen even 1 dino cell.