Thank you.
I also beat Dinos by dosing silicate, nitrate , and phosphate until GHA grew. Since then (8 years ago) I have been careful to keep nitrates and phosphates at healthy levels.
Thank you!!
Can I please ask the brilliant minds here, when dosing silicates and promoting diatom growth, should I be dosing some extra trace elements or coral food/supplements as my monitora cap has gotten paler despite maintaining the same water parameters. My alk is 8.6, calcium is 420, magnesium is 350, nitrate is 15.7 and phos is .09. It could be coincidence but I feel things are otherwise consistent. I will see a paused chaeto gro and feeding my corals for the duration I’ve been dosing silicates as I read it’s best not to feed the dinos.
Thank you as always Randy. I followed your advice and added some trace last night. I do think the monti cap looks a bit better today. It seems less pale to me.
There’s nothing wrong with dosing 2 ppm if needed.
@Miami Reef are we using the entire 4oz bottle mixed w/ 2 cups of RO/DI water sold on Amazon? Does this need to be refrigerated or room temp?Silicate feeds diatoms and sponges in reef tanks. Diatoms in particular are good at outcompeting dinos, feeding copepods, and might even feed corals and filter feeders when scraping the glass. Diatoms are also less visible than the standard green film algae they replace.
There is no need to test for silicate because it depletes quickly and the dose I’m suggesting will not accumulate over time. In addition, the dose has absolutely no interference with phosphate test kits. It will not cause false positives.
Here are Amazon links to purchase sodium silicate:
Sodium silicate is very thick. It’s not as simple as saying 1 gram of silicate = 1 mL of silicate. I accounted for this by using its density, so pick whatever’s most convenient.
Mix the singe 1 ppm dose with some water (about 1-2 cups) prior to adding it to the tank. I didn’t mean to imply that we should dilute the entire stock solution in water.
Tank looks good!
. I’ve battled three rounds of Dino’s now. Finally got them beat! Now getting GHA but it’s much easier to deal with. 
Mind sharing what filter/pump setup you use with that cartridge? Thanks!Agree diatom filters are awesome! They cleared my 1 & 2 rounds of Dino’s very quickly. But depends on which type of Dino’s you have. So far a diatom filter has done nothing for third round of Dino’s specifically Prorocentrum Dino’s. It’s been a two month battle so far. I’ve been trying treatments in stages to see what has the biggest effect. So far diatom filters and manual removal has changed nothing. This is while also running UV sterilizer. Two weeks ago started dosing silicates. This last week the Dino’s have slowly been withering down. I can finally see patches of sand popping through. So silicates are definitely working. Before seeing silicates being successful I ordered the UV sand sweeper. To test its effectiveness I’ve started using it on one side/half of the tank. So we’ll see how it compares to the other side with silicate dosing.
Rounds 1-2 with manual removal and constant turkey basting while running a marineland magnum filter. Though those Dino’s would disappear at night and enter the water column so catching and removing was highly effective.
12-24 hours of running and filter would be clogged. But Dino’s were gone in 5-7 days. Wish prorocentrum was as easy to rid off.
It’s just a marineland magnum internal canister filter. They’re cheap and work awesome! You can get a multi pack of cartridge filters off amazon as well.
Can you just mix with tank water instead of RO/DI?Silicate feeds diatoms and sponges in reef tanks. Diatoms in particular are good at outcompeting dinos, feeding copepods, and might even feed corals and filter feeders when scraping the glass. Diatoms are also less visible than the standard green film algae they replace.
There is no need to test for silicate because it depletes quickly and the dose I’m suggesting will not accumulate over time. In addition, the dose has absolutely no interference with phosphate test kits. It will not cause false positives.
Here are Amazon links to purchase sodium silicate:
Sodium silicate is very thick. It’s not as simple as saying 1 gram of silicate = 1 mL of silicate. I accounted for this by using its density, so pick whatever’s most convenient.
