diatoms

[tony]

these things arent going away and im dying trying to keep up with the scraping. tank has been up short of 3 months with no problems. ive checked ph, nitrates, nitrites, phosphate, ammonia and all are looking good.

i "think" i know what the problem might be. since im lazy and slow hooking up my ro/di ive been using the water out of one of those windmill filters in a parking lot near my house and if i were a betting man i would say the silicates are high

anyone got any insight? silicate test kit i could borry? (im on the NE side) otherwise ive had no problems of note in the tank (aside from the killer powerhead but thats been solved hehe)

[Thunderkat]

Your tank has been up 3 months, maybe it is cycling. Did you add any live rock recently? Do you have a sand bed with burrowing critters that may have died? What kind of skimmer do you have? Do you use activated carbon? Do you have a refugium?

If you have everything above and running ok then I say don't worry about it they will go away on their own.

[tony]

forgot those details, doh!

its an eclipse 12g

i do 10-15% water changes weekly (religiously too), run carbon changed every 2 weeks, no fuge (yet), plenty of circulation with a penguin HOB and a maxijet 600, 80w of pc lights ran about 5-6 hrs/day with actinics running about 7/8

i did have a cardinal die (note killer power head reference) about 3 weeks ago. i got all of him out i could and the cleanup crew took care of the rest. i did an extra water change also after his demise to avoid any spikes. however IIRC the diatoms started coming around before the tragic death.

[tony]

oh, and livestock is one small-medium black ocellaris, a fire shrimp, and modest clean up crew

[GaryP]

Do you have any snails in there?

Diatoms in a new tank are not unusual. if you have silicates then your silicates are definitely high. The windmill water is hit or miss. It just depends on how long it has been since it was maintained.

[tony]

Do you have any snails in there?

Diatoms in a new tank are not unusual. if you have silicates then your silicates are definitely high. The windmill water is hit or miss. It just depends on how long it has been since it was maintained.

ive got 4-5 snails

i check everytime i get water there and they at least take the time to write the current date on there as the last day cleaned lol

it finally clicked tonight that that might be the root of all evil

i guess i have something to do this weekend (install the ro/di)

[taldrich13]

I use windmill water in my 12g also. Very convenient since it's 1/2 mile round trip from my house. Mine has only been set up for a month though so I blame all my problems on it cycling (and me being a noob :blink ).

[LoneStar]

Kinda off topic but when I added new 'sand' to my refuguim, it turned out to be silicate based and gave me a big diatom outbreak. After the new sand matured and sorta cycled down, they stopped. All I had to do was scrape the last bits of them off the glass and whatnot. The only bad thing was I noticed that they even started to grow on the optical sensor on my Tunze Osmolator!! :o
'

[Richard]

silicate test kit i could borry?


I guess you could test the windmill water for silicates.

In a reef tank, silicates are taken up VERY rapidly by diatoms so testing your tank water probably won't tell you anything. The fact that you have a diatom problem is a better indication of the presence of silicate than any test kit IMO.

[GaryP]

Yep, what Richard said. The best silicate test kit available is the Mod 1 Mark 1 eyeball that also doubles as a phosphate test kit.

[tony]

thanks for the info/help guys