Problem with Golden Diatoms

[BriGuy]

Alright so I think I have figured out what I have been battling for the past month...Golden Diatoms. So what I have been doing is manually removing it from the rocks and stirring the substrate, sucking that junk out and doing a 10g water change on a 46g tank each week for the past month or more....still within 4-5 days it comes back. I have 2 Korillia 1's and a Marineland canister filter on the tank (rated for 55g) and have pulled the skimmer off for now since it was not helping at all. What can I do to get rid of this junk? Regular clean up crew in the tank, not making a dent.

Pepermint Shrimp
Neon Blue Crab
5-6 Nassarius
5-6 Astraea
4? Trochus Snails
and a few half back snails (hitch hikers)

[Gilbert]

golden diatoms, never heard of it do you have any pics or links to get and idea of what your talking about...

found some pics of what it looked like and the first things that came to mind is you need more flow or a clean up crew. but i think the best thing you can do is upgrade your clean up crew. in my 55 gallon i have
10-15 astraea
50-60 nassarius
20-30 blue legs
1 mexican turbo snail
10-15 ceirths (think thats how you spell it)
and i still get a lite shade of green flim on my glass that my lawnmower blenny likes to pick on.

[Gilbert]

i would also think that the clean up crew that you have is currently not making a dent because its growing faster then they can get rid of it.

[aquasport24]

Don't stirr up the sand bed any more, that will spike up your nitrate automaticlly. You need to find the causes first (like overfeeding,flow,lighting age,etc). I think your tank have too much nutrients, especially silica. Adequate concentrations of silica will encouragethe growth of diatoms.Feed livestock sensibly, water change weekly and place your skimmer back in service and let it run acouple weeks and see if it get any better. Oh, and adding more clean up crew would help also.

[Daniel]

I was fighting a diatom bloom for the past 2 weeks. I had silicate leaching, I'm guessing from some base rock I bought. Out of desperation I got a HOB filter and bought some 100% poly pillow batting for 2.99 at Hobby Lobby, and got me a pouch of rena phos zorb (it removes phos and silicate) at a lfs. I changed the floss 2-3 times a day depending on what it looked like and scrubbed the rock, walls, and so on with a soft filter brush two times a day. Within 3 days it got better im almost a week into it and its almost gone completly. Good luck.

Daniel

[BriGuy]

OK thanks everyone, i have tried the no feeding for 3 days and no lights for 3 days as well. I picked up some more clean up crew yesterday, and getting a phos tester today and one of the phos bags to put into the canister.