Cant beat this brown diatoms covering the sand and glass

[e048]

I'm fighting the same battle

 

[CStrickland]

You used reef tank sand right? As in not something from the beach or a hardware store

 

[Mollydog]

I used live sand from my LFS it is the real fine sand

 

[CStrickland]

cool just checking. Also, you're testing the rodi water for TDS, and changing the GFO regularly? Both help remove silica

 

[Mollydog]

my ro/di water is 0 tds. how long dose the GFO last and how often should it be changed. I use Seachem Renew in a two little fishy reactor 150
Thank you all for all the help i feel you guys are directing me in the right direction.
The pictures don't show all the brown diatoms on the sand and glass i wipe the glass last night and vac the sand it is ugly this morning

 

[CStrickland]

Usually gfo gets changed out when you start seeing phos coming out of the reactor. But since gfo also absorbs silica maybe change it every month or so even if it's still pulling phos.

It sounds like you are on track with maintenance, with clean water and proper sand there not any more diatom food being added so I guess it's just a matter of waiting it out until it all gets eaten up and they die off.
Good luck!

 

[Miguelh1302]

Am with coak 100% add some life to that tank and stop overthinking, throw some soft corals and some fishes in there, hell u can even throw Salem lps already in there, 10 months, that's a lot of waiting for a nice white sand which we always struggle so much with

 

[Mollydog]

so i went to my lfs today and had my water tested. The nitrates are up at 20 ppm and the ph was at 7.4 he said i needed to use a ph buffer an raise the ph and maybe add alkalinity.he ask about the lights i told him i was running t5's 2 white 2 blue.he ask how old the bulbs were i did not know i got the light used. $90 dollars for new bulbs every 6 to 8 months. he suggested i look in to led lights.he said stirring up the sand might be the cause of the high nitrates.he thinks the lights are causing the diatom bloom. my test kit showed every thing good. he said wait and let the tank settle down and retest the water Monday and not to add any fish yet What are your thoughts.

thank you for the great in put i feel more positive about my now

 

[ZeeSparrow]

Do you have your own test kits and know the actual numbers for Salinity, Alkalinity, Calcium, Magnesium and Phosphate (or did you get them from the LFS)? Without any coral in your tank I'm not sure you'd need to add Alk... but maybe you do. Coralline can use that up enough that you would. But we can only guess without knowing the numbers. I doubt you need a pH buffer. From what I've read, they increase the pH temporarily but are not a long-term fix.

Nitrates at 20 aren't that bad, really, though it is interesting since you don't have much life in the tank. I agree that stirring the sand might be the reason. How many fish do you have and how much do you feed them? Can you test your new saltwater that you use for water changes? Could be coming from there...

If you're going to continue to use the T5's then you will need to replace the bulbs regularly... but that's only once you have corals. The fish will be fine with old bulbs.

 

[Mollydog]

I have a api test kit. I will be doing a water change today. Any suggestions on doing this right. As i don't want to mess with the sand bed
Thanks for all the great help.

 

[Deftones2015]

Vacuuming the sand bed into a filter sock works great for me I never had an issue doing that. Stirring the sand bed throws a lot of detritus into the water column. With nothing to take it out, it all rots and causes issues. I ran my 75 for 2 years with vacuuming the sand into a sock with 0 issues. I have noticed though whenever I moved rocks around or sand when I moved rocks, my nitrates would shoot up and a water change was required to bring them down.

 

[Fish Keeper82]

Maybe take a pitcture when its bad. Perhaps you have something else besides diatoms.
Dinoflagellates look alot like diatoms if you clean the tank good.

 

[Mollydog]

Doing my water change now. checked my ro/di water no nitrates.
i to vac into a filter sock

 

[Mollydog]

is it possible for a ro/di system to have 0 tds before the di resin after about 2 hours making ro/di water 0 tds before the di resin

 

[Fish Keeper82]

Its possible but a meter inacuaracy is more likely. They all have a bit of % accuracy tolerance.

 

[Quiet_Ivy]

so i went to my lfs today and had my water tested. The nitrates are up at 20 ppm and the ph was at 7.4 he said i needed to use a ph buffer an raise the ph and maybe add alkalinity.

Well that is very low for pH, which should be about 8 to 8.3. pH buffers don't really work, you need to either increase water circulation at the surface of your tank, or increase alkalinity. Did you find out what your alk is? Normal range is 7 to 11.

I'm kinda surprised by that nitrate reading too. It will be dropping with all the water changes you've been doing, plus diatoms suck up nitrate very efficiently. Is the media in your reactor full of gunk? Maybe stirring the sand is kicking it up a bit. Nothing to panic about anyway, your fish won't care.

hth
ivy

 

[Mollydog]

update did a 50% water change last Sunday my nitrates 5 days latter are at 5.0 and ph is at 8.0 still have diatoms but lighter in color and not as dence

 

[isomorphic85]

i'm dealing with this exact same issue....

just vac'd the sand for the first time while doing 20% water change.

Looks much better than it was but it came back a bit as well.

Nitrates are around 12-15 but were high around 30 before the water change.

I feel your pain

 

[Mollydog]

so i add 5 sand sifting snails and 5 crabs and turn up to skimmer to skim wetter not as dense the diatoms still their but have faded in color