Cyano battle........

[jimrawr]

A couple of your images are really blurry, but from what is CLEAR in the pictures it doesnt make me think its dinos at all, and leaning WAY more to diatoms. Also your nitrates are a clear indicator that it may be diatoms as well. My nitrates were 1, and when I got it to zero my diatoms went away. Had them for a good 4-5 months before that.

Your hair algae problem also shows you have excess nutrients, again which leads to diatoms.

 

[bertoni]

Even if the silicate is allowing diatoms to grow, if you take away the silicate, the bloom probably will just turn into cyanobacteria. All organisms require carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus as macronutrients, so that's usually where to start for nutrient control. Photosynthetic organisms can get carbon from the air, so we tend to concentrate on phosphorus and nitrogen.

 

[schroedel]

Thank you guys so much. I hope you are right that it is diatom. sounds easier to deal with. shoud i continue with the lights out for 48hrs once a week? I do notice that the light does affect it. I am running phosban For the silicate if there are any and carbon for a few days. I will then continue with the de nitrate after that and work on removing the nitrates(and check my phosphate again) and continue my Dr.Tims re-fresh and waste-away regiment. Do you think I need to raise my PH to 8.6 for awile or is it not helpful with diatoms? what section of the ro/di is responsible for filtering the silicate? Why did it not do its job or is there always some silicate that gets through. sorry im new to ro/di water making. I used pre-amde water on old tank.

 

[bertoni]

Some vendors had special DI resins for silicate removal. I don't know how well they actually worked. Silicate can be difficult to remove since it's only weakly charged.

If the film is all diatoms, snails should eat it.

 

[schroedel]

Thank you everybody. I still am fighting it but am replacing my aquaC eV skimmer with the reef octopus diablo this weeken so i hope this will help!! Im tired of a brown tank.had to get a pump slow enough to run my de nitrate so will run that next.. wish me luck.

 

[bertoni]

Okay, sounds like reasonable steps to me! Good luck!