Diatom problem

[vickit447]

Ok guys the Diatoms are driving me crazy. My 20g tank is almost 3 months old and the prams are:

PH 8.3
Ammonia 0
NO2 0
NO3 0
MG 1200
KH 172
CA 413
Salinity 1.028
Temp 79.8

My lights are currently on for 6 hours (the diatoms will go away when I decrease the time, but come back with a vengeance whenever I increase it).

I made a 5g water change on the 14th, a 2g on the 6th and 2g on April 26th.

I have been dosing 15ml of Reef Vital DNA (could this be the cause?).

I’m toping off with RO/DI water.

What am I missing? Will the Diatoms just (for lack of a better term) burn themselves out? What about using Phos Buster?

Oh FYI no fish or corals yet, so I’m not over feeding. Unless I am with the Reef Vital DNA.

Your thoughts please.

 

[birdman1979]

Didn't see a PO4 reading. Even a little can cause algae to bloom. What kind of lighting?

 

[johnnyblaze313]

Yup generally the diatoms should eat all the silicates up and starve off. I just got done with a diatom outbreak and it SUCKED!!
I think mine was from using play sand and or the lights i was using not forsure though but after removing the sand and changing lights i have no more diatoms. Does that reef vital say anything about not having or having silica in it.

 

[froggy4112]

i had the same issue. if they last more than a couple weeks, increase the flow i use this formula (65G tank x20 flow = 1300 with of GPH in the power heads. and they will (should) go away within a week. but what you are suffereing from has ailed all of us. this is quite normal. after the diatoms come the algaes. red slime almost madde me tear it down. but i won!

 

[tbittner]

What kind of sand did you use? Do you have a link to it? Stop dosing the Vital DNA for a week, do a couple of WC's, and see if that helps. If it does, then you know what was causing it.

On another note, you need to bring your salinity down a notch. I know you don't have any fish or corals yet, but you might as well get in the practice of keeping it right on.

 

[socalchris]

the worst diatom bloom i ever had was when i started my first tank with tap water...lol. after that i switched to distilled or ro/di and my diatom bloom never lasted for more than a week. maybe you should check the source water?

 

[jdckbr]

dont mean to hijack,but wouldnt phosban help this type of problem they say this stuff will take out silicates down to .05ppm I dont know how much silicate diatoms need to thrive but .05 ppm seems pretty darn close to zero

 

[vickit447]

The Reef Vital doesn't say anything about silicates.

I bought some LS from Aquatic Connections and a couple bags of AgriLive (sp?) sand from LFS.

This may sound like a cop out but... I didn't test for PO4. In a bunch of the posts I've read, people would say that the PO4 reading were 0 because the alge was using it up. Why test if you're going to get a 0 reading? Noob goof?

Plus I don't have any Cyano.

2 month old T-5 lights.