When I first setup my tank, I didn't know that you were supposed to rinse the sand. My sand came wet in a bag (live sand I guess) and I thought it would be good to just pour it straight into my tank. Now I'm having a constant diatom outbreak on my sand for the past 2 months or so. Is this related to not rinsing my sand initially, or is there something else I should be doing to get rid of this problem?

thanks

assuming what you have is indeed diatoms (and it likely is), your tank is going thru it's obligatory diatom bloom. what you need to do is NOTHING...let it run its course (typically 2-4 weeks). if you don't leave it alone, it will never go away, and if you DO leave it alone, it WILL go away...honest.

clean your viewing panels, but leave the rest.

BTW, it has nothing to do with you not rinsing your LS...

if you don't believe me, take a look:




we waited until the bloom was over before adding the purple LR and the second fish:

2 months is a long time to see diatoms in a new tank... the bloom usually lasts no mare than a couple of weeks, ime. What kind of sand is it exactly?

man, your after pic looks GREAT.

So...I've adjusted my flow to keep the diatoms off my sand for the past week or so. Should I point my powerhead at the surface and let the diatoms do their thing on the bottom?



Well, I previously had everything setup in a 10g Half moon, and had diatoms for about a month, then I moved everything into a 10g standard rectangle, and the diatoms came back immediately and its been about a month with that.

I can't remember what kind of sand it was, but it was wet, came in a bag, and I bought it from petco

i had the same problem back when i was a SW noob 20 years ago...the stuff wouldn't go away. then i finally found someone who knew the score and said "just leave it", and by golly, it went away.

now if the growth in question is dino's, that's another story.

peyton,

does the stuff look kinda like brown dust, or is it thick and slimy with bubbles in it?

It's probably cyanobacteria.

It's funny, I thought this thread was going to be about the potential relationship between using tap water to rinse sand and algae blooms post cycle.

probably agra-alive? i'm having a similar problem, 3 months since i changed to agra alive sand and i've had dynos or diatoms since. i'm not sure if it's related to the sand or not though

diatoms:



red cyano:

When you guys say "just leave it", are you referring to keeping flow off of it, and not sucking it up during water changes?

uploading pic now so you guys can see it




I think it was agra-alive...





I've had cyano in the past, and I'm pretty sure thats long gone. This is what I have going on now -

lemme get a picture later on today after the light have been on.. mine are pretty nasty

yeah I'll post a picture later. It gets wayyyy worse by the end of the night

And can someone tell me what you guys mean by "leaving it alone"?

Yep, that's definitely diatoms.

Why aren't your clean-up crew taking care of it?

That's something I ask myself every day of my waking life O_O

haha but really, I have no clue. My CUC consists of:

4 small hermits
3 astreas
3 nassarius
1 nerite
1 stomatella

Today I bought 2 ceriths and 1ninja snail (same thing as astrea I think)
soooo..hopefully the ceriths will do some work

Are you supplementing some other food for them?

nope, just feeding my clown 5 pellets a day, and he gets all of them

How big is your tank? Sorry if I missed that. The hermits should be owning that up daily, and staying ahead of the game at that. You may be over feeding, and they'd be eating that instead of the diatoms, and the food could also contribute to the diatom breakout, if you're feeding too much.

its a 10g. How much should I be feeding my clown?

i feed my clown every other day.. and he gets about 5-7 pellets as well. he goes crazy when i put them in there. and he makes sure he dont miss any.

okay thanks!

to answer the question...yes, just leave it alone. don't siphon it, don't clean it...zippo. if you interrupt it, it will basically start over. like i said, i went round and round with the stuff for a long time until i let it go.

I tossed some cortez/mexican (name varies) hermits in and they immediately went to town on it. 2 small ones scrubed a lot of rock.

When they say leave it, they mean stop worrying about it.

It will go away.

after a day

cyanobacteria

yeah.... that doesn't look like diatomes to me.

Yikes!

really? i wasnt thinking diatoms, i was actually thinking dynos..

i dont mean to hijack the thread OP

It could be dinoflaggelates, but if the tank is new then I doubt it is. If I were you I'd pray that it was cyanobacteria.

yeah i'm at about 6 months... the sand is newer at about 3 months due to a move and a tank size change. how can i tell the difference between dinos(yeah i thought it was spelled dynoflagellates) and cyano? the reason i thought it was dinos was because of the tall stringy bubbles.. any time i see cyano it seems like it's more of a film than tall and stringy.

Okay so...
I was gone the past 2 days on a trip out of town, and my tank lights were off the whole time.

I come home to less (diatoms?) on my sand, but now whats left looks like its turning red and stringy?
any idea what this could mean? I'll post pics in a few

anything?

cyano

first pic is definitely red slime(which is a form of cyano), not bad tho. i've had red slime about as bad as my cyano problem is now(at least i'm gonna say it's cyano)

okay, can you see the stringy part in the first pic?
well now the brown stuff on the sand is getting stringy like that too :/

any idea what it could be ?

if you start seeing bubbles forming on the sand/rocks then you have DINOS!

If that does happen, what should I do?

Alright, here's today's update..

1. Looks to me like something more than diatoms going on here -


2. This stuff is long, webby, and flowing. I have no idea what this is...




So, I'm starting to think this is NOT a diatom problem? In which case I probably shouldn't leave it alone. And I'm not sure whether a water change would be good or not?

Should I just let this stuff take its course, or should I take some sort of action to try to get rid of it before it takes over and possibly ruins my tank?

That's not necessarily true. You can get bubbles trapped in all sorts of algae, cyano included.

2 days lights out





since cyano can have bubbles too, how can i tell the difference between cyano and dinos?

do you guys think I should get an emerald crab? or any other CUC suggestions?