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Diatoms or Dinos?


jabeuy

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What is your alk at? I was told alk of 7 or less can cause slime algae outbreaks.

 

So I tested and got either 6 or 7 dkh. I lost count haha.

But thanks, that might be something for me to look into.

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So I tested and got either 6 or 7 dkh. I lost count haha.

But thanks, that might be something for me to look into.

No problem. Ive noticed my alk decreases by 1 every 2 days. Im hoping it works for me as well.

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No problem. Ive noticed my alk decreases by 1 every 2 days. Im hoping it works for me as well.

How are you planning to up the alk? I'm hoping regular water changes will do it for me, don't really wanna start dosing haha.

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I started dosing this stuff made by continum. I add 10ml per day. Only thing that sucks is i forget sometimes. So my alk will drop if i dont remeber lol.

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Got a TDS meter, some new discoveries:

- 0ppm out of RODI into a bucket

- 3ppm in brute bin for storing rodi water

- 13ppm in my ATO reservoir

- 12ppm in my mixing bucket (think this is fine b/c I have a heater and pump in there that I didn't rinse off from last time I mixed)

 

Perhaps this problem is being caused by my ATO reservoir?

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Is your ato sealed? I know rodi attracts particles from the air like a magnet.

 

It's a bin with a lid, where I cut out a notch for the pump and hoses to go through. So...not really sealed, but it's not completely open either.

It's also PP#5, food safe but probably could still leach stuff.

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I dont think its leaching i believe its grabbing stuff from the air. I use 5 gallon water containers from winco and my rodi stays at 0. How old are your filters?

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I dont think its leaching i believe its grabbing stuff from the air. I use 5 gallon water containers from winco and my rodi stays at 0. How old are your filters?

Id say pretty new. I got them this summer around July. Been making water for a 10g, then now a 36g so not too much water I think.

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Id say pretty new. I got them this summer around July. Been making water for a 10g, then now a 36g so not too much water I think.

Hmmm...interesting.

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I could be (and most likely am) entirely wrong, but that looks like Cyano to me. I had a small problem with it for a while and had to siphon the living daylights out of it. It would get on everything. rocks, sand, glass and corals. Limiting feeding, keeping up water changes and just sucking it out beat it for me.

 

Right now I'm having a problem with either diatoms or dinos (still not 100% sure) and they appear to be quite different to clear. If I siphon those out, they come back almost instantly where as the cyano took longer to grow back. Cyano was also present regardless of lights being on or off and seemed to clump a lot more.

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I could be (and most likely am) entirely wrong, but that looks like Cyano to me. I had a small problem with it for a while and had to siphon the living daylights out of it. It would get on everything. rocks, sand, glass and corals. Limiting feeding, keeping up water changes and just sucking it out beat it for me.

 

Right now I'm having a problem with either diatoms or dinos (still not 100% sure) and they appear to be quite different to clear. If I siphon those out, they come back almost instantly where as the cyano took longer to grow back. Cyano was also present regardless of lights being on or off and seemed to clump a lot more.

I'm almost definite its cyano now. It's clumpy as you say, doesnt go away at night and is rust to reddish in color.

 

The only thing is that mine has a lot of bubbles making me suspect dinos. But I still also hear of bubbles being in cyano.

 

How much did you limit feeding? I have a tang that needs to graze most of the day haha.

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I cut back almost all feeding of my corals. My tank is small and I only had one fish, so I'd turn of the pumps and feed it small pieces at a time in a corner of the tank.

 

I still get the occasional outbreak of green cyano in my 4g, but that ones much easier to deal with since there's no fish.

 

Both the green and red look bubbly.

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It really looks like cyano now to me, time to research how to get rid of it.

This is after leaving the tank for 4 days with no food and regular light periods:

 

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Are you siphoning it out?

Yup, siphoning it out with weekly water changes. Also, just now, siphoned it into a bucket with filter floss, and put the water back in after.

 

The ugly stuff seems to come back a few days after, we'll see how much it reappears after this time.

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I battled a similar algae for the past two months (starting about three days after I set up my new tank). I suspected that mine was brown Cyano.

 

I think it might be a new tank thing, because mine finally went away. Keep doing your water changes and nutrient export & siphoning it out, after the tank matures a little bit more, it'll probably go away.

 

 

mine usually go through this cycle as well. i get the diatom bloom in the cycle, that dies, then maybe after a month of being new i get this brown cyano that everyone here is getting. after about 5-6 water changes with sand bed cleanings it always goes away for me.

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  • 2 weeks later...

It's been a week since I saw cyano! My sand is white again lol, hope it stays this way.

 

What I did was continued weekly water changes, added phosguard at the start, and increased flow with a jebao rw8 during the last 2 weeks. Also siphoned out the cyano with each pwc, and sometimes in between pwc's by siphoning into filterfloss and putting the water back in.

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