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Cultivated Reef

Diatoms I think?


Bcb577

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My tank is a 14gallon biocube,and as of right now I have one hell of a diatonic bloom in my sand or possibly cyno?I'm doing a water change tonight,but as of now this bloom is only in the sand not on the rocks or glass so maybe I'm thinking the sand might be my source of phosphate.the tank is 5months old,running stock biocube filtration with chemipure elite added.I have one blue damsel,and one red firefish,trumpet coral,1mushroom.i1peppermint shrimp.I'm thinking since the sandbed seems to be the source and I've been battling this algae since about 2 months ago,it got better with lights out and water changes but now I'm thinking about replacing the sand bed.I'd show pics but having trouble with my device

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My tank is a 14gallon biocube,and as of right now I have one hell of a diatonic bloom in my sand or possibly cyno?I'm doing a water change tonight,but as of now this bloom is only in the sand not on the rocks or glass so maybe I'm thinking the sand might be my source of phosphate.the tank is 5months old,running stock biocube filtration with chemipure elite added.I have one blue damsel,and one red firefish,trumpet coral,1mushroom.i1peppermint shrimp.I'm thinking since the sandbed seems to be the source and I've been battling this algae since about 2 months ago,it got better with lights out and water changes but now I'm thinking about replacing the sand bed.I'd show pics but having trouble with my device

 

Do you vacuum or stir your sand?

 

Did you add more sand in the last 3 months when you noticed the Diatoms? Frankly 5 months is still young and you may just be going through your cycle still!

 

Cyano is more slimy and stringy. It will lift off the sand in string formations. Is that what you have? By your explanation it sound like Diatoms (only on sand).

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My sand bed is close to three inches deep in some parts,and I do regularly do a light vacuuming of the sand bed,however I recently left this task to for my wife and she did a deep vacuuming,and I'm not sure if that's an issue,would cleaning the sand bed fix things if it were to be cyano?

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Yes for sure, my tank is made immune to cyano due to these cleanings. My tank is immune to any invader because I don't buy frags from places that don't QT, for me, ahead of time (or I would quarantine myself)

 

check out UWharries thread kicked up beside this one now, good pics included there, high level cyano work.

 

 

Of all invaders we can get, diatoms or cyano are the easiest to control and are no big deal since we know how to rip clean tanks now. A deep sand bed vacuuming which is still partial cleaning work upwells nutrients for cyano already up top; that can be a mild boost, so I like to recommend a full attack/skip cycle reset others take a dosing approach.

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Well the tank is now getting algae which is looking kinda slimey,not sure if I'm dealing with cyano,or dinos?should I tear down the tank?I've had something like it before but after lights out and peroxide treatment for a few days it left but now it seems to be comming back!do I repeat past practice or tear this thing down?do I empty the tank and vinegar wash it and replace sand bed?how long does this take?what do I do with fish and corals???how do I go about cleaning with vinegar?I know I'm replacing the sand bed,any help would be great!also after I replace the sand I'm only gonna put about an inch to inch and a half deep,but how do I clean the Cyrano off of the back panel of my tank and should I go ahead and just clean all the acrylic while I'm at it?I love this tank and want it to be beautiful so ill do whatever it takes to get this thing back it just turned 6 months old and have had algae issues from day one and I'm thinking it's due to excess nutrients from starting the cycle with a raw shrimp?

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3" sand bed could be considered a dsb which isn't supposed to be disturbed, disturbing it could have caused some issues with nutrient levels.

 

The best way to combat an algae bloom like cyano - is to find the cause and correct it. It could be sandbed, not cleaning filters, not replacing floss often enough, additives, foods, bioload, water used.

 

You can do all the major clean up but until if you don't know what the cause is, how do you prevent it from reoccuring?

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we need pics here~ but as a recurring theme, cleaning any nano tank deeply makes for an invader free tank even sight unseen. it may be more work than needed, perhaps a topical only cleaning is required, but its never harmful. the longest lived nano reefs are the ones best cleaned, this is practice for that mode. whether a tank is new or old, this bed cleaning link below applies. one way to tell if a sandbed in a nano is a liability, new or used, is to see how bad it clouds if you lift up a handful in the tank and drop it down (shouldn't have a waste cloud)

 

http://reef2reef.com/threads/the-official-sand-rinse-thread-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

 

we should make sure here even before pics that the lighting isn't white-heavy, that matters massively as LEDs become the norm on smaller tanks. Even if a dose of chemi clean or peroxide would remove the invader, its not removing the cause as you mentioned, that's either in the sandbed (can be tested to know) or in the rocks, or in the bioloading of the tank, the light balance, or the top off water.

 

The full cleaning is never harmful to a tank its refreshing... like CPR since we have low dilution, high waste sinks, indicated by problems above any tank we run in our picos forum is immune to. the practice of being able to reset a tank is gold.

 

 

 

The invasions described in this thread have been covered on how to correct them if wanted, they are also not much more than an eyesore if left in, and they may wax and wane on their own/ our cleaning is only a guaranteed reboot, so our investment $$ never look bad. some tanks are immune to this invasion, copy what they do if concerned.

 

nano reefs don't have functioning dsb's up under the rocks, its not a depth measure. They are all waste sinks... which is why you don't see super old nanos with untouched beds, we see moderately aged ones at best with enduring cyano issues.

 

 

the oldest living nanos in the world run a hands on cleaned bed and purposefully dont follow common rules meant for large tanks with dilution. its not that this keeper has to clean the tank to be invader free, its that its guaranteed to work if he does per giant threads searchable

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3" sand bed could be considered a dsb which isn't supposed to be disturbed, disturbing it could have caused some issues with nutrient levels.

The best way to combat an algae bloom like cyano - is to find the cause and correct it. It could be sandbed, not cleaning filters, not replacing floss often enough, additives, foods, bioload, water used.

You can do all the major clean up but until if you don't know what the cause is, how do you prevent it from reoccuring?

exactly,I'm leaning towards the sand bed being the issue
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3" sand bed could be considered a dsb which isn't supposed to be disturbed, disturbing it could have caused some issues with nutrient levels.

The best way to combat an algae bloom like cyano - is to find the cause and correct it. It could be sandbed, not cleaning filters, not replacing floss often enough, additives, foods, bioload, water used.

You can do all the major clean up but until if you don't know what the cause is, how do you prevent it from reoccuring?

I think I don't want my sand bed that deep,I think I'm gonna buy a new bag of live sand and replace the old one with a shallow sand bed
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Well,after months of fighting different types of algae in my 14 gallon nano reef tank,I'm resetting my tank.for months I've been doing large water changes and different types of thing,it kept coming back,and I was never happy with how deep the sand bed was.so today I took my tank apart and switched out my old sand bed for a new sand bed,I contemplated going bare bottom,but I'm rather attracted to having a sand bed.I went much shallower and now it looks great, I reused all of my live rock and water since I just did a large water change.so after a few hours later it's looking great,I did however rinse the live sand as people told me it would be fine,but I admit I'm a bit nervous about it,lol.but as of now corals have reopened,fish swimming around and it looks great!

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Glad to hear it! :) pics?

wish I could send pics but for some reason my device will not send due to the image being too large it was never an issue before but I'm not sure what's going on ill work on getting some on here!ok well I just sent this pic,unfortunately I have my night lights on,lol

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Alright,frustrating situation here,as the thread shows I've been battling algae in my 14 gallon bc. So this past sudsy I cleaned the tank,and switched out the old sand bed for a new one.well....I rinsed the live sand with tap water and I forgot to do a final rinse in my distilled water.now I'm getting a light algae bloom on the new sandbed.I plan on doing a large water change tomorrow any others wanna chime in.I mean I'm obviously no good at this hobby,but love it so much and don't wanna quit!

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It won't hurt a thing

 

It was never a big risk, how well does your sand pass a drop test underwater, does it cloud any? The failed sw rinse is no big deal

 

As we covered in the thread r2r sandbed rinse, no worms or pods or starfish was lost in your rinsed bed, it was all just waste. Curious to know how well the new sand was rinsed

 

If not much, then the smaller particles fuel outbreaks until they get covered in biofilm. If you cleaned your live rock of any invasions it may produce waste for a while and this can fuel algae blooms or mild diatom blooms associated with new beds. Not a risk of anything

 

On the reef2reef site right now there's an 80 page read of people putting raw Clorox bleach into their sys and sps tanks

 

Your no rinse was their walk in the park

 

 

 

Live rocks cleaned will exude waste that needs to be guided out, always do a water change when you suspect anything

 

They are cpr for your tank, never something harsh, they are regenerative as a flushing reef zone would be. You can't do too much volume, too little causes problems. Match temp and salt levels only, no other params need to be detailed in the aggressive water change method of forced tank compliance.

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Ok thanks brandon429 it definitely looks like durations,not slime or stringy I did a good size water change last night hopefully it'll die out soon thanks again,I thought I rinsed the sand pretty well but ill try the drop test!

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Well,I must apologize to the forum for my previous rant,lol.after having the lights on for six hours there is hardly any diatoms in the sand bed,but keep my fingers crossed that it's the same after 8,9,10 hours but probably gonna turn the moonlight on after 8hours just until things are totally ok,but it does look much better than it has,so again sorry for the rant,and brandon429 I never doubted the the ideas you gave me and I appreciate your input it has helped renew my tank,it's just that after a yeAr into the hobby I'm still learning patience!

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my friends at r2r enjoyed seeing your posts its good modeling for tank resets, this stuff was illegal in reefing in 2004 only pirates/ne'er do wells did tank resets.

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Hey I'm glad that they enjoyed the picture everything going well just some very light diatoms from not rinsing the sand good enough,but the tank looks amazing,I was going to share a picture on here but it gives me an error reading,I made a new post with a recent picture in the thread hopefully it went through,I highly recommend this type of maintenance thanks for your help,looks like I got the pic to send anyway,here it is!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Having a similar problem. New tank cycled 3 weeks ago. Came into office and discovered that a coworker put a coral in tank. So I plugged in the heater a week ago and been having an bloom ever since.

 

I accept that it's my fault for having flake food in the tank even though I was trying to target feed. But what should I do now? Did a water change but nitrates up from 1 to 5 over the weekend.

 

Do I start taking rocks out, or just keep doing wc and wait?

 

Oh... at some point I switched from CaribSea salt to Coralife. I'm halfway through the bag. Should I switch back?

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Diatoms will go away on their own once they have used up their food source which is often silicates. The only thing you can do is water changes with vacuuming your sand.

 

Diatoms are a common algae that new tanks have.

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