Diatoms issues

[Aidanburkhardt]

I’ve been having a lot of issues with ugly brown and green algae popping up everywhere on my tank it usually covers the sand bed and glass, then gets covered on the rocks. I’ve been scrubbing it off manually every day and it seems to keep coming back is there any particular reason for these types of outbreaks and what can I do to prevent it 

[A.Berry]

whats your lighting schedule? water parameters and water changes? How long has your tank been running? It's hard to help without that info.

[Aidanburkhardt]

54 minutes ago, A.Berry said:

whats your lighting schedule? water parameters and water changes? How long has your tank been running? It's hard to help without that info.

I usually do 8 hours of light a day 20% water changes every 2 weeks it’s been running for around 7 months 

[A.Berry]

2 hours ago, Aidanburkhardt said:

I usually do 8 hours of light a day 20% water changes every 2 weeks it’s been running for around 7 months 

Got it. What are you Nitrates/nitrites/phosphates at? What kind of lights? Its pretty normal from what i understand to have a wave of cyano, dynos, and algae blooms as a tank matures. Keep your water change regiment and try to reduce feedings and you could always black out for a day or so. I personally subscribe to the idea that traces of nuisance organisms create a healthier balanced ecosystem. They'll balance out. 

[Djc918]

Part of the cycling process 

how many fish in the tank

[Aidanburkhardt]

10 minutes ago, Djc918 said:

Part of the cycling process 

how many fish in the tank

3 fish a emerald crab a hermit crab and 6 snails 

[Aidanburkhardt]

1 hour ago, A.Berry said:

Got it. What are you Nitrates/nitrites/phosphates at? What kind of lights? Its pretty normal from what i understand to have a wave of cyano, dynos, and algae blooms as a tank matures. Keep your water change regiment and try to reduce feedings and you could always black out for a day or so. I personally subscribe to the idea that traces of nuisance organisms create a healthier balanced ecosystem. They'll balance out. 

I have to pick up a new test kit to see haven’t got around to it cause everytime I tested my parameters were good 

[A.Berry]

14 minutes ago, Aidanburkhardt said:

I have to pick up a new test kit to see haven’t got around to it cause everytime I tested my parameters were good 

Something else that seems to becomeing more well known is that an overly sterile tank may encourage blooms too

[Clown79]

9 minutes ago, A.Berry said:

Something else that seems to becomeing more well known is that an overly sterile tank may encourage blooms too

An overly sterile tank causes dino's.

 

What's your water source?

 

What filtration are you using and what media?

 

What is your maintenance routine  during waterchanges? 

 

 

[Lugmos12]

1 hour ago, Clown79 said:

An overly sterile tank causes dino's.

 

What's your water source?

 

What filtration are you using and what media?

 

What is your maintenance routine  during waterchanges? 

 

 

What do you mean by sterile?

[A.Berry]

Sterile isnt the right word. Too "clean" of water. I could be wrong but ive seen a shift in mentality over the last couple years on forums moving away from 0ppm on nitrate/nitrite/phosphate and towards a controlled balance. Ive seen a drastic difference in my own tank between 0ppm and trace amounts. When I'm at 0ppm my coral suffers and I end up with diatom and cyano blooms. Maybe its a unique experience? But worth noting I think

[Clown79]

48 minutes ago, A.Berry said:

Sterile isnt the right word. Too "clean" of water. I could be wrong but ive seen a shift in mentality over the last couple years on forums moving away from 0ppm on nitrate/nitrite/phosphate and towards a controlled balance. Ive seen a drastic difference in my own tank between 0ppm and trace amounts. When I'm at 0ppm my coral suffers and I end up with diatom and cyano blooms. Maybe its a unique experience? But worth noting I think

Diatoms, cyano, gha, are from silicates and high nutrients. Often cyano starts up from something lacking in maintenance and low flow areas.

 

Test results may be 0 but it's because those algaes are using up the available nutrients, often leading to false test results.

 

Dino's are from 0 nutrients. Particularly phosphates. 

 

 most if us aren't running ULNS because it has negative effects like dino's, lack of growth, lack of colour but I haven't seen diatoms or cyano caused from ULNS.

[A.Berry]

13 hours ago, Clown79 said:

Diatoms, cyano, gha, are from silicates and high nutrients. Often cyano starts up from something lacking in maintenance and low flow areas.

 

Test results may be 0 but it's because those algaes are using up the available nutrients, often leading to false test results.

 

Dino's are from 0 nutrients. Particularly phosphates. 

 

 most if us aren't running ULNS because it has negative effects like dino's, lack of growth, lack of colour but I haven't seen diatoms or cyano caused from ULNS.

That's what I was thinking. Pardon my confusion. Thank you for clearing that up. 

[Aidanburkhardt]

20 hours ago, Clown79 said:

An overly sterile tank causes dino's.

 

What's your water source?

 

What filtration are you using and what media?

 

What is your maintenance routine  during waterchanges? 

 

 

I have a fluval 13.5 all in one tank with the protein skimmer added and carbon and bio media in the sponge when I change my water I do %20 every 2 weeks and usually I siphon the sand to get the algae out while changing water and scrub any algae off the glass when it pops up and goes into the skimmer. However I don’t have a RODI system and I’m on a well that I’ve had tested and it’s as clean as bottled water but maybe that’s the issue 

[A.Berry]

8 minutes ago, Aidanburkhardt said:

I have a fluval 13.5 all in one tank with the protein skimmer added and carbon and bio media in the sponge when I change my water I do %20 every 2 weeks and usually I siphon the sand to get the algae out while changing water and scrub any algae off the glass when it pops up and goes into the skimmer. However I don’t have a RODI system and I’m on a well that I’ve had tested and it’s as clean as bottled water but maybe that’s the issue 

Id bet thats your culprit! I had the same issue with my pico jar

[xthunt]

22 hours ago, A.Berry said:

Something else that seems to becomeing more well known is that an overly sterile tank may encourage blooms too

Got to agree, at least at this time with my limited observation so far with dosing nitrate. My tank has been running for a while with absolute 0 nitrate (salifert), 0.00-0.01 phosphate (Hanna). Even with weekly water changes and running phosguard, and bare bottom I had a fuzzy, furry algae growing and loads of white sponge stuff.  No dinos whatsoever. Even target and broadcast feeding a mix of reef roids/reef chili/phyto/aminos never got detectable no3. 

 

I dosed my tank up to 5ppm nitrate over the course of a week. When I first started dosing, the tank was using about 2ppm a day. Now it's been holding at 5ppm on its own for a few days. My rock has never been cleaner. Almost all the furry, fuzzy algae stuff is gone, the coralline spots have gotten much richer in color, and much less sponge growth. Another thing I've noticed is much less alk usage.

 

This is just my second week so take it with a grain of salt. Probably the well water your using though. 

[Clown79]

2 hours ago, Aidanburkhardt said:

I have a fluval 13.5 all in one tank with the protein skimmer added and carbon and bio media in the sponge when I change my water I do %20 every 2 weeks and usually I siphon the sand to get the algae out while changing water and scrub any algae off the glass when it pops up and goes into the skimmer. However I don’t have a RODI system and I’m on a well that I’ve had tested and it’s as clean as bottled water but maybe that’s the issue 

The first culprit could be the sponge, they often are nutrient traps. 

A better option would be a media basket with floss and carbon. Floss changed out 2 times a week.

This also gives you the ability to vacuum out the back chambers.

 

When you say the well water is clean, was TDS levels tested? Bottled drinking water is filtered tap, so there are still minerals and stuff in it.

 

Using distilled or rodi is better.

[NSReefer902]

On 7/10/2019 at 6:21 PM, Aidanburkhardt said:

I have a fluval 13.5 all in one tank with the protein skimmer added and carbon and bio media in the sponge when I change my water I do %20 every 2 weeks and usually I siphon the sand to get the algae out while changing water and scrub any algae off the glass when it pops up and goes into the skimmer. However I don’t have a RODI system and I’m on a well that I’ve had tested and it’s as clean as bottled water but maybe that’s the issue 

I just had the same issue. my well water test came back perfect and I measured my TDS at 085PPM which is pretty good. The problem I had was that every water top up provided more food for the algae's and diatoms. I switched to distilled water and did a massive water change. my tank is back to running order and the growth/take over has seemed to cease for now.