Originally Posted by
don1234
http:///forum/post/2668121
Yes I used tap water
Yeah, usually bad diatom blooms occur when you initially fill with tap water. Water Companies add silica to the water to help coat the pipes, so you get bad diatoms with plenty of nutrients to encourage their growth. You may want to consider removing phosphates/silica. Theres like 3 major brands that make it, one is called Phosban, one is Phosguard and the other Phosphate Sponge. It's just a fine crushed media that you pour into a separate mesh filter bag and drop in your filter for <2 days. Then you dump it out refill it and leave it in for about a week. (For Phosphate Sponge anyway). The first charge removes phosphates, the second removes silica. Your diatoms may hang around for a while so this will really speed things up. You can siphon some out if you can but they'll keep coming back for a while.
Originally Posted by don1234
http:///forum/post/2668123
Going to add a few more to the CUC team tommorrow...I thought about that.
==>Beefing up your CUC is always good but they DONT eat diatoms, so they wont help that at all. And with the diatoms using up nutrients there probably isn't any other algae growing etc.. Make sure your CUC have stuff to eat in there. If its a new tank it may not have much of anything in there but diatoms. You may want to wait a few more weeks. FYI.
Originally Posted by Payton 350
http:///forum/post/2668126
This is all normal....
you will go through a diatom stage...(brown stuff)
a hair algae stage.....
a cynobacteria stage
and probably a few other things that are annoying but all are normal and everyone goes through them
This is very true, mine went through all 3 stages, Ditoms- real bad, Hair Algae- not bad at all, then Cyano (Red Slime)- Moderate.
After that you'll just have your basic algae here and there but will be good. Don't freak out at what your tank looks like right now (trust me we all have), it'll get way better. Just do your routine cleaning & WC's still and you'll be good.
