weird diatom question...please read took me a while to peck it out.

emtguy

emtguy

Member
My tank is 4 months old. I set it up right and did what i was told and learned on this site and took it slow in the beggining. My tank is a 28g HQI and it is cycled and now has a few corals in it and WAS doing good. I had a Small diatom bloom after the cycle but since then i have had no algea of any sort until now...
I am seeing some diatoms on the SB and LR and the only way i can get it to go away other than siphoning it out is to cut the light cycle from 8 hrs to 5 hrs. Once i set the cycle back to 8hrs the diatoms come back again in same place on SB.
I have sunlight coming in a window hitting part of my tank but it isnt where the diatoms showed up at and i did stop that anyhow with blinds.
The only thing i have done lately that is diffrent is started using DT's twice a week and my skimmer was off for 1.5 days and i put 2 lid full of purple up in the tank...
My levels are all good except for nitrates and they are 20 which is acceptable i think.
I havent used DT's or purple up since the small bloom started about a week and a half ago but it has not gotten any better.
Any tips on what might be causing the outbreak?
My temp is 79.8 and salinity 1.025
 
coraljunky

coraljunky

Active Member
DT's will produce excess nitrates which is likely feeding the diatom. How much are you feeding? I believe 1 cap per 100 gal.
 
sepulatian

sepulatian

Moderator
What kind of water are you using? Do you have a cleanup crew? Your tank is still considered new. It is not unusual to get second outbreaks of diatoms. How bad is it? Is it only in some areas?
 
emtguy

emtguy

Member
only in some areas...i have 1 hermitt, 6 turbos and 8 nass. using ro/di water but i have probally been feeding to much DT's i am or was putting 2 teaspoons full in 28g so now that i have syoped maybe they trates will go down and diatoms might receed??????????
 
sepulatian

sepulatian

Moderator
Originally Posted by emtguy
http:///forum/post/2573090
only in some areas...i have 1 hermitt, 6 turbos and 8 nass. using ro/di water but i have probally been feeding to much DT's i am or was putting 2 teaspoons full in 28g so now that i have syoped maybe they trates will go down and diatoms might receed??????????
You may have to do a few water changes. The extra nutrients were certainly helping the diatoms. Being that it is only in a few areas you may want to be sure that your power heads are reaching those areas. It sounds like you may have some low flow spots.
 
emtguy

emtguy

Member
thought about that so did move my PH to create more flow toward the bottom. i guess i just have to wait and see.
 
michaeltx

michaeltx

Moderator
yeah that would be alright but you wont get rid of them until the food source is gone.
what we see are the dead skeletons of the diatoms. usually they feed on silcates.
what you may try is stop useing the DTs for awhile and when it gets better try again if they come back you have the source. if they dont receed then try not useing the purple up if they receed bingo you have teh culprit..
Now I would not use purple up to begine with I would use a good 2 part calcium buffer like kent makes. I used purple up long time ago and it didnt do anythng to speak of in the tank.
Mike
 
scopus tang

scopus tang

Active Member
Originally Posted by MichaelTX
http:///forum/post/2574786
yeah that would be alright but you wont get rid of them until the food source is gone.
what we see are the dead skeletons of the diatoms. usually they feed on silcates.
what you may try is stop useing the DTs for awhile and when it gets better try again if they come back you have the source. if they dont receed then try not useing the purple up if they receed bingo you have teh culprit..
Now I would not use purple up to begine with I would use a good 2 part calcium buffer like kent makes. I used purple up long time ago and it didnt do anythng to speak of in the tank.
Mike
Ok Mike, I have to ask, please be aware I'm not trying to stir up trouble, I'm just asking because I'm curious. Why do lots of people on this site think that only the dead skeletons of diatoms are visible during a diatom bloom? Living diatoms are also visible. Also, diatoms are photosynthetic, they use silica in building their shell, which is why they grow well and bloom when it is present, but I do not believe they "feed" on it as a food source. Perhaps I'm missing something here, but I have to ask
 
michaeltx

michaeltx

Moderator
feed may not have been the best word but in a sense they do and use it as building blocks.
I will have to find the artical again.
but basically all tanks have diatoms in them once they die the skeletons fall to the bottom and clump together forming a dusting that we can see with the n-aked- eye. diatoms are very tiny critters. when they are seperate we dont see them or when there isnt a bloom of them they arent noticed in the tank.
Mike
 
michaeltx

michaeltx

Moderator
ok found it the artical is from vortex
DIATOM (Greek - cut in two) a mobile plant of microscopic single cell or colonial algae. Among the relatively simple forms of microscopic life are animals that cannot move and plants that can. One class of these mobile plants is known by the name of diatoms. A favorite subject in many general biology or botany classes, the diatoms also occupy the geology students because diatoms have been inhabitants of both fresh and salt waters for at least 15,000,000 possibly over 20,000,000 years.
As living plants they serve as food stuff for animals as small as themselves and for the largest whales.
As fossils their siliceous skeletons form the substance of diatomaceous earth, once less accurately called kieseiguhr, now generally mined, refined and sold as DIATOMITE.
Diatoms reproduce by self-division - as suggested by the name - under ideal conditions each diatom may divide every eight hours. In thirty days a single diatom my produce ten billion descendents.
In the course of growth a diatom extracts silica, the basic ingredient of common sand, from the water and converts it into a sort of external skeleton or frustule. When a diatom dies, it settles to the bottom of the sea or lake and the organic part disintegrates leaving this siliceous skeleton, microscopic in itself and as full of tiny holes and passages as a sponge.
A cubic inch of diatomite contains millions of diatom fistulas, which is one way of dramatizing the fact that phenomenal growth over a period of ages was required to produce the vast deposits of diatomaceous earth. Some layers measure as much as 1500 feet thick and extend over thousands of acres.
The individual diatom come in a great variety of shapes - well over 10,000 have been separately identified. Microscopic to sub-microscopic in size, their forms are as fanciful and delicate as snow flakes. The highest power microscopes reveal each minute particle as a mesh-like structure, a lacework spun for silica, the stuff of sand.
The combination of minute size and frozen-lace particle structure account for the unusual and important properties of diatomite.
Light weight compared to buck,
7 -13 lbs. a cubic foot
Large surface area per pound
3,000 to 30,000 square feet
Absorptive facility
up to 300% by weight
Liquid suspendibility
carried easily by very light or very viscous fluids
Thanks to certain proportion of elongated particles, a layer of diatomite tends to mat like straw or felt. It is curiously both flexible and rigid in practical use - and a thick cake is almost incompressible although minute voids from 75 to 96% of its bulk.
Diatomite is practically inert being essentially the same chemically as common sand. Melting point is 2900°F. It is friable and from from grit.
 
scopus tang

scopus tang

Active Member
Interesting; Thanks for the info , I'll have to do some further research. I would tend to disagree with the articles statement that all diatoms are mobile. You and I both, have numerous times cleaned the front glass of our aquariums of a light film, that film in many cases is caused by what I believe to be the growth of living diatoms that actually attach to and grow on the glass. Try a simple experiment sometime - place a glass slide at an angle in your aquarium sometime after a few weeks remove it ~ it will be covered in diatoms easily viewed under a microscope. You are correct in that individual ones are too small to be seen with the nake.d eye, but the effect of their growth on rock or glass is often easily observed. If they were simply dead skeletons, they would simply brush off the glass, instead of attaching. I don't argue that in death they drift to the bottom and accumulate, just don't totaly agree with the notion that the golden brown growth we see is in reef tanks is only the accumulation of dead skeletons. Again thanks for the info; gives me something else to investigate.
 
michaeltx

michaeltx

Moderator
true but 99% of the time what see condense at the bottom and on the rocks and what is asked about is dead already and make then that much more noticeble. I am not saying that they are all dead though but most of them are anyway.and for the common person asking the dead skeleton is the answer thats needed going deeper into it most of the time would only interest a biologist. Most people just want to know what they are and how to get ride of them. Most dont care what they really are just for them to be gone. if that makes sense.
Mike
 
emtguy

emtguy

Member
i did a 3 gallon WC and vacumed SB. They are gone for now! LOL
I have stoped using the DT's and Purple up for now...the only other thing i did was changed the Filter floss with the WC before this one....i didnt change it this time.
They arent that ba but i wana control them before they do get outa hand.
 
scopus tang

scopus tang

Active Member
Originally Posted by MichaelTX
http:///forum/post/2575657
true but 99% of the time what see condense at the bottom and on the rocks and what is asked about is dead already and make then that much more noticeble. I am not saying that they are all dead though but most of them are anyway.and for the common person asking the dead skeleton is the answer thats needed going deeper into it most of the time would only interest a biologist. Most people just want to know what they are and how to get ride of them. Most dont care what they really are just for them to be gone. if that makes sense.
Mike
Yes indeed that makes sense, and I do appreciate the time. Sorry if I appear argumentative at times, I'm not trying to be, my biological mind just catches on certain things and I have to pursue it further. Your quite correct, most of what I find very cool and interesting tends to bore my students ~ so your answer makes a lot of sense. Again appreciate the time.
emtguy, glad you've solved your diatom issues for now.
 
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