3.5 year diatom battle

[Heart of Dixie]

I give you praise for your commitment to the tank. I had this issue in my first reef when I was running black sand. It almost ended me. Once I identified the problem and corrected, I knew it was worth the pain. You'll get there. You have experience, support and a desire to identify the issue. It's like solving a murder mystery... you just want to know who is holding the candlestick over the body. Please keep us in the loop... I'd love to know how your ICP comes back and your isolation testing goes.... following.

Thanks CMMorgan. It is sort of like playing Clue. It may just be the “silica free” aragonite is going to take a long time to deplete what it is not supposed to have. I wish I had identified what the 437 ppm were leaching out of the plastic barrels over the 3 years they were in use.

 

[Cory]

Another natural way would be to get some sponge growth. They will use the silicate and possibly eat the diatoms.

 

[brandon429]

What if instead of a partial cleaning you did this

120 gallon rip clean

I’ve decided to perform a rip clean on my 120 with 100% new water. The tank has been running for 5 years and was battling Dino for several months. I used the bacteria method from elegant corals and worked great I haven’t seen Dino in months now. But I tried several other methods including...

www.reef2reef.com

imagine diatoms surviving that

you could also just remove your sandbed for two months

beat the issue, add back rinsed sand free of issue. Removing sandbeds is easy, we do it all the time in the sand rinse thread, forty pages of that above across hundreds of tanks. When people move homes and are forced to dis assemble, they never show up invaded on the other side. Pattern spotting like that is a prime benefit of huge work threads.

 

[RobertTheNurse]

Well im def gonna pay attention to this thread. Keep us updated along with you. I'm starting to get used to the fact that my sand bed just isn't going to be pearly white all the time. Instead of that colour you have mine is a light green. Unless it's not compromising the health of my ecosystem, or out of control I've learned to live with a few things.

Good luck!

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

No picture, my microscope is old, but I can post a tank picture. I have some GFO but do not run it for I have to dose nitrate weekly and p04 about every other week to keep the levels from dropping to 0. My 20 gallon refugium grows chaeto very well.

But you do see distinctive structures that indicate the organisms are diatoms?

 

[Heart of Dixie]

But you do see distinctive structures that indicate the organisms are diatoms?

Thanks for the reply Randy! I have been reading your articles since I joined RC back in 2003. The structures on low power look like little needles. The next power up more like elongated rice. They appear to match some of the photos I pulled off the internet.

 

[Heart of Dixie]

Quick update. About a week after my initial post some small brown patches appeared in areas of high light and flow. Lo and behold it was ostreopsis dinoflaellates. My tank's p04 had been in the .04 - .034 range (Hanna ULR) and my nitrates are maintained at 5 by dosing. The patches showed up 5 days after a major chaeto harvest where I pulled out 2/3 of the chunk that almost filled a 20 gallon refugium. This is my second round with dinos in 18 years, the first was amphidinium experienced a few years ago.
I cut out the white light, decreased blues to 15%, dosed bacteria (Dr. Tim's) 1ml per 10 gal. every morning then dosed 3% peroxide 1 ml per 10 gal for 5 days. During the whiteout N03 increased to 10. Thursay I began bringing the lights back up at a rate of 10% a week. There was no sign of diatoms or dinos then or now.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Sorry to hear about the dinos. They are amongst the worst pests we get.

 

[Courtney Aldrich]

I've attached a nice book on identification of dinos the you might find useful. I also read that Dinos grow optimally at lower temperatures. I found one report (https://reefbuilders.com/2020/05/11/dinoflagellate-aquarium-treatment/) showing that raising the temperature to 82 °F eliminated dinos after a couple of weeks.

 

[Heart of Dixie]

I've attached a nice book on identification of dinos the you might find useful. I also read that Dinos grow optimally at lower temperatures. I found one report (https://reefbuilders.com/2020/05/11/dinoflagellate-aquarium-treatment/) showing that raising the temperature to 82 °F eliminated dinos after a couple of weeks.

Thank you Courtney. I was able to get rid of them for now. I will however increase the temperature a bit as added insurance.