Cleaning substrate

SlicVic · Sep 19, 2022

Hi everybody! I am at month 5 and I have brown algae or something of that sort on my bottom substrate and it also goes on the glass as well. I clean it off of the glass every couple days but I haven't cleaned the substrate because I'm nervous about that! It seems to stay around in the water and land back on the glass every couple days( which I clean off) but it stays on the substrate. Nobody eats it is what I noticed. I thought maybe I could get more clean up crew Critters to take care of that but nobody seems to have this problem. Should I siphon the bottom? I am scared that I would suck out too much and change the chemistry of the tank! Right now I have a 32 gallon BioCube with four fish,( chromis, clownfish, firefish, pajama cardinal) several corals, cleaner shrimp crabs and snails. What do you think? Should I use a regular siphon if I clean it? Help!

Cory · Sep 19, 2022

No problem siphoning it out. Better would be to use a gravel vac. But brown algae is either diatoms (silicate in tap water) or dinoflagelets.

SlicVic · Sep 19, 2022

Cory said:
No problem siphoning it out. Better would be to use a gravel vac. But brown algae is either diatoms (silicate in tap water) or dinoflagelets.

I only use r o water. Will the dinos get sucked out and stop growing with the gravel vacuum?

Cory · Sep 19, 2022

SlicVic said:
I only use r o water. Will the dinos get sucked out and stop growing with the gravel vacuum?

Silicate can get through ro water easy. Most people use deion resin on the exit of ro for silicates. Sucking them out will work for a day or two but theyll come back because theirs a food source for them someplace. First you need to id them as dinos or diatoms then try to get rid of them. Got a clear picture of it?