Diatoms in 10 month old tank

JACKS REEF · Jun 23, 2020

I have been battling diatoms for a long time now and have done about everything. They used to be on the sand bed but that cleared up. Currently I did a water change about 1 week ago and things cleared up. But the diatoms came back like 2 days ago they came on the rock and glass and I need to use my glass cleaner to get rid of them. Some patches on the glass are very hard to get off and are very stubborn. The good thing is that they are not coming back as much on the sand bed. I am currently toping off with distilled water from Walmart and I just changed toping off from drinking water from pet smart to this distilled water. My phosphates are low and my protein skimmer is running well. My nitrates are a little high. Also I don’t have any live rock just a cheap rock from pet smart that I got when I cycled the tank.