Dose amount?

[TK_KW]

Hey @Randy Holmes-Farley,

Can you refresh my memory for dosing to promote a diatom bloom. I have 260g total volume in the system.

Trying to still fight these dino's. If levels rise, is there a upper threshold to not go past for ppm?

So I stay on the safe side.

Thanks

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Yours is a little more potent than mine was, so dosing about 0.8 mL per 100 gallons is a fine plan.

Silica In Reef Aquariums

Why would I recommend dosing silica? Largely because creatures in our tanks use it, the concentrations in our tanks (at least in mine) are below natural levels, and the sponges, mollusks, and diatoms may not be getting enough to thrive.

reefs.com

" Here’s how to determine dosing amounts. I’ll assume that you want 1 ppm SiO2 dosing, and you can scale from there. If the concentration of the supplement is 29% silica by weight (41° Baume), then it is 290,000 ppm silica. To get to 1 ppm silica, you then need to dilute by 290,000 fold. If you add 1.3 grams of this supplement (0.96 mL) to a tank with 100 gallons (378,500 mL), then the final concentration will be about 1 ppm SiO2. I’d disperse the concentrated silicate solution into some fresh water before adding it to the tank, and then add it to a high flow area. Because the pH is high, you likely will see some cloudiness that is mostly magnesium hydroxide. The magnesium hydroxide will dissolve without a problem, but to be safe, add the supplement in a high flow area. "

 

[Reefer1978]

Just wanted to say this method didn't work for me to beat Dinos.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

Just wanted to say this method didn't work for me to beat Dinos.

Did you get diatoms to grow?

 

[Reefer1978]

Did you get diatoms to grow?

I sure did, but so did Dinos. There's an interesting discussion I had with a long time reefer, his method of defeating Dinos was the reverse, to fully remove silica out of the water via PhosGuard, since Dinos also utilize silica for the shell / armor.

What ultimately worked for me is consistent presence of N/P + high-power UV.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

I sure did, but so did Dinos. There's an interesting discussion I had with a long time reefer, his method of defeating Dinos was the reverse, to fully remove silica out of the water via PhosGuard, since Dinos also utilize silica for the shell / armor.

What ultimately worked for me is consistent presence of N/P + high-power UV.

No, dinos do not consume silicate. He must have been confused between dinos and diatoms.

it is well established in the scientific literature that adding silicate to seawater can boost diatoms at the expense of dinos. Of course, there are many species of both of these organisms, and diatoms need a lot more than silicate to thrive, and may not always outcompete dinos anyway.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

FWIW, wikipedia has a nice list of organisms that use silicate:

Biogenic silica - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"Unlike the other major nutrients such as phosphate, nitrate, or ammonium, which are needed by almost all marine plankton, silicate is an essential chemical requirement for very specific biota, including diatoms, radiolaria, silicoflagellates, and siliceous sponges. "

 

[Reefer1978]

@Randy Holmes-Farley Thanks for the links and info - I always thought I was done reading about Dinos but it never stops it seems. Here's a link to the article I found just now, there have been many over the years, but here's the quote and info I was referring to: "These single cell marine and fresh water organisms have a silica shell". Question for you, if dinos don't consume silica, but the shell is a silica shell, how is it produced? This is where I am green on my chemistry and biology. Are dinos using other elements to make a silica shell?

The Algae and Photosynhesis

www2.hawaii.edu

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

@Randy Holmes-Farley Thanks for the links and info - I always thought I was done reading about Dinos but it never stops it seems. Here's a link to the article I found just now, there have been many over the years, but here's the quote and info I was referring to: "These single cell marine and fresh water organisms have a silica shell". Question for you, if dinos don't consume silica, but the shell is a silica shell, how is it produced? This is where I am green on my chemistry and biology. Are dinos using other elements to make a silica shell?

The Algae and Photosynhesis

www2.hawaii.edu

OK, there are some species of dinos, mostly freshwater species, that do contain some silica structures, but those are not what we usually find problematic in reef aquaria, and elevated silicate does not appear to encourage the growth of marine dinos in scientific tests.

All of the science references I have seen suggest that higher silicate concentrations drives diatoms and reduces dinos that they typically compete with.

For example:

Effect of silicate and inorganic carbon availability on the growth and competition of a diatom and two red tide dinoflagellates

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2216/13-234.1

 

[Reefer1978]

@Randy Holmes-Farley Thanks again. Here's something I've been reading for the last half an hour. Interestingly enough, O. cf. ovata is what I was fighting a few years ago and dosing silicates didn't help me much to the point of me observing the effects.:

"In turn, it has been observed that planktonic and benthic diatoms can negatively affect O. cf. ovata physiology, morphology and growth. An inhibition of its growth rate by 57 % and 78 % was reported in cultures exposed to, respectively, filtrates of the planktonic diatoms Skeletonema marinoi and Thalassiosira sp., and similar growth inhibition, deleterious effects and genotoxic damages were also observed when exposed to filtrates of other benthic diatoms (e.g., Tabularia affinis, Proschkinia complanatoides and Navicula sp.) (Pichierri et al., 2017). These studies suggested the production of allelopathic compounds by all tested diatoms, especially released after Ostreopsis cell destruction (Pohnert et al., 2007). These diatoms are well known to produce a large family of polyunsaturated aldehydes (PUAs - Wichard et al., 2005). Pichierri et al. (2017) found that exposure to a range of PUAs (2E,4E-decadienal, 2E,4E-octadienal and 2E,4E-heptadienal) concentrations (from 3 to 36 μmol⋅L–1) caused O. cf. ovata growth inhibition, decrease in photosynthesis efficiency, increase of abnormal cells (motionless, decrease in dimensions, contraction of cytoplasm and formation of abnormal vesicle-like structure) and a decrease in cell integrity (chromatin dispersion, lack of autofluorescence of the chlorophyll and larger lipid bodies)."

Frontiers | Chemical Ecology of the Benthic Dinoflagellate Genus Ostreopsis: Review of Progress and Future Directions

The genus Ostreopsis includes some species that produce high biomass blooms and/or synthesize toxic compounds that can be transferred through the marine food...

www.frontiersin.org