Dosing Sodium Silicate

Jameseywayney · Apr 20, 2019

I'm currently battling amphidinium Dinos and plan to dose silicates. I'm in Canada and i'm having a hard time finding any sodium Silicates. I'm wondering if Rutlands 146 Waterglass will work:

https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/Rutlan...esive-and-concrete-sealer-Gal/PRD7H8QNEC9YREO

dwest · Apr 20, 2019

Jameseywayney said:
I'm currently battling amphidinium Dinos and plan to dose silicates. I'm in Canada and i'm having a hard time finding any sodium Silicates. I'm wondering if Rutlands 146 Waterglass will work:

https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/Rutlan...esive-and-concrete-sealer-Gal/PRD7H8QNEC9YREO

I think so. It says it’s 100 percent sodium silicate. Let’s ask @taricha

I would recommend the Hanna silicate tester.

taricha · Apr 20, 2019

I'd say use spongexcel at first - it has directions and calculated doses on bottle. Then once you know how your system behaves with Si, you can buy a cheaper larger more concentrated Si solution.

Jameseywayney · Apr 21, 2019

Thanks for the advice, I ordered some Sponge Excel. Quick question, since my sole purpose is to just dose to get diatoms, do i need to purchase a test kit? What are the risks of silicate overdose?

Cory · Apr 21, 2019

Im under the same problem. Been dosing water glass too. It seems they are going away.

Check for stray voltage/ amperage. I suspect a link to dinos and voltage/amperage. I had a piwerhead leaking .04 milliamps.

Jameseywayney · Apr 21, 2019

Cory said:
Im under the same problem. Been dosing water glass too. It seems they are going away.

Check for stray voltage/ amperage. I suspect a link to dinos and voltage/amperage. I had a piwerhead leaking .04 milliamps.

Good to hear, I'll check for stray voltage. I suspect my main issue was it was a tank move. So sand bed was completely disturbed. I dealt with ostreopsis before and uv took care of it easy. I thought this was ostreopsis that was only on sand bed because rock still had bacteria and Dinos couldn't compete.

But after a 3 day blackout, running uv, dosing microbactor and dosing hydrogen peroxide I'm quite confident it's amphidinium. They look like amphidinium under a microscope but I'm not great at IDing

taricha · Apr 21, 2019

Jameseywayney said:
Thanks for the advice, I ordered some Sponge Excel. Quick question, since my sole purpose is to just dose to get diatoms, do i need to purchase a test kit? What are the risks of silicate overdose?

hmm...
Overdose within reason is not a problem, I know of no harmful side-effects and I kept 1-2ppm SiO2 for months.
(a few others have had Si in the multiple ppm range from some complications with Siporax. Lasse comes to mind.)
The issue is this. You (like most) are dosing after a dino bloom has already leveled out because the dinos depleted something else. So you'll only get a small dusting of diatoms. You will wonder if the Si has been eaten up or not. hard to tell, it might be the Si gone or something else. Without a test kit, you could keep pushing Si up and up, and not see any diatom increase past a small dusting. This is pretty common.

Jameseywayney · Apr 21, 2019

taricha said:
hmm...
Overdose within reason is not a problem, I know of no harmful side-effects and I kept 1-2ppm SiO2 for months.
(a few others have had Si in the multiple ppm range from some complications with Siporax. Lasse comes to mind.)
The issue is this. You (like most) are dosing after a dino bloom has already leveled out because the dinos depleted something else. So you'll only get a small dusting of diatoms. You will wonder if the Si has been eaten up or not. hard to tell, it might be the Si gone or something else. Without a test kit, you could keep pushing Si up and up, and not see any diatom increase past a small dusting. This is pretty common.

Thanks! I've heard bad things about the salifert kit, is it really that bad? I find it hard to justify $70 Canadian for the Hanna considering I'll only use it for a couple weeks

taricha · Apr 21, 2019

Jameseywayney said:
Thanks! I've heard bad things about the salifert kit, is it really that bad? I find it hard to justify $70 Canadian for the Hanna considering I'll only use it for a couple weeks

I've never seen anyone actually detect Si with the salifert kit. Like 0 for 10 with known Si sources.

saltwaterpicaso · Oct 17, 2019

did you figure out a conversion for the rutlands I bought it not knowing it was 100 percent and need to cut it down

Cory · Oct 20, 2019

taricha said:
I've never seen anyone actually detect Si with the salifert kit. Like 0 for 10 with known Si sources.

I have detected silicate with my Salifert kit. Maybe i got a good batch?

taricha · Oct 20, 2019

Cory said:
I have detected silicate with my Salifert kit. Maybe i got a good batch?

Maybe they got it working?
Do results line up with your calculated dose?

Cory · Oct 20, 2019

taricha said:
Maybe they got it working?
Do results line up with your calculated dose?

Well i didnt really calculate but i added a capful of sodium silicate to ro water and put it in the tank all at once (300 gallons). Iirc it read .05ppm