Diatom algae

Pat Pather

Pat Pather

Joined
27 Oct 2017
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Hi. My tanks is 3 months old and I have diatoms irritating me. How do I get rid off it?
 
Shorter Light cycle
Manual Removal(Syphon during water changes)
Test your RO water for Tds
 
Thanks. What is tds? I left the lights off for 2 weeks after a proper clean, with no diatom growth. Then I switched the lights on for 8 hours per day. With. 2 days the diatoms were back.
 
When you make water for water changes, do you use your RO machine, or tap water, or NSW(natural sea water). TDS is total disolved solvents in water. In tap water they run quite high

Do you know if your tank has gone through its cycle? It can take up to 3 months to finish a cycle.

PS, the more TDS, the more algae you will have
 
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Here are some pics

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IMG_20180912_175132.jpg
 
I am using a RO filter. My tank is nearing 3 months. I had the same issue with my larger previous tank
 
I would suggest testing your RO water then. A tds pen(meter) is about 400 bucks. Might need to replace some filters there.
 
Thanks for the feedback. I am using a di resin filter as well. I'm experimenting with the led lights. 50% at 8 hours per day as it seems like this is the algaes food source.
 
Hello have you managed to take a look at your tds yet? Usually local water shops like oasis etc have a tds pen maybe ask them to do a quick check for you.
 
Thanks again for the advice. My tds is reading 94 ppm. So I'm going to get my RO unit tested tomorrow
 
That is the TDS of the top up and water change water you using ? when i first started the hobby i was using the waste water for that by mistake :D was putting the cleaned water into the garden
 
Lol. Same issue here. I had the RO setup incorrectly. Waste was going into the tank and the good stuff into the garden. Anyway got the RO sorted so my tds is now 003. But damn, it took almost 5 hours to make about 70 liters. Going to do a 30% water change today and then another 2 30% changes in the next 2 weeks. Let's see if this makes a difference.
 
Keeping fingers crossed that this sorts out the algae issue. Only then will I start to add more livestock
 
And I invested in a tds meter. It was either that or a powder blue tang. ... Decision was easy... Let's sort out the water conditions first
 
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