The Puffer Forum

I've got a 55g that I recently tore down and rebuilt. The current bio-load on the tank is two 1/4" diameter ramshorn snails. Before I knew they were in there, I threw a small chunk of stale krill into the tank to feed the biowheel (one new + one old).

Now my nice white sand is covered with diatoms. The rocks have diatoms, too. And the silk plants. And even the heater.

I'm ordering a timer for the light. The bulb is 32 watts, the one that came stock with the AGA 48" strip light.

* What's a good color temp bulb to get that will minimize diatoms?

* How do you get the current diatoms out of the tank and off the rocks without removing all of the rocks and bleaching them?

* Will a diatom filter help keep the diatoms under control?

* Does anti-phosphate media go bad? We had some at the previous place, but that was purchased several years ago. Is it still good?

Diatoms are formed from excess phosphates and silicates in the water. The phosphate will continue to accumilate in your tank unless you use some sort of media filter to get them out. And yes your media is probably bad. When you add phosphate removing media you can assume it is good until the diatoms and algae start growing again, that is when you know it is time to change the media. Silicates is basically waste from your dissolving krill. Silicates can be removed by doing water changes. But basically all tanks go through a phase of diatom madness in the beginning months.

Pretty much any time you set up a new tank (or do some major changes) you are going to have diatoms. They show up, they linger for a while, they go away. Its just a natural part of the tank settling in.

There really isn't much you can do to get rid of them, and at this point, since you are trying to get the tank cycled, you don't want to be in there scrubbing the glass and washing the gravel.. just let it be. It will be ugly, but one day soon you'll look at the tank and say, hey, they are gone!

The tank should be cycled already ... the old biowheel filter is from before I tore the tank down; I kept the thing floating in tank water while I was redoing the tank.

Regarding the phosphate media: does it go bad in storage? I'm not talking about media that's been in the tank for years, but media that's been in an airtight and lightproof bucket.

What brand is it?

I honestly have no idea about that, but I"m intersted in the answer because I think I have both a "phosphate sponge" new in its container and a few sheets of the pads stored somewhere.

My guess is you'd have to call the manufacturer and see what they say.. most likely they'll cover their butts and tell you not to use it..

As far as the tank still being cycled, a little biowheel is only a fraction of your established biofilter. The vast majority of it lives in your gravel, on the glass, in your decor.. That's why we say if you change out your media, don't over clean your gravel or scrub your glass on the same day.. or you might kill too much of the bacteria and hurt your cycle a little. The bacteria only reproduces to meet its food source, and if you kill 2/3'rs of it during a cleaning/tank redo, well, you have to feed it and wait for it to grow back. It will be a lot faster having a seeding source like your biowheel, but that little wheel isn't even close to being your entire colony of bacteria.

But anyways, bacteria aside, its more that everything you put in there needs to re-establish a sort of slime coat of gunk.. since its not there yet, the diatoms are sticking to it (total dumbed down explaination of it LOL). Once the stuff gets a chance to get all nice and dirty and "used", the diatoms will be gone.

Meh. It's been a while since I've been on this forum...work has been pretty crazy, so I'm a bit behind on water changes. But the nitrates stay right at 5.

Unfortunately, now the sand and rocks have bunches of black-green algae, too, in addition to the diatoms.

I replaced the bulb with a 6250K last week.

Phosphates just tested somewhere between 1.0 and 2.0 in my freshly-mixed 1.004 replacement water. In the tank, it's 2.0.

I think I see the problem. I've added Seachem's phosphate media; found the bucket-o-stuff from a while back. We'll see if it still works.