Brown algae or diatoms?

This stuff started showing up about two months ago, just wondered what it is? At the same time hair algae came on strong, guessing one of two things happened. Either the place where I get my R.O. water from has bad membranes or this last batch of salt was not very good. pics showing problem.

 

It may also be that your bulbs are getting old , you are over feeding, cheap charcoal containing phosphates, skimmer not working properly or you had something die off in your tank like a coral or fish that wasn't removed promptly. Just a few other things off the top of my head And yes I would say it is Diatom ............... John

 

The bulbs are 9 moths old good for a year says manufacturer, I use Black Diamond charcoal, feeding is one frozen cube a day for ten fish in two tanks, skimmer working very well, but the die off could be the problem, I lost all of my of my shrimp and some snails within the past few months. The shrimp were not recovered they were just gone I assumed that they were eaten but maybe they are causing the this issue.Thanks John,I'll move some rocks around to see if I can find them.

 

I am just a newbie (since 12/04), but I believe that frozen cubes contain high organic content. I am curious, do you thaw first or just drop cube in? Somewhere I read that the "juices or gels" used to create the cubes can cause a problems. I use frozen foods as well, but I first thaw in a little tank water and then strain out the food before adding to the tank.

 

Seafood when it is captured is purposely coated with polyphosphates. Add to that, the phosphates that are naturally in the frozen food and you can get some high phosphate numbers in your tank.

The best thing to do with frozen foods is thaw it out in RO/DI water. The "stripped" water acts like a phosphate magnet. Let it soak for quite some time. Then pour off the dirty water and put the food in the tank.

 

Very interesting! I did not know that RO/DI water would do that. Unfortunately, I only have RO water, will this work the same? Also, I have a question....I use a turkey baster to target feed my anenome and zoos mysis shrimp, what liquid should I use?

 

It would be an improvement but will not work nearly as good.

You can get a DI add-on very inexpensively as almost all RO/DI units use standard componenents and John Guest fittings. That's what I did. My first unit was strictly RO too. The DI resins are what grabs the majority of the Phosphates.

AFTER soaking the food in RO or RO/DI water and draining, put tank water in your container and fill your turkey baster. You don't want to smack your critters with non-salinated (is that even a word???) water.

 

Yes, I thaw first but just with tank water, then once a week I add garlic extreme to boost there immune system. I use phoso-buster and another similar solution that a LFS makes, works great at controlling phosphates in the tank. I will give the thawing in DI water a shot, it can't hurt to try. Thanks for the advise.

 

Diatoms are limited by both Phosphates and something else....silicates. Somehow, whether by food, salt, top-off water, etc., silicates have been added to your tank. Now, you are going to have to be a detective to figure out where they came from.

Here's a good article http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/jan2003/feature.htm

 

I finally got smart, Always test your RO water before adding salt. The phosphates in my RO water is reading 0.50, I think this is why I have diatom problems.