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Rob74

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Hi,

My water is finally within good parameters! My tank is the 40gal. I have posted about that started cycling last month. Ammonia is 0, Nitrates 0 and Nitrates 0. I am going through a "bloom" of what I believe are diatoms. It is a light brown dusting on the sand and LR. It is worse on the LR. I have been running my lights for 4 hrs. each day. Since the water quality is good, how long will this phase last and should I wait until it is clear to add my first livestock? I have been skimming and have good circ. in the tank. Really, it isn't that bad, just kinda unsightly. Thanks ----Rob
 

AstroCreep

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my tank is going throught the same thing right now and it has been a couple weeks and i still have algae....
 

MartinJ

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Hi Rob
I am going through the same - I believe that once the tank is fully cycled and your Ammonia & Nitrites are 0 you can start adding some hardy livestock slowly. I have a Royal gramma and some Green Chromis in my tank wtih no apparent problems. I'm just cleaning the Diatoms off every other day or so.
 
A

Anonymous

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You will go through phases of algae, I don't see any need to wait until they are all gone to add fish.

As long as your ammonia and nitrites are 0 and your nitrates are under control you can add fish

Slowly....

That's the key..
 

LA-Lawman

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julian sprung has a cool little algae book. he talks about this phase of cycling and reccomends not to do a water change until the diatoms are near full dieoff. you do not want to feed another bloom.

I will post the excerpt in a while
 

MartinJ

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I am going through the same and will be adding Turbo snails tomorrow to see if they make a difference - can anyone confirm if Turbos eat Diatoms?
 
A

Anonymous

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Yup, they do. If you've got a sandbed, add a fighting conch too. Cool to watch. 8)
 

MartinJ

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Hi

Just to let you know I put 12 Turbo snails in on Friday and three days
later just about all my rock has been cleaned of Diatoms, very impressive!

The snails don't seem to clean the sand though - so I'll be looking into the suggested fighting conch - can anyone tell me what they do - who do they fight (each other?) etc. etc.

Thanks
 
A

Anonymous

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Ceriths do a fairly decent job of digging through the sand too.. - Nassarius will bury themselves in the sand to wait for uneaten scraps. (They'll come popping up as soon as they smell food in the water..)
 
A

Anonymous

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MartinJ":bqgyutpr said:
Hi

Just to let you know I put 12 Turbo snails in on Friday and three days
later just about all my rock has been cleaned of Diatoms, very impressive!

The snails don't seem to clean the sand though - so I'll be looking into the suggested fighting conch - can anyone tell me what they do - who do they fight (each other?) etc. etc.

Thanks

What's in a name? ;) They're completely peaceful even with themselves.
 

kwirky

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LA-Lawman":2wvtildi said:
julian sprung ... reccomends not to do a water change until the diatoms are near full dieoff. you do not want to feed another bloom.

I think that's if you're not using RO/DI water... are you using a RO/DI unit or tap water?
 

kennyfish

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I read the diatoms are after excess silica. Once the diatoims use up the inital silica from starting a tank they decline.
 

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