how to remove diatoms?

stewy14 · Saturday at 1:36 PM

I have a 6-7 month old tank, sps, lps, mushrooms, blah... its a 11.4, I have a pretty good and expansive cuc, (25+ astreas, 5 Nass's, 2 crabs, 1 turbo snail, 2 blue legged hermits) and I am getting diatoms(I think, its brown, and fluffy, its not detritus or poop, cuz it doesn't look like decomposed stuff, I have id'd myself, and its diatoms) so how do I remove it?
ill post photos later if possible
oh and 1 clown

EchoPear · Saturday at 1:45 PM

Copepods

Dom · Saturday at 1:46 PM

You could deploy a Diatom filter. Vortex makes one. On Amazon, it said "currently unavailable". But I don't know if it is limited to the vendor on Amazon or if the device has been discontinued.

Either way, there are other manufacturers of Diatom filters.

I like them; you can run it for a few hours daily as a water polisher.

PharmrJohn · Saturday at 1:51 PM

Well, you have Nass snails which is good. Keep silicates to a minimum (they use that to build cell wall). Manual removal should be done. Copepods help. You could also QT your corals if nothing else works and then lights out for a time in the DT. They're photosynthetic so that would help. But in the end you've got to deal with the root cause. It may be as simple as competition for space. So Microbacter7 dosing to out compete. You've got several options, so I wouldn't go nuclear unless absolutely necessary.

stewy14 · Saturday at 4:14 PM

EchoPear said:
Copepods

have manyyy

PharmrJohn · Saturday at 4:26 PM

Dom said:
You could deploy a Diatom filter. Vortex makes one. On Amazon, it said "currently unavailable". But I don't know if it is limited to the vendor on Amazon or if the device has been discontinued.

Either way, there are other manufacturers of Diatom filters.

I like them; you can run it for a few hours daily as a water polisher.

Nice! Didn't know that was an option. I'll put that on my list. Thanks, man!