the one over...................................................................^^ is the type I sawBelieve it or not...
Diatoms come in MANY shapes and sizes. For example:
Diatoms... good or bad?
- Thread starter 1oooop
- Start date
Yeah, it's still a diatom, so you should treat it like one...
Quite possibly by not doing anything more to your tank!
Gravel vacs and water changes help.
Quite possibly by not doing anything more to your tank!
Gravel vacs and water changes help.
If it is in fact diatoms they are perfectly harmless and will disappear on their own. They should be pretty easy to wipe off...
I have what I believe is diatoms. Brown algae-like stuff appeared on my rocks and plastic plants over the course of three to five days. Most but not all of it wiped off, and it did nto come off in sheets. It accumulated on the quartz rocks and the plastic plants but not in any quantity on the gravel or the glass (which gets a very small amount of ordinary green algae that I wipe off).
I have photos of them under a microscope at http://good-times.webshots.com/album/566847341WolpST
Most but not all diatoms have raphes, and I'm having trouble viewing under the 1000x power. Experts are telling me you can't see them wihtout 1000x power.
They do look like diatoms to me. They do not however look like any of the ones in the picture posted here. Tehre was some opinion that they might be cocconeis.
Waht do people here think?
Also, what SMALL fish will help control diatoms, and how many do I need? My tank is a bit overstocked, so I sure don't want to add a big catfish. Besides I have small danios and tetras - the kind tha tdon't get bigger than 1.5 inches.
I am doing daily 10% water changes, following two days of more drastic water changes and suctioning out the gravel.
My tank is five months old and just finished cycling. I have been busy adn was siphoning out the food at the bottom every two or three days instead of every day, and finding the tank had digested it.
The day the brown algae was at its worst there was no ammonia, no nitrites, no nitrates, and no phosphates, teh latter two of which is hardly the normal condition of the tank. The water here is high in phosphates and normally there is 5% to 10% nitrates. I'm figuring that hte diatoms ate it all and then died off. Now the nitrates are back to normal and hte phosphates are at or slightly above tap water level. I understand that the API phosphate kit won't measure organic phosphates. I have a small amount of ammonia that is coming down, but I thoroughly rinsed the filters in addition to deep cleaning the tank.
Yours,
Dora Smith
I have photos of them under a microscope at http://good-times.webshots.com/album/566847341WolpST
Most but not all diatoms have raphes, and I'm having trouble viewing under the 1000x power. Experts are telling me you can't see them wihtout 1000x power.
They do look like diatoms to me. They do not however look like any of the ones in the picture posted here. Tehre was some opinion that they might be cocconeis.
Waht do people here think?
Also, what SMALL fish will help control diatoms, and how many do I need? My tank is a bit overstocked, so I sure don't want to add a big catfish. Besides I have small danios and tetras - the kind tha tdon't get bigger than 1.5 inches.
I am doing daily 10% water changes, following two days of more drastic water changes and suctioning out the gravel.
My tank is five months old and just finished cycling. I have been busy adn was siphoning out the food at the bottom every two or three days instead of every day, and finding the tank had digested it.
The day the brown algae was at its worst there was no ammonia, no nitrites, no nitrates, and no phosphates, teh latter two of which is hardly the normal condition of the tank. The water here is high in phosphates and normally there is 5% to 10% nitrates. I'm figuring that hte diatoms ate it all and then died off. Now the nitrates are back to normal and hte phosphates are at or slightly above tap water level. I understand that the API phosphate kit won't measure organic phosphates. I have a small amount of ammonia that is coming down, but I thoroughly rinsed the filters in addition to deep cleaning the tank.
Yours,
Dora Smith
