Phosguard

rbell219

rbell219

AC Members
Nov 12, 2005
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Anyone use Phosguard by Seachem and what were your results?

I'm having a diatom bloom and it's gotta be silicates because everything bad is 0, except nitrate and it is only 5-10ppm. I was hoping to use Phosguard (or something) to help keep the diatoms in check until the source of silicates is exhausted or found and removed. I'm cleaning the glass every third day and my sand bed looks like cr@%.

Any other products or tips for problems with silicates?
 
what type of water are you using? what are you filtering it with?
id use phosban. it is more expensive, but IMO, works better
 
*RO/DI always with Instant Ocean salt mix
*Wet/dry with bioballs, prefilter sponge in overflow, bag of Purigen in the drip tray---no other mechanical filtration
*ProClear 75 motorized skimmer

This diatom thing started a week ago. In Sept the old tank sprung a leak. So I got a new to me one....The new tank is a used, thouroughly rinsed (not cleaned with antyhing) saltwater 55 gallon with 60lbs of new Carib Sea bio active live sand which looked beautiful, pristine white until two Fridays ago.
 
So basically this tank has only been up and running since September? You might be going through a mini cycle issue. If all your water parameters are truly at 0 you may just be able to wait the bloom out. I've always waited out the diatom bloom stage so I've never used phosguard or phosban.

You mentioned that you had a wet/dry filter with bio-balls. You may want to remove your bio-balls as they will become a source of nitrates.
 
leave it alone once the free silica in your water column goes away so will the diatoms.
hth
max
take it about 3 weeks.
 
Magpen said:
You mentioned that you had a wet/dry filter with bio-balls. You may want to remove your bio-balls as they will become a source of nitrates.
Click to expand...

I cleaned 1/2 of them in August. I'm a bit timid to do that because the tank had been let go when I inherited it. Nitrates were off the chart and traces of ammonia were present. So I think the live rock had, well, died. There's still a lot of red hair algae left that is slowly being consumed and coralines are taking over---once there are more coralines then red hair, I'll start removing the bio balls.
 
I'd take about 1/4 of them over a period of about 4 weeks . Your trates should start to fall man.
max
 
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