View Full Version : Do I have diatoms?
Brian94558
11/09/2010, 04:32 PM
My 18g tank has been getting a gold/brown life coating on my send bad the past couple of weeks. I have one arc eye hawk, which I feed pellets every other day. I leave my halides on for only 5 hrs a day. The only filtration I have is a AC50 with purigen, chemi-pure, and filter floss. I also have a ball of cheato in a soup basket. My glass stays spotless but I've been noticing areas of hair algae popping up in a few spots along the rocks. For top off and water change I use RO/DI water from my lfs.
Here's a photo of what it looks like.
http://i264.photobucket.com/albums/ii162/audio101/P1020187.jpg
mike_cmu04
11/09/2010, 07:06 PM
It is hard to tell for sure in the picture but it is either diatoms or cyano.
Palting
11/09/2010, 07:26 PM
Golden brown is usually diatoms, though it's hard to tell from the pic. How long has the tank been up and running?
looks abit more like cyano to me. As I had some that started kinda orange brown and then started to change to red. I Attacked it right away buy cutting back on feedings and sucking most of it out with my gravel vac. I also only ran my actinic lights as I read they feed off of the orange and red spectrum. In a week it was almost all gone.
nvdiz
11/09/2010, 11:05 PM
looks like diatoms
aleonn
11/10/2010, 12:17 AM
Looks like diatoms, but a more definitive answer would require additional pix or tank history.
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