How to remove diatoms
 

I've heard there are all kinds of schools of thoughts about this... and I've also heard that every tank is different. However, I would love to hear thoughts from those of you who have had success. Perhaps this isn't the right forum for this thread, if so, please feel free to move it.

unless there is fresh silicate being introduced to your tank (through water changes or top off) the diatoms will use up the available silicate and fade out with time. patience is the best way to remove them, simply stirring the sand bed and brushing them off the rocks as you can will help keep their life cycle as fast as possible to burn up the available soluble silica in the water.

Interesting - I buy both my ATO RODI water and my mixed salt from my LFS - I'll check with them and see if anything came from their water. Thank you for the heads up!

Anytime you add something new to the tank like changing to a new plastic bucket for mixing salt water in you can get a bloom. I swear I get a bloom every time my pistol shrimp excavates a new burrow.

there have been a lot of success stories using yeast

GFO also binds silicate, FWIW.

Tbh though, diatoms are one of the best "problem" algae to have IMO, almost everything eats it, easily vacuumed/removed, generally subsides quickly; if your blooms are restricted to diatoms you are not in a bad spot. Others deal with dyno, cyano, GHA, and other more annoying blooms.

If it is a new tank diatoms are just one of the stages. Like HBtank said, it's an easy one to deal with if necessary.

Awesome, thank you all for the suggestions!

Well, it turns out I was wrong, it wasn't diatoms - it is cyano. Time to research more about cyano! (I'm sure I'll start a new thread for this at some point). Thanks!