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Brown dusty 'algae'

Now that bit is interesting ! Almost like bacteria in the filter ? Ottos eat diatoms too though dont they ?
 
sWozzAres said:
I don't think anyone knows why diatoms appear in new tanks. You can look at their life cycle and ecology and try to map this into an aquarium but it never seems to fit.
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In my area Southampton/Eastligh SO postcode, with very very very hard water coming from Twyford (from chalk), we can stop brown diatoms appearing when setting up tank by putting Silicate remover in filter apparently, I have been told by numerous people/fish shops (or just setup using RO water). I don't think it is silicate supplied in the water but something in the water that allows silicate to be leached/reacted/dissoved out of the substrate on initial setup.

Also can and does reappear after massive substrate fiddling around in conjunction with water change.

Anyway the brown diatoms eventually get less and less (4 weeks odd) and stop becoming a problem. Local shops can supply fish that will eat the diatoms & algea, but I noticed what they were trying to sell me could grow to 20-30cm !!!! So research carefully.
 
Antipofish said:
Now that bit is interesting ! Almost like bacteria in the filter ? Ottos eat diatoms too though dont they ?
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Apparently so, and Amano Shrimp are probably even better.

Ciliates however don't seem to be considered. This experiment tried to determine the rate at which ciliates eat diatoms

http://www.springerlink.com/content/u8l9052474q24363/

Up to 90 a day, which doesn't seem much but you can have many thousands of these things munching away.

This video shows a ciliate eating 2 diatoms in 15 seconds!

http://www.microbelibrary.org/libra...ample-which-shows-ciliates-preying-on-diatoms
 
Maybe that is what is happening it takes a week or two for the number of cilliates in a new tank to get to great enough numbers to make a difference.
 
Exactly right. Makes one wonder what else these microscopic organisms get up to and what effect they have on a tank. "New tank syndrome" could be exclusively because of a lack of microorganisms and an "established tank" might be one with lots of microorganisms. Do water changes suck out lots of microorganisms, does excel kill them? The mind boggles :shock:
 
Put 6 dwarf "ottos" in tank this weekend, who immediately set to work on the brown diatoms and in just two days appear to have scoffed the lot. Quite amazon difference it has made to the plants.

Feel bit bad now, as I cleaned and pruned the tank of "brown" covered leaves and wiped as much away as possible before adding the fish. Should have left it for them to eat.

You can see tracks on one of my bits if wood where they have been munching the slight covering of BBA as well.

Quite impressive busy boys and girls.

Appear to be quite unaffected by the CO2 as well.
 
The tank has been runnung about six weeks now and all the diatoms have gone,I reduced the MH's to one hour a day and run the T5's for seven,not sure if the depletion was due to reduction of the photo period,or to natural cycling,any way its gone,now waiting for the next outbreak of something else green and ugly.

Rudi
 
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