Diatom Outbreak on 3 Month Old Reef Tank

Hello everyone ,

So, my tank has been going for about 3 months now, and has had its ups and downs. My corals are growing amazing, and coloring up. And invertebrates are cruising around the tank. However, recently i noticed LOTS of diatoms forming on the sand in my reef tank. These diatoms are just impossible to kill, i tried to stir the top of the sand around, and try to make the diatoms die out that way, to see if it was a "Left-over algae" from some invisible sorts of nitrate spikes. However, next day it looked the same again. All the diatoms were back to annoy me. Diatoms are seriously going me on the nerves. I have so many problems with this tank; Majanos, Aiptasia, Algae, and Parasites. I've gone through pretty much EVERYTHING within these 3 months, which is just freaking me out. But guys, please help me on this one, so that i have one less thing to worry about.

 

Maybe a sea cucumber would help you with that. If you get a specific species (like the black sand cucumber) they would eat the sand with algae on it and then poop out clean sand. When all the mess is gone, they will start climbing the rocks and glass for other bits of algae until it grows back on the sand. Some species are not the most beautiful of creatures, but they are very good at what they do and are great members of a CUC

 

It's probably cyano rather than diatoms. Cyano grows in more of a mat and IME produces a lot less gas bubbles. Cyano is fairly normal in reef tanks, nearly everyone experiences it from time to time. If you don't have any inverts that stir your sand (starfish, conch) adding one would help, along with running some GFO to help get rid of phosphates.

 

I have been battling sand junk for about 3 months now on my 5 month old tank. It's just now starting to subside a bit. It's still not completely clear but it's getting there. If your corals look great and everything else is healthy, then I would just let it run it's course. You can change up your flow a bit to keep it blown off but it will plague you until the source of nutrition is gone or bacteria all get in balance. This is very typical with a young tank.

 

My 56 is only a few months old & I had a gha outbreak. But now the cyano is starting to take over the gha. Which I don't mind lol. Cyano is much easier to remove from rocks & sand. Yesterday I just added to my cuc a more hermits, snails, starfish in tank & pods, chaeto & a shaving brush tree in my fuge. I just keep the junk away from corals & keep up with weekly wc's. Your tank will stabilize after a while. It takes a while to get everything dialed in.

 

Can you post up a pic? Diatoms just has to run it's course. It'll disappear eventually if it's diatoms. Messing with it won't speed it up.