Diatoms?

Is this the start of my diatom explosion?

 

You'll find out I guess. That is interesting rock, did you buy it as "live" or "dry" ?

 

I bought it dry

 

The reason I asked is because 1) I like it and 2) critters. If you have lots of live rock you may have, with it, lots of pods and may never see a bloom. A common hypothosis is that there is a bloom, until excess silica is used up. Some odd ones, such as myself actually dose silica though, to help the pod population along, as diatoms are one, maintainable food source for pods. However, even with detectable silica, usually we don't see diatoms. Under a microscope, I see they are there, but the pods, snails etc... apparently do consume them and they never manifest as a macroscopically visible nuisance... So, another hypothosis is that the diatom bloom occurs until there are enough diatom consumers in the tank to knock it down. So, anyways, as far as whether you'll have a bloom, don't know. If you used dry rock, I would guess it is more likely, but will go away, for one reason or another, so, not to worry...

 

That white rock was live at one time, in another tank, it got bleached, and I wanted it for the tank.

I did put a small piece of live rock, with live sand in the tank to cycle it.

I was just surprised at how fast the brown showed up, and how fast it seems to be growing.

Just checked Ammonia today.....between .50 and .25.

 

Im fairly convinced its diatoms. Ammonia was between .5 and .25 and the nitrites were darker than any color I have on the scale.