Brown Diatoms and live rock?

[Brent Hutchings]

My live rock just finshed curing, and ammonia is down to zero. I just gave the rock a good blasting to clean out as much stuff as I could and everything looked great, but today I went down to find a bloom of brown diatoms. My phos and nitrates are unreadable, ph, temp, alkilinity, and calcium are all at good levels. I have 2 10K 250W bulbs about a foot off of the water and have dimmed them (I have an electronic ballas, and I have no suplemental atinic lighting)

Is this common? How should I proceed?

BTW I tried the search engine on the site but it is too busy.

Thanks,
Brent

[acrodave]

What is happening is just what all new tanks go through.You will have diatoms for a while you can add some snails to help but it will go away on its own. After the diatoms are gone you will get green alage the same way.

[m2434]

Agreed. Diatoms common in new tanks, snails and pods will help get rid of them. If it continues, diatoms require silicates, so you may want to test you water source if possible, however I'm not sure that any of the silicate test kits are very accurate. I would just use good RO/DI and wait, most likely they will go away on their own.

[DavidA717]

yeah diatoms are part of the ending cycle. should go away on its own. mine did after about a week and a half

[ManotheSea]

What salt are you using? Certain salt brands are known to cause diatoms outbreaks such as Oceanic.

[Jeremy_holt]

I am using Red Sea. What is the best?

[Brent Hutchings]

Well I am using oceanic, so if it persists, I may look at changing salts.