Random Diatom Algae Appearance??

[ltkenbo]

Today I noticed that there was an increasing amount of diatom algae appearing on the sand in my tank. I am trying to figure out what would have cause this. A couple of changes or actions I have done recently:

Added cheato algae several weeks ago to the sump which has pretty much starved the green hair algae to death so there is hardly anymore now.

Since last week because of the decrease in hair algae and since the chaeto is now pulling out many nutrients I slowly increased the photo period from 8 hours to 11 hours.

About 3 days ago I moved around several rocks in the tank to rearrange them which involved pushing the sand around several times.

Over the past couple of weeks I have been adding more sand to convert to a deep sand bed.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Gdbyrd]

Sounds like a combo of more light and rearranging stuff. Moving rocks around changes flow and stuff too. Coulda stirred up enough crap to get a small cycle going too.

That's my guess anyhow.

 

[daugherty]

diatoms are sicilite based so by adding more sand you are adding more sicilica to the mix they will come even if you have the light off since they feed on the sicilica not the light.

 

[ltkenbo]

So what should the solution here be, just wait it out, or stir the sand to burry the diatoms or what?

 

[Bifferwine]

Just wait it out. Burying them may make your tank look nicer, but it won't actually do anything to get rid of them. Diatoms will leave on their own, and they aren't harming anything in your tank; they just look ugly.

 

[ltkenbo]

Yeah but see the last time this happened was a couple months ago when I cycled my tank and the diatoms were followed by a horrible hair algae outbreak. So, I trimmed my chaeto, decreased the lighting period a little bit, cleaned out the sump, protein skimmer filter sponge, overflow box and performed a 5 gallon water change.