what the dueuce?!?! diatoms after a week of new sand

[jcegt87]

um so my tank was looking all nice and whatnot , yesterday i started seeing a few bubbles on the very top of my rockwork, no problem just blew them off with my the turkey baster and went about my day, today i wasnt really paying attention to the tank for most of the day until a few minutes ago, i look in and holy sh!t the back wall has a brown film and the rockwork is FULL of bubbles,

am i gonna go through another cycle, this is what i was scarred of when changing my sand , i checked my parameters sunday and all checked out .

my brain had bubbles on the bottom base also

should i just pick up my water changes? like twice a week? should i leave my lights off for the next few days?

ill check my levels and post them here in a few *sigh*

 

[jcegt87]

alrigh heres the tests lol

everything checks out

ammonia -0-
NO2 -0-
NO3 -0-

 

[little_fish]

The algae is sucking up the nitrates before you can test for them, but is it possible you have dinos? It tends to look like snot with bubbles in it

 

[jcegt87]

for now its just bubbles.... should i do anything specific aside upping my water changes and cutting lights?

 

[little_fish]

not really

 

[jcegt87]

ok thanks L_F , just curious thought , could it be caused by changing the sand? or could it be something else?

i reduced feeding to every other day,lights i am still running the lights prob about 10-11 hrs is that still to much?first 2 hours i have the 10k bulbs on , followed by all lights for about 6 hrs , then only actinics for the rest about 2 hrs

 

[little_fish]

it could be, mixing up the sand could cause a nutrient spike for them to feed off of

 

[NanoReefer]

if you used silica sand, diatoms make their shells from silica. (thats why most people use ro water). but that could be causing the diatoms

 

[wontonflip]

Did you CHANGE or ADD sand? If you changed out too much sand, you could be going through another cycle because you essentially would have removed all the nitrifying bacteria from the old sand. The new sand will get seeded quickly, though, so I wouldn't worry.