Diatom Nightmare! Light or no light

R84achey said:

I do intent to add some more plants and stripping the tank of the ornaments and adding rocks and wood. I’m just dubious as I have no soil etc in the tank & wouldn’t even know how to begin with moving the fish whilst I changed it all.

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You don't need soil unless you are planning a high tech planted tank with few, if any, fish. For fish tanks with live plants, liquid fertiliser is enough for most plants and root tabs for plants which are heavy root feeders.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the light tube you have
I'm not well up on lighting for plants, but this is 9000K with very little red in the spectrum, and I think plants need red light to do well.
But looking at the various types of LED tube on Juwel's website, none of them have any red in the spectrum, including the 6500K Nature tube

Hopefully someone who knows more than me about lighting for plants can take a look at Juwel's lighting page

Essjay said:

You don't need soil unless you are planning a high tech planted tank with few, if any, fish. For fish tanks with live plants, liquid fertiliser is enough for most plants and root tabs for plants which are heavy root feeders.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the light tube you have

JUWEL Aquarium | LED DAY | purchase online

LED Tubes - LED DAY. JUWEL Aquarium

www.juwel-aquarium.co.uk

I'm not well up on lighting for plants, but this is 9000K with very little red in the spectrum, and I think plants need red light to do well.
But looking at the various types of LED tube on Juwel's website, none of them have any red in the spectrum, including the 6500K Nature tube

Hopefully someone who knows more than me about lighting for plants can take a look at Juwel's lighting page

JUWEL Aquarium | LED Tubes | purchase online

MultiLux LED - LED Tubes. JUWEL Aquarium

www.juwel-aquarium.co.uk

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Yes that’s the one. I have the day and nature bulb in at the moment. I also have a blue bulb which I took out. I believe you can buy a red one too. It is bizarre how you can’t reduce the light, it’s all or nothing. As I’ve said though the 2 plants I do have, have nearly doubled in size in 2 weeks, so the lights clearly are doing something x

The other option to light that's too bright is floating plants, but those which are bit more substantial than duckweed. Water sprite, or Amazon frogbit would be my choices, though there are other plants as well.

PheonixKingZ said:

12.5ppm of nitrate really isn’t that much. It’s generally recommended to keep it below 10ppm.

Those “diatoms” really look more green than brown.

@mbsqw1d, any ideas?

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As @Slaphppy7 has aluded to, diatom algae is common in new setups with substrates that contain silicates such as sand as silicate is the building block for diatoms. They can also show up when substrate has recently been disturbed, thus releasing more silicates into the water column. Lots of water changes and manually cleaning of hardscape/decorations is how to get rid.

mbsqw1d said:

As @Slaphppy7 has aluded to, diatom algae is common in new setups with substrates that contain silicates such as sand as silicate is the building block for diatoms. They can also show up when substrate has recently been disturbed, thus releasing more silicates into the water column. Lots of water changes and manually cleaning of hardscape/decorations is how to get rid.

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Should I turn the filter off when cleaning? Dig right to the bottom with my gravel vac or just hover over the top? Take out the ornaments and rinse them? Tap water or tank water? Sorry to ask a 1001 questions x

R84achey said:

Should I turn the filter off when cleaning?

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If the water will drop below the level of the intake, yes turn it off.

R84achey said:

Dig right to the bottom with my gravel vac or just hover over the top?

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Dig right to the bottom in places where there are no plant roots.

R84achey said:

Take out the ornaments and rinse them? Tap water or tank water?

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To get rid of diatoms, scrub them under the tap. Once the diatoms are gone, they won't (shouldn't) need scrubbing.

Just picking up a couple of things from earlier posts...

On the light, only use "daylight" tubes with a Kelvin around 5000K to 6500K. This has high red, blue and green and that is the best light for aquatic plants. Light "cooler" than this, meaning a K higher than 6500K which is more blue and less red, is only going to feed algae. Then control the duration, 7-8 hours of tank light each 24-hour period, and in one continuous period during that time, is adequate. You do not have sufficient live plants to warrant more light, but floating plants @Essjay suggested will really help here.

I agree on the water changes and substrate cleaning. There is an organics issue here, and that feeds algae (floating plants will benefit though).

@Byron Juwel make a few tubes, the one called Day is 9000 K while the one called Nature is 6500 K. The website shows spectra for every type of tube but none of them shows much red. Even the Colour tube, which says "emphasises blue and red colours" does not show red in the spectrum.
Am I missing something obvious?

Essjay said:

@Byron Juwel make a few tubes, the one called Day is 9000 K while the one called Nature is 6500 K. The website shows spectra for every type of tube but none of them shows much red. Even the Colour tube, which says "emphasises blue and red colours" does not show red in the spectrum.
Am I missing something obvious?

View attachment 135480View attachment 135481View attachment 135482

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From these graphs, I would tend to go with the Juwel Colour. One thing I discovered in my search for good T8 lighting is that the Kelvin of manufacturer "A" can be different in appearance from the same Kelvin in manufacturer "B".

Here are some interesting graphs, first showing the light need of plants, then the ZooMed TropicSun, UltraSun, and Life-Glo 6500K. I use the Life-Glo on single tube tanks, and the LG and TropicSun on dual tube tanks.

Byron said:

From these graphs, I would tend to go with the Juwel Colour. One thing I discovered in my search for good T8 lighting is that the Kelvin of manufacturer "A" can be different in appearance from the same Kelvin in manufacturer "B".

Here are some interesting graphs, first showing the light need of plants, then the ZooMed TropicSun, UltraSun, and Life-Glo 6500K. I use the Life-Glo on single tube tanks, and the LG and TropicSun on dual tube tanks.

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Ok I’m confused lol! The problem with the multilux lighting system is both lights have to be on at the same time and there’s no dimmer. At the moment I have the day light and the nature light running. Is this too much or not enough? I do have a blue light but as you’ve suggested probably best not to use this due to algae. (The other half wanted the blue light ?‍) waste of £25... what is the purpose of the blue lights? Are you suggesting I get the colour bulb instead? For both units or 1 to run with the day or nature one? I am in the process of saving and researching to change my tank into a planted tank x

R84achey said:

Ok I’m confused lol! The problem with the multilux lighting system is both lights have to be on at the same time and there’s no dimmer. At the moment I have the day light and the nature light running. Is this too much or not enough? I do have a blue light but as you’ve suggested probably best not to use this due to algae. (The other half wanted the blue light ?‍) waste of £25... what is the purpose of the blue lights? Are you suggesting I get the colour bulb instead? For both units or 1 to run with the day or nature one? I am in the process of saving and researching to change my tank into a planted tank x

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First, do not take my word for anything to do with LED lighting, as I have not looked into it in sufficient detail. I tried some units when I had to replace a broken T8, and ended up fixing the T8. Those tubes I do understand and have through trial and error achieved very good plant lighting.

Having said that, I would think the "Colour" may be the best spectrum of the three, but I have not seen them "live" as it were. I am only going by the spectrum graphs...and I have been fooled by those before.

Intensity is another factor, and here floating plants can benefit, plus obviously a shorter light period, assuming the initial intensity is not too far beyond what the plants in this aquarium require.

You could in the meantime if you're planning on changing the lights, grab yourself some black tape and stick some on the tubes intermittently to block out some light? Might help some

The best wayto know if you have enough red light is to look at your plants. If plant are not getting enough red light they plants will put all of their growth into growing taller. i have in my tankSaurogyne repens which typically grows to only 3 inches tall. At that time I had but a lamp for the aquarium and I used 3000K lamps to insure I had enough red. The Saurogyne repens was growing to about 6 inches tall. I have since added 660nm red leds to the lamp and now it stays about 3 inches tall. Clearly the Keven rating doesn't mean much if you still can be red deficient with high quality LEDS.

One of my previous hobbies was photography and from that experience I find the 6500K recommendation as highly questionable. During the day the sky color can very from about 2000K in the morning and evening to about 5500K at mid day. Add clouds and it can go to 15000K Now many people base the recommendation on the camera sensors. But camera sensors will average all the light readings over the entire sensor. which in many landscape photographs is going to be mostly blue sky.. The sun by itself is about 3000K but it only occupies a very small area (less than 10%) of the image. So cameras are naturally biased toward high kelvin readings

As to Silicate in the water, all substrates will have a lot of Silocon be it plant soil, gravel, and sand . Silicon is one of the most common element in the crust and it typically exist as silicon dioxide or silicate (which is a random mix of silicon and oxygen). Some is soluble but most is not.Typically all and gravel is considered to be inertin an aquarium. But depending on the chemistry and PH of the water some ou might get little silica or silicate dissolved in the water or a lot. Most people believe that tap water is the primary source of silicates. but in reality silicate might be from your substrate or from your tap water.

One thing you can do to reduce silicate levels in tap waters to put water in a bucket and then put a small filter in the bucket. Load the filter with phosphate remover. Phosphate remover is very good at removing phosphate But it is also very good at removing silicates from the water. Then during your next water change use the water from bucket. This would insure the water you are putting in the tank is silicate free. Since plants need phosphate you shouldn't use phosphate remover in a planted aquarium. But if you don't have plants in your aquarium you can put the phosphate remover in the tank filter.

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