Just A Quick One

[regnats]

Does anyone know how long the brown diatom stage lasts
thanks, Andy

 

[Navarre]

That depends on the amount of nutrients in the water. This is course depends on the amount of food you feed the tank and the quality of hte water you are using.

Diatoms will die off once they have used up the silicates in the water. Then of course the algae stage takes over.

 

[regnats]

well we havnt added any inverts yet or fish so we arent feeding anything im guessing it will be gone in a couple of weeks , do you need to wait till its over to start adding life to the tank

 

[SkiFletch]

well we havnt added any inverts yet or fish so we arent feeding anything im guessing it will be gone in a couple of weeks , do you need to wait till its over to start adding life to the tank

Usually by the time you're at the diatom stage you're past the initial nitrogen cycle... So long as your ammonia and nitrites are at zero and your nitrates arenot way off the scale you can go ahead and add some cleanup crew to nibble on those diatoms. A week or so later and you should be able to add fish and/or corals depending on what you want to keep

 

[regnats]

hey thanks for that people, can i jus add another wuick question though. We have been told many differnt times to leave the metal halide lights on. Obviously when we have fish and inverts in there the lights will be on most of the day, but with only LR and LS do we need the lights on all day or just for maybe 4 hours
thanks, Andy

 

[SkiFletch]

4 hours is probably enough to sustain things on the LR so long as you're not going to do it for more than a month or so.