How to test silica in kalk solution

dbq5anlxj · Oct 8, 2022

Hello. After remove all the source for silica that I can think of. I still have diatom growing on my barebottom and rock. It's grows back really fast. The only thing I did not test for is the kalk solution. It did remind me all this diatom happened after changing the kalk brand(ESV now). Is there any way to test the silica level in kalk solution? Anyone has experience with ESV kalk? (I do have seachem silica test kit .can't locate a Hanna 705 anywhere)
Ro water icp show 0 silica (enduro and silicabuster)
Tank icp 181ug

Garf · Oct 8, 2022

dbq5anlxj said:
Hello. After remove all the source for silica that I can think of. I still have diatom growing on my barebottom and rock. It's grows back really fast. The only thing I did not test for is the kalk solution. It did remind me all this diatom happened after changing the kalk brand(ESV now). Is there any way to test the silica level in kalk solution? Anyone has experience with ESV kalk? (can't locate a Hanna 705 anywhere)

Dunno, but diatoms ain’t bad, they are a food source for higher organisms.

dbq5anlxj · Oct 8, 2022

Garf said:
Dunno, but diatoms ain’t bad, they are a food source for higher organisms.

You are right they ain't bad but when it's everywhere it dose not matter it's good or bad anymore. It's just ugly to look at.

Garf · Oct 8, 2022

dbq5anlxj said:
You are right they ain't bad but when it's everywhere it dose not matter it's good or bad anymore. It's just ugly to look at.

You got a pic of the tank? Copepods and tiny stuff eats them.

Dan_P · Oct 8, 2022

dbq5anlxj said:
Hello. After remove all the source for silica that I can think of. I still have diatom growing on my barebottom and rock. It's grows back really fast. The only thing I did not test for is the kalk solution. It did remind me all this diatom happened after changing the kalk brand(ESV now). Is there any way to test the silica level in kalk solution? Anyone has experience with ESV kalk? (I do have seachem silica test kit .can't locate a Hanna 705 anywhere)

@taricha

The only thing that I can think of is to measure freshly prepared saltwater before and after dosing kalkwasser to it. Make sure pH is around 8.

By the way, while silicate is needed for diatom growth, it may not necessarily cause heavy diatom growth, especially in new systems. You may also want to confirm the brown film is diatom growth rather than dinoflagellate growth.

dbq5anlxj · Oct 8, 2022

Garf said:
You got a pic of the tank? Copepods and tiny stuff eats them.

I added four bottles galaxy pods two weeks ago and three urchins. I have 50 decent sized snails. The clean an area but it grow back in a day or two

dbq5anlxj · Oct 8, 2022

Dan_P said:
@taricha

The only thing that I can think of is to measure freshly prepared saltwater before and after dosing kalkwasser to it. Make sure pH is around 8.

By the way, while silicate is needed for diatom growth, it may not necessarily cause heavy diatom growth, especially in new systems. You may also want to confirm the brown film is diatom growth rather than dinoflagellate growth.

Thanks. Tank is almost a year old. It was spotless two months ago. I did have some dino when my nutritions bottomed out recently and uv cleared out mostly.

Dan_P · Oct 8, 2022

dbq5anlxj said:
Thanks. Tank is almost a year old. It was spotless two months ago. I did have some dino when my nutritions bottomed out recently and uv cleared out mostly.

View attachment 2855499

This photo shows this part of the sample is a mixture of diatoms and dinoflagellates. Is this sample from the rock or glass. If you took another sample would it have similar proportion of organisms? I ask because it seems to be a mixed culture.

dbq5anlxj · Oct 8, 2022

Dan_P said:
This photo shows this part of the sample is a mixture of diatoms and dinoflagellates. Is this sample from the rock or glass. If you took another sample would it have similar proportion of organisms? I ask because it seems to be a mixed culture.

Yes. I did take sample from my magnet scraper, barebottom ,rock and back panel. It's mostly diatom and minimum dino and other algae. My fish all enjoy to eat it so I assume that also means that most part it's not dino. I guess I'll stop dosing kalk and back to two parts see what will happen.

Garf · Oct 8, 2022

dbq5anlxj said:
Yes. I did take sample from my magnet scraper, barebottom ,rock and back panel. It's mostly diatom and minimum dino and other algae. My fish all enjoy to eat it so I assume that also means that most part it's not dino. I guess I'll stop dosing kalk and back to two parts see what will happen.

My wife will be around in a tick to clean the glass for ya. My tank would probably look similar, left to me.

taricha · Oct 10, 2022

Dan_P said:
@taricha

The only thing that I can think of is to measure freshly prepared saltwater before and after dosing kalkwasser to it. Make sure pH is around 8.

agreed. without a test kit confirming a measured notable Si increase from using kalk to increase new saltwater from say 8dkH to 10 to 12 dKH, I wouldn't conclude kalk is the source. It seems an unlikely source of lots of Si.

Also, as Dan noted there is clearly a dino/diatom mix. and different parts of the system will have a different proportion of those. Hard to say how much of your brown is diatoms vs dinos.

also in this context, diatoms are the "good" guys. certainly with the other main brown being ostreopsis dinoflagellates (known toxic).

Dan_P · Oct 10, 2022

taricha said:
agreed. without a test kit confirming a measured notable Si increase from using kalk to increase new saltwater from say 8dkH to 10 to 12 dKH, I wouldn't conclude kalk is the source. It seems an unlikely source of lots of Si.

Also, as Dan noted there is clearly a dino/diatom mix. and different parts of the system will have a different proportion of those. Hard to say how much of your brown is diatoms vs dinos.

also in this context, diatoms are the "good" guys. certainly with the other main brown being ostreopsis dinoflagellates (known toxic).

In the artificial world of algae culturing on microscope slides, diatoms are the first to show and the first to go. In cultures with green algae growth diatoms can completely disappear from the algae community, while diatoms remain a small part a community when it includes cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates. From this data, it is difficult to see how diatoms could ever outcompete dinoflagellates. It seems I have a long way to go to sort things out

dbq5anlxj · Oct 13, 2022

update： I stop dosing kalk solution (ESV) for four days now. Diatom is noticably less on the rock and back wall.

taricha · Oct 13, 2022

Dan_P said:
In cultures with green algae growth diatoms can completely disappear from the algae community, while diatoms remain a small part a community when it includes cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates. From this data, it is difficult to see how diatoms could ever outcompete dinoflagellates. It seems I have a long way to go to sort things out

In the world inside my aquarium the surface of GHA is always a place I can find diatoms and a few dinos. And little is ever so clear as to declare obvious outcompetition.
aquaria are frustrating systems to scale down.

Dan_P · Oct 13, 2022

taricha said:
In the world inside my aquarium the surface of GHA is always a place I can find diatoms and a few dinos. And little is ever so clear as to declare obvious outcompetition.
aquaria are frustrating systems to scale down.

Speaking of which, for the last week I have had diatoms, the triangular kind, growing on the water surface of the Ulva pond cconnected to my aquarium. Nuts right! 2 liters of Ulva versus a milligram of diatom. So much for macro algae outcompeting nuisance microorganisms, though they are beautiful diatoms. The bloom is a sticky thin film on the water surface, easy to get onto a microscope slide.