Please help : Silicates and Diatoms

[BubblesandSqueak]

So I thought I had Dino’s but believe it’s actually diatoms from silicates in RODI water. Yesterday I vacuumed, cleaned skimmer, changed 10% water and fresh socks. Then this morning as the lights came on brown on sand.
My 4 stage RODI runs at 45psi from my house tap which is 55psi. my tap ph is 7.01 and the RODI water comes out at 8.69. So this has me thinking the ph increase is due to silica in the system? Anyone have thoughts on this? Is there an inexpensive silica test kit to determine high silicates before I buy a $70 Hanna tester and the $160 booster? What level of silicates is acceptable? I have read that people dose silicates to get rid of Dino’s.
Currently I have 1.025, ph7.71, nitrates at 15 and phos at .002, 73 degrees. I turned the lights off for the next few days. Phosguard and SeaGel in sump. Normally I run the skimmer 24/7 but shut it off for 5 hours today since phosphates seem low. Will the skimmer remove diatoms? I use it for oxygen and cut down in waste (raw clams and shrimp from feeding)
I have nassarius, Astrea, Nerite, Limpets, blue leg hermits, Cerith, turbos, magarites in the system and have dosed pods a few times. I have more CUC coming of nassarius, Cerith, zigzag, ox tongue. I have one giant Cerith but doesn’t move much. Thinking too cold.
I know ultimately remove silica if that’s the issue. Should I skip the weekly water change or continue with known water?
Thanks

 

[BubblesandSqueak]

bump

 

[BubblesandSqueak]

@Randy Holmes-Farley
thought you might be the one to answer this?

 

[UMALUM]

If I'm not mistaken Salifert has a cheap silicate kit. Your tank looks young going by the cleanliness of the glass. Are you sure it's not just an early bloom that will phase itself out? Just scanning over I would ditch the phosguard as it's gonna strip your tank and not help with silicates if ther being introduced via water or salt mix. Turn your skimmer back on to get your ph up and realize the skimmer has no effect on your phosphates. No matter what anyone claims I have yet to see a proven consumer of diatom as a first preference when it comes to cuc. That includes pods. I think some builds are more sensitive than others when it comes diatoms. I actually tracked it down to my salt IORC which is the only salt I've used in 25 years of off and on reefing and never had an issue in previous builds. Wait why is your temp 73? Just curious as I don't think temp has any effect on your situation.

 

[BubblesandSqueak]

If I'm not mistaken Salifert has a cheap silicate kit. Your tank looks young going by the cleanliness of the glass. Are you sure it's not just an early bloom that will phase itself out? Just scanning over I would ditch the phosguard as it's gonna strip your tank and not help with silicates if ther being introduced via water or salt mix. Turn your skimmer back on to get your ph up and realize the skimmer has no effect on your phosphates. No matter what anyone claims I have yet to see a proven consumer of diatom as a first preference when it comes to cuc. That includes pods. I think some builds are more sensitive than others when it comes diatoms. I actually tracked it down to my salt IORC which is the only salt I've used in 25 years of off and on reefing and never had an issue in previous builds. Wait why is your temp 73? Just curious as I don't think temp has any effect on your situation.

I have an octopus in the system. So need the lower temp. I started this with TBS rock and been running fine for five months. It wasn’t until I started using the new RODI about a month or so ago that it started with each water change. Which leads me to pointing to that. BRS got back to me and said a booster pump to get the pressure up would filter silicates. Would think that would push them more through. I saw there was a Seachem silicate test but looks to be color change which is probably a guessing game. Just not sure if I should skip a water change now to starve it of silicates or still do the change but different RO source. What would be considered a high number for silicates? I’ll look at ordering a salifert. I think I have put through ~50 gallons of water on this RODI filter should I change it already?

 

[UMALUM]

Your filters should be fine. Are you testing tds?

 

[BubblesandSqueak]

TDS on the BRS unit shows 0 and so does the Vivosun TDS meter. But silicates don’t show up in TDS

 

[UMALUM]

You asked if your filters were good is why I asked about the tds.

TDS on the BRS unit shows 0 and so does the Vivosun TDS meter. But silicates don’t show up in TDS

 

[UMALUM]

Don't drive yourself nuts they're not gonna hurt anything while you wait for the test kit. I know there ugly trust me I know but when you pinpoint the soarce it will be an easy fix.

 

[UMALUM]

If your getting zero and the unit is producing the proper hourly amount then a booster is not necessary. A second di stange is not unheard of when incoming silicates exceed what a unit can handle.

 

[Ziggy17]

The only way to know for sure if it’s silicates or dinos is to look under a microscope. Even a kids microscope that magnifies 400x is good enough.
The seachem Si test is super reliable and for $20 you get 75 tests out of it. I used it in my battle against dinos and when I did a comparison with a Icp test, the seachem test was almost spot on to the Icp result.

 

[EricR]

The only way to know for sure if it’s silicates or dinos is to look under a microscope. Even a kids microscope that magnifies 400x is good enough.
The seachem Si test is super reliable and for $20 you get 75 tests out of it.

Microscope look for sure ... some in the (blurry to me) pictures look a bit "stringy" to be diatoms.

P.S. I dose silicate (waterglass) and only adjust dose based on ICP about every 4 months

 

[BubblesandSqueak]

Microscope look for sure ... some in the (blurry to me) pictures look a bit "stringy" to be diatoms.

P.S. I dose silicate (waterglass) and only adjust dose based on ICP about every 4 months

This is definitely a dust. One of my kids once had a microscope that I’ll look for tomorrow if it didn’t go to the consignment shop.

 

[BubblesandSqueak]

Any insight on why the filtered water pH would increase from 7.01 to 8.69?

 

[UMALUM]

Any insight on why the filtered water pH would increase from 7.01 to 8.69?

If your soarce is high in co2 then it's completely normal

 

[JNalley]

If it's dusty it's typically Diatoms.

Any insight on why the filtered water pH would increase from 7.01 to 8.69?

That's a mystery, considering the opposite should be happening. I've heard of slight rises because of CO2 degassing within the RODI filter itself, but it shouldn't be that dramatic, like a 0.05 rise, not a 1.5+ rise. The only other thing I could think of is perhaps something in the RODI filter itself is contaminated with something increasing pH. What are you using to Test the pH of the input and output water?

 

[BubblesandSqueak]

If it's dusty it's typically Diatoms.


That's a mystery, considering the opposite should be happening. I've heard of slight rises because of CO2 degassing within the RODI filter itself, but it shouldn't be that dramatic, like a 0.05 rise, not a 1.5+ rise. The only other thing I could think of is perhaps something in the RODI filter itself is contaminated with something increasing pH. What are you using to Test the pH of the input and output water?

Using a vivosun ph meter. But yeah. I thought filtering would cause it to go down. Not up. I was thinking though that if silicates are not being removed, they could be causing the rise in ph.

 

[JNalley]

Using a vivosun ph meter. But yeah. I thought filtering would cause it to go down. Not up. I was thinking though that if silicates are not being removed, they could be causing the rise in ph.

I know that when silicates dissolve they can raise pH, but I don't know by how much or how fast that occurs. It would seem to me that it shouldn't occur in the brief amount of time going through a filtration unit, but I could be totally wrong...

 

[taricha]

My 4 stage RODI runs at 45psi from my house tap which is 55psi. my tap ph is 7.01 and the RODI water comes out at 8.69. So this has me thinking the ph increase is due to silica in the system? Anyone have thoughts on this?

the disinfectants in tap water can affect pH (it ought to be higher than 7 out of the tap, I think). The amount of dissolved CO2 - which can be pressure dependent - also affects pH. Once the water is very purified, then small amounts of stuff can move the pH significantly, so I don't think the pH of purified water is telling you anything super useful - and I really doubt that the pH could be an indicator of silicates.

Is there an inexpensive silica test kit to determine high silicates before I buy a $70 Hanna tester and the $160 booster? What level of silicates is acceptable? I have read that people dose silicates to get rid of Dino’s.

seachem silicate test shows SiO2 levels well at 1ppm and above. So it's fine to check for moderate / high levels.

 

[Ziggy17]

seachem silicate test shows SiO2 levels well at 1ppm and above. So it's fine to check for moderate / high levels.

100% agreed. And anything below 1ppm of Si should not induce a diatom bloom. I think we all have a little baseline Si from sand and rocks, but that is my non expert opinion on that. I know I didn’t get any diatoms until I ramped up my Si over 2ppm for my Dino irradiation program. Looking forward to a couple microscope pics to get an ID. Crossing fingers it’s just diatoms for you