Silica sand: did I just pull a dumb diatom maneuver?
 

Hi Folks,

I just put a couple pounds of silica sand on top of my plant tank's
flourite substrate. In so doing, did I just commit a grievous error
vis a vis encouraging diatom growth? I would think silica sand is
darn near nonreactive in water, but now I'm paranoid.

My plant tank's still new. Even before adding the silica sand there
was slimy brown growth on some plant leaves; this I self-diagnosed as
diatoms.

Water:
Nitrates: dosed to 12-15ppm
Phosphate: dosed to 1ppm
KH 4.5
GH 2-3
K - kent potassium dosed 1.5x dose
Traces added weekly with Seachem Flourish

Water change 20-30% weekly, using NYC tap water.

Lighting is 4x65W dual daylight, over a 75 gal tank.

--Trapper

IME it does'nt make a difference, a CAE will take care of this IF a problem
arrises.
--
"In the beginning, God said the four-dimensional divergence of an
antisymmetric,
second rank tensor equals zero, and there was Light , and it was good."


"Trapper" wrote in message
om...
Hi Folks,

I just put a couple pounds of silica sand on top of my plant tank's
flourite substrate. In so doing, did I just commit a grievous error
vis a vis encouraging diatom growth? I would think silica sand is
darn near nonreactive in water, but now I'm paranoid.

My plant tank's still new. Even before adding the silica sand there
was slimy brown growth on some plant leaves; this I self-diagnosed as
diatoms.

Water:
Nitrates: dosed to 12-15ppm
Phosphate: dosed to 1ppm
KH 4.5
GH 2-3
K - kent potassium dosed 1.5x dose
Traces added weekly with Seachem Flourish

Water change 20-30% weekly, using NYC tap water.

Lighting is 4x65W dual daylight, over a 75 gal tank.

--Trapper