New 110 Gallon Reef

[LifeIsGreat]

This guy will never starve!

[Ryancw]

it looks like your play sand is starting to cause diatom issues despite you doing a little test area. the silica in that is going to become a problem. i would remove it all, followed by a few larger water changes this week while you still have a chance.

if you are going to use sand in the aquarium hobby make sure it is reef friendly. while it may seem in the beginning stages like its going to work fine, problems like leaching happen over time and once it takes over the tank there will be no recovering from it. there is literally a million resources online that suggest silica based sand is not for use in the aquarium hobby.

[LifeIsGreat]

Hard to tell from the pics, but those aren't diatoms, it is the same cyano and hair algae mix as what's on the rocks, and that was there before the sand was put in. I've read read numerous sources and studies on all sides of the silica/aragonite/calcium carbonate fence, all saying one is better than the other. Some people even dose silica for its benefits. From what I've read, the silica sand is unable to dissolve at the PH levels of sea water, and therefor cannot become a food source for diatoms. Also, my glass is silica based so unless I go acrylic there will always be silica in my tank. As it stands, the fish are perfectly healthy. We'll see how it goes in the long term, I'll post the results of whatever happens.

[LifeIsGreat]

Here is a photo comparison of the tank the day I added the 6500k lights and one month after adding the 6500k lights. I'm not sure if it is a result of the lighting or just the natural progression of the ecosystem, but the red cyano has all but disappeared in favour of the green cyano. The hair algae population has reduced greatly, particularly on the back glass; this I attribute to aging of the system and reduction of nutrients. There is a dramatic difference in the amount of bubbles in the water after the 6500k's turn on: there are very few bubbles when they are off and the tank is almost like a snow globe when they are on.

[LifeIsGreat]

The tank is now crawling with microscopic bugs. There are little round white bugs that are eating the cyano film. You can see them in the picture eating away (the extension cord shows the scale). The solid white line dividing the cyano film from the clean glass is a concentrated wall of feeding bugs.
There are millions of long skinny reddish brown bugs on every surface and some tiny white worms visible on the glass, both of which are only visible using a 10x jeweller's loupe. The bugs are starting to burrow down into the sand bed. The cyano growth has been giving way to more hair and film algae. I keep all the lights on full power for 12 hours per day in order to speed the algae along for manual extraction. An easy method I've been using to clean the algae and cyano is to put an airstone inside the return jet while I scrub the rocks with a tooth brush. The bubble flurry latches onto the debris and floats it to the top where I can net it out. Water is quickly crystal clear afterward.

[LifeIsGreat]

Tank Update:

The tank is now 14 months old. This is the first tank I've started using dry human-made rock, and I have been amazed at the difference between starting with this rock and years old cured rock. In my previous system I used old cured rock and basically had an insta-system that only relied on water changes. It never had any real algae issues and had tons of coraline growth. This new tank is only now starting to get over its initial ugly phase, and the coraline is only now starting to grow a bit. The cyano phase lasted about 9 months and the hair algae started at around the 6 month mark and is now subsiding at the 14 month mark. The only reason the algae is now going away is because I added a skimmer and a refugium that lights caulerpa 24 hours a day about a month ago. I have used dry natural rock before, and it got short green algae on it for a short time, but this cement based stuff gets a lot of long hair greens. The next time I use it I will cure it for a couple years before putting it in the tank.

The tank has a deep sand bed of fine silica based play sand. Some people worry about diatom blooms with this type of sand, so here is my experience so far. When initially putting it in the tank I did get noticeable diatoms, and every time the sand was stirred diatoms would grow in the agitated spot. Now however, I do not get diatom blooms, even with my snails rooting through it all day long. This has lead me to think that when the sand was first added to the tank diatoms feasted on the fine dust and any part of the sand that was able to dissolve, but now enough time has gone by that all of that resource is used up.