Help against diatoms??

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spacepops

Aquarium Advice Regular
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Oct 22, 2018
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I believe I am having a diatom take over and I’m not sure what to do I am going to post below some gradual photos of the last few weeks the ones including the brown gravel is when it began and that is only a week old up until this morning.
 

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These are from this morning
 

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Green algae will eventually overtake the diatom. Probably not what you want to hear. White substrate is always going to show gunk. Be sure to gravel vac the substrate with the weekly WC. That should churn the gravel up enough to keep the substrate looking white for most of the week.
 
Nerite snails will devour diatoms at a pretty impressive rate, you just need to make sure they've got something to eat after they've done their job:) I've got 3 patrolling my 40g, they come in a nice variety of attractive colors and are safe with just about anything that can't fit whole thing in it's mouth. They don't have a large foot like a mystery snail and barely protrude from their shell when moving around!
 
Nerites are great cleaners. Unfortunately, with white sand substrate, they'll leave behind hundreds of Black poo balls all over that you have to clean up every few days. Unless you don't mind a salt and pepper look in your tank.
 
Well as of now I have the salt and pepper look with brown lol and I can vacuum poop and can’t vacuum the diatom covered gravel. I might just have to invest in these snails and I plan to add a bichir. I’m sure it will most likely eat it later if it fits in its mouth. And what about them breeding? I had two mysteries that took 3 days to call each other from ether side of the tank then breed. And they stuck together for like 48 hours and a few days later I had a clutch and less than a month later I had like a hundred tiny snails squirming around my 10 g and I don’t want that again
 
They will, however, still lay eggs. They look like little clear/white ovals and can be hard to remove!
 
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