Diatoms / something brown in storage water?

[catmel]

Wondering if anyone could help shed some light on my situation. I have a 30 gallon trash can ( covered) I store my ready to use salt water in. I typically keep it in there about 2-4 weeks ( depending on how often / much I do my PWC). I use RO/DI water, and I have a TDS 0-1 ppm so it's pretty pure. I have 2 heaters ( its below freezing here now) and a small powerhead ( about 150 gph) in it.

Tested the water from the ro/di directly and it came back as 0.

Oddly enough, went to go do a PWC today and looked inside my can.. theres a velvety looking light brown / gold 'dust' on the side of the can. Is this diatoms? If so how could this be? I'm a bit confused. Things seemed a bit ' slimey' to the touch too. Maybe is it something 'sneaking into' the can ( eg: lid isnt tight enough?)

I'm battling still a bit of hair algae in my main aquarium and want to make sure I have the purest of water..

any ideas would be great!

 

[ryshark]

Certain saltmixes can leave a residue in the mixing container. If you are battling hair algae look into getting a GFO reactor(to reduce phosphate) and doing weekly PWC until it is gone. If I had hair algae I would also not use rodi water which tested 1ppm. I'd change the DI to get back to 0ppm. Keep Nitrate as close to 0-as possible. Also a 6-8 hour light cycle is long enough.
If that doesn't work then look into a product called Prodibio Bioclean, that will help eliminate the hair algae by taking all the algae fuel/nutrients out of your tank. The stuff works good in conjuction with everything else above.

 

[catmel]

Thanks for the info

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

I keep my SW (Reef Crystals) premixed/heated just about like you and get brown "gunk" slowly accumulating on the sides/bottom of the Rubbermaid tub like you describe. I've always just assumed it's something precipitating out of the saltwater and not necessarily anything growing in it. Water parameters in the tub still all test OK so I've never worried about it. I've seen other posts from folks that use Reef Crystals that have seen the same thing.

 

[catmel]

I keep my SW (Reef Crystals) premixed/heated just about like you and get brown "gunk" slowly accumulating on the sides/bottom of the Rubbermaid tub like you describe. I've always just assumed it's something precipitating out of the saltwater and not necessarily anything growing in it. Water parameters in the tub still all test OK so I've never worried about it. I've seen other posts from folks that use Reef Crystals that have seen the same thing.

I use reef crystals too, thats good to know. I was really worried I was getting something growing in there. Phew LOL

thanks for the info