Large amount of diatoms(brown algae)

[Em221122]

First off, I’m new the fish tank hobby and Recently I’ve set up a new tank. I added the startup bacteria to the tank to get the tank cycling, it took maybe 3 weeks in total until my ammonia, nitrite and nitrate levels reached 0. I would also like to mention that I’m using aquasoil in my tank, so I think that there’s a lot of excess nutrients floating around in my tank, which may be the cause of diatoms? My tank is also heavily planted and the reason I’m worried is because I’ll clean the diatoms off the plants every day, do a 20-30% water change and then the next day the diatoms will be back, exactly as they were before. Every evening I’ll come back home and the plants are covered in diatoms (atleast that’s what i think they are).I also added an algae stop liquid that is supposedly supposed to help prevent and stop algae, but this hasn’t worked and I think this is because diatoms really aren’t a form of algae, they’re something different. Anyways, can someone please help because I don’t want my plants to dieeee ((.

 

[rlederer]

Diatoms are a form of algae with a silicon shell. Usually excess nutrients cause them to proliferate.

 

[Aiken Drum]

You are right. Brown algae/diatoms isnt an algae.
Its a microscopic creature. They are common in cycling tanks.

There are algae eaters that will eat the diatoms if that is the route you want to go down. However they typically go away on their own as the tank cycles and nutrients in the tank settle down. Green algae will also out compete the diatoms, so turning up the lights or increasing the lighting period can help. Green algae is easier to deal with than diatoms.

Last time i cycled a tank i had diatoms from about week 2 or 3 and it went away around week 10, which was also a couple of weeks after i got a more powerful light. Upto that point i was manually cleaning it off everything. The nerite snails that i understood to eat diatoms did nothing.

 

[charliebankston]

And to add to all that great info, often if you scrape them off and into the water column, they'll just settle on something else and continue to be brown, unsightly and populate