Anyone silicate dosing?

[Jimbo327]

My last ICP, my silicate was 0.2ppm (200 ppb), and this has been coming down from around 0.5ppm (500 ppb).

I think I'm starting to see signs of dino again. My nutrients are actually on the high side (20ppm nitrates and 0.2-0.3ppm phosphates) and never close to bottoming out.

So anyone have experience with silicate dosing? To how much and how often? Did it cause a diatom bloom? And has anyone kept dosing silicates even without dinos just to keep diatoms in the system?

 

[bluemon]

Did you try this product? I've seen some good reports of it on R2R. some daily elbow grease with the bacteria afterwards apparently did wonders for many.

https://3dreefing.com/products/sand-bed-uv-sweeper

 

[Jimbo327]

I have the UV sweeper. It works at the area that you do sweep. I have other areas that are not open sandbed, and it's hard to get the sweeper in there.

I was just thinking perhaps having some higher silicates might not be bad for a reef at all. Sure, it might get diatoms, but diatoms are not that bad. Not toxic and snails will eat it.

So I thought maybe just dosing silicates (even without dinos) might not be such a bad thing for a reef.

And some of my tangs is even territorial when I put my sweeper on the sand. The Desjardin tang uses his tail to try to push it out of his area. LOL.

 

[drexel]

I would try to dose some silicates and see what happens. Start with a small amount and go from there. Are you dosing any live phyto?

 

[DanK.Reefer]

Rather than dosing silicates you may try dosing bacteria. I used PNS when battling Dinos last time and haven't seen any since. After dosing many different concoctions to battle Dinos over 3 different events once with Coolia, once with Procentrum and another time with Ostreopsis this was the most effective treatment by far. If you have a sand bed I would probably use a long feeder pipette and inject it straight into the sand.

I hate dosing silicates to beat Dino, because I hate inducing the growth of yet another algae/bacteria that I don't want.

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[DanK.Reefer]

I would try to dose some silicates and see what happens. Start with a small amount and go from there. Are you dosing any live phyto?

Oh I forgot to mention phyto dosing

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[DanK.Reefer]

If you want some more waterglass though I have a bottle of lab/reagent grade I can send you. I don't see myself using it anymore.

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[Jimbo327]

Darn, I just ordered a bottle of water glass. It's already shipped. It's $10, so it's okay.

I do dose Zeobak and AF bacteria, but so far, not much progress. No phyto dosing.