Wayne Sallee wrote:
That's incredibly fast for diatoms. With that kind of diatom growth,
your turbos should be doing great. Are the turbos making paths on the
glass? What about the sand and the gravel, how's it looking? What's
causing your turbos to die?

Yes, the turbos definitely make paths on the glass. I think the hermits
killed off a number of turbos for there shells, and then it took me
awhile to figure out that when a turbo lands on it's back, it can't get
up. I now turn them back over when they accidentally get bumped by the
algae magnet. I also feed my giant hermit once a week to keep him from
preying on the turbos.

The sand is okay. There are some brown areas, but between the blenny
and 2 fighting conchs, it gets turned over frequently. I've been slowly
adding more sand because I only have a 1/4" inch in spots. I also have
lots of debris from turbo shells, etc. I've been removing a few of
these whenever I do a water change to keep the sand sifters happy.

I think it's sherlock homes reasoning time: "Eliminate all other
factors, and the one which remains must be the truth."

Phosphate? I'm thinking the phosphate reactor is working well enough to
keep the hair algae under control, but it's still not good enough for
the diatoms.

It seems that the only time the diatoms get knocked back is when I
change media in the phosphate reactor. I get 2-3 days of clear glass,
and then I'm back to the usual. It keeps the hair algae from growing
for about a month. I was thinking that it was silicates, but now
phosphate seems more plausible.

I'll order a more sensitive phosphate test and keep working on the fug.

--Kurt