diatoms?

[willg]

Every day I now have a green film that I have to scrape off my aquarium walls. It comes off more or less easily and it is a relatively even light green shade throughout. Are these diatoms or something else and is there any solution other than scrubbing daily?

 

[hdtran]

I always thought diatoms were more golden brown than green. The definitive diagnosis for diatoms is to look under a microscope to see if you can see the silica skeleton. Green film could easily be a single-celled green algae.

The solutions to algae outbreaks is (are):

(1) Eliminate the nutrients of the algae (light, CO2, water, nitrogenous compounds, and other essential elements)
(2) Get an algae predator (snails, for example).

(2) is not as effective as (1). Eliminating water, of course, makes an aquarium rather pointless, but eliminating nitrogenous compounds, or changing the lighting might be done much more easily.

If a moderator moves this to the GRD, I'm sure you will get many many more responses. Also, I hop`e a moderator will attach a big animated "welcome to reefs.org" banner!