Getting rid of diatoms trial with Ge acid and preparation method.
The other day I had cleaned a tank a bit I’m using to grow a few plants while the main tank is still in dry start. Damn diatoms all over the shit. Fuzzy strands and cotton fluff about.
Yes just wait, everyone wants to wait. hundreds of YT vids prolly “ just wait, let the plants die “ Well this tank is being run by the FIERRO NIGHTS. And waiting, nah. Knew there had to be a better way. Just needed to find it.
So I spent some time searching around. And there was a not so deep rabbit hole so easily just there all a sudden. A method that’s been around for over a decade. Needed germanium, which was fantastically convenient because I have some around I use for making alloys.
You can’t just chunk a piece of germanium in the tank and expect it to do anything tho. There’s a few steps.
So in the pics, a bit of germanium, this is ground dry with a mortar and pestle to a fine make up like pasty powder.
Then mixed with hydrogen peroxide and placed in a borosilicate dish and heated. This is to make germanium oxide.
Then once cooked off we get a hex form of dry that’s then mixed with distilled water and heated again to make germanic acid.
Now, only so much can dissolve in such a small bit of water so a bit more water in another deal. Alright.
There you go, just add the shit to the tank by the ml’s. I’m not offering weights, dilution volumes and concentrations to dose with. But w/mg and ml it’s easy to scale and work out. I’m firing from the hip and offering this as more a springboard pointer.
There’s lots and lots of info and research papers going over using the stuff, doses etc. example but for this application remember the ratio to Si I’ll mention in a moment.
Now some caveats.
There’s conflicting information about toxicity to aquatic life fish etc some say nothing noted, others mention chronic exposure. However there are products on the market today that use similar for fish kept tanks.
Little to no research on shrimp. But they don’t use silica in their shells which is why this works for diatoms, germanium is similar to silica and things that use silica can’t really distinguish and separate which one is taken up.
There’s a pic mentioning a ratio. The concentration of germanium in the water for effects depends on the concentration of silica in the water. More silica, more germanium needed. As higher concentrations of available silica require a higher effective dosing of germanium to compromise the diatoms.
At very high doses. Because plants can use silica as well for cell walls, this can be an issue for plants so there’s a limit but really crazy high levels of silica unless your adding it intentionally prolly not to that level.
And a caution. Don’t put your face over this stuff when heating to dry off or when dissolving. The vapors will burn your eyes and all that. I used a very small amount of germanium. But I’m saying this in case someone gets the idea to make some several gallon batch using several grams of Ge for whatever reason. Gotta be outside and if close using a full eye shielded gas respirator, a regular carbon filter may not suffice. This is mixed as well but may need an acid gas carbon filter or a prefilter to trap vapor. Just don’t make stupid amounts of the shit at once.
Once cooled to room temp, there’s no steam or anything and can sit about just fine. I worked w/a tiny amount and wasn’t really anything just like I said don’t put your face right over the shit when hot.
Started it on another tank to trial see how that works. Prolly update later.
Anyway, so what’s going on with this stuff.
Well diatoms need silica to build their shells. They divide and a portion of the daughter makes a new half. Germanium is incorporated into this half and causes structural faults. Essentially now a gimp cell. This leaves it vulnerable to bacteria, structural faults needed to access resources and also cytoplasmic issues.
So don’t be afraid to leave the light going, the more they try to proliferate the more they get messed up.
If a diatom attempts to go into a dormant state, it will thicken its casing, but do so with a germanium doped casing which will compromise its ability to stay alive while dormant. So it’s a serious additive to the water.
In the pics you can see some fluff diatoms about and strands cover plants. Then just gone mostly in a few days. Now there’s green dust algae as Iv been running the light for over 12 hrs but that’s fine. The goal was to try out this method to get rid of the damn diatoms and well, good stuff so far.
Remaining diatoms if not dividing are on lifespan borrowed time.
Another note, there are some diatoms, marine mostly but they don’t utilize a full shell and can change shape. Because they don’t rely much on silicates for a fixed structure, they are more immune to this method. But this generally works pretty broadly for various and most type diatoms and things that heavily rely on silicates.