Natural – Non-Toxic – Animal Friendly
How Diatomix Works
Where Can Diatomix Be Used?
Everyone wants to have healthy water and to improve pond water quality. When unwanted algae blooms or water weed growth occur, causing problems, it can be annoying, or it can be an expensive problem. For example farm dams, water reservoirs, rivers, streams, aquaculture dams, irrigation channels, garden and council ponds, raw water supplies, wastewater treatment and effluent storages can be affected. An unwanted algae bloom or weeds may just be ugly or it can be the cause of a fish kill, bad odours and clogged waterways or filters.
Promote a Healthy Ecosystem
We recommend that you manage your water ponds/ dams/ lakes or other open water spaces in a natural way. With Diatomix you can naturally create conditions in the water that promote the ecosystem to become healthy and problem free. We have found it is easier and cheaper to prevent and maintain good quality water, free from Salvinia, Hyacinth, Azolla, filamentous algae and toxic blue-green algae than it is to fix the problem.
Diatomix is a liquid feed that enhances the growth of the ‘good algae’ – these are called diatoms. This diatom food contains Silica as well as Iron, Manganese, Zinc, Copper, Magnesium, Boron, Potassium, Molybdenum, Calcium and Cobalt. These are the micro-nutrients required by diatoms that are not always present in water in adequate quantities.
What Are Diatoms?
Diatoms are interesting because they require silica to grow and they make up a large part of the first plants in the Earth’s food chain. The very unique and exciting technology that makes Diatomix such a great tool is that it contains microscopically small, amorphous gels of silica, packed full of micro-nutrients to help diatoms grow. When diatoms take up the silica, so they can grow, they find a surprise bonus of all the micro-nutrients they need. Because the problematic algae, that are also present in the water, didn’t get a micro-nutrient boost, they can’t grow as quickly. This is one of the ways that the diatoms out-compete other algae and weeds and hence dominate and improve the water’s condition and appearance.
The reason we want to encourage diatoms to dominate is because they are the basis of the main food-chain in water. Diatoms grow better when they are supplemented with Diatomix. Some of the diatoms get eaten by zooplankton; the microscopic animals living in the water, and then the zooplankton will get eaten by other larger organisms in your water. What this means is that the nitrogen and phosphorus that are in the water, causing the growth of unwanted algae, gets consumed by diatoms, and then begins the journey up the food chain. The concentration of nitrogen and phosphorus is now lower in the water, and so there are fewer other algae and weeds in the water, so total water quality is better, and there was no need to use poisons, or extra equipment and electricity e.g. aerators or mixers.
The video below is a 5-minute presentation given at an Innovations Day on how Diatomix works.
If you want to dig a lot deeper into the technical side of what Diatomix does, this 20-minute video is Dr Simon Tannock talking at a National Conference in 2018 on how Diatomix works and some of the results. Dr Tannock is a co-founder of AlgaEnviro.
How Long Does it Take to Get Results?
Once Diatomix has been added to your water it only requires a few days for there to be an increase in the dissolved oxygen (DO) level. You will also see a reduction in the Nitrogen and Phosphorus concentrations as the ecosystem in your water becomes healthier.
Noticeable Benefits
We expect that the dominance of diatoms will be noticeable in a few days and in the coming weeks your water quality will be improving. This does depend on how polluted and overgrown the water was to begin with, but it is pretty quick. With continued use the zooplankton populations will increase and this helps the waterbody to stabilise, as the whole food chain becomes healthier in the water.
Over longer periods of time you will see more water insects and also fish populations will increase, if there are fish in your water. Because these insects and fish are all food for some types of birds, you can also expect to see more of these types of birds, if your pond is big enough.
Water clarity will improve day by day as the water changes from being dominated by problem algae and weeds and returns to a healthy ecosystem. From a distance the colour of water will most likely change from having a green tinge to a light brown one.