Grouper8891
New member
Hello Everyone!
Like all of you, I started a reef tank to enjoy the beauty and challenge of this hobby. I have had my aquarium running 14 months now with no water changes on just a DIY algae scrubber and would like to share my successes and failures. Currently in college, I've applied things I've learned from chemistry, biology, and oceanography. First I will go through my journey in the next paragraph. After that I will give my self aquired technical data from this project.
Being new to reef keeping, I started with a 20-25 Gallon Nuevo to get my feet wet. Yes a bigger tank is easier and more stable but a smaller tank is cheaper to maintain and good to learn on. After 3 months, I switched from standard filtration to an improvised DIY algae scrubber. It took about a month for decent amount of algae to grow before it could replace all other filters. 3 months after that, I was having issues with the growth and color of the algae. This was due to a key element missing. It turns out Iron is more important to algae than CO2 is, more to come later. After a crash due to a power outage, most of the algae got dry and the tank went through a sort of old tank syndrome. I did not lose any fish during this, but half my coral died. To date the algae is still recovering. I have hair algae on the rocks from the crash but it is not growing. My bleny is being lazy with eating it since he is more into regular fish food now. Having issues with alkalinity not reducing. This is due to the algae eating the magnesium. When everything is running well, you may have to frequently feed the tank (fish and coral) so the water isn't too clean.
Specs:
Algae scrubber build I found that works well. Wider works better than taller. You want 2 square inches per gallon if one sided. 1 square inch per gallon if intended to be double sided. Mine is one sided so I have 10" by 6". 1" is inside the PVC pipe so 10 by 5 is used for growth. Lights are one 12 hour shifts. I kept them on for the first 48 hours to stimulate initial growth. Tried lights on for a week straight. It was too much for the algae. I recommend a max of 18 hours if you need the extra cleaning. The water flow should be 35 gallons per hour per inch of the width of the algae scrubber. Go the first month without harvesting algae. Be very general with the first harvest. The algae is still maturing. It would be a good idea to harvest a small section and just rinse the rest with cool fresh Fossett water. This will let you see how quickly it grows back. Rinsing is important because the copiopods/macroscopic organisms can over populate and kill the algae. At this point you want to start harvesting each section every 1-2 weeks depending on the growth rate. You do not want to completely harvest the scrubber. Only half of it. In some videos I saw the author harvesting down to the screen. I have had better luck trimming with scissors and leaving a decent foundation. I generally add planted aquarium iron once a week. I was getting very good growth over a two week period. My bleny would also eat it. One more important note: green hair algae is the best to filter water with. I had a combination of green hair algae and brown smooth algae that is crap. To aid the green hair algae, I eliminated the brown smooth algae. This makes a big difference. And yes, it kept the algae from growing in my display tank. I do not have any other form of filtration.
Currently I am struggling with some things that I believe are related to rookie mistakes due to poor planing. My coral open their polyps and eat, but half currently don't seam to grow. I've learned the hard way about coral placement and proper light acclimation. My rock placement in relationship to my power head is poor. I thought in the beginning water aimed at the rocks would help filter water better. Now I know the coral don't like it. I've done my best to work with it but the rocks are too big for the tank to correct properly.
I am using the AI primes. They are high above the water as the neck allows. The blues are at 65%, greens at 20%, reds at 5%, and for right now the whites are at 10% for now. The coral seam to like it. The rock flower anemone doesn't mind. Could use some help with the lighting.
Overall, when I get a bigger tank one day (after school and in a permanent house) I will only be using this. I theorize that right after the tank cycles I should be able to grow algae on the scrubber by keeping the display lights off and continually polluting the water with food. Maybe have some clean up crew members to aid. Once the algae comes in and the water is clean, one should be able to set the desired levels and take off. This is a great way to increase the fish capacity as well.
Anyway guys sorry for the long blog. I am a very big believer in this system. If I could get funding for a bigger system, I would start developing a proper way to start a system. Till then, will just have to wait a few years.
Like all of you, I started a reef tank to enjoy the beauty and challenge of this hobby. I have had my aquarium running 14 months now with no water changes on just a DIY algae scrubber and would like to share my successes and failures. Currently in college, I've applied things I've learned from chemistry, biology, and oceanography. First I will go through my journey in the next paragraph. After that I will give my self aquired technical data from this project.
Being new to reef keeping, I started with a 20-25 Gallon Nuevo to get my feet wet. Yes a bigger tank is easier and more stable but a smaller tank is cheaper to maintain and good to learn on. After 3 months, I switched from standard filtration to an improvised DIY algae scrubber. It took about a month for decent amount of algae to grow before it could replace all other filters. 3 months after that, I was having issues with the growth and color of the algae. This was due to a key element missing. It turns out Iron is more important to algae than CO2 is, more to come later. After a crash due to a power outage, most of the algae got dry and the tank went through a sort of old tank syndrome. I did not lose any fish during this, but half my coral died. To date the algae is still recovering. I have hair algae on the rocks from the crash but it is not growing. My bleny is being lazy with eating it since he is more into regular fish food now. Having issues with alkalinity not reducing. This is due to the algae eating the magnesium. When everything is running well, you may have to frequently feed the tank (fish and coral) so the water isn't too clean.
Specs:
Algae scrubber build I found that works well. Wider works better than taller. You want 2 square inches per gallon if one sided. 1 square inch per gallon if intended to be double sided. Mine is one sided so I have 10" by 6". 1" is inside the PVC pipe so 10 by 5 is used for growth. Lights are one 12 hour shifts. I kept them on for the first 48 hours to stimulate initial growth. Tried lights on for a week straight. It was too much for the algae. I recommend a max of 18 hours if you need the extra cleaning. The water flow should be 35 gallons per hour per inch of the width of the algae scrubber. Go the first month without harvesting algae. Be very general with the first harvest. The algae is still maturing. It would be a good idea to harvest a small section and just rinse the rest with cool fresh Fossett water. This will let you see how quickly it grows back. Rinsing is important because the copiopods/macroscopic organisms can over populate and kill the algae. At this point you want to start harvesting each section every 1-2 weeks depending on the growth rate. You do not want to completely harvest the scrubber. Only half of it. In some videos I saw the author harvesting down to the screen. I have had better luck trimming with scissors and leaving a decent foundation. I generally add planted aquarium iron once a week. I was getting very good growth over a two week period. My bleny would also eat it. One more important note: green hair algae is the best to filter water with. I had a combination of green hair algae and brown smooth algae that is crap. To aid the green hair algae, I eliminated the brown smooth algae. This makes a big difference. And yes, it kept the algae from growing in my display tank. I do not have any other form of filtration.
Currently I am struggling with some things that I believe are related to rookie mistakes due to poor planing. My coral open their polyps and eat, but half currently don't seam to grow. I've learned the hard way about coral placement and proper light acclimation. My rock placement in relationship to my power head is poor. I thought in the beginning water aimed at the rocks would help filter water better. Now I know the coral don't like it. I've done my best to work with it but the rocks are too big for the tank to correct properly.
I am using the AI primes. They are high above the water as the neck allows. The blues are at 65%, greens at 20%, reds at 5%, and for right now the whites are at 10% for now. The coral seam to like it. The rock flower anemone doesn't mind. Could use some help with the lighting.
Overall, when I get a bigger tank one day (after school and in a permanent house) I will only be using this. I theorize that right after the tank cycles I should be able to grow algae on the scrubber by keeping the display lights off and continually polluting the water with food. Maybe have some clean up crew members to aid. Once the algae comes in and the water is clean, one should be able to set the desired levels and take off. This is a great way to increase the fish capacity as well.
Anyway guys sorry for the long blog. I am a very big believer in this system. If I could get funding for a bigger system, I would start developing a proper way to start a system. Till then, will just have to wait a few years.
