Algae Scrubber Basics

[Spar]

Using CFL bulbs, think two 23w bulbs on each side of an 8x8 screen is too much for 18 hours on per day? I am using 8.5" reflectors which has a lot of light leakage on sides given i have to have two reflectors angled to aim at the 8" long screen. I figure i am getting closer to 32 watts per side by the time accounting for the loss...

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I would say that's ok, 64 sq in screen would be 64w total for minimum light, 64 per side (128 total) for "high" lighting.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Algae Scrubber Basics

They've been unchanged since 2008, and almost every part of them can be improved.

This makes no sense to me.

It's like we've all been sitting around with our thumbs up our rear ends running CFL scrubbers and no one has been doing anything to make them work better.

No offense to anyone running a CFL scrubber. Which works just fine BTW.

Even you improved on what you did in 2008.

Insert massive amount of sarcastic comments that might have gotten me banned. Thank you, brain filter, for helping me not look really bad.

 

[ecotanker]

Bud,

no doubt SantaMonica did not see your new state of the art design, which I can't wait to get one.

cheers

 

[sensei]

Floyd,
As you may remember, I was asking you some time ago how to tune the ATS to have some measurable levels of PO4 and not cero. it has been 20 days since I started my ATS. PO4 measured cero when I tested 10 days after ATS started.
The thing is that I have a lot of sps in this particular tank and they were gaining color when I started having measurable levels of PO4. Now after 20 days of having cero, I believe some of them have lost some color. I have made no other changes. I believe NO3 and PO4 is needed for the Zooxanthellae of the sps coral and this is why I was wanting of having detectable levels in water.
I am thinking of having on ATS lights only half of the time, that is 8 hours instead of 16.
my PO4 levels before ATS were 0.12 and I wanted to control it via ATS. I would be happy if I can achieve having 0.05 with ATS running.
please tell me your thoughts about this

In a non sps tank I would be happy with cero PO4 via ATS as colors are good with or with out PO4, but in an sps tank I am a little concerned.

please tell me your thoughts

 

[chema]

Floyd,
As you may remember, I was asking you some time ago how to tune the ATS to have some measurable levels of PO4 and not cero. it has been 20 days since I started my ATS. PO4 measured cero when I tested 10 days after ATS started.
The thing is that I have a lot of sps in this particular tank and they were gaining color when I started having measurable levels of PO4. Now after 20 days of having cero, I believe some of them have lost some color. I have made no other changes. I believe NO3 and PO4 is needed for the Zooxanthellae of the sps coral and this is why I was wanting of having detectable levels in water.
I am thinking of having on ATS lights only half of the time, that is 8 hours instead of 16.
my PO4 levels before ATS were 0.12 and I wanted to control it via ATS. I would be happy if I can achieve having 0.05 with ATS running.
please tell me your thoughts about this

In a non sps tank I would be happy with cero PO4 via ATS as colors are good with or with out PO4, but in an sps tank I am a little concerned.

please tell me your thoughts

I'm in a similar situation, and also planning to control phosphates by means of ATS. How was your initial nitrate level? Did that level go down in correlation with the phosphate reduction?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Floyd,
As you may remember, I was asking you some time ago how to tune the ATS to have some measurable levels of PO4 and not cero. it has been 20 days since I started my ATS. PO4 measured cero when I tested 10 days after ATS started.
The thing is that I have a lot of sps in this particular tank and they were gaining color when I started having measurable levels of PO4. Now after 20 days of having cero, I believe some of them have lost some color. I have made no other changes. I believe NO3 and PO4 is needed for the Zooxanthellae of the sps coral and this is why I was wanting of having detectable levels in water.
I am thinking of having on ATS lights only half of the time, that is 8 hours instead of 16.
my PO4 levels before ATS were 0.12 and I wanted to control it via ATS. I would be happy if I can achieve having 0.05 with ATS running.
please tell me your thoughts about this

In a non sps tank I would be happy with cero PO4 via ATS as colors are good with or with out PO4, but in an sps tank I am a little concerned.

please tell me your thoughts

I don't know if the coloration issue would necessarily be related to phosphate, most of the "heavy SPS" threads that I have read use pretty aggressive filtration and their main target is low phosphates. That at least has been all the rage since the advent of GFO, but now there is some pushback on this thought process that I am seeing.

What may be at play here, depending on your coral stock, is some kind of allelopathy from the algae that you do have growing. The type of growth you are getting (brown) might be playing chemical warfare with some of your corals. Are you running any activated carbon?

Because of the possibility of this type of chemical interaction between algae and SPS, I have been recommending that you run at least a small amount of activated carbon. Some have had no problems with scrubber only + SPS and others have said they have better success when running scrubber + skimmer or scrubber + GAC, or all 3.

If you are feeding, and you have fish in the system, and you are not running any aggressive phosphate reduction media, chances are you have enough phosphates in the system to sustain whatever growth you want....this is why I'm thinking that it's something else going on

 

[AZRippster]

This makes no sense to me.

It's like we've all been sitting around with our thumbs up our rear ends running CFL scrubbers and no one has been doing anything to make them work better.

Hear, Hear!

 

[sensei]

I'm in a similar situation, and also planning to control phosphates by means of ATS. How was your initial nitrate level? Did that level go down in correlation with the phosphate reduction?

Phosphates dropped very quickly from 0.12 to cero in less than 10 days. I have not seen a change in NO3 levels, but my screen is still maturing so I guess that we would need more time to see the effect on NO3.

 

[sensei]

I don't know if the coloration issue would necessarily be related to phosphate, most of the "heavy SPS" threads that I have read use pretty aggressive filtration and their main target is low phosphates. That at least has been all the rage since the advent of GFO, but now there is some pushback on this thought process that I am seeing.

What may be at play here, depending on your coral stock, is some kind of allelopathy from the algae that you do have growing. The type of growth you are getting (brown) might be playing chemical warfare with some of your corals. Are you running any activated carbon?

Because of the possibility of this type of chemical interaction between algae and SPS, I have been recommending that you run at least a small amount of activated carbon. Some have had no problems with scrubber only + SPS and others have said they have better success when running scrubber + skimmer or scrubber + GAC, or all 3.

If you are feeding, and you have fish in the system, and you are not running any aggressive phosphate reduction media, chances are you have enough phosphates in the system to sustain whatever growth you want....this is why I'm thinking that it's something else going on

I do not run carbon, but I do have a skimmer. I do not have any other means of PO4 removal and have enough fish in the tank.

let me tell you the whole story:
Some time ago most of my sps frags lost their colors a few weeks after being in my tank. My parameters were: KH = 7.45, Mag 1300, Cal 440, NO3=,PO4 =0 (hanna). Then, my professor from RC recommended me to take out the GFO reactor since sps needed PO4 for coloration. I removed GFO and PO4 started to show in levels of 0.06 and during this time sps started gaining color, I could see improvements in color every two days but after some time PO4 climbed to 0.12- 0.14 and for obvious reasons I did not want the PO4 to climb much more than that, so I thought it would be a good idea to add an algae scrubber to control PO4 naturally with scrubber because filtration is done by algae rather than mechanical media. Now with the ATS PO4 does not show again and color is also starting to deteriorate. I asked today in an sps thread and the answer that I got was :" No matter how you remove it very low PO4 is not good" so it would make sense to fine tune the ATS to get measurable levels of PO4 .
I guess the only way to probe all this would be to try to adjust the ATS not to be so strong and have measurable levels of PO4 in the order of 0.05ppm. That is why I have been asking so much how to tune the ATS not to have cero PO4

I have made no other changes in tank since the addition of the ATS

Please tell me your thoughts of how to tune the ATS for such a test?
thanks

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

You would: reduce the photoperiod, reduce the flow, or both. I would not reduce intensity, because you want intensity high - low intensity can lead to shading of the lower layers and detachment, so if you run high intensity for a short duration, the algae should stay attached well.

I would start by slightly lowering flow (maybe by 25%) and not changing anything else

 

[sensei]

You would: reduce the photoperiod, reduce the flow, or both. I would not reduce intensity, because you want intensity high - low intensity can lead to shading of the lower layers and detachment, so if you run high intensity for a short duration, the algae should stay attached well.

I would start by slightly lowering flow (maybe by 25%) and not changing anything else

perfect. now another question.
I have now cero PO4. I was thinking of turning off lights until PO4 show again and then try the experiment? I am only afraid that all algae in screen will die, thus maybe I would have to clean clean the screen before doing this? what do you think?

recapitulating: you sugest reducing flow first and keeping the 16 hours of photo period that I have been using?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

You should be able to turn the lights off for a few days and as long as you maintain flow, the algae will not completely die. But I would do a pretty decent cleaning before that, so that you don't end up dumping all the nutrients back into the water or have some strange effects of dying algae.

In addition I would still run the lights a few hours per day. If you have a timer, run the lights for a 1 hour photoperiod 3 or 4 times/day, just to keep the algae going at least a little bit.

 

[chema]

Phosphates dropped very quickly from 0.12 to cero in less than 10 days. I have not seen a change in NO3 levels, but my screen is still maturing so I guess that we would need more time to see the effect on NO3.

That's weird, because usually you see larger and quicker reductions in nitrate than phosphate. May be it depends on the species of alga which is growing on the screen.

 

[sensei]

You should be able to turn the lights off for a few days and as long as you maintain flow, the algae will not completely die. But I would do a pretty decent cleaning before that, so that you don't end up dumping all the nutrients back into the water or have some strange effects of dying algae.

In addition I would still run the lights a few hours per day. If you have a timer, run the lights for a 1 hour photoperiod 3 or 4 times/day, just to keep the algae going at least a little bit.

thanks Floyd,
I would do that and report back in a few days

 

[sensei]

That's weird, because usually you see larger and quicker reductions in nitrate than phosphate. May be it depends on the species of alga which is growing on the screen.

as you know Phosphate figures are much lower in magnitude than Nitrate ones. I have a 180 gal system and I had 0.12ppm PO4 and around 7.5 ppm of Nitrate. Also it is difficult to quantify a 1ppm reduction of Nitrates since test kits for NO3 are not that exact , while for PO4 if you use hanna digital tester it is preaty easy.

 

[herring_fish]

That's weird, because usually you see larger and quicker reductions in nitrate than phosphate. May be it depends on the species of alga which is growing on the screen.

Bacteria load in the tank and phosphates that are temporarily bound in the rock are just two examples of factors that can render weird results.

 

[chagovatoloco]

Hay, what do you guys think of the marine magic scrubber on ebay item number.
272053935197
I am thinking of putting the light in the overflow box of my innovative marine 40.

 

[KafudaFish]

Has anyone used this light on a scrubber?
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00M31GHHO?psc=1

If so what size screen would it effectively light?

And the 20 watt version?

Thanks.

 

[m1k3]

Bud, couple questions but let's start with my situation. I've got a 125 with a 20 sump and separate 20 fuge with cheato. 8 fish and a variety of soft and lps. My skimmer is by some accounts a tad undersized, aquamaxx cones co-1. Tank started to get overtaken with the short brown fuzz algea but lately have also been getting a powdery green algea that is easy to blow off with a turkey baster. And it's getting worse. Oh also run the BRS mini gfo reactor with their standard bulk media. I have recently began feeding more especially the coral which is obviously contributing to the algae prob. On average I would say I feed 1.5-2 cube equivalent per day. Always been curious about ATS but didn't think too much about one till my algae problems started getting worse. I should also add that my nitrates are always unreadable and phosphates never more than .02 on red sea kit. Obviously a lot of phosphates are bound up in the algae and my pukani rock may well still be leaching. I love diying so this looks like a fun project and I can't wait to get started. Have a lot of stuff on order already and heatsink will be 2-4 weeks coming from china. Picked up the canvas today and prepped it, it is marinating in the fuge alongside my cheato ball, at a min it should at least get a biofilm on it by the time I am ready for it. Couple more fish to add and a lot more coral so I am shooting for a 3 cube per day system. Here is what I got so far, let me know if I am off anywhere:

6x6 lit area 2 sides.
Enclosed
6 ea 660nm (cree XP-E )and 1 450 nm (cree XT-E) per side
Driven by a meanwell 60-48d
Dimming and timer control via arduino upped to 10v via op amp and dac (this will be one of the funner parts).
Heat sink to be cut in two is 300x140mm

Still debating on separate pump or splicing off my return line. I do not want to tap my drain line. Looking to upgrade my return pump and would like tune everything but the skimmer off of it. Goal is to get rid of the fuge and use the mini reactor for carbon. Oh and be algae free or close to it in the DT.

So the questions, did I get the level of light corect? Assuming yes would best layout be simply two rows of three with the blue in the middle or some other configuration? Since I am going enclosed what do you recommend for the number and size of drains?

My biggest concern at the moment is my tank is practically silent, loudest noise being the fans on my two photon lights. That's the main reason I opted for enclosed am I going to hear this thing? Any tips to make it as silent as possible?

Wow I've never written that much on my tablet before...