Algae Scrubber Basics

Ok, this is a picture of my 600 liter tank. It has only been running for two months and I'm currently waiting for the Riffmeramik (from Korallenwelt) to mature (as well as the tank as a whole) before adding any corals. The ones I have in the tank, two softies and a small SPS frag are there as indicators. The whole two months has been with a DIY ATS.

The white slate is a slate used for white balancing and calibrating under water cameras, I use when diving. The slate is located about 60 cm backwards from the front glass. The picture is taken with white balance set to "direct sunlight" as this made it come out just as it looks to my eye. Sorry for the reflections in the glass, but it's quite sunny outside. :)

To me it looks like very little yellowing in the water. Water is reasonably clear although feeding time was ten mins ago.





This is a picture from another tank of mine running a SM-100 scrubber. This is more of a close up. The slate is about 40 cm into the tank. Sorry for the ugly background, just spilt some water on it..

 
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Here's my simple nano ATS, full build and tons more pics here:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1967609

DSCN6232.jpg
 
maglofster said:
Please read what I wrote and think again.. I have never stated that a filter sock is needed. I have stated some other things which I'll try to clarify.

Crystal clear water without particles will not be achieved without a filter sock (or some other way to filter all particles out of the water, like a powerhead and a very fine sponge). I think that is a very true statement. A particle is something very small - a speck and something that is usually measured in microns, so it wont affect water clarity unless there is a lot of them suspended in the water. For me, the time I see them clearly is when i get sunlight comming in from the side into the tank, than it almost looks as the dust particles you sometimes see in sunlight coming in through the window. The food particles I'm describing here are ranging in sizes from 5 to 200 μm - as a reference a red blood cell is about 8 μm, rotifier 50 μm, brine shrimp 125 μm and a large copepod 250 μm.

It is also true that the ATS will trap a lot of stuff. But this depends on how the ATS is constructed - for example if it is enclosed and with a quarter of the media always under the water level like a SM-100 (which I have running), or if it is just hanging free (which I have running in another tank). It also depends on what kind of flow you have, i have noticed that when I ramp up the flow, more stuff gets flushed off the media again. Also, a newly cleaned media with a small amount of algae compared to a media with 6 days of growth will differ in how much detritus they catch.

So, again.. If you want water with food in it and don't need it to be crystal clear without particles, remove the sock - be happy! :) As an avid diver wanting to recreate the reefs I have been diving (Red Sea, South East Asia and the Caribbean) I like my water to be as natural as possible so I never use any socks!

When it comes to yellowing of the water, I would say most systems where you don't change a lot of water pretty regular will have yellowing of the water - scrubber or no scrubber. The good news is that it's very easy to solve in a lot of ways. For example, a very small amount of ozone or adding active carbon in a mesh bag will fix this yellowing.

The last thing I want to do here is start some kind of big discussion about this, but I think it is important to share as much correct information about this subject and all aspects of it as possible. Why? Well because many people still writes ATS off as something that: A. Does not work and B. Cause a lot of problems. By being as correct as possible and providing clear information maybe it's easier to gain acceptance in the wider circle of fellow reefer. I miss the more scientific approach and presentation of empirical data.
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I am sorry, I should have quoted people, that part about not needing it was intended for the person asking. This is my fault for not making that clear.

I agree with a lot of what you said, aside from the yellow water comment. I have had my tank setup for almost 9 months now. I have only changed ~80 gallons of water since I have started. I have no yellow water problems. That being said, I have NEVER cleaned my ATS in my tank.

No hard feelings here, now back to ATS basics. :D
 
srusso said:
I have no problem doing that for you. Floyd is correct though, If my 10k 250w MH is on, everything in my tank looks yellow, everything look blue when... you get the idea. However when the 10k MH and 2 ATI blue plus and 2 ATI purple plus are all on I get a good mix. Tomorrow at noon while I am home(and MH is on) I will try that for you. I will attempt to get a picture but dont hold me to it if the color is off... you will have to take my word for it.
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Thanks, I would not bother with a picture. If you can take a peek & see if you can detect any yellowing at all, I'd appreciate it.

Can't wait to get my system up & running. Hopefully this summer.
 
salty joe said:
Thanks, I would not bother with a picture. If you can take a peek & see if you can detect any yellowing at all, I'd appreciate it.

Can't wait to get my system up & running. Hopefully this summer.
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I posted some pictures above as a reference for you. I really dislike yellow water, but have not seen any color change in my tanks running ATS.
 
salty joe said:
Thanks, I would not bother with a picture. If you can take a peek & see if you can detect any yellowing at all, I'd appreciate it.

Can't wait to get my system up & running. Hopefully this summer.
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I found everything is my house that I thought was true white. I used the longest view possible which is ~36". First tried cheese cloth, then a piece of printer paper, and a white food container. All looked white to me! I really tried to focus on the color of the water between the white object. Nothing...
 
srusso said:
... I have had my tank setup for almost 9 months now. I have only changed ~80 gallons of water since I have started. I have no yellow water problems...
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Additionally, that includes a tank move from one house to another. I tried to move every drop of salt water I had but the tank had only been setup a month or two and I had never moved a tank before. So needless to say I made a lot of mistakes that forced me to have to make more water. I have no way of knowing how much of that I used for the move but I generally do about a 5 gallon water change every month for trace elements.

Although I do have plans to do a constant slow water change system, I was inspired by a fellow reefers tank at my last club meeting. Seems like it could be built for rather cheap as long as you have a good location for it, IE my basement.

Fyi - The only reason I am building this is to automate as many things on the tank as I can...
 
I've been running an ATS for about 2 months now on my 90g. Was skeptical of using an ATS but I am seeing better results and increased stability

The only real issue I ran into was too much light/too long of a photo period and yellow algae, cyno in the scrubber, and smell (not strong but noticeable to me)
Rather than try and dose iron I cut back the photo period by 2 hours to 14 hours and it resolved all the issues I had. algae is much greener, smell is gone and no more cyno in the ATS.

The positive aspects i've found:
Tank PH is rock solid stable at 8.41-8.44 PH (with the skimmer it would swing 0.15)
Only need to clean the front glass every week or two
Nuance algae is gone (got a frag with GHA and the GHA died off)
Cleanup crew is small (2 turbo,7 astraea, 4 certh, 5 margarita, 5 trochus, 1 Nassarius)
Dont need to worry about over feeding, has no impact to the tank other than more food for the micro fauna
Increased micro fauna (tons of red feather dusters, pods, etc)
Happy fat fish from all the food available
water clarity improved (tint gone, no longer running carbon)

The negatives:
Alk consumption seems to of gone up (no new corals introduced)
Small particles of food/stuff/poop floating (not a ton but more than when i had the skimmer running)
Uses more electricity than the skimmer (96w vs 22w, or 3x the electricity factoring in the off time of the lights)
Algae on the front glass is much harder to remove (multiple passes with a blade or pad)
Micro fauna try's to grown on the glass, have to be more cautious about scratches now.
Adjustments to the lighting schedule or flow take a few days to be reflected, adjustments need to be made slow and given time to be reflected.

For feeding I feed 1 cube rotifiers, 1/2 cube mysid, 1/2 cube baby brine, 1/2 cube cyclops and sometimes more if I am lazy.
Stocking is light, with a 2" misbar clown, a 3" firefish, and a 2.5" mystery wrasse (looking to add 1 more fish but undecided)

Pic of some of the micro fauna, encrusting sponges, tunicates, tube worms, feather dusters, and other stuff I have no idea what to call. Tank is 11 months old, started with dry rock and a few small seed chunks.
IMG_20110501_134717.jpg


Pic of the screen in the ATS 48 hours after being cleaned
IMG_20110501_082537.jpg
 
I am having some issues with my ATS squirting water on my clip-on lights. I noticed one of my lights was smoking a couple of days ago. Luckily I caught it before something bad could have happened.

Does anyone have any pics of an ATS's that has an acrylic cover over their lights? I am currently using the clip-on Lowe's shop light.
http://www.lowes.com/pd_203213-1373...ight&pl=1&currentURL=/pl__0__s?Ntt=shop+light

Would it be easy enough to just add a acrylic sheet on both sides of the screen so when water splashes it only hits the acrylic?
 
Dave1NC said:
I am having some issues with my ATS squirting water on my clip-on lights. I noticed one of my lights was smoking a couple of days ago. Luckily I caught it before something bad could have happened.

Does anyone have any pics of an ATS's that has an acrylic cover over their lights? I am currently using the clip-on Lowe's shop light.
http://www.lowes.com/pd_203213-1373...ight&pl=1&currentURL=/pl__0__s?Ntt=shop+light

Would it be easy enough to just add a acrylic sheet on both sides of the screen so when water splashes it only hits the acrylic?
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If you look at my summary post, which is I think #1035 or right about there, there are a few examples of quick and easy shields that work well enough for a CFL/reflector setup. If you take 2 pieces of acrylic (any kind will do, even 1/16", you may need to replace it every so often due to warping, but still pretty cheap) and drill a couple small holes along the top edge and run some zip-ties through them, you can hang them over your slot tube. The pic on my summary post is 2 pieces that are just 2" tall or so, just enough to block the spray from the slot tube. You could use longer pieces also and drape the whole screen if your slot tube would support the weight.
 
It's been 6 weeks, and I have a report.

I had a skimmer that wasn't really doing anything. So I irresponsibly took it offline when I put my ATS online. The ATS wasn't mature at all. And boy did my livestock suffer. EVen water changes didn't help. I really thought I was going to lose many of my corals.

For the first 5 weeks, there was no sign of green hair algae. Only the brown slimy stuff that comes with new screens.

Then 1 week ago, I started to see green hair algae growing on the screens. Concurrently, my livestock has taken off incredibly! I must say, I also began topping off with Kalkwasser. It seemed like the ATS while reducing the hair algae in the tank, allowed diatoms or cyano to take over. I know that this is a pH issue, so I added the Kalk for top off.

Now, my water is getting crystal clear, the rocks are losing all traces of HA with minimal pruning. (did this to judge the effect of the ATS). And my corals are all waking up! My SPS Montipora responded very well. My nuclear green paly's are opening, and a zoa that I haven't seen open since I bought it is starting to open up! I'm thrilled!

My experience suggests that an appropriate time to remove the skimmer, is when you see hair algae upon your screen, and not before. I guess I shouldn't have gambled with my livestocks' lives, but they came through like champs, and I'm still not convinced the skimmer was doing anything.

Hope this helps!
Aaron
 
Aaron, you changed a few things that may or may not be a result of the skimmer.. You started dosing kalkwater. Initially this could have shocked the system, and it took some days for everything to acclimate to the new dosing levels, and to get the levels evened. Kalkwasser is great, but, it does mess with ph and introduce impurities, so, it may have simply been corals getting adjusted to changes in water chemistry. My corals respond very weirdly to changes in alk or calcium. One of my corals seems to respond negatively when my magnesium is low.. It got down to around 1200 and the toadstool refused to open for over a week. I dosed some mag, and within 2 hours it opened right up.

I'm not convinced it was the mag, but, it could have been.

With that said, I'm going to have to start a new screen. my old one going on 2 months old is all broken up.. When I was "roughing it up" i may have roughed it up too much as some of the areas got too thin and I have to rollit up to get it out from underneither my stand. and it's broken in several places now, and parts of it are flat out missing. It's looking pretty rugged and water flow is uneven and splattering some as a result.

I hate to start over with a new screen. But, I don't see a choice. The good thing is I kinda have a macro scrubber running in my display that may be limiting my ATS...

Several small pieces of sea lettuce got attached to the screens of my powerheads (all 3 powerheads). And within a week or two the sea lettuce is 6-8" long. I harvest it every 2-3 weeks.

although it may be limiting my scrubber, when I replace the screen, hopefully I won't be shocking the system....
 
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