Hello folks,
I've seen a bunch of threads on the many ways to lego together your scrubber but what I find sparse are tales of true experience with coral growth. I posted a reply to this thread in the SPS forums and I wanted to link to that as well as host an independent thread here. What I'm looking for are your tales of success and failure with coral growth using an algae scrubber. By no means is it a requirement to have a scrubber as your sole means of filtration - I'm not convinced it can handle things 100% on its own, but it's working OK so far for my system. Many of the things I'm seeing may be due to the normal maturation of a medium sized reef tank. Some photos here. Details follow below...
Tank: 90G (~110G total volume), scrubber driven by Eheim 1262 return pump, no filter sock, live rock and additional critters in the sump.
Lights: 2x250W MH (1 10K, 1 Radium) @ 5.5 hours and 2x54W Actinic @ 8 hours; scrubber has 4x23W CFL (2 on each side)
Params: PH 8.24, Alk 9.8, Ca 420, Mg 1400, NO3 0, PO4 0.025; 2-part added twice daily (morning and night) and ATO includes Kalk.
Maintenance: Scrubber cleaned weekly, 15-20% w/c monthly
Fish: yellow tang, (2) percula, (3) purple firefish, mccosker's, mandarin
SPS: Great polyp extension on several different types. Good growth on monti's of all types as well as birdsnests. Slow on others but most are encrusting quite well. I've had RTN on 2 montis but I believe these are unrelated to tank conditions as growth continues after I excised the bad parts.
LPS: All seem to do very well except for chalice, though I've only had a single 1"x2" frag so far (it's receded slowly over the course of 2 months or so). Plates, duncan, hammer, frog, acans, etc. are all happy.
Softies: I've only had a toadstool leather that I've since donated to another reefer. It seemed to do OK but shed monthly.
Anemones: Single RBTA that has split into two that I now want to get rid of (it's stinging my duncan and I like the duncan better!!). Both parent and clone have mostly lost their bubbles. Otherwise they're stable.
Zoos: Mixed bag here. They're open nicely most of the time but they are quite stagnant. I'm going to try target feeding them a few times a week to see if that helps.
Shrooms: I have a few different Ricordea Florida and Yuma that seem happy for the most part. No real expansion but they do OK.
That's about it. I've had bouts of what I consider normal newbie/new tank pests including diatoms, flatworms, valonia (which is making a comeback - boo!) and dinos - dinos being the most problematic but I seem to have them beat down for now. Coralline has taken over most of the rockwork which is great.
So anyone else have scrubber stories to share? Look forward to seeing some good results out there!
I've seen a bunch of threads on the many ways to lego together your scrubber but what I find sparse are tales of true experience with coral growth. I posted a reply to this thread in the SPS forums and I wanted to link to that as well as host an independent thread here. What I'm looking for are your tales of success and failure with coral growth using an algae scrubber. By no means is it a requirement to have a scrubber as your sole means of filtration - I'm not convinced it can handle things 100% on its own, but it's working OK so far for my system. Many of the things I'm seeing may be due to the normal maturation of a medium sized reef tank. Some photos here. Details follow below...
Tank: 90G (~110G total volume), scrubber driven by Eheim 1262 return pump, no filter sock, live rock and additional critters in the sump.
Lights: 2x250W MH (1 10K, 1 Radium) @ 5.5 hours and 2x54W Actinic @ 8 hours; scrubber has 4x23W CFL (2 on each side)
Params: PH 8.24, Alk 9.8, Ca 420, Mg 1400, NO3 0, PO4 0.025; 2-part added twice daily (morning and night) and ATO includes Kalk.
Maintenance: Scrubber cleaned weekly, 15-20% w/c monthly
Fish: yellow tang, (2) percula, (3) purple firefish, mccosker's, mandarin
SPS: Great polyp extension on several different types. Good growth on monti's of all types as well as birdsnests. Slow on others but most are encrusting quite well. I've had RTN on 2 montis but I believe these are unrelated to tank conditions as growth continues after I excised the bad parts.
LPS: All seem to do very well except for chalice, though I've only had a single 1"x2" frag so far (it's receded slowly over the course of 2 months or so). Plates, duncan, hammer, frog, acans, etc. are all happy.
Softies: I've only had a toadstool leather that I've since donated to another reefer. It seemed to do OK but shed monthly.
Anemones: Single RBTA that has split into two that I now want to get rid of (it's stinging my duncan and I like the duncan better!!). Both parent and clone have mostly lost their bubbles. Otherwise they're stable.
Zoos: Mixed bag here. They're open nicely most of the time but they are quite stagnant. I'm going to try target feeding them a few times a week to see if that helps.
Shrooms: I have a few different Ricordea Florida and Yuma that seem happy for the most part. No real expansion but they do OK.
That's about it. I've had bouts of what I consider normal newbie/new tank pests including diatoms, flatworms, valonia (which is making a comeback - boo!) and dinos - dinos being the most problematic but I seem to have them beat down for now. Coralline has taken over most of the rockwork which is great.
So anyone else have scrubber stories to share? Look forward to seeing some good results out there!
