algea scrubber

[Floyd R Turbo]

Harvest #6

Harvest #6

I cleaned out the sump on Saturday, moved most of the LR in there to the DT, removed the return pump intake foam filter, and stacked the remaining LR around the intake so that I had a place to put the Purigen bags and to also create an area for bubble to get stuck to. It works pretty well. During the cleaning today, I opened the bypass with a pipe extension added, and bubbles were flowing pretty heavily around the sump, but they werent' getting into the DT. I forgot to snap a pic.

During the cleaning, I also fragged some Xenia and Anthelia and got into a conversation with the guy buying them, and the screen was without flow for about an hour. I think it dried out a little too much in a few areas, because there was a little more odor than the last few weeks, and sections of the GHA had turned yellow, strangely enough only on one side of the screen. Anyways, still had excellent growth and the cleaning took 21 minutes from the time I walked in the door to the time I closed the bypass valve after re-installing the screen. Pics:

One half harvest

second half screen

Harvest

 

[slow_leak]

My experience with modified algae turf scrubber

My experience with modified algae turf scrubber

I have been running a algae turf scrubber for 2-3 months and running reefs since 2001. Picture of tank is in avatar and scrubber in operation is below. I followed a version of Santa Monica <no links allowed> site. I used his general guidelines for operation.

This was not a controlled experiment it is a developing and mature reef, with observations and some common sense taking the lead.

1)Observations I seen were active Clam and decorator goby kept a healthy diatom bloom present. This bloom was gone in 2 weeks and weekly cleanings of algae screen bare with hot water rinse.

2)Trace hair algae on overflows and scum behind overflows, as a default algae scrubber when away next with a slower than normal maturing of screen.

3) Increased feeding of thawed and rinsed frozen foods and Oyster Feast. Screen grew faster. I added rabbit fish and yellow eye Kole tang from reputable LFS in Charlotte, NC, Now Have Bellus, Yellow Eye, Scribbled Rabbit, goby and two baby cinnamon clowns.

4) Shortly there after Scolyoma(sp) experienced rapid tissue loss and death. I had this one 7-8 years and survived 1 power failure.

5) Acan colonies experienced much less polyp extension. After 2 months restarted old Euroreef skimmer. Output was low and steady. I use automotive scraper on screens and cut back fully and rinse heavily with warm tap water will all visible DOC and particulate is gone. Take a long ten minutes of cleaning weekly.

HOWEVER SPS appear to be very healthy. This is said based on growth and continued 2 part uptake and corraline growth.Essentially I replaced 20 gallon tall refugium with pictured scrubber and removed carbon to see effect of DOC from filter.I will replace precision marine pro reactor filter and keep ATS for awhile longer and carefully observe Acans.

It is effective at nutrient control. There is no question.

May main problem with this is I am a hobbyist making large grow out colonies of SPS primarily. This is OLD filtration technique and yet I have not found a tank with mature ATS filter on SPS dominated DISPLAY I would like to call my own, and I have tried

All written books atleast make handwaving gestures algaes can impeded SPS growth.

I see long winded explanations but almost no decent results. please steer me/us towards them!!

 

[slow_leak]

I would also add that my system has matured as low nutrient system without ATS and has red turf algae grazed with Mexican turbos somewhat effectively.

Perceived pests are unidentified hairy branching anthlia from Vietnam area and red and white feather dusters in sand only. Some people find this attractive.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

My Kryptonite Candy Cane and Zoas were not extending very well after about week 3, but they are starting to come back. That may have had to do with the fact that I took out all 8 original lamps in my T5HO fixture and replaced them with ATI and Geisemann 3 weeks into the ATS running.

If I had to take an educated guess, I would say that doing a total switch from filtration A to filtration B will cause a period of instability, which can lead to certain issues in the system. A new balance point must be established. This is especially the case with an ATS because you stop taking out the DOC that the corals like, and suddenly they are flooded with an overabundance of what they should have, and they need an adjustment period.

It's like if you are a meat lover but your girlfriend (or boyrfriend) makes you a vegetarian and you don't eat meat for 2 years, then you eat a big steak. Your body is not used to processing that food and you will get sick.

 

[kcress]

Good points Turbo.

Slow; I am rather shocked you're using hot water on the screen. That seems like it would kill a lot of the remaining starter growth which would cause more tank cycling as the screen tries to recover each week.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

yes, I would think you would not want to use hot water. You are not wanting to sterilize the screen, just rinse away any loose algae fragments, dust, and kill pods. room temp water is what I use (tepid)

 

[spamreefnew]

I have an ATS witch is much like floyd r turbo's , it is my ONLY filtration and has been for 6 months now. It has been the BEST 6 months of reefing in my life. skimmers are only good for sps only tanks IMO. scrubbers are the best option for everything else. my water is clear,my coral is healthy,my fish are fat,,i mean fat!,,,and my pods and shrimp,,that's right shrimp,,,reproduce like crazy. I could never say all that when i ran a skimmer. good luck

 

[Amphiprion]

Good points Turbo.

Slow; I am rather shocked you're using hot water on the screen. That seems like it would kill a lot of the remaining starter growth which would cause more tank cycling as the screen tries to recover each week.

Actually, any of the extremes are a problem, IME. I ran into this issue when I accidentally rinsed with hot water and another with much colder water. In either case, it will slow recovery quite a bit. Ideally, you should just use room temperature water or close to it and a light rinse is all that is required. Most particulates will be scraped away with the algae, so being aggressive in trying to remove them isn't really going to net any real benefits and may hamper growth. When I still had mine going, I simply scraped aggressively (with a razor blade, actually), quickly rinsed, and put the screen back online. FWIW, it worked fantastically for me. The only reason I don't run it now is that I don't have the need for it, since I am growing lots of seagrasses.

 

[herring_fish]

I've been following along but I'm pretty stumped by the water level thing. I'm not sure what you mean, or why you would want the entire screen submerged. I thought the whole point of this design was high flow and air exchange?

Sorry that I am so late on this comment. It seem out of place but I was answering from the a different page and it got hung up.

Any way, algae does need CO2 but it gets it from the water. Air exchange is not necessary at all. There have been studies done on a large scale where CO2 was injected into the water so that it came into direct bubbling contact with the algae. There was an increase in growth but not enough to warrant its continued use.

If it gets good water flow to the individual strands of algae, it will grow just as well as if it was constantly submerged.


Another late add to slow_leak

There is a guy in South Africa that has a great looking SPS tank. It was mature and he changed it over to a ATS only tank for about two years with great results. Then he started catching fish, I believe and putting them into the tank until his bio load got too high to go any farther without adding more filtration. He felt that lighting and electricity down there was too expensive afford making a bigger, more powerful scrubber so he added back in his skimmer.

You can google:
Pics of Mudshark on the MASA site

 

[Jstdv8]

Ive been running my scrubber for about 6 months now and couldnt be happier.
SPS is growing good, loads of pods for a fat mandarin (until he went carpet surfing a while back)
phos and trates have been undetectable and all my HA in display is gone except for a little on the powerheads. And I had alot.
Shut the skimmer off months ago and have no other filtration on the 120g system except 120 lbs of LR and LS
still do 10% water changes every week for calcium replenishment.

I ahve seen something interesting that Santamonica mentioned might happen.
Xenia likes a little nitrate in the water.
When I was running skimmer I had .5 phos and 40 trates and it grew like weeds. Now they don't seem to spread or grow much at all, still living and looking good, but not really spreading like they had in the past.

Slow leak, you said you wanted to be directed to a good place to see an established tank that had been running for a while?
http://www.algaescrubber.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=91
That's a good one

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

I believe he wanted to see an SPS tank. SM's tank is mixed.

I remember reading up on the guy in SA that you mention (with the electricity costs, etc) and if I remember right, his scrubber power dropped off because he didn't change his bulbs every 3 months, it was like once a year or something and that will greatly effect efficiency.

I'm going to start a SW tank of my own soon (right now I just maintain them for others) and haven't decided what to do yet as far as corals go, but I've got 4 months at least until I get to the point of adding them...

 

[stan zemanek]

Hey guys! I've been following this thread for awhile and thought I would post a couple pics of my ATS that has been up and running for about 3 weeks now. My sump is in my basement so I have the srubber being fed by my left side overflow. Everything seems to to working great and after about 2 weeks algae has started growing.

First day

After 3 weeks

 

[kcress]

LOL. Crazy different pipe stands you have there.

 

[slow_leak]

My no spray box is necessary. It's pictures a few posts above.

It the kerf of the slot is too thin algae will cause pressure and spray to occur. In you case it will be on electrical.

I still have yet to see a ATS performing well on SPS display tank. The one TOTM here that had a ATS was probably least impressive ever shown.

 

[waynotcars]

My ATS in basement sump with skimmer gfo carbon

My ATS in basement sump with skimmer gfo carbon

Took a while to get through this thread. REALLY interesting and lots of great opinions! Figured I'd show a shot of my ATS in my 100 gallon rubbermaid stock tank basement sump. The pipe which feeds my screen was a standpipe from an old AGA sump I had. It was already pre-slotted for me! I just used one of the rubber cuffs that used to connect it to a tank to the standpipe and connected it to one of my overflow pipes. I just wire-tied the screen to the pipe with looped wire ties. I am using a 100 watt 5000k metal halide lamp I had laying around which used to light up a basketball court in my backyard. I put in a new bulb. I just installed this 3 days ago and look at the screen already turning green. I run a really large ASM G6x skimmer which I NEVER plan to get rid of. I run GFO and carbon and plan on always running these also. Here's my thoughts on the matter in my case. Look, the overflow pipe was there feeding the sump anyway, right? I had all the materials I needed at home except for a 50 cent plastic screen. WHY not give it a shot?? I constantly fight algae, as MOST of us do, in my display tank, so if this works, why not? I don't think it's going to take any longer to wash this screen in the sink then it does to wash my filter sock or clean my skimmer cup and I LIKE doing maintainance on my tank. I have fun doing this stuff. I keeps me busy and makes me feel good. Instead of just arguing the pros and cons of skimmer verus ats, yellow water, who's right and who's wrong, I figured I'd try it out. I view it as just one more weapon in my arsenal of reefkeeping. I sure hope it works!

 

[Amphiprion]

All written books atleast make handwaving gestures algaes can impeded SPS growth.

I see long winded explanations but almost no decent results. please steer me/us towards them!!

The first statement is a very broad, sweeping statement and is only conditionally true. Please refrain from simplifying things this much, as it causes too many misconceptions. There is by and large far, far more algal biomass on any reef in the world, period. It surrounds every coral and is in constant close proximity. Algal reefs are a more apt name, honestly. That being said, there are algae that can potentially inhibit coral growth, such as many macroalgal species (Caulerpa, many "brown" algae). Turf algae growing on a skeleton next to healthy tissue can be a problem at times, especially for a weakened animal. But having it in the same system, however, is not necessarily the same.

I still have yet to see a ATS performing well on SPS display tank. The one TOTM here that had a ATS was probably least impressive ever shown.

Lots of reasons for this, including a lot of misconceptions, as per the above. Your recent hardships in the change are unfortunate, but may or may not be positively attributed to the scrubber itself--correlation does not imply causation. I'd be quite surprised, honestly, if the scrubber in and of itself caused it. The only issue I ever had with mine was when it died from dessication, in which the lack of filtration caused a "crash." As far as the last part, that is all personal preference and opinion. I won't argue for or against that, despite the fact that you are treating a subjective statement rather definitively.

Anyway, to each his/her own. I can definitely respect differences in opinion and experience, but it isn't doing much justice to the hobby as a whole to dismiss something on hearsay or to make broad assumptions without much support.

In any case, scrubbers have their place and purpose and every tank is different. Applying one methodology across the board won't work well for everyone. For example, at least some (possibly many) tanks that run scrubbers may benefit from protein skimming of some degree. Others may well do worse with it. The same can be said of most things in our tanks, actually. There are far too many successful ways of doing things, as well as differing opinions, etc., so let's keep it at that.

 

[slow_leak]

I will write what I like about ATS scrubber. Please refrain from telling me what to do. You are defending this methodology and wished I kept negative observations of results to myself. I think the readers here can differentiate an observation form a hobbyist from direct causation. As I wrote, I get long explanation but little in the way of proof. Again this does not mean it is not possible, just that it is either new (which it is not), applied incorrectly, now one does it, or possibly not a good system to use solely on a SPS dominated tank.

That being said I am getting excellent results on SPS and removed 8 year old pectinia to another tank. It was not doing well. It is a modified system that appears to be working well for 3-4 months. Please let your readers know this is just another observation.

You will not hear anymore from me.

 

[wmilas]

To chime in a bit. I have a 600 gallon display, 1000 gallon system. Mainly sps with a few acans ect. I've been having a HARD time feeding enough into my system to keep my now pretty large coral colonies happy. through experimentation I know its a food and not a light issue. I have an ATB Xlarge cone skimmer plus I run filter sucks every other day. I also dose VSV.

I'm at the point where I'm dosing half a gallon of VSV a week trying to keep my feedings under control. If I op my feedings the coral are happy but I experience an outbreak of hair/turf ect in frag tanks and on exposed surfaces in the display. Well, no hair in the display the tangs eat it all. But bubble ect. When I back the feeding off, I see a decline in health of the sps. Oh they are still healthy, but nothing like the large feedings. Color fades, growth slows, ect.

I'm in the processes of building the first of 3 large scrubbers to try them out. Each will be 200 sq inches of area, lit by 4 t5 ho 3k bulbs each side. Basically the new "high filtering" scrubber model. I have no problem experimenting and if this actually works, It'll allow me to keep more organic particles in the water which is what I fear I need at this point.

And before everyone freaks out and tells me I don't know what I'm doing, I've been in this hobby for years. I don't care what works, as long as it works. When colonies get large, say basketball size or larger, food and flow DO become big issues. If you don't get food deep in the colony you start to see STN'ing from the inside. It's happened to me and other large reef tanks. My personal theory is that the inner part of the colony that receives less light needs more food to make up the the carbohydrate negative balance... but thats just my theory. Older reef tank keepers know that its harder to keep an large colony over a frag... I want to see if this helps.

 

[TheFishMan65]

wmilas, You might also consider bio pellets (sorry for the hijack) . I have not used them, but from what I read they may help. The bacteria they produce can feed the corals and me skimmed out with a skimmer.

 

[Amphiprion]

I will write what I like about ATS scrubber. Please refrain from telling me what to do. You are defending this methodology and wished I kept negative observations of results to myself. I think the readers here can differentiate an observation form a hobbyist from direct causation. As I wrote, I get long explanation but little in the way of proof. Again this does not mean it is not possible, just that it is either new (which it is not), applied incorrectly, now one does it, or possibly not a good system to use solely on a SPS dominated tank.

That being said I am getting excellent results on SPS and removed 8 year old pectinia to another tank. It was not doing well. It is a modified system that appears to be working well for 3-4 months. Please let your readers know this is just another observation.

You will not hear anymore from me.

No need to be defensive. I wasn't being defensive, myself, and I apologize if it came across that way. I don't discourage observations in the slightest, but it is bad science to immediately attribute them to something--especially in light of many other variables. This sort of thing is what can create many of the ideas about something that just aren't necessarily true. LEDs are another great example of this where we still have people saying that, in general, they can't support more demanding corals. I see far too many people start a scrubber with either expectations for it to fail or even cause problems, which doesn't help observationally.

So, sorry I offended you--I never argue against the poster, only the post. In the long term, many/most may find that scrubbers may not be one of the better approaches to typical "sps" type system and are already certainly not for everyone. I can certainly accept that. I'd also like you to keep posting your observations, as I believe a larger pool will always help.