Keeping Nitrates Down In NPS Tank

[herring_fish]

As I remember, I think that you typically need about .5 to 1 watt and 1 square inch of surface erea for each gallon in your main tank. With a two sided screen, it looks like you have plenty of surface area.

On the lighting, you are in the right ball park but I like to stay on the high side. It's cheap any way. Then you can cut down on the light period if you start running too clean.

Please double check on the scrubber site becuase it has been a while since I calulated the specs for my scrubber. I don't know if I should trust the equivalencies but I am with you ...I take thie word for it. I don't have a light meter.

 

[ReefMonger]

I will toss around the idea of 2 more spot lamps. I probably will as I am noticing not nearly as dark of algae growth towards the ends of the screen. How long did yours take to set itself up?

 

[herring_fish]

I think that the two new lamp are inexpensive insurance.

I'm sorry. I can't give you a good time frame for getting up and running. My first two scrubbers started 18 years ago and this time, I was also starting a refugium at the same time.

In order to get the fug stocked with bacteria, I used a lot of Reef Bugs from Marc Weiss's new company. They kept the N&P so low that my scrubber really didn't grow anything so I pinned some macro algae in the tray to get the respiration (CO2 to O2) and went on about my business.

Only in the last month have I quadrupled my feeding. Because of that, I have noticed that algae started growing in the tray where the macro wasn't so I moved the macro to the fug, for safe keeping and let the algae scrubber do it's job as designed.

The Reef Bugs, the refugium and the Algal Turf Scrubber worked in competition with each other. This gave me a lot of capacity that is not yet fully utilized but I have clean rock in high light so that's not a bad thing.

There isn't any hurry on the algae growth. With enough lighting, the algae will grow when it is needed. Just test your water to make sure that you haven't missed something in the start up phase. That's the ultimate test.