My first led algae scrubber

[Floyd R Turbo]

What kits do you use to test N and P, and what are the results?

 

[Skinnysloth]

What kits do you use to test N and P, and what are the results?

At this time, I don't see much value in testing for N and P. It's obvious that I have excess N and P in the water or else all that algae wouldn't be growing. My bio load is relatively low, 2 clownfish, 1 tang, and 1 cardinal in about 100 gallons of water. I feed 1-2 pinches of flakes per day, with a cube of mysis shrimp every other day. The effective area of the ATS is 8x6 inches or 48 square inches with led lights on both sides.

But just to cover all the bases, which test kits would you recommend? The old test kits I threw away were seachem.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

For low range N - Salifert
High range API
For P - Hanna checker
For K - Salifert
Alk - Hanna or Salifert
cal - salifert
Mag - salifert

 

[McPuff]

Really cool thread first of all. Great information.

In reference to your DT, I hate to say it but I think you're best option is to take out the sand and rock and start with new. You're probably fighting a losing battle with the storage nutrients otherwise. It shouldn't be a total reset... maybe you can keep a few rocks for seeding purposes and then remove them after a couple weeks (if you go with dry rock that is). And you can try to save as much of the water as possible. Also, that would give you the chance to really go after that coralline algae that is on your glass. It's a full day of work for sure but I think it'll pay off much quicker than bleeding out the nutrients slowly. Whatever you chose to do, I hope it works well and quickly. Good luck!

 

[SaltY305]

At this time, I don't see much value in testing for N and P. It's obvious that I have excess N and P in the water or else all that algae wouldn't be growing. My bio load is relatively low, 2 clownfish, 1 tang, and 1 cardinal in about 100 gallons of water. I feed 1-2 pinches of flakes per day, with a cube of mysis shrimp every other day. The effective area of the ATS is 8x6 inches or 48 square inches with led lights on both sides.

But just to cover all the bases, which test kits would you recommend? The old test kits I threw away were seachem.

are you thawing the cube and rinsing the mysis? If you just pop in a cube its an insta source of dirty water..

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

It's all a matter of patience really. With the low level of feeding, you just have to wait it out. Jim Stime's tank (LA Fishguys) took almost a year to clear up - but it looks great now, and his scrubber is over 5x the size that he needs per feeding.

If you don't want to go through the expense of new rock and then cycling it, etc, here are the steps I would take:

1) set up a small frag tank and transport all (possible) corals to that tank. 40 Breeder is a great size for this IMO, because any smaller and you can run into problems maintaining proper levels (salinity and alkalinity, primarily). If you have encrusted corals, try your best to break them off or frag them as much as possible.

2) leave fish in DT. You could even buy more tangs to pick at the GHA

3) cut your DT light cycle down to only a couple hours per day, and have them shut off 15-20 minutes after feeding

4) increase the size of your scrubber to as large as you feasibly can. Use CFLs for temporary lighting, because they're cheap and you're not going to use them long term. Or you could duplicate your current one, if you can build it cheap / have parts lying around. Setting up multiple scrubbers is OK too, because then you can rotate through cleaning. Setting up another type (CFL) of scrubber might also grow a slightly different strain or dominant mixture of algae, which might compete from another angle with your DT algae - but that's just a possibility, and I honestly have no proof of that, at least not from personal experience. But the point is that since you have a lot of GHA in the tank and dirty rockwork, you need a very much oversized but temporary scrubber.

5) Scrub the rocks with a stiff brush (grout & tile brush @ Home Depot) and make sure you are running a filter sock to catch it, or net it out.

6) know your N and P and track it. If your N drops out and you still have P, you have nitrate limitation - test K. If K is low (<350-370), boost it with Brightwell Potassion-P (to 390-400). If P continues to stay high, then run GFO or what I prefer - Premium Aquatics Phos-Blast (or ROWAphos, essentially the same thing) and not much of it, and change it often. Same for carbon, run small amounts and change weekly.

7) never hurts to buy snails to chew on the algae. They will just convert it to waste, but at least they would help keep the algae at bay from competing with the scrubber.

It's a rough guideline, but just one way of attacking it.

 

[Skinnysloth]

are you thawing the cube and rinsing the mysis? If you just pop in a cube its an insta source of dirty water..

Uh, not so much. I just do a quick rinse to thaw it out a little then into the tank.

It's all a matter of patience really. With the low level of feeding, you just have to wait it out. Jim Stime's tank (LA Fishguys) took almost a year to clear up - but it looks great now, and his scrubber is over 5x the size that he needs per feeding.

If you don't want to go through the expense of new rock and then cycling it, etc, here are the steps I would take:

1) set up a small frag tank and transport all (possible) corals to that tank. 40 Breeder is a great size for this IMO, because any smaller and you can run into problems maintaining proper levels (salinity and alkalinity, primarily). If you have encrusted corals, try your best to break them off or frag them as much as possible.

2) leave fish in DT. You could even buy more tangs to pick at the GHA

3) cut your DT light cycle down to only a couple hours per day, and have them shut off 15-20 minutes after feeding

4) increase the size of your scrubber to as large as you feasibly can. Use CFLs for temporary lighting, because they're cheap and you're not going to use them long term. Or you could duplicate your current one, if you can build it cheap / have parts lying around. Setting up multiple scrubbers is OK too, because then you can rotate through cleaning. Setting up another type (CFL) of scrubber might also grow a slightly different strain or dominant mixture of algae, which might compete from another angle with your DT algae - but that's just a possibility, and I honestly have no proof of that, at least not from personal experience. But the point is that since you have a lot of GHA in the tank and dirty rockwork, you need a very much oversized but temporary scrubber.

5) Scrub the rocks with a stiff brush (grout & tile brush @ Home Depot) and make sure you are running a filter sock to catch it, or net it out.

6) know your N and P and track it. If your N drops out and you still have P, you have nitrate limitation - test K. If K is low (<350-370), boost it with Brightwell Potassion-P (to 390-400). If P continues to stay high, then run GFO or what I prefer - Premium Aquatics Phos-Blast (or ROWAphos, essentially the same thing) and not much of it, and change it often. Same for carbon, run small amounts and change weekly.

7) never hurts to buy snails to chew on the algae. They will just convert it to waste, but at least they would help keep the algae at bay from competing with the scrubber.

It's a rough guideline, but just one way of attacking it.

I'll see what I can do with a temp frag tank. I already have a 20g tank I can use, hob filter, extra tunze 6025 nano stream for flow, and enough spare parts to make a royal blue/white led light.

My current tang must be allergic to algae since I have never seen it pick at any algae. He's a pig when it comes to flake food and mysis though.

I'll cut down my lighting schedule once I have the temp frag tank set up and scrub the rocks out of the tank after dipping in peroxide. Unfortunately, my scrubber is the at the max size for the space I have. As it stands, it's 3-4x bigger than the recommended size per the feeding guidelines.

Interesting thing about the clean-up crew, they don't seem to live all that long in my tank. I have a few critters still alive including a few ceriths, hermit crabs, nassarius snails (I know, carnivore, not herbivore), and a whole lot of bristle worms that had a population explosion during the time I neglected my tank. Turbo and astrea snails don't seem to survive past 2 months now. I don't want to add any more snails at the moment if they're just going to die and contribute to the nutrient problem. I'll go look for some test kits for N and P. I already have tests for the basic three, Ca, Mg, and Alk. I'll test those again when I get home tonight.

 

[Skinnysloth]

Tested the basic three parameters with the Redsea Prokit:
Ca 470ppm
Alk 7.6 dKH
Mg 1360ppm

Salinity with refractometer: 1.025

 

[unitedbga]

I don't know if this if possible. But adding on a refugium thats all algae may help. I have a 60 gallon display with two 29 gallon refugiums. Each refugium has chaeto the size of 2 basketballs. I no longer use a skimmer as it is not needed. I have no bad algae, coral growth is good, and fish are happy.

I think what you are doing great and I would not breakdown the tank. You have the chance to really test what works and what doesnt.

 

[woods4542000]

Any updates? Just read thread love your scrubber! I had hair algae pretty bad to used I believed Kent tech m , believe raised magnesium to about 1600ppm wiped out all hair algae in a few weeks.

 

[FocusFin]

Any updates? Just read thread love your scrubber! I had hair algae pretty bad to used I believed Kent tech m , believe raised magnesium to about 1600ppm wiped out all hair algae in a few weeks.

I use it for Bryopsis.