Algae Scrubber. Can you go too big?

Chris Spaulding

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A little background.
Tank 150 gallon plus 40 gallons in sump
Heavy Bio Load
No discernible algae in DT except for a small patch of Bripsis about the size of a nickel. Manual removal every 2 or 3 days .Was larger but fighting it back.
Currently running Biopellets, Fuge and Skimmer. Does not seam to be doing the trick.
Nitrates >25 Hann HR nitrate
Po4 .13. too .08 Rowaphos pending
Feed 4 cubes a day.

Looking at an in sump Scrubber as limited over head space in cabinet.
Scrubbers considering because in sump application. Santimonica Rain 2 or 4 or newly released Icecap Pro in sump medium or large
Question is.
Can a scrubber be too large for a system?
I know they can be too small.
Is the size rating based on the size of the screen used?
 

Quietman

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Select your scrubber based on cubes feeding per day. Santa Monica has good guidance on this. I have the RAIN2 but only use one light (1 cube per day). What's nice about them is you can always add more lights for more food. With 4 cubes I think you're looking at the RAIN4 though.
 

JWsticks

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I'm a lazy reefer and hated the scrubber when I owned one due to the high maintenance. Refugium with a high wattage led can have the same effect with pods as an added benefit.
 

Quietman

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High maintenance? Take out the screen once every week or two and scape it off? :) Not sure how that's high maintenance compared to taking out a handful of algae every week or two.
 

JWsticks

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I've missed a week and and had salt spray in the sump area. Mine was diy btw. And I didn't have to deal with nutrient spikes after cleaning the screen too much etc.

Pros and cons to either setup.
 

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I've missed a week and and had salt spray in the sump area. Mine was diy btw. And I didn't have to deal with nutrient spikes after cleaning the screen too much etc.

Pros and cons to either setup.
Ok. Yeah I was thinking (and even started buying suppllies) for DIY but had concerns my design wouldn't be as solid and simple as the RAIN2/4. So I just bought one instead. Good design is definitely maintenance impact.

Plug for them I suppose but I love a functional design with minimum moving parts, connections and nothing to break really. Lights all waterproof so I didn't have to design some separate light box etc. And there's not one screw I have to remove to take out the screen.
 

X-37B

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For nitrate I would upgrade the size of your skimmer.
On my 120 I ran a 9410dc for over a year. Towards the end my nitrates were at 20.
I upgraded to a 9430dc, which is oversized for my system, and nitrates went down and are now <5.
I only run a 7" filter sock as the other export system.

I have thought of a scrubber for po4 control but right now I use gfo effectivly.

I do believe a scrubber can remove to many nutrients if oversized but you can offset that by feeding more.

I practice heavy in/out and feed upwards of 10 cubes a day to the 15 fish in my system.
 

X-37B

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The Skimmer I have now is a Deltec 1000I rated for up to 255 gallons
Those are nice!
As an example on my 120 the 9410dc is rated to 315g's.
Tunze website says reduce by 70% for full sps, 90 g's. Mine is 95% sps.
The 9430dc is rated to 925 g's.
70% less is 270 g's for sps.
That is what I meant by oversize.

I almost went with the Deltec and it would have been the 2000 for my system.
 
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Chris Spaulding

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I had this skimmer on my RS250 for a few years SPS tank 65 gallons total and always had great numbers. When I upgraded to the 150 I moved this skimmer over because it was rated for a 255. But as things are settling in and SPS are growing well I am just struggling to keep nitrate down. My Fuge just does not to seam to do well with Macro.
I have been testing every month with ATI ICP so I know all other parameters are in line as I follow Reefmoonshiners. Everything looks good and happy just can't get the Nitrates down. I know things do not happen over night and I have been working these BioPellets for 2 and a half months with no changes.
 

JWsticks

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For nitrate I would upgrade the size of your skimmer.
On my 120 I ran a 9410dc for over a year. Towards the end my nitrates were at 20.
I upgraded to a 9430dc, which is oversized for my system, and nitrates went down and are now <5.
I only run a 7" filter sock as the other export system.

I have thought of a scrubber for po4 control but right now I use gfo effectivly.

I do believe a scrubber can remove to many nutrients if oversized but you can offset that by feeding more.

I practice h
I had this skimmer on my RS250 for a few years SPS tank 65 gallons total and always had great numbers. When I upgraded to the 150 I moved this skimmer over because it was rated for a 255. But as things are settling in and SPS are growing well I am just struggling to keep nitrate down. My Fuge just does not to seam to do well with Macro.
I have been testing every month with ATI ICP so I know all other parameters are in line as I follow Reefmoonshiners. Everything looks good and happy just can't get the Nitrates down. I know things do not happen over night and I have been working these BioPellets for 2 and a half months with no changes.

Sounds like you might be limited in phos given you're also running biopellets too.

Had a quick run through your build and nice build BTW. To increase your chaeto harvest, I would stop running gfo and dose iron and continue running the fuge light for 22 hours. I dosed 1 capful of Brightwell iron Wed and Sat and it grew chaeto like a champ. Also don't harvest the chaeto and let the mass take up nutrients.

In my 60G, I used a 75w LED made for a planted tank and it grew a tiny baseball sized chaeto to a basketball in 7 days. I had to dose both nitrates and phos at one point to combat dinos in the fuge area.

Do report back and look forward to your results.
 
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Chris Spaulding

Chris Spaulding

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I was going over my logs as I keep records of all my ICP test. One thing I found and this would explain why my Cheato is not doing well. My Iron and Manganese are much lower than what they should be. When dosing these I forgot to double up the dose because I am running macros.This in turn caused growth to stop and even slowly die off. I think this could be a major cause of my elevated Nitrates ?
 

JWsticks

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Not exporting effectively is the cause of high nitrates. I would not be too concerned dosing iron as it binds to phos also and gets taken up by the tank quickly.

Normally I would expect biopellets to address the nitrates easily as it efficient for nitrates provided you're using enough for your system size.

Only other place I would look if phos is limited which is a high possiblity given biopellets are not having an impact.
 
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Chris Spaulding

Chris Spaulding

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I have a trigger Triton 44 sump BUT I am running a Roller filter and skimmer with about 25 lbs of live rock along with bio brick ,and maxspect bio plates in the first chamber. Then in the second chamber the fuge. That section is 16”x 11”
Biopellet reactor is running of a spare core15 pump and the Outlet from the reactor goes straight to the intake of the skimmer
 

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JWsticks

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I have a trigger Triton 44 sump BUT I am running a Roller filter and skimmer with about 25 lbs of live rock along with bio brick ,and maxspect bio plates in the first chamber. Then in the second chamber the fuge. That section is 16”x 11”
Biopellet reactor is running of a spare core15 pump and the Outlet from the reactor goes straight to the intake of the skimmer
Assuming that is a Neptune fuge light I see.

20W LED is not enough if you want to export nutrients quickly.

Friend had a Kessil H80 which has a 15W power consumption and had nutrient issues.

Then he switched to the same 75W LED I am using and had to dose nutrients to keep from bottoming out.

Some might say a 75W led is alot of light for a fuge but if you want to quickly export you will need to light it like you light SPS.

Other option is to increase your bio pellets. IMHO, I would rather increase led wattage and that will address the GFO and Biopellets usage.

More light wattage = More growth.
 

Treefer32

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I highly recommend talking to Bud with TurboAquatics. The short answer yes and no. Yes, you can run algae scrubbers on too long of a light schedule with too large of a screen and extract too much. That said, based on the cost factor, I have the L4 scrubber for my 340 gallon system with 26 fish. I feed around 1-2 ounces of frozen food and a whole sheet of Nori every other day.

That said, when I ran my scrubber lights 16 hours on 8 hours off, my screen needed to be cleaned every 7-8 days. I talked to Bud and he said run it 24 / 7. I settled on a 2 hours of lights out to let the algae rest and 22 hours with lights on. I went from the screen being full every 7-8 days to it being a softball sized ball of hair algae every 3-4 days.

This is the bad side. Cleaning the screen every 3-4 days is a pain. It's not hard, takes me less than 5-10 minutes at most. But, I have to do it. By the 4th day there's enough hair algae on the screen that the primary drain is plugged and water is running down the secondary drain.

A larger screen and more lights could extract more nitrates and po4. My L4 turbo aquatics scrubber is able to keep my phosphates steady at .06 ppm. I also run a skimmer and dose Vodka. To keep phosphates and nitrates in check.

I wish the scrubber was sufficient for me. But I would have needed probably twice the scrubber I have. As it is, I would say the scrubber is picking up 70% of the nutrient export. I have no algae in my display. If it wasn't full of hair algae, I'm confident my display would be. :)
 
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Chris Spaulding

Chris Spaulding

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@JWsticks thank you for the input .Yes it is. Apex fuge light. I was going over my ATI ICP logs as well as I dose Reef moonshiners program for the last 3 months. One thing that stood out big time is that I have not been dosing enough Iron and Magnanesse daily which most likely slowed / stoped the cheato growth. As growth was off the hook just six weeks ago and has not picked up since last harvest.
 
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