Algae scrubber ideas

[Scrubber_steve]

Lol well I thought maybe at this point you could make an educated guess based on my particular situation. Given that there's some nutrients in your water, and you're getting the slime out, isn't there a point when it has to be working? Or haven't you noticed that after a certain period of time, 100% of your scrubbers have started growing?

Or also I wonder if the red light is throwing this operation off. The algae I've been growing has always had at least some blue light. I'm wondering if the particular strain in my tank needs to adapt a bit before it can use just red light.

Green algae live in shallow water & mostly utilise red 660nm for photosynthesis.
Red is all I use & it grows awesome.

If you have slime growing then you're on the way to success. How quickly it establishes with a worthwhile algae depends on different factors - nutrients, minerals, & the available strains of algae & bacteria existing in your system (many of which you don't know are in there) which will eventually take advantage of the optimum environment you have provided them.

How long that will take I cannot say, other than it will happen.
What I can say, is, be patient.

 

[KleineVampir]

Well...I'm starting to see some growth in that scrubber. We might have liftoff!

 

[KleineVampir]

Yes...my evil plan to destroy water changes once and for all is possibly coming to fruition!! First I did it with freshwater, and now hopefully I'm doing it with saltwater! All inside a couple of years. Though a big difference between freshwater and salt is that there's still a lot more to learn with saltwater, even if I do eliminate water changes. Besides I haven't managed to totally stabilize the calcium and alkalinity levels, and the trace elements.

Still though, if I do finally succeed in eliminating water changes, it might change the reason I'm in the hobby. I dunno though, reaping the benefits of what I've learned and just keeping the saltwater tank might be worth it. I have come to kind of enjoy those little fishies!

 

[Scrubber_steve]

Yes...my evil plan to destroy water changes once and for all is possibly coming to fruition!! First I did it with freshwater, and now hopefully I'm doing it with saltwater! All inside a couple of years. Though a big difference between freshwater and salt is that there's still a lot more to learn with saltwater, even if I do eliminate water changes. Besides I haven't managed to totally stabilize the calcium and alkalinity levels, and the trace elements.

Still though, if I do finally succeed in eliminating water changes, it might change the reason I'm in the hobby. I dunno though, reaping the benefits of what I've learned and just keeping the saltwater tank might be worth it. I have come to kind of enjoy those little fishies!

Sounds like you should start a diary, here, at R2R, recording your advances.

It would be super awesome interesting fantastic.

 

[KleineVampir]

Sounds like you should start a diary, here, at R2R, recording your advances.

It would be super awesome interesting fantastic.

Well there is this: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/first-saltwater-tank-40-breeder.584895/page-22

But it moves pretty slowly nowadays. I'm mostly using it to keep track of when I do things at this point.

 

[KleineVampir]

Well I'm happy to be able to say that there is definitely some growth now occurring inside the scrubber. Some little GHA strands on the sides now, and a lot on the black screen. The bits on the side are about 3x what they were a day or two ago so that is pretty exciting! Hopefully this is the beginning of some exponential growth!

 

[KleineVampir]

My question is: To brush or not to brush? I think I'd better not since I see some proto algal growth going on. But part of me says brush it one more time to make sure there's no slime on it.

 

[KleineVampir]

Well now the whole sides have turned more greenish. I think shoving it down further in the water helped. I think it gets more water flow that way. I don't get how it's supposed to work with the hole above the waterline. Air gets pumped in the bottom, it bubbles up in the box and the air just leaves the hole. But not water! Whereas if the whole thing is below the waterline, I believe water would flow through that hole as well.

 

[KleineVampir]

Seems like this thing is doing better since I dunked it into the water further. More flow I think. It's pretty green in there. Not a lot of actual mass but it's definitely greening up pretty fast now.

 

[KleineVampir]

Ok, so now there is most definitely a straight up clump of hair algae in and around the strings. I'm leaving it in because it grows better with a bit less light than straight up max. Rough going with this thing at first, because the walls start out white and there's no nutrient buildup on them either. Seems like my tank has been a little better off lately but there is still a hair algae problem in the tank. I'm still waiting for it to look like I dumped nopox in there! For now though, there's probably plenty of nutrients for both the algae in the display and in the scrubber.

 

[KleineVampir]

Well I cleaned the scrubber out this evening. Seems like it slowed down. Also I wanted to see if I got any "slime" and I believe I did. But anyways I brushed the whole thing again. The hair algae in there showed up overnight, or maybe over 2 nights but I didn't even see it growing. It was just there one time.

 

[KleineVampir]

It does seem like the waterfall design might be the best. Can't say I've tried it but given that you have water actually flowing over the whole thing does seem like a pretty big advantage as compared to the drop unit I got. We'll see what this thing can do. So far not impressed but if in a few months I'm taking out a big brick of algae every 3 days, well....Then maybe it can be about as good as the waterfall.

 

[KleineVampir]

I decided to try something a little different with this thing. Seeing as how I haven't had the greatest luck with it I decided to cut up a bunch of knitting meshes I had around into rectangles the approximate size of playing cards, but thinner, and a bit taller. I put all of those into the drop unit like a big old deck of cards! It took about 2 sheets of mesh but a little less since the first time I did it I was very inefficient.

Now there should be a wide range of light levels in there since they are semi-translucent but after the light gets through a few of them it starts dimming down pretty significantly. I don't know what it'll do to the flow or if it'll work but I should know in a few days.

 

[italquam]

This is how my Turbo Aquatics L2 Scrubber grows algae

 

[KleineVampir]

This is how my Turbo Aquatics L2 Scrubber grows algae

In other words, it works? Lol. Let me ask you this though: How soon after you started the tank did you start this scrubber?

 

[italquam]

In other words, it works? Lol. Let me ask you this though: How soon after you started the tank did you start this scrubber?

Yes for sure ...lol

So my tank is about 13 years old and I just added the algae scrubber two months ago when I finally installed my new sump which has a spot for my Turbo Aquatics scrubber.

I have had a major hair algae issue , so recently I started only have my tank lights on for an hour a day , I run the scrubber 24/7 , basically starving the hair algae and getting to the point the scrubber will only grow algae. Keep in mind my tank is Fish only with Live rock so I can shut the lights off for long periods to do this.

Scrubber Steve actually recommended trying this method and so far the green hair algae seems to be dying off.

 

[KleineVampir]

Yes for sure ...lol

So my tank is about 13 years old and I just added the algae scrubber two months ago when I finally installed my new sump which has a spot for my Turbo Aquatics scrubber.

I have had a major hair algae issue , so recently I started only have my tank lights on for an hour a day , I run the scrubber 24/7 , basically starving the hair algae and getting to the point the scrubber will only grow algae. Keep in mind my tank is Fish only with Live rock so I can shut the lights off for long periods to do this.

Scrubber Steve actually recommended trying this method and so far the green hair algae seems to be dying off.

Right on. But I do have corals so I can't black out the tank. 6 hours is as low as it gets as far as I'm concerned.

A big part of the trouble in my tank is that there's so much GHA in the display that I haven't been able to get the drop scrubber to out-compete it.

 

[italquam]

Right on. But I do have corals so I can't black out the tank. 6 hours is as low as it gets as far as I'm concerned.

A big part of the trouble in my tank is that there's so much GHA in the display that I haven't been able to get the drop scrubber to out-compete it.

I hate GHA , always been my number one enemy...lol


I would get a Turbo Aquatics algae scrubber and Bud is also very helpful , he even has a new revision coming out as well.

 

[NHgoalstop]

You need patience with these things and I feel you think you're going to get instant gratification and that's definitely not how these things work.

 

[italquam]

You need patience with these things and I feel you think you're going to get instant gratification and that's definitely not how these things work.

You definitely have that correct