My Algae Turf Scrubber Build
- Thread starter labas39
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Changing or adding filtration to an existing setup will cause a change in the overall system dynamic. Sometimes, this can have a negative effect. I think this is what happened in many cases and the conclusion is then drawn against the scrubber, which may or may not be the case.
My advice right now (I've been holding to this for a while also) is that if you keep a lot of SPS, don't give up your skimmer, and don't be afraid to use carbon. Too many unknowns regarding SPS to mess around with, you're better off with multiple forms of filtration. Little changes in chemistry can cause defensive reactions from certain corals (warfare) and you need to mitigate these when making changes.
I personally have not had much luck keeping certain Zoas on a scrubber tank - some do great, others hate it. But then again, I'm not really a Zoa expert and I really don't have much time to devote to husbandry. I tend to just let my tank grow wild and not try to cultivate anything. Right now I have a colony of GSP that is 12x12 over a high rock, and it's grown onto the tank glass and now covers 1/4 of one end of my 120, and a sandbad invasion of clove polyps. I hate those guys.
SantaMonica
Valuable Member
Many people have sps-only tanks with scrubbers and no other filters or water changes. This setup gives the most food particles in the water, and also costs the least.
Floyd I am exactly doing like you said ( skimmer, carbon,...) Haven't done water change in a month, adding aminos, additives. I have all kind of tank habitats huge anomens, clams. Added few sps few weeks ago so far doing good. Let's see how it goes.
labas39
Active Member
Well, after the brown algae in my ATS died while I was on vacation a few weeks ago, I ended up buying this light from ebay:
It's 40 total watts with 20 2W LEDs: 6 blues @ 445nm and 14 reds @ 660nm. It has a magenta appearance. It's totally cool to the touch, too!
After only getting brown algae from the 42W CFL, 150W equivalent, now, after just 12 days, I finally have green algae growing!
I paid $45 for the fixture and it shipped from China in like 1 week.
Getting more powerful LED's is what Floyd R Turbo has been saying all along!
It's 40 total watts with 20 2W LEDs: 6 blues @ 445nm and 14 reds @ 660nm. It has a magenta appearance. It's totally cool to the touch, too!
After only getting brown algae from the 42W CFL, 150W equivalent, now, after just 12 days, I finally have green algae growing!
I paid $45 for the fixture and it shipped from China in like 1 week.
Getting more powerful LED's is what Floyd R Turbo has been saying all along!
Thank you for the feedback...not everyone posts when they have success, mostly only when the have problems. Not just for scrubbers either, that's forums in general.
I've seen that fixture used many times as well, some have reported that they will stop working, I think one guy said his didn't end up being as watertight as advertised so keep that in mind. And keep us updated on the growth progress of course!
I've seen that fixture used many times as well, some have reported that they will stop working, I think one guy said his didn't end up being as watertight as advertised so keep that in mind. And keep us updated on the growth progress of course!
Generally, the only time you will ever smell an algae scrubber is 1) if it's brand new, sometimes you can get an odor but it is only temporary 2) you don't have enough flow and the algae is constantly exposed to air 3) you shut off the flow to clean it (or there is a power outage)
SantaMonica
Valuable Member
That LED is about the same wattage as the CFL, but is using plant-grow colors, so is at least twice the useful light; thus the green growth now.
Properly run scrubbers rarely ever smell because there is always a covering of water on it. And upflow scrubbers, of course, are always underwater and thus can't smell.
Properly run scrubbers rarely ever smell because there is always a covering of water on it. And upflow scrubbers, of course, are always underwater and thus can't smell.
labas39
Active Member
They market that lamp as a plant growing lamp.
I broke down and bought a Hanna Ultra Low Phosphorus Checker which came in today. My level is 10 ppb which equates to 10*3.066/1000 = 0.03 ppm.
I broke down and bought a Hanna Ultra Low Phosphorus Checker which came in today. My level is 10 ppb which equates to 10*3.066/1000 = 0.03 ppm.
Lucky you I can barely get my phosphrus checker to read anything. I've had to go as far as remove my skimmer and cut back on the algae scrubber time since the tank is running zero phosphate.
omykiss001
Active Member
Just curious why are you multiplying by 3.066. Are you changing gallons to liters? Seems it would be 0.01ppm as ppb is ug/L and ppm is mg/L. Should just just divide by 1,000. Just trying to understand, maybe something about the Hanna checker?
Great thread getting ready to do a tank build and looking to be as low maintenance as possible and trying to decide on a refugium with GFO and maybe bio pellets, or an ATS with chemical scrubbing as auxiliary in case it's not enough. I.e. Want to do as little water changes as a means to control PO4 and NO3 and have that controlled by biology rather than my labor or reactors.. Seems with the cost of bio pellets and high cap GFO (not even considering the reactor cost) a good ATM will have a positive ROI in no time. So much good info here!
labas39
Active Member
That checker gives you phosphorus in ppb so the 3.066 converts P to PO4. The 1000 converts from ppb to ppm.
omykiss001
Active Member
Whoops my bad, didn't notice it was the phosphorus checker, makes total sense now the 3 fold difference in the molecular weight between P and PO4
labas39
Active Member
My green hair algae turned white? What's up with that?
Just tested and my phosphates are .028 according to a Hanna Ultra Low Phosphorus checker and nitrates are 0 according to Salifert Nitrate Profi test kit.
The light is the one pictured in post #268 . It's 40 Watts total: 6 blues @ 445nm and 14 reds @ 660nm and has a magenta appearance.
Is there too much blue? If so, I can black out the two center blues.
Is there too much wattage while starting out the algae? If so, I can somehow make the glass opaque for a period.
I do have a bubble algae issue; are they consuming the nutrients? I'm thinking of picking it all out manually. I read not to pop them because spores go everywhere but even if you get lucky with some clean up crew, they'd end up popping them anyway.
Just tested and my phosphates are .028 according to a Hanna Ultra Low Phosphorus checker and nitrates are 0 according to Salifert Nitrate Profi test kit.
The light is the one pictured in post #268 . It's 40 Watts total: 6 blues @ 445nm and 14 reds @ 660nm and has a magenta appearance.
Is there too much blue? If so, I can black out the two center blues.
Is there too much wattage while starting out the algae? If so, I can somehow make the glass opaque for a period.
I do have a bubble algae issue; are they consuming the nutrients? I'm thinking of picking it all out manually. I read not to pop them because spores go everywhere but even if you get lucky with some clean up crew, they'd end up popping them anyway.
Well, you're only the 4th or 5th person now that I've heard from that has experienced what I call "whiting". This is a strange phenomenon that seems to be associated only with LED scrubbers. As I hear more about this I continue to develop a theory to explain it, but so far I've started to see a pattern.
Something essential to the algae is bottoming out and limiting growth to a point where photosynthetic production literally stops, and all the incident light just bleaches the algae out, and it seems to happen rather fast.
Almost every scrubber I run keeps the nitrate at zero. It's not really dead bottom zero, because there is always waste being produced, but over the long term with a scrubber running on the tank, it remains almost undetectable. So I don't think that is the problem.
I've also had tanks running with phosphate at zero, and I'm talking 0.00 on a Hanna Phosphate checker (not phosphorus) but the same tanks usually have days when I test 0.02, 0.04, etc. Still low, but not rock-bottom.
I haven't heard of anyone testing their water for other elements that might be affecting growth, just these two. So it might be something else.
Here are the cases I have come across:
A tank running a scrubber, biopellet reactor is added with a large quantity of pellets. Within a few weeks, a whiting incident occurs.
A large tank with low bioload and low nutrients is running only a scrubber, N + P are already low, scrubber is being run aggressively (high flow, long photo period). Whiting occurs
A large tank with moderate load running a large skimmer and mechanical filter (DD system) is lightly fed, no N & P to speak of, running two 4 cube/day scrubbers (one waterfall, one upflow) with long photoperiods (18 hrs/day) and whiting occurs.
The pattern here, that I see is:
Low nutrients in water
Not a lot of issues with "bad rock"
LED-based scrubber with very high intensity
Very aggressive scrubbing, meaning LEDs are strong, photoperiod is long
labas39, would you say that you are falling into this category?
Do you have any frame of reference between where the screen was growing just fine, and then it was stark white?
The fix, that you can try, is to reduce the photoperiod and maybe back them off a bit, like 1". If you were running 18 hrs/day, that's a problem. Strong LEDs don't need to be run that long. Also your screen got wiped out so you're back to a maturing stage and my recommendation is no more than 9 hrs/day or else you risk photosaturation (not enough algae growing, so there is too much incident light compared to the nutrients that can be absorbed by the small amount of algae.
Whiting appears to be the extreme end of photosaturation. It seems there is some kind of "hard line" that you cannot cross, or the screen just dies off.
Come to think of it...I have had this happen to me, but the instance was when I was gone for a week on vacation, and a fish got stuck on the scrubber intake pump so it was only getting 5% flow for about a day. The T5HO lights cause the growth to turn white in the absence of flow, but I figured that is just what happens when you have zero flow and tons of light. Apparently, this can happen when flow is actually present as well.
Unless no one is reporting their flow outage to me...that would just be too coincidental.
Something essential to the algae is bottoming out and limiting growth to a point where photosynthetic production literally stops, and all the incident light just bleaches the algae out, and it seems to happen rather fast.
Almost every scrubber I run keeps the nitrate at zero. It's not really dead bottom zero, because there is always waste being produced, but over the long term with a scrubber running on the tank, it remains almost undetectable. So I don't think that is the problem.
I've also had tanks running with phosphate at zero, and I'm talking 0.00 on a Hanna Phosphate checker (not phosphorus) but the same tanks usually have days when I test 0.02, 0.04, etc. Still low, but not rock-bottom.
I haven't heard of anyone testing their water for other elements that might be affecting growth, just these two. So it might be something else.
Here are the cases I have come across:
A tank running a scrubber, biopellet reactor is added with a large quantity of pellets. Within a few weeks, a whiting incident occurs.
A large tank with low bioload and low nutrients is running only a scrubber, N + P are already low, scrubber is being run aggressively (high flow, long photo period). Whiting occurs
A large tank with moderate load running a large skimmer and mechanical filter (DD system) is lightly fed, no N & P to speak of, running two 4 cube/day scrubbers (one waterfall, one upflow) with long photoperiods (18 hrs/day) and whiting occurs.
The pattern here, that I see is:
Low nutrients in water
Not a lot of issues with "bad rock"
LED-based scrubber with very high intensity
Very aggressive scrubbing, meaning LEDs are strong, photoperiod is long
labas39, would you say that you are falling into this category?
Do you have any frame of reference between where the screen was growing just fine, and then it was stark white?
The fix, that you can try, is to reduce the photoperiod and maybe back them off a bit, like 1". If you were running 18 hrs/day, that's a problem. Strong LEDs don't need to be run that long. Also your screen got wiped out so you're back to a maturing stage and my recommendation is no more than 9 hrs/day or else you risk photosaturation (not enough algae growing, so there is too much incident light compared to the nutrients that can be absorbed by the small amount of algae.
Whiting appears to be the extreme end of photosaturation. It seems there is some kind of "hard line" that you cannot cross, or the screen just dies off.
Come to think of it...I have had this happen to me, but the instance was when I was gone for a week on vacation, and a fish got stuck on the scrubber intake pump so it was only getting 5% flow for about a day. The T5HO lights cause the growth to turn white in the absence of flow, but I figured that is just what happens when you have zero flow and tons of light. Apparently, this can happen when flow is actually present as well.
Unless no one is reporting their flow outage to me...that would just be too coincidental.
labas39
Active Member
Floyd R Turbo; I really appreciate all this info!
I do believe I fall into that category:
Low nutrients
My rock has been in the tank for 8 years
High intensity LED
18 hours light
Skimmer rated for this setup at low bio load
GFO through a Phosban reactor
Carbon where half is replaced every 15 days
Approximately 100 gallons with only 10 smallish fish and feeding approximately 1.5 cubes per day
Acro dominated tank
You are 100% correct that I lost my screen when I went on vacation so I did start over again with this new LED. Things were looking good and then it bleached within like 2 days.
I'll cut the time back to 9 hours per day until things green up and only start to increase if I need more growth.
Also note that I test the phosporus once a week and before the whiting, I was at 6 ppb, or PO4 @ .018, and today it was at 9 ppb, or PO4 @ .028 ppm. So, it initially appears that the die off resulted in an increase in phosphates.
I do believe I fall into that category:
Low nutrients
My rock has been in the tank for 8 years
High intensity LED
18 hours light
Skimmer rated for this setup at low bio load
GFO through a Phosban reactor
Carbon where half is replaced every 15 days
Approximately 100 gallons with only 10 smallish fish and feeding approximately 1.5 cubes per day
Acro dominated tank
You are 100% correct that I lost my screen when I went on vacation so I did start over again with this new LED. Things were looking good and then it bleached within like 2 days.
I'll cut the time back to 9 hours per day until things green up and only start to increase if I need more growth.
Also note that I test the phosporus once a week and before the whiting, I was at 6 ppb, or PO4 @ .018, and today it was at 9 ppb, or PO4 @ .028 ppm. So, it initially appears that the die off resulted in an increase in phosphates.
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