ReefMat fleece roll consumption

[DeputyDog95]

To reduce the alarm I have set the fleece roller advance to its lowest setting, the water level then stays quite stable. I am finding usage high though, I have 100 Gal with SPS and LPS but only 1 fish as I had an Ich wipe-out, but am still going though a roll in about 4 to 5 weeks, after 3 months!

I just adjusted mine down to 1" yesterday. It was at 1.5" and it would set off frequent high water alarms. Seems to have stabilized it at one inch though. So far so good anyway. Doesn't do much for nutrient export with so much dirty fleece in the water all the time... But even with a high fish load, I'm still struggling to keep nutrients up and mainly added the ReefMat to automate the tank a little more so I (or whoever is watching my tank when I'm gone) don't have to deal with mechanical media filter changes 3x/week.

Right now, I'm averaging well under a foot a day so it should easily last a few months on my 1200 model (oversized for my 500liter with approx 1k gph return pump). I did stir the sand bed up on Sunday to see what would happen and it still only went through 24" that day.

 

[DeputyDog95]

I have dual drains on my 220, so I adjusted more water to go to the unfiltered drain, we will see how long I can get the roll to last.

Nox Vidmate VLC​

Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose? I would assume you're just depositing a pile of detritus in your sump now, right?

 

[DeputyDog95]

Does anyone see an issue with dosing Alk and Ca directly into the ReefMat chamber?

I was dosing both of those into my drain chamber as it was quite turbulent and made certain the chemicals would be fully mixed before making it to the DT.

However, with the return plumbed directly into the ReefMat, that area is kind of stagnant now and I saw some precipitation forming on the bottom of the sump where the dosing lines drip to.

The Reefmat chamber looks pretty turbulent and the fleece or carbon won't pull out the Alk or Ca. I would reroute to the return chamber, but I have my Trident sample line there (cleanest compartment in the sump) and I don't want to throw the readings off if it's sampling while the doser is adding Ca or Alk to the same chamber.

I have the ReefMat hanging on the sump wall with the motor on the left. Which leaves a nice hole in the Reefmat on the right where my dosing line clip fits almost perfectly to drip right into the chamber.

Thoughts?

 

[ConsummatePro]

Can you please update the link and provide the name of the roll adapters? The post now only shows the amazon logo and it’s not clickable — the name of the item would allow future users to search for them as well in case the link goes dead again.

In case anyone else needs to find them in the future: the roll adapters are called 2” flexible desk grommets. You’ll need to wrap a bit of electrical tape,to fit snuggly, as shown in @mackdave’s pictures.

 

[arafas]

Noticed a few things: nitrate and phosphate bottoming out even with crazy feeding. Noticed the more you advanced the more material consumes, which doesn't make sense to me since it all works with sensor and how dirty it is. So I am down now to 0.4-0.6 inches. Will try out the lowest amount soon.

 

[DeputyDog95]

Noticed a few things: nitrate and phosphate bottoming out even with crazy feeding. Noticed the more you advanced the more material consumes, which doesn't make sense to me since it all works with sensor and how dirty it is. So I am down now to 0.4-0.6 inches. Will try out the lowest amount soon.

The more you advance the roll, the faster you're pulling nutrients out of the water. I run mine on the half inch setting as well. However, I'm not looking to lower nutrients but to simply maintain them and not have to mess with filter socks or floss cups. Much shorter advances keeps "dirty floss" submerged most of the time and will help keep those nutrients up.

 

[DeputyDog95]

Since adding the roller mat, the "high water" alarms from my Apex ATO were driving me nuts. Even on a very low advance setting, it was still setting it off constantly when the unit advanced as the water level in the roller mat would drop significantly pushing the sump level up. It gave me a little anxiety to get a high level alarm without knowing if it was just a little high or if it was actually flooding.

I put a 15" liquid level sensor in last night and turned off my ATO water level alarms. I now have my sanity back! LoL

What a wonderful device. Cheap and super easy to set up. Now I have peace of mind that I can check my sump level at any time and set more realistic high and low alerts, as well as let the ATO sensors simply manage the top off without tripping alarms every hour.

Perfect solution.

 

[DeputyDog95]

To reduce the alarm I have set the fleece roller advance to its lowest setting, the water level then stays quite stable. I am finding usage high though, I have 100 Gal with SPS and LPS but only 1 fish as I had an Ich wipe-out, but am still going though a roll in about 4 to 5 weeks, after 3 months!

I ended up getting a liquid level sensor and disabled the high water alarm on my Neptune ATO sensor. Problem solved, no more alarms when the roll advances and the water level goes up. Easily one of the best gadgets I've purchased for the tank in a long time as you can set a measurement range for high and low water level alarms.

 

[DeputyDog95]

Looks like you are getting the filter media from the same source I got!
Very clever idea to get it to fit the smaller core!
It also looks like you have similar issues I have. The Aftermarket rollers are paper based so the material will stretched/shrunk on the pick up side if there are too much tension on the setup.
It is not an issue if the filter rollers openings are far away from the outter edges!
For my BM, it was an issue (it shrunk and allowed water to leak out of the filter roller.
As you can see, it shrunk by almost an inch (22mm). I ended up glue pieces of acrylic to close out the outter opening.

What is the advantage of the aftermarket filter media?

The Red Sea replacement rolls are pretty cheap, relatively speaking, and seem to do a good job of filtering without being too aggressive.

 

[DeputyDog95]

Has anyone had an issue with the ReefMat not correctly measuring the amount of fleece used?

Mine is now saying I have a daily average of 2.5 inches and about a third of the roll left. However, that seems like an extraordinarily small amount for a tank that is heavily fed, and eyeballing the remaining fleece, I'd say I have 10 percent left. About a month ago I was averaging around 12" according to the app.

I vacuumed the sand bed yesterday and really stirred up a mess, but it still said under 3" for the day...

I'm tempted to put a sharpie mark right above the water line on the used side and see how far it moves.

 

[arafas]

Has anyone had an issue with the ReefMat not correctly measuring the amount of fleece used?

Mine is now saying I have a daily average of 2.5 inches and about a third of the roll left. However, that seems like an extraordinarily small amount for a tank that is heavily fed, and eyeballing the remaining fleece, I'd say I have 10 percent left. About a month ago I was averaging around 12" according to the app.

I vacuumed the sand bed yesterday and really stirred up a mess, but it still said under 3" for the day...

I'm tempted to put a sharpie mark right above the water line on the used side and see how far it moves.

No I haven't had that issue. I use about 50inches average a day on my 200. My tank is super clean. Not sure why I use so much fleece. It last almost a month.

 

[Rskiba]

My first roll lasted 52 days. This new role installed last week is using fleece much faster - 6' a day! Granted the tank was new with the first roll. I still only have one fish and a few corals so not heavily bio-loaded by any means. I am struggling with the low nitrate/phosphate issue as well, so I changed the advancement setting to the 0.4" - 0.6" so will see how that goes keeping more "dirty" in the water. Every time it advances I tense up thinking it wont make it 30 days this time lol.

 

[arafas]

My first roll lasted 52 days. This new role installed last week is using fleece much faster - 6' a day! Granted the tank was new with the first roll. I still only have one fish and a few corals so not heavily bio-loaded by any means. I am struggling with the low nitrate/phosphate issue as well, so I changed the advancement setting to the 0.4" - 0.6" so will see how that goes keeping more "dirty" in the water. Every time it advances I tense up thinking it wont make it 30 days this time lol.

Ye mines don't make 30 days, and they very different from roll to roll.

 

[Ev8siveaz]

I have had my reefmat since June and the first roll went really fast. After that my rolls were averaging about 24 inches a day and lasted roughly 8 weeks, give or take. I just installed my 5th roll on Dec 23rd and just got the warning today that there are 5 days left. I am shocked as it seems to be using 60 to 80 inches a day on this roll. Not sure why that would be.

 

[HankstankXXL750]

I have had my reefmat since June and the first roll went really fast. After that my rolls were averaging about 24 inches a day and lasted roughly 8 weeks, give or take. I just installed my 5th roll on Dec 23rd and just got the warning today that there are 5 days left. I am shocked as it seems to be using 60 to 80 inches a day on this roll. Not sure why that would be.

Did anything change? Make sure your feed amount didn’t get increased. I have one that runs about 24”/day, but it is in a tank that is currently fallow. I run much more closer to 80” on my predator tank, and around 40” on my 210g reef.

 

[Ev8siveaz]

Did anything change? Make sure your feed amount didn’t get increased. I have one that runs about 24”/day, but it is in a tank that is currently fallow. I run much more closer to 80” on my predator tank, and around 40” on my 210g reef.

Nothing has changed in the past 3 weeks. I rehomed some fish over a month ago and then added 2 smaller fish so I wouldnt think that would make much of a difference since that was well before this started happening and I got rid of a fish that was a foot for some much smaller fish.

My concern is that those rolls will add up if they need to be replaced every 2 weeks. That will get super expensive.

 

[arafas]

Nothing has changed in the past 3 weeks. I rehomed some fish over a month ago and then added 2 smaller fish so I wouldnt think that would make much of a difference since that was well before this started happening and I got rid of a fish that was a foot for some much smaller fish.

My concern is that those rolls will add up if they need to be replaced every 2 weeks. That will get super expensive.

Whats is your Matt advancement setting lower to 0.4-0.6 I seen best results with that

 

[Ev8siveaz]

Whats is your Matt advancement setting lower to 0.4-0.6 I seen best results with that

I have it at .8 to 1.0

 

[Floyd-]

Mine is set to .8-1.0 also and get about 2 months out of a roll on my 150gallon display.

 

[arafas]

If use lower probably will last longer. But since the material is longer in the water column it may affect your nitrates to be a little higher. I struggle with nitrates so I don't mind it.