Santa Monica Surf2

[cba191]

I have an Aquaforest OG 275 with the sump. It's a 50g display with a 20ish gallon sump and I added a 8g aio for a refugium. My nutrients are higher than I would like. Phosphates are at .28 and my nitrates are at 54. Higher than I'd like, but my corals are doing pretty well. The refugium is full of caulerpa. It was full of chaeto but for some reason the chaeto started disintegrating. I was thinking of switching to a turf scrubber. I've heard good things about the Surf2 from Santa Monica. But I had some questions. Can you adjust how much it reduces the nutrients? Is it a worthwhile upgrade? I'm also looking at the upflow 1.2?

 

[exnisstech]

You can control the growth somewhat by changing the light on time but I'm not sure how much affect it has on N and P reduction. I run a couple of surfs but have really kept track if how much reduction I get in my levels. One tank runs high levels and the other at near zero but i have no nuisance algae in the DTs which was my main goal when I added them. Maybe @SantaMonica can chime in? Mine do grow some nice algae that my tangs love.

 

[cba191]

How do i know what size scrubber to get? I dont use cubes. I squirt the mysis into the tank.

 

[exnisstech]

I have never measured food or used it to calculate nutrient levels. I feed a lot and keeping my fish healthy and not fighting over food what I watch. I find the whole process of measuring cubes a bit odd but I know nothing about the science behind the scrubbers. I wanted a floating scrubber with as little light spill as possible so I went with a surf 4x because I have a total of 275g amd a lot of fish including large tangs. My other tanks is small at 35g total so I went with a surf 2. I would probably reach out to Santa Monica for assistance unless @VintageReefer has any input? He was very helpful when I was searching for info in scrubbers. Mine did stall once so I started dosing aone Chaetogro and it took back off. I now dose a little once a month.

 

[VintageReefer]

The surf 2 or 2x would probably be the right model to get. They aren’t rated by tank size they are rated on current phosphate levels and amount of phosphate added each day, using an estimate contained in an average cube of frozen food.

As the scrubber consumes phosphate, phosphate will begin to leach from the rocks and sands back out into the water. As you add food, phosphate is added to the water. The scrubber ideally tips the scales so that you are constantly removing more than what’s being added each day.

Eventually the rocks and sand will run out of phosphate to unbind; and then the numbers will come down. It takes weeks, even many months, and varies by the individual situation. Just because the numbers aren’t coming down does not mean that progress isn’t being made. It takes time but one of the advantages of the scrubber is that it works safely 24x7 round the clock and has no costs for media to replace