Up and running!

[Kerry's Reef]

Hi, y'all! I've been browsing this forum for over a year now (incognito ;) ) reading up on ats, and, planning for my own scrubber. I finally got my algae filter built and running today, and, my tank is also new and just recently set up and running, as of the end of Aug. It rapidly morphed into a brown and now green mess in that time, so, I'm looking forward to seeing a transfer of green from my display tank to the scrubber screen! Eventually, I do want to build a LED scrubber, but, for the present I went with just getting one going using the cheap, but, tried and true waterfall style.

Anyway, I'm hoping you guys will help me trouble shoot this set-up now, and, over the next few weeks until we can get it working well. :) As it stands right now, it is operating, but, I know it will need tweaking. Here is what I have and my tank specs. I don't have water tests available right now, but, will do a full run down in the next couple days. (I know they're bad and I'm procrastinating...lol!)

Tank Set-up;

37gal Agueon/Perfecto tank 30Lx12Wx24H
20L sump
Reef Octopus 100 skimmer (plan to phase out or only use intermitantly)
2 Little Fishies Phosban reactor running biopellets (plan to phase out)
lighting; 4 Nanotuners 21w par38 lamps (2 20000k, 2 14000k) on adjustable height hanger
cement/oystershell/perlite walls on three sides - cured for about a year now, but, still leaching high levels of calcium. PH is stable.
aprox. 30-35lb natural liverock....this is in dire need of cleaning, cooking, or, even acid washing. I've had it for years in a dirty sump and it is full of detritus and covered in algae!
Deep sandbed 5" of reef special grade with a topping of caribbean puka shell (for jawfish)

Livestock;

3 pajama cardinals (plan to catch and return 2 as they don't get along)
royal gramma
purple firefish
cerith, nerite, nassarius, and, scutus snails
Planning to add one or a pair of yellow-head jawfish (lost my first two...will be more prepared next time! They don't just jump, they look for suicide portals!)
only 5 small soft and lps frags.

Algae Scrubber;

Planning for a 3 cube/day set-up although I'm probably using only 1.5 -2 cubes/day now. I like to feed my critters, so, I'm building for the future, lol!

screen: plan is 36sqi screen 7x5 actual screen 7" wide x 14 long (to reach water surface)
* Lit both sides with compact spiral flourescents 1 23 actual watt lamp each in aluminium clamp on fixtures. Lamps are within 5-6" from the screen.
* flow is T'd off my return (Quiet One 4000 - 1000gph) don't know the actual flow through the filter, yet, but this can be adjusted up a little more if needed. It definately looks like more flow than a MJ1200 so I think it is close to or slightly more than 300gph.
* currently using plastic wrap to stop any splashes
* Not installed, yet, but will add a black plastic light guard to the top of the screen to control light on the upper 2.5" of screen (to keep algae from growing into the pipe slot, and, to reduce the actual growing surface size to closer to the 5x7 plan size)

Here are pics of my set up...hold on, boys...this is really high tech stuff here! ;)

Full setup
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Current algae tank with lr from sump piled in center
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ATS set-up The green on the screen is old, dried algae from a previous ATS build from last year that I removed after only 1 week running...plumbing sprung a leak. It's been awhile getting everything going again.
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[SantaMonica]

Looks good. If you don't mind algae on the rock for several months, you won't need to cook them; the scrubber cooks them in-tank, and does so without killing any animals inside them.

[Kerry's Reef]

That sounds good. I have no problem waiting, lol...took me 3years to get this tank together and finally set up...I can wait! :) As for life in the rocks, other than bacteria and algae, there really isn't any. I need to seed my tank with some copepods, amphipods, ect, because there isn't any in this tank. I will probably try to trade some of my rock in on some fresh lr later on.

[sklywag]

Is that real rock? Or a foam rock wall?

[Kerry's Reef]

The back and sides and base under the sand are cement/oystershell/perlite over eggcrate. No foam or natural rock added. The pile in the middle is natural lr which I plan to remove. I tossed it there to make room in my sump for the scrubber. Here's a pic of the nearly finished walls before I added water.

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[kaskiles]

It's Aragocrete, right?

Like they talk about here:
http://www.garf.org/news17p1.html

The Perlite is a great idea to make it lighter for walls...
I wonder if you could cast an algae scrubber screen out of it?

[Kerry's Reef]

Yeah, it the same idea. Differant recipe maybe, but, it all evolved from the Garf aragocrete! The perlite does make it much lighter and porous; too much and the rock will float. I guess you could make a screen with it, but, it would be a bit@h to clean, imo. The surface would be more than rough enough but also fragile and crumbly. Even with the perlite, it would also be very heavy, which means, even if intent were otherwise, cleaning would probably end up being done intank....which would result in nasty yellow water. :)

[Kerry's Reef]

PS, just wanted to add, right now, my aragocrete rock is growing algae very well, lol!

[kerry]

Your scrubber will do wonders for algae elimination, just wait and it will happen.

[Kerry's Reef]

That's what I'm hoping for. This algae kinda got away from me, lol! I added the biopellet reactor to help but it is still too new, and, I really don't have much faith in the bio pellets system anyway. I also started vinagar dosing but really haven't seen any improvement there either. Anyway, I had originally planned to do an algae scrubber on this since last year, just never got it up. Anyway, my screen is getting darker... I'm going to yank out the biopellets and the skimmer next week after visiting family leave again. By then it should be mature enough not to cause a major problem. The tank has enough lr to sustain it biologically without the skimmer and pellets, so, I don't forsee any problems there.

[Kerry's Reef]

Today is day 10 for my new AF and I cleaned it, and, removed the bio pellet reactor and the skimmer...it's all AF from now on! :) I had some good growth on this for the first 10 days, and, even had some spots of long green hair algae on it. Doesn't show the green on these pics very well.

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That's both sides of the screen. As you can see, I did not have the upper part of the screen light-blocked and the algae grew right up into the slot. I will fix that with black plastic this week to reduce the size of the lighted screen and to keep algae out of the slots. Is that bare center area light burn, or, could it be that the center was not getting water flow like the sides? I am running my lights 12 hours on/off. Should I go to a shorter on time? I need a new timer, first, but would a 6hr on/off period work better?


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As you can see here, the screen is not perfectly straight from the slot to the water because I pieced two pieces of screen together with fishing line to make a longer piece. The slight bend this causes is making the water flow spray off the screen and causing a lot of noise and spray/creep. I think I will make a new screen later and improve on this one. I want it to be about 1/2" wider than my slot to catch water spilling off the edges better, straighter and one piece, and, I want to leave the top 1" smooth to reduce algae growth in the slot...this one is cut down from a bigger screen and is roughed up right into the slot area.

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Harvested a nice little pile of dark greenish sludge. This is the screen after cleaning.

[Kerry's Reef]

In addition to the above changes, I also reduced the lighting in the DT. I use 4 par 38 leds, but, I only have 5 small coral frags to worry about, so, I just moved them to one spot and un-screwed two of the lamps so they stay off. I'll leave this like this until the algae is gone, or, nearly gone from the DT.

[SantaMonica]

You could say the center is burning, but it will probably fill in with the next 14 days at 12 hours.

[Kerry's Reef]

I'll wait and see how it goes. It is nice having some open space in my sump after removing the skimmer and biopellets! It is very dirty, though and full of algae and slime. I am planning to do a large waterchange sometime this week and plan to clean up the sump, scrub the loose rock in the sump and Dtank, and scrub algae off the man-made rock in the DT and siphon out the crud. I need that big water change because my tank has really high calcium...about 1350ppm at my last testing. I'm pretty sure the calcium is coming from the cement in the MMLR as I have not been dosing calcium or kalk, just Kent alkalinity. I have also been using tap water which contains who-knows what nasties. I have a new RODI that I just have to figure out, set up, and, start using, lol! Family is away until sunday, so, I'm hoping to get this all done before they get back. :)

[Kerry's Reef]

Well, it has been two weeks and I can see a real differance already! I will be cleaning my screen for only the 2nd time tomorrow, but, I can really tell the algae in the main display has stopped growing. I had silky green 4" flags of hair algae waving in the currents before, and, brownish green covered all the rocks. Now, the flags are gone and the stuff on the rocks appears to be going. There are still a few tufts but it is nothing like it was, and, it really does look like it is receding. Yeah! This is all due to adding the algae filter and reducing my display lights by half (unscrewed two of the four par38 led lamps). This still has a ways to go yet, and, I still have other issues to fix on this tank, but, I'm really pleased with these results so far! This beats anything I had going with the skimmer, bio-pellets, and vinagar dosing combined. :) I'll try to get pics of the tank and screeen tomorrow.

[SantaMonica]

Great!

[Kerry's Reef]

Here is my 2nd cleaning, 7 days from 1st.

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Scrubber in action...near lamp removed for pics

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One side of the screen...getting some green algae on it.

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the other side of the screen

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Full tank pic

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This last pic shows some of the green stuff still in the tank

[Kerry's Reef]

I'm getting some of the lighter green algae growing on the screen now. I left the few tufts on the screen at my last cleaning and now they are much bigger and starting to spread across the screen more. I'll get pics on my next cleaning.

So far, I'm really pleased with how this is working. It's not perfect yet, but, still imo, better than the skimmer/gfo/carbon dosing/waterchanging -that-it-needed-but-wasn't-getting that I was doing. What really drew me to trying a scrubber was that I wanted to simplify my sytem and try to make it more energy/cost efficient as well as physically easier for me to maintain. This scrubber so far has allowed me to reduce the number of pumps used to just the QuietOne 4000 return which is T'd off to feed the scrubber, too, plus the two circulation pumps in the display. This should be easier to maintain, too. Since I find it difficult to do water changes, anything that will allow my tank to flourish while reducing the need for frequent changes is a real plus for me. That said, I do still have an algae problem in the tank and water quality issues....but they are improving. :)

[Kerry's Reef]

forgot to add, I was not getting an even flow across the width of the screen. All the water seemed to be running down the sides leaving a very thin flow down the center. I think this may be why the growth in the middle of the screen was so much thinner than the rest of the screen. I decided to cut out some of the screen material out in half inch long vertical strips bisecting the pipe slot and just along the middle portion of the screen. This does seem to have helped to increase water flow down the center of the screen. I'll take pics on my next cleaning and see how it compares to my previous pics.

[SantaMonica]

Less waterchanges, more happiness :)

[Kerry's Reef]

So true! :)

[Kerry's Reef]

Well, I let this go a few weeks without cleaning it...not what I had planned...just how it turned out! :D Anyway, it is interesting to see that the algae is turning to predominately the long bright green type and much less of the darker, slimey type. The center of the screen is still not filling in and is actually bright yellow with the screen holes filled in with a pastey pale yellow sediment that is difficult to scrub out with a toothbrush. I avoided over scrubbing the screen as I want the bright, thick green algae to spread. That pastey yellow sediment must be detritus embedding in the screen where the algae is not able to grow and process it...just guessing here. I will try to get back to a weekly/10day clean schedual and see if that doesn't improve things. I'm also guessing the lack of growth in the middle is a hot spot as my lights are only a couple inches from the screen surface, and, they can not be moved much more in either direction. Should I change the lighting schedual and see if that will improve the growth in the center? Currently, I am running the lights 14hrs on. Any sugggestions?

Here are pics;
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other side;
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After scraping but before scrubbing with brush...note the yellow center area;
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Algae is making a major comeback in my display tank. I think diverting the return pump to run the algae filter may be reducing flow to the main tank too much, and, food/detritus are not making it back to the sump, leaving the food to decay in the tank and thus fueling algae growth there. Any thoughts on this? When I can next afford to do so, I think I will buy a dedicated pump for the algae filter and leave the QO4000 for return only. Any recommendations on a pump? I'd like one a bit bigger than needed that can be dialed back as needed or split off to run a gfo reactor if needed. Here are picks from the tank today, before I hand-picked off what algae I could...and water test results...not seeing an improvements there.

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SPG. - 1.025
MAG - 1120
ALK - 7.8
CAL - 810
PHOS - .04
NITRATE - 5

I have been adding MAG to try and get it in line, but apparently not enough. Cal is still way high, but, is down from 1350...guess I'll have to do a waterchange. Since I don't have much in the tank, I wanted to see if the algae filter would gradually lower those high levels. Currently, I am only dosing mag. and alk...no calcium.

[Garf]

What's your pH?

[Kerry's Reef]

I didn't test it this time as my API ph test is very old and I always seem to get the same reading of 7.8. It has always been difficult to differenciate between the test colors anyway, and now, I'm sure it must be way out of date. One I need to re-new for sure.

[kotlec]

http://algaescrubber.net/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=3813&d=1357461987

You can insert your pictures this way for easier viewing. Just click "reply with quote" on this post to see how its done.

[SantaMonica]

The brown stuff in the middle is dead algae from being covered by thick growth. The center grew faster because of the brighter light, and let go, which is why there is little there before you cleaned. The brown stuff is like putting wheat into the water; you need to clean the entire screen down to the white, especially the wheat looking stuff.

[Kerry's Reef]

Thanks, SA! I'll do that. That central area never grew algae, but, there are some areas surrounding it that did and now have the yellow, so, I'm sure it is as you say. I cut off 3 of the 4 par38 lamps over the display again to reduce the algae in the main tank. I'm not sure, but, I think I may not have enough flow through my main tank now to get nutrients to the algea filter before they are turned into algae in the display. I may have to add a dedicated pump to the algae filter and improve circulation in the display. As it is, I don't think the lights on the filter are powerful enough to compete with the display lights...am I thinking this out correctly? Any comments on tweaking this system so it will handle my algae problems without having to keep all my display lights off?

[SantaMonica]

If the middle area never grew, then the light is too much there and needs to be spread out.

[Kerry's Reef]

That's what I was thinking, too, but, can't move these lights any further out. I'll have to see if I can maybe move the screen more diagonally in the sump and see if I can get more space between lights and screen. THX!