HOG1 with no growth at all after one month

[jimrawr1]

Hi SM. I ordered a HOG1 about a month ago, and its been in operation I think since the 30th of October (3.5 weeks). I started with 12 hours a day lighting, and the cloth half on half off. After seeing slight brown algae growth on the uncovered area, I uncovered the whole thing and upped the lighting to 16 hours. What the screen has now is a slight brown algae film, but really not much at all to be honest.

I am using the same pump you recommend and its on full blast (cant remember name of pump). I do not have much algae in my tank, just Cyano. I feed around 1 cube per day, plus one sheet of nori, plus a few pinches of flake. No measureable PO4 or NO3 last I checked, but enough to have to clean the glass once a week as well as the Cyano taking over the tank.

Thoughts?

[SantaMonica]

Did you take it to the sink and scrub all the slime off with a toothbrush? Green hair can't attach if there is slime there.

Also, probably need to go to 20 hours.

[jimrawr1]

No I didnt, Ill do that tonight. The brown stuff didnt start growing until a few days ago and its really very light (not much brown on the grabber). Ill up the time as well

[jimrawr1]

Here is a pic taken a couple days ago

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/IMAG0548_zps7be54deb.jpg

[SantaMonica]

Looks like it still needs the cloth half-covered.

[jimrawr1]

Ok cloth back on half way for now

[jimrawr1]

Went on a vacation and my skimmer stopped working for two weeks. That plus using an autofeeder with flakes led to a tank looking like this:

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/IMAG0618_zps6cc2234f.jpg

There is no film on the glass, its straight cloudy from an algae bloom. My HOG1 looks like it did in the previous picture. It shouldnt be this hard to grow algae on this thing..? Rocks are growing algae now, yet zero on scrubber.... HELPPPPP

[SantaMonica]

Well the bloom will burn itself out in a few days; nothing else needed to do if you don't want to, it does not hurt anything.

I need a video of the scrubber running; at least several pics of the placements and surfaces.

How many hours of light, and, are you sure it's turning off (you've seen it) ?

[jimrawr1]

Lights are definitely turning off. Its programmed on my apex controller to come on at 9am and off at 11pm. Here are some more pics

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/IMAG0619_zpsab84994e.jpg

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/IMAG0620_zps2d40c68c.jpg

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/IMAG0621_zps3262fd67.jpg

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/IMAG0622_zps22344d5e.jpg

[SantaMonica]

Still half-covered with the cloth? It should be.

[jimrawr1]

It was up until yesterday. Removed the cloth when getting zero results..

[SantaMonica]

Put it back, at 3/4 covered. You need to end up with a definite grow / no-grow area, and let it fill that area dark first.

[jimrawr1]

It was half covered from Nov 1st till Jan 6th will no growth at all.. I am going to keep a closer eye on the lighting to make sure its going on and off, but its connected to my apex so I cant see that not working correctly.. I even had detectable ammonia when I got back from vacation so the nutrients are clearly there for growth. I will try to take a video later today as well.

[SantaMonica]

Do you have any kind of algaecide?

[jimrawr1]

Yes I used Algae Fix Marine when I came home to find this mess of a tank. First time it was used in a few months. Probably right around the time I got the scrubber was the last time it was dosed.

[SantaMonica]

Well I wonder how long it stays around.

Yours is taking longer, but they all start growing at some point. I've seen apex-connected ones actually never turn off, so watch for that.

[jimrawr1]

Good question about the algaecide, but I dont think its that. Between the two months that it wasnt dosed at all, I did enough water changes to remove it completely I would imagine. I am waiting patiently tonight to see if it goes off again (the light). Last night it did, but who knows.. I dont know what else it could be if not the light. Today had measurable ammonia in the tank again, so clearly this should be growing. Air pump dialed all the way up too..

Is it possible that hair algae cant grow without the tank having been seeded of it? I started this tank with dry everything, and havent added much to the tank. Pretty sure I have not introduced any GHA spores to the tank. I imagine it would grow just fine even without this...?

[SantaMonica]

It never needs seeding. Will always grow.

In some more difficult cases like this, some folks have just let it run without checking it, and eventually it settled in and started growing. But always, white means too much light. So just let it go, half covered or so.

[jimrawr1]

Light didnt turn off just now :( Going to look into whats wrong with the apex parameters

[jimrawr1]

Starting to see a hint of green on the scrubber... near the center of the unit and also towords

[SantaMonica]

Excellent. Let it fill in.

[jimrawr1]

So four weeks later and still no growth. The tank has completely cleared up due to water changes and a uv sterilizer. Algae Scrubber looks like it did in the last image four weeks ago. I have NO algae in the tank at all. PO4 is usually .00 to .04 and Nitrates are 5ppm. I do have cyano growth though which really does not want to go away.

[SantaMonica]

If the white surfaces are still white, then it's just too much light and needs shading.

[SantaMonica]

I'm still thinking about that algaecide though, because it is usually copper based, and copper would not fade away on it's own.

[jimrawr1]

We'll on my old tank I was using algaefix marine regularaly (every 3 days for a couple months) and I was able to grow GHA on my scrubber. I know there are two versions of AlgaeFix, one is Marine and the other is not. I can't imagine it having copper but I could be wrong.

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/20111215_173232.jpg

And here it is after I trimmed down the size. This growth happened while dosing algaefix marine at the same time

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/20120526_185259.jpg

[jimrawr1]

Here is a pic just taken of the HOG

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/IMAG0813_zpsfigw8fpi.jpg

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/IMAG0815_zpswbxbm9wf.jpg

[SantaMonica]

Is that growth up at the top?

[jimrawr1]

I will take a better pic so you can see.. there is definitely some green up there but no growth really. It almost looks like coraline algae but green.. very thin layer on the scrubber. I will take a better pic and post it when I get a chance.

[SantaMonica]

Dose some Iron now if you can.

[jimrawr1]

So the black cloth now is covering only the bottom 25% of the area for the last 2-3 weeks or so. You can see the line on the bottom area of where the black cloth was, so clearly better growth with higher light. I've tried about everything, and right now I am having a diatom bloom in my tank so clearly nutrients present.. Not sure why this thing wont grow. I dont have iron to dose, or a testing kit to check at this point.

http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/IMAG0823_zpsm010nsmz.jpg

[SantaMonica]

Well this is certainly an odd case. If you want, put some gha inside it, just for fun, to see if it attaches. And leave the cloth halfway up. You never want pure white surfaces exposed to strong red light.

Since it does not cost anything to run, you might just let it run and run without touching it. It might catch on.

[jimrawr1]

I would if I had some, but I dont really have algae in the tank. Just some diatoms currently and cyano. Hmm.. guess I dont know what to say either. Very surprised to say the least

[SantaMonica]

One last idea: Double up the black cloth to make sure that the bottom half of the scrubber gets no light at all. It might be that enough light was going through the cloth, combined with your low nutrients, to have been too much light overall.

[jimrawr1]

Well, I actually removed the black cloth completely and have started to get a bit of green growth now (it looks like it may finally start to fill in). The scrubber also grows a decent amount of slime, so I scrub that out every week or so but try to leave all the green there. Its a nice bright green color but only in a few spots.. Ill grab some pictures. Nutrients arent low anymore, tested nitrates the other day and were at around 40PPM. Didnt check PO4

[jimrawr1]

Ok here is a pic taken today. The white spot was covered with Cyano that I just brushed off thats why I think that area hasnt filled in. I havent harvested anything buyt its starting to look promissing. Tested today, no3 = 40ppm, and po4 = .05
[http://i403.photobucket.com/albums/pp120/jimrawr/IMAG0907_zps0jputecb.jpg

[SantaMonica]

Just let it fill in more for a week. Clean the glass of course.