How does this look?

[spazthecat]

Hi,

I've had my scrubber up for about 2 months now and I'm not sure I'm getting the growth I should. The last 4 pictures at this link are one side of my screen about 2 weeks since it was cleaned.

I do still have Chaeto in my sump as well as a bit of phosban. I was thinking I need to remove those and I should get better growth.

Thanks,

Andy

http://picasaweb.google.com/andy.black10/Aquarium03?feat=directlink

[SantaMonica]

Thank goodness you have a lot of display pics; those are needed to figure out if the scrubber is moving in the right direction. It looks like it is. Here are the important things:

Screen has some green on it, and not all black.
Display has small, individual spots of HA, mostly on rock corners and edges.
Back wall looks like patches of algae have fallen off.
Screen flow is great.

Together this tells me that your phosphate in the water is low, and that phosphate is being pulled out of the rocks (which always happens on the rock corners and edges). Now if your rocks had a light coating of algae evenly all over, and if the back wall and sand had the same, and if the screen was black, then I'd say you have high phosphate in the water.

So your screen and phosban are working well. Do this:

Clean your screen all the way to the plastic this next time, and ROUGH it up with a hole saw. Put it back and starting cleaning every 7 DAYS, not two weeks. Remove the phosban and chaeto, and report back if you have to clean your glass more, or less (that will be your first indicator). Your screen should start growing more thicker green, and your rocks should start shrinking the GHA patches. Should be all gone in 4-8 weeks.

[spazthecat]

Hi,

Well, I think the phosban needs to go back in. At least for now. I removed it, removed the chaeto, cleaned the screen and it's growing very short, dark, slimy, brown algae pretty quickly. Not a hint of green anywhere. Plus, I'm seeing new patches of algae popping up in the display tank. Mostly brown fluffy stuff.

It seems like I need to "kick start" the screen like you covered in your article. So, I was going to bump up screen cleaning to every 3 days (1 side every 3 days) and put the phosban back for now. Sound like the correct course o action?

Thanks,

Andy

[SantaMonica]

Yes. Unless you just want to give it some time in the brown phase. About half the people in the brown phase get to green in a few weeks without doing anything. It's only the folks who are stuck in the brown for weeks (because the scrubbers are not powerful enough) who need to kick start.

[kcress]

Kick start? :?:

[SantaMonica]

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=397 (http://www.algaescrubber.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=397)

[kcress]

Thanks SM. Saw that but didn't remember the term, "kick start".