Hello all,
My first post.
SantaMonica you get my vote for innovative, out of the box thinking! I've run into the scrubber phenom about two weeks ago and have dived into everything I can get my hands on. I've gotten thru 18 pages of interesting material on the Tom Barr site. Clearly Tom is not a fan of scrubbers with freshwater planted tanks. But before I give up on the idea of adding a scrubber to my system (for a planned large planted freshwater set up), I want to be sure I'm not throwing the baby out with the waste water. So I am hopefully going to be able to learn a great deal here on your site. I haven't yet found a "Freshwater" forum so if there is one here, please let me know.
Here's my planned setup. I'll have a 700 total gallon set up composed of two tanks, one a 450 gal tank and the other tank divided down the middle with a display on the front side and a sump behind the middle partition. I have 480 nylon scrubbies plus foam to use in the sump. The two tanks will share the same water and be essentially the same system.
Now the sump will have the diminsions of roughly 7 ft x 18" x 25". I had been planning to use baffles to direct the water flow up and down thru the scrubbies. The tanks will sit in a perpendicular fashion, an "L" shape. Both tanks will be made to looks like one "L" shaped tank built into a wall. I'm planning to draw water from the large tank into the sump. The display tank in front of the sump will get a measured amount of water flow and will be heavily planted and house nano species such as shrimp, Celestial Danios, cardinal tetras etc.
The large tank will be about 12 ft x 36" x 25" and house angels, harls, and dwarf cichlids. It will be moderately planted but have substantial open areas in the front of the tank.
My biological filtration potential will be massive. I can use all or some of the 7 ft x 18" x 25" and pack it full of first mechanical, then bio filtration. I can use a substantial part to grow emergent plants or even heavily plant fast growers in some areas. In other words, I'll have the space to do different things and really get er done. What I think will get done is excellent removal of ammonia, nitrites and solid waste. What I'll be left with is nitrates. Big regular water changes could become prohibitive due to the massive volumes we're talking about. A 20% water change a week will be 140 gals.
My questions involve these issues:
1. If I added an algae scrubber to the substantial biological filtration, would it be more of a help than a hurt? I'm looking here to allow me to reduce water changes by removing most of the nitrates.
2. Would the scrubber complicate my desire to keep the nurtrients for the plants up to an optimal level? Phosphate for instance.
3. Would I be able to alter flow over the scrubber screens (in response to more algae in the display >> increase the flow, to respond to starving plants >> less flow? In other words, if my plants seemed to be starving, I could back off the flow >> removing less ferts and micros from the water >> making more available to the plants. Of course I could add ferts and chemicals to either the tank water to feed plants or directly onto the scrubber if necessary.
4. Tom Barr advocated using emergent plants and heavy planting to keep the nitrates low >> algae down. Regarding nitrates, would the extra plants be superior to algae in removing nitrate?
5. In a large system with massive bio filtration available, would I need to have the 4x tank volume / hr flow thru the bio filtration? How would this change if I do add the scrubber?
I realize that this is a complex set of questions but I am hopeful to learn a great deal from you.
Thanks,
Paul