Hey All,
So my scrubber is what i would call "still in the infantile stages". I've had it up and running for about 2 weeks and have some "okay" growth but very uneven. I think i discovered why and remedied it last night. It turns out I must have been drunk when i cut the tube slit for the screen cause it was all over the place so my water flow was all clumped on either side with nothing really in the middle. At any rate my question is actually in regards to cleaning. I've been reading SantaMonica's posts and doing some research outside of algaescrubber.net and the consensus seems to be that weekly cleaning is the single most important task you can do for your scrubber and tank as a whole given some of the toxic effects that could develop if this weekly task is ignored. As i was doing my first cleaning last night (shhh, i know i violated the cardinal rule... i thought i was doing myself a favor by letting it slip a week cause my growth wasn't very good :-( ) i realized that at the bottom of my scrubber there is on average of about a half inch to an inch of water during normal operation. There seems to be a "field" of algae done there. Is this normal? Is this something that i should remove every week along with my normal cleaning? Will this lead to similar toxic affects experienced by others when the screen isn't cleaned for long periods? Am i doing something wrong to cause this growth down there? Also I've noticed that right by the outlet of my scrubber (my scrubber is actually a above my display and dumps into the top of my tank via a 3/4 ID flexible hose) a bloom of what looks like red slime has developed. Nothing really awful just an observation.Once again wondering if that is normal and what not. Thanks all for your help.
P.S. - I purchased a screen from Inland Aquatics to seed the screen. Don't really know if that helped any as I'm getting growth but nothing like i expected. I thought by getting the screen i would skip the red /brown slimy stuff and jump right to the turf... yeah no chance. Its as the screen had no affect. I have it zip tied to my screen with direct contact between it and my screen and water flowing directly over it... nada... all the growth i have is definitely NOT turf...