How long can a screen survive without light?

[Vannpytt]

Going to restart my system. How long can the scrubber screen survive without a photoperiod. Flow will be running as normal.

[Floyd R Turbo]

When I moved the tank I currently run, I had the scrubber down but screens hanging in the tank for over a week, so the only light they got was from the DT lights.

Why are you restarting, and why black out the scrubber screen if you're going to keep the flow going?

[Vannpytt]

Want to build up bacterial colonies on the rocks again before the scrubber effectively removes all of it. Was planning on running the display without lights and no scrubber for a week untill no ammonia can be measured.

I'm building new DIY LED's on my Profilux, changing sand, and changing alot of the setup in general, so I had to get all out anyhow. (Also to quarantine fish from spots)

[Floyd R Turbo]

If you cycle the tank as usual, then when the scrubber is inserted into the mix it will absorb much of the circulating ammonia. The ammonia that is more at the surface of the rockwork and sand will still go towards bacterial filtration. What happens is that you will have a new set point with the scrubber and your bacterial colony will need to adjust.

If you just keep the scrubber running, the set point will be reached eventually. The scrubber will absorb any ammonia that might cause a spike high enough to stop the cycle. Essentially, you have a 'quiet' cycle. You won't really see it, if your scrubber is strong enough, or you might get a period of dark growth that will eventually green up.

Either way, if you introduce new sand and rock, there will be about a 6 month long period of life build-up and die off that will occur. Leaving the scrubber out of the equation for a week or two can only hurt organisms in the rock due to causing exposure to excess ammonia and nitrate. Nitrite is not toxic on marine aquariums below 100 ppm, which you will never ever see.

So I'm still confused about why you want to take the scrubber off line.

[Vannpytt]

I did cycle my tank initially with the scrubber off the bat, and never saw any bad readings, but I had massive algae growth for half a year. This time I will try it oposite, and the rocks are more or less the old rockwork I used, just rescaped, so there won't be that much dieoff. It's currently in containers with saltwater.

Like I said, I had to tear down to change the aquascaping, and hence I'm "restarting" in that fashion. I'm adding new coarser sand mixed with my fiji pink 0,5-1mm grain sand, as it makes a sandstorm with my current watermoving setup. I also had to pull out 3 tangs for quarantine and hospital. All in all, the system did not work, I did not find a solution, and I'm tired of having algae on the glass, feeding f all, and still getting good green growth on the screens while no nutrients show up as measurable. It's impossible to pinpoint what is killing my SPS, again, I'm not blaming the scrubber, but something related to it.

I run a much much smaller scrubber on my holding tank (100 gallon) with massive success, and that one is dimensioned for a 50 gallon tank.. (No skimmer or carbon)..