Coolhandgoose's 55Gal

[SantaMonica]

Search for Srusso's scrubber.

[coolhandgoose]

Well I'll see how these work for now. I have them on a timer for 18 hours on and 6 off. Right now just getting a light dusting of brown on the screen after two days.

[kerry]

Thats about normal, It may take a few cleanings to get the green stuff.

[coolhandgoose]

Should I give it 14 days before the first cleaning? Or 7?

[kerry]

The first cleaning can usually go up to 14 days or clean if its is becoming detached from the screen as this not what you want.

[coolhandgoose]

Thanks for the reply. One more question, should I keep running carbon for now until my scrubber is up and running? Will i still need carbon later? I guess that was two questions

[Ace25]

Thanks for the reply. One more question, should I keep running carbon for now until my scrubber is up and running? Will i still need carbon later? I guess that was two questions

Carbon doesn't affect the growth of an ATS. I personally believe carbon will help remove some of the negative things an ATS creates, but there are just as many people not running carbon and having success as those that do run it, so I wouldn't say it is necessary to run carbon, just a personal choice.

Consider switching to side-reflectors that hang down.

Not sure what those are

like this:

[kerry]

I have never seen carbon really do anything for my tanks. I have not touched carbon in over a decade unless you count the time a couple months ago I tried it in my sump because someone said the little bit of foam on my water surface could be corrected by carbon. Well after a month with weekly changes of the carbon it turned out to be BS!!!

[Ace25]

I have never seen carbon really do anything for my tanks. I have not touched carbon in over a decade unless you count the time a couple months ago I tried it in my sump because someone said the little bit of foam on my water surface could be corrected by carbon. Well after a month with weekly changes of the carbon it turned out to be BS!!!

Your not going to visually see carbon doing anything unless your water has a colored tint to it, then it will turn it clear, but if your water is clear to begin with I can't imagine how a person could tell from observation if it is doing anything, but it is.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2010/1/aafeature

•Only about 20 - 30% of the measurable TOC in reef tank water was removed by skimming

Actually, in the first skimmer article in Jan 2009 AA, we used a skimmable model system, the protein Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA) in freshly prepared salt water as well as authentic TOC from reef tank water. This protein could be skimmed down to the ~ 10% level (that is, we could remove ~ 90% of the BSA through skimming). You can check out that article to see the comparison between BSA removal rates and TOC removal rates. For reasons discussed in the 2010 AA article, we dropped the BSA inquiries.

In some as yet unpublished work, we have shown that GAC is very effective at stripping aquarium water of its TOC load; from 60 - 90% removal, if I recall correctly, depending on specifics. We looked at ROX, HC2 and Black Diamond GAC's. The ROX was the winner by far.

[coolhandgoose]

I was using carbon because someone told me that having finger leathers and SPS in the same tank can cause some kind of chemical warfare and using carbon will help get rid of the toxins.