Hi everyone,
Great site, been reading about the scrubbers for over a week now and am very interested in going down this route to solve my nitrate/hair algae on rock issue using natural means.
I'll start with a bit of background.
Tank is a 5 x 2 x 2 with approx 55kg rock, sump with chaeto in 24/7 lit fuge. In addition I'm running carbon, skimmer and fluidised rowaphos. I like my fish so am in to the very well stocked side of things. I've always struggled with cyno in the 3.5 years of the tank being in existence and whilst the cyno went 6 months ago, this was replaced by hair algae and lots of it. So much so I've removed all corals except my nem and some hair mushrooms. I started experinmenting with vodka and sulfur reactor but to no satsifactory results which leads me to this site!
2 weeks ago I did think I'd got my nitrates just about under control as these were reading 10. So I began a process of removing all the hair algae on the rocks (lights out and physical removal) as well as increasing the flow from powerheads (now 12000lph and 6000 lph in addition to reef flsuh system of theoretical 6000lph). This worked at a treat at removing the hair algae, unfortuntately what I didnt relasise was I hadnt solved the underlying nitrate problem and within a week nitrates were at >25. At this point, panic, increase light periods, cut back on feeding to get the algae to grow back on the rocks again!!!
So here I am. Since I'm not a great DIYer, I started to prep my tank to take a scrubber as well as build my first one knowing full well it will need modification to get it where it should be. So last week was spent getting the sump unit ready to take a scrubber and yesterday was adding all the fixings and the scrubber itself.
Current tank stats:
Tank size: 5 x 2 x 2 with approx 55kg of rock. Estimated display capacity including rock displacement 450 litres
Sump size 3 x 1.5 x 1.5 holding approx 100 litres
Total system size c. 550 litres
Nitrates currently at 25 (salifert)
Phosphates registering very slight tinge of blue on salifert ie just above 0.00
Feeding regime: large pinch of flake in the morning along with approx 15 pellets. In the evening 1 cube of frozen mysis supplemented with a couple of small pieces of prawn or mussell and approx 2" square of seaweed sheet.
Current scrubber:
Width (36cm) x length (30cm) using 7 count roughed up plastic canvas
Lit on both sides with 20W spiral CFL (ie 2 light in total) with home made reflectors.
Pump is rated at 1000lph but at the required head height I'm getting 456lph.
Please can you advise optimum screen size and flow rates so i know whether I should keep pump and reduce screen size or keep screen about the same and get a new pump?
Any feedback welcome!
Thanks,
Steve.
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