Finally! 90g scrubber - 40sq inches

[Floyd R Turbo]

Yes I would really to a full battery of tests. pH, Salinity, Ammonia, Nitrite (not like that one matters, but let's be thorough), Nitrate, Alk, Cal, Mag, Phosphate, (with a Hanna checker if you can get access to one) and make sure they are not expired kits, and make sure you are performing the test right. Review your top-off regimen, alkalinity / calcium / magnesium dosing. Eliminate all other possibilities.

A long-time very successful reefer in Wisconsin gave me great advice once, and that is to comprehend and follow the basics of reefkeeping, and then keep things stable for 3 months. At that point, you will see a growth explosion. Stability is the primary key to reefkeeping.

[mess7777]

Well I decided for my mental sanity to remove the corals that were nearly dead to get them outta my sight. I have to admit it feels a lot better looking at the tank without those (mostly) skeleton corals staring back at me.

I also decided to take a hands off approach and just did the bare minimum of feeding and replenishing evaporated water.

I didn't even clean the scrubber for about 3 weeks, I wasn't seeing any die off so why bother.

Anyway, forward to now, and it seemed my corals were a little perkier and happier, so I though I'd do a phosphate test. Well, for the first time since owning the tank, the API test kit came up the '0' color. I think I am finally getting somewhere. The rocks are a little fuzzy, which is a good sign that the phosphates are leeching back out, or maybe already have. I didn't clean my front glass for almost a month and really, it is not that bad. I have all kinds of new pods crawling around in the DT now that I never did before....so maybe I can try a mandarin again which is great news!

Hopefully over the next few weeks the nitrates will come down to, I started to feed a little more aggressively, building up to the scrubber capacity of 4 cubes/day.

It actually feels like I am getting the tank back and I might be able to actually enjoy it again.

Another note of interest is that the sand sifting star(which I never should have gotten) finally died and the tank seems to be happy it did. Perhaps it was keeping the sandbed so devoid of life it couldn't do its job as well.

Good times.

[Garf]

Goodbye starfish - I think your right. Think you'd better getting some more pics up soon. Glad your feeling more confident about your system.

[kerry]

Glad its coming around for you. The sand sifting stars are something to avoid in my opinion unless you have a 250G plus tank.

[djmatteo]

I just read through this thread and I see a lot of me in a lot of the stuff thats happened in your tank both with mysteriously dying corals and my original algae scrubber just not doing well. Oddly enough I also had to use seran wrap on my scrubber which slowed down my flow and prevented it from working properly once the GHA algae just grew on the top inch of the screen.

Just wondering if you have an update?

[mess7777]

Not much to update here. I am still fighting off nitrates, others have posted that once the phosphates are gone that this can happen. I believe due to the bad shape of my system, that equilibrium is taking extra long to find it's place. Interestingly, my zoas continue to do poorly, with less and less all the time. This is unfortunate as i really like them!

I did a screen cleaning and took it a little far, this also can cause a nutrient spike. The algae is the filter so for the first few days after the cleaning there isn't as much algae pulling out nutrients.

It is needed to say that I also still have chaeto and caulpera in my sump which both continue to grow albeit very slow since my phosphates have reduced.

I can also say that the zooplankton in my tank has never looked better, there is life everywhere, and this is great!

Although it is far from perfect, my tank is the best it has been in a long while.

[SantaMonica]

Good that the tank is doing well. However if your sump macros are still alive, your scrubber is very weak.

[mess7777]

SantaMonica,

I do believe I am underpowered, unfortunately my bad sump design doesn't allow me to get a real nice scrubber going. The reflectors take up a lot of space and I can't get them positioned exactly right. Perhaps LED and a design like Floyds is my answer to give some extra space, but I am not prepared to spend the cash just yet.

[djmatteo]

You mention space, but this scrubber was build on old sizing guidelines was it not? You could probably get away with using a much smaller scrubber now and i would guess have good results.

Im still a bit oversized on my build as well, im about 40sq inches with 50 watts of light ... im still working the kinks out, did my first cleaning on a new screen after 2 weeks it was considerably green!

[Garf]

Dont think size guidelines should apply while there's plenty nitrates and phosphates around, surely.