howdy from the uk - day one

[Garf]

19 days complete with sparkly bits and fireworm; nitrate has got up a bit, phos has come down a bit, 470 gramme harvest (down);


10 days, with more sparkly bits;


Edge;

[Devs]

This has happened since turning the air off ?

[Garf]

This has happened since turning the air off ?

Yeah. Also got a bit of algae going white at the screen also, showing early stages of death. Gonna give it a few more cycles, and if things don't improve the bubbles are going back on, full time.

[Devs]

So the air injection could be helping to prevent the matting associated with waterfall scrubbers ?

[Garf]

So the air injection could be helping to prevent the matting associated with waterfall scrubbers ?

Good spot, the holes in the highest lit portion of the screen are caused by oxygen bubbles that get trapped against the algae, maybe reducing filtering/growth. Never got this with the bubbles on the screen;

[Garf]

Update - last screen cleaning harvested 390 grammes (last week) down
370 grammes (this week) down
nitrates going up, phos coming down.

Gonna implement full aeration again now to see if the growth loss is aeration (pH) mediated. Don't need to reduce phos any more anyway.

[Garf]

Thankfully, Nitrate back down to pre phosphate precipitation test, phos level constant, harvest increase to 410grammes.

[Garf]

Just to keep this thread upto date;

Have put a plastic sheet on one side of the screen to try and increase flow through the mat;


Also drastically reduced the cleaning period. Gonna try one sided cleaning every 4 days. I'm thinking that maybe I'm missing the exponential growth phase and using the Hydromentia philosophy of "regular harvest improves overall yield" or something along them lines, hopefully although harvest weight will be massively reduced, the average growth per area of screen will increase.

Pic of last harvested algae for the hell of it;

[Garf]

This is how I'm gonna be keeping track of growth increase / reductions;
http://algaescrubber.net/forums/show...ll=1#post31430

Tried the squeezing technique and started at 295 grammes (this side is 100 sq inch, 9 days 2 x crap cfl's + 4 days LED growlight). After vigorous squeezing could only get it down to 155 grammes. So perhaps my dense carpet of algae holds a bit more comparative mass. Anyway, the calculations for this would be 155/13/100so 0.119 compared to Floyds 0.104. However, that's trying to account for the fact I'm cleaning only one side at a time ie. the screen size figure of 100 is only half of the actual screen size. These figures may be more useful when tinkering with individual systems, rather than comparing different systems as we know, all systems tend to run slightly differently.

[Garf]

First time of reduced cleaning period.

8 day side


4 day side


The harvest [squeezed] was a dismal 38 grammes. So the calculation would be 38/8/100 so 0.0475 (not even half of previous). However I'm gonna be keeping the faith for a while and see if this picks up.