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Thread: 100 galon tank with a lot of GHA and new algae scrubber

  1. #1
    Yolka's Avatar
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    100 galon tank with a lot of GHA and new algae scrubber

    Hi I'm Polish girl living in Mexico, I'm new here, first of all thanks for than forum, excelent informacion, hopefully it will help me to win my battle with GHA., my tank has about three year now, it's about 100 galon system, it was a very nice setup but about a year ago I started to have HA problems and was trying to battle it with water changes but it realy dont work at all, then I found en algae scrubber solucion and I want to give it a try. First let me show you what I'm dealing with
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    And here is my scrubber, it's working for 5 days now, I seed it with hair algae from my tank.
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    I use 4 CFL bulbs, two each side, they are 27 real wats 2700 K color with some reflectors made from half of bottle and aluminium papel. My screan is 10 inch long x 13 inch wide, it's very roug. I hope I made it good enough and it will help me with this GHA battle. I will post every week pictures of the scrubber and display tank. Realy sorry for my english I do my best and hope you understand it.
    Greetings from Mexico

  2. #2
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    Welcome.

    You have about 100 watts on about 130 square inches, not bad. Lot of phosphate in the rocks, so algae will start getting worse on the rocks for a few months, then will go away.

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    Do you have any turbo snails in the tank? I have found those to be the best for clearing up hair algae. Only problem with them is they are big and knock over your corals. If you can take a rock or two out during a water change and scrub the algae off the rocks that will also speed up the recovery, but like Santa Monica said, even with snails and scrubbing rocks it will still take a few months before the tank recovers to the point the hair algae will no longer grow in the display. Scrubber seems adequate though so I think you are doing positive things for your tank. Just make sure to clean it every 7 days for at least the first month. After that you can go up to 14 days between cleanings once green algae fills in on the screen.

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    Thank you very much for your reply SantaMonica I have 4 bulb 80 W ATI Sunpower Fixture in my tank and I was thinking to run only two bulbs (160 W) till my scrubber get stronger, I only have 3 small frags of zoas in my tank for now ( all my zoo colonies was murdered by algae )do you think it's a good idea or it will not help much?

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    Thanks for your advice Ace25, yes I have 5 turbo snails but they really dont help much, they seem to prefer algea from the glass and barebottom. Maybe I can take my rocks out during the water change and use H2O2 or scrubbing it and then rinse it with saltwater, you think it would help to acelerate the proces?

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    You can do that.

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    The way I do it is I would take water out and into 2 5gallon buckets. Put about 4G of water in each bucket and take a rock out one at a time, scrub it really good in the first bucket, then swish it around really good in the second bucket and then put it back into the tank. The algae will still grow back after you clean it, even if the rock looks perfectly clean, but it will grow back slower. It is still going to take time for everything bad to leach out of the rocks.

    Only do a few rocks at a time, you don't want to upset the balance in the tank too much at once. By cleaning a few rocks the nitrates and phosphates will leach out into the water quicker because there is no algae barrier to absorb it, so you want the other rocks that do have algae to act as a buffer and absorb that so you don't harm your fish or corals. There will also be a lot of bacteria changes happening on the rock just from scrubbing it and putting it back in the tank. You want to minimize disrupting the bacteria balance in the tank so that is another reason to only scrub a few rocks at a time and wait at least 3-4 days before scrubbing anymore rocks. Scrubbing a few rocks should also benefit and possibly speed up the maturation process of your ATS screen as well. It isn't a solution, nor is it even necessary to do, but if you want to do the work it will help and make the tank look a little better.

    How old are your turbo snails? I have found after about 6 months they get very lazy and don't do work anymore. You may want to add 1 or 2 new ones and see if they work. I have found the ones that are called "mexican turbo snails, zebra turbo snails, or Belize turbo snails" work the best. They have a green shell with black lines in it. There are so many different snails labeled "turbo snail" and I have found some work much better than others.


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    Thank you very much for all that info I will try it this weekend and tell you how it goes becouse I think with all that algea in the rocks my scrubber will have a dificulty to win the nutrients from the water. I think also maybe eating algea goby will help I can purchase one and purchase more turbo snails, yes my snail are very lazy but I think it becouse its so much food around them that they dont even need to move a lot

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    If you dont have many light sensitive corals, I would bet on DT lights decreasing . This way your scrubber will increase power, as lumens balance will strongly shift towards scrubber. DT algea will have less light to feed on.

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    On some sites, even the mention of the word tang starts a debate. That said you have 100 gallons so you can have at least 1. I had turbo snails, crabs, blahblahblah. Nothing took care of algae like my yellow and sailfin tang. My sailfin in particular is a huge pig and eats every speck of HA in the main DT. I have had relatively high phosphates and nitrates for almost a year, yet no algae in the main tank. If you don't have one, why not get yourself a yellow or kole tang. They are great to watch, reef safe, and eat the stuff naturally.

    If you are already fully stocked, another option is to borrow a sea hare from a local reefer or LFS. These guys will eat all the HA in a matter of a week or two. The problem is they are too good at their job, so you have to pass them forward or they will starve to death.

    Aces plan with the rocks will go a long way to keeping it manageable without adding anything new to the tank.

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