HOG.5

[Clavius]

Up to 1 lpm.

Thanks for the quick reply. Can't wait until it arrives.

[bacon07]

I seeded mine today with a bit of green algae growing on a piece of base rock and changed the hours from 12pm - 6 am, can't wait to see if it grows a little by tomorrow. Ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 10ppm. The diatoms in the display tank (1 month old) have almost disappeared and been replaced with purple coralline/green algae. No hair algae anywhere that I can see.

[SantaMonica]

You should smear the algae on the screen and work it into the plastic.

[bacon07]

Not seeing any kind of growth on any side so I decreased the hours to 14 light /10 darkness. Gonna wait til Friday before I check again. I also touched the hose a little and the bubbles increased a lot on the center of the screen and also became bigger so that might be better. There's good green algae (no hair or cyano, but more like a green coralline) covering a few pieces of base live rock in my display and there's still plenty of diatoms in the powerheads/back wall (but not enough to be a nuisance, I actually like the way it looks except for the odd spot in the glass that the snails take care of pretty fast) so I think those algae might be out-competing the scrubber. I added 5 more Astraea snails today (bringing the total to 12 or 1 per 10 gallon). The main tank gets 300w 14k metal halide lighting for approx 8 hours a day, and about 2 watts of blue LEDs 24/7 (4 small LEDs that act as moonlight when the HQI go out)

Stock:
2 Clownfish (Both around 2 inches)
1 flame angel (2.5")
1 diamond watchman goby (3")
2 firefish (2")
1 mandarin dragonet (3")
12 astraea snail (1/2" to 1.5")
3 orange spotted nassarius snail (1.5")
2 peppermint shrimp (1")
about 10 little blue legged hermits, might be off by a few since I also seem to have a mantis shrimp that I haven't met yet... lol

Close to 100 pounds of live rock

Parameters
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
ph 8.2
temp 76
Nitrate ~10ppm

Phospate was undetectable last time I checked, but I have since then removed the GFO (Saturday), haven't checked again
Calcium 520 mg/L
KH (Alkalinity) 12

Filter media (SUMP)
- filter sock, polyester filter fiber (aka pillow stuffing) to catch small particles
- Poly-filter
- 200 ml purigen (I also have an extra 500ml bag that I took out when I installed the scrubber)
- some bioballs
- ceramic rings

UV sterilizer (turned off since I installed scrubber)

Canister
- 4 Liters of seachem matrix (all trays full of it)
- 20 oz Chemi pure elite

Top off with RO/DI water every day.

[SantaMonica]

There won't be any growth for the first four days.

[bacon07]

So you don't think cutting the hours for now was a good idea? Maybe increase them once I do see some growth? Sorry I know everything in this hobby takes patience and I'm not good with that lol but I have to say you did an awesome job, these units look really neat. Btw, do you think the two scrubbers will be able to handle my current stock just fine?

[SantaMonica]

Glad you like the design. How do the magnets hold on your sump?

I'd keep them at 18 hours unless a bald white spot appears in the middle.

The two of them together can handle 1 cube a day once they are growing.

[bacon07]

They hold really well, sometimes I just try to open the scrubber a little bit to peek inside and they snap back shut if I leave the cover too close, hard enough to make a sound.

There's definitely enough magnets for most tanks... I just wish my display was acrylic because even if I add more magnets to fit the thick glass, the inner rim would make it impossible to have the top 1" of the unit out of the water. Only option would be lowering the water level, but I don't wanna break the overflow too lol so I'll just keep them in the sump ---> I'm not good with DIY.

[bacon07]

Still no growth... and it's been 7 days. Not even a hint of a growth. in fact, I stuck two small pieces of rock covered in green hair algae (actual live rock from the LFS tank that had hair algae growing everywhere) behind the screen for two purposes: seeding the screen and keeping it tilted forward so that the top end touches the glass as suggested in the manual. Guess what happened? The rocks are now white, I actually killed hair algae by trying to grow it. Isn't that the ultimate irony? lol

Is it possible that I just don't have enough nutrients for these scrubbers to work? I have been feeding a pinch of 1mm nls pellets every other day for the last week, a pinch would be about 10 pellets. I feed very lightly because the few fish I have are all very small and I have lots of pods and stuff in the live rock that they eat. I also wash the filter sock daily (it goes from white to dark brown in about 24 hours) Maybe I should not run a filter sock and let all that gunk stay in the water column, or maybe I have so much live rock and sand that it's consuming everything, or the scrubbers just aren't meant to be in the sump return chamber...

Another thing I noticed is coralline algae seems to be starting to take over and the other algae are disappearing from display. I haven't done a water change in a week and the water seems cleaner than ever.

I will test tomorrow morning all my parameters from nitrates to calcium, alkalinity and phosphates and post them here. Perhaps I should consider adding more livestock?

[SantaMonica]

You are feeding about 1/100 of a cube. Add livestock, and multiply your feeding by ten times. You can remove the sock if you want, which will put more particles in the water for corals for small fish to eat.