I did my first cleaning this morning. I can tell it is growing something. When I cleaned it there was a fish smell and it was a bit slimy but not much.
I'm hoping this is normal.
Oh yea, I decided to remove the macro algae from my sump and expect this to help with the growth. I pulled out about 1/2 of a 5 gallon bucket worth of chaeto (uncompressed). There was a lot of floating debris in the chaeto which may also be a reason for my excess nutrients.
Mine sometimes had/has an odor too, nothing to worry about. Without competition your screen will grow much faster.
150G. Reef/Mix
125G. 3 Regular Oscars/1 Jack Dempsey
75G. 20+ Africans
40G. Fish/Reef. Algae Scrubbers on ALL my SW
10G. SW Fish/Reef.
10G. SW Hospital/new fish quarantine/pod breeder tank
6 stage RO/DI system 200 GPD.
So, I'm thinking my lights are too close to the screen but I don't think I can move them out any farther the way it is currently set up. I can see green growth at the bottom 4" of screen, where there is little light but right were the light hits it has almost no growth, or only slimy growth.
Thoughts? I really don't want to re-do my entire sump for this but it is getting to that point...
Less hours.
Ok here is an update: Not good.
I realized I had the 23w bulbs in there and they were very close so I'm guessing that is why it wasn't growing right next to them-it was getting burned. So I switched over to 13w bulbs.
Now there is growth, but it is all brown and slimy. What else can I do?
Rinse the brown stuff off a little more frequently. If it is what I think you are describing, it's kind of like dinoflagellates? long hair-like brown strings, that disintegrate if you touch them? You can take the screen off every couple days and give it a rinse in tap water to get rid of them, this lets the GHA below stay alive longer. then still do your every 7 day cleaning, making sure to leave any hair algae in the holes.
So I finally started getting green growth. It looked like I had enough flow but I guess I didn't and when I cranked it up higher, the greed started coming out.
That being said, I'm going to start with a new screen. Right now I have two put together because I started with the right sized screen, but it was several inches off the water and I didn't like the splashing, so I zip-tied a second section on for smooth flow to the water. Well, I find that cleaning it like that is a PITA so I'm going to start over with a full screen that goes all the way to the water in one piece.
So I finally start getting green growth and I'm beginning again.... what do they say? One step forward two steps back?
On the up side, I rearranged my sump so I can put my skimmer back in if I want. The skimmer would be before the ATS. I'm not sure if I want to put it in or not.
Two forward, one back.
Yea.... Well... if you saw my tank you would know why I said one forward and two back
Ok, I'm looking for help because I'm just not getting any growth. I've changed the location and it was doing good, but now it has stopped and I'm getting yellow in the middle and small green along the sides outside of the light zone. Also, it seems to be nothing but slimy growth. I'm going to put up some pictures. I have one 12w bulb on each side and it is lit for 14 hours at a time currently (from 6 AM until 8 PM). I have good flow over the screen although it does have more flow on one side than the other and I haven't figured out why (I've turned the screen around, I've adjusted how the screen is held, and I've changed the angle of the slot). This is showing 10 days of growth (or I should say no-growth).
Thanks for the help.
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