My FW HOG.5 UAS

[KevinZ]

Here are pics of my HOG 0.5 after 2 weeks and 2 days. The green appears to be pretty even across the screen, although there are no strings or filaments yet. It's in my 15 gallon FW tank containing shell-dwelling African cichlids. Per the instructions, I had the LEDs on for 8 hours the first week, 10 hours the next week, and 12 hours for the last 2 days.

1. Should I bother cleaning it at this point?
2. Should I increase the duration of the light?

One thing I'm concerned about is my feeding. I only need to feed about 1/8 tsp of the .5mm pellets per day. I don't have a scale fine enough to weigh it, but by my calculations it's about 1/3 to 1/2 gram per day.

3. Will the scrubber still be effective even if it's fed so little?

[SantaMonica]

If algae is growing at all, it effectively removing nutrients from the tank which would otherwise grown on something else.

Since it is green, you can increase to 14 hours. Then 18 if it is still green. If it goes yellow, then reduce.

You can also feed much more if you want.

[KevinZ]

Nitrates in the tank are below 20ppm, so I took the plunge today and removed the internal power filter. The HOG .5 is my only filtration now. I did put a powerhead in the tank just for some water circulation.

[KevinZ]

Algae growth is dark green and has thickened up in the holes of the screen. I bumped the time up to 18 on, 6 off. Nitrates are still in the 10ppm range. There are still no long strings or filaments like I've seen in pictures of other's FW scrubbers, but then I don't what what species I've got growing. Is it possible the screen isn't rough enough for FW? Still, with nitrates at 10 or below despite no water changes, I'm happy.

[SantaMonica]

It's rough enough. Let it go 14 days.

[KevinZ]

Nitrates are still barely readable, although there seems to be a lot of spots of black algae growing on the shells in the tank. It looks dark green and thick. What do you think?

[Garf]

Did you have any algae on the shells before you started the scrubber?

[KevinZ]

There was some. But it seems to have taken off lately, instead of dying off. I know nutrients are being sucked out because there is some java moss on a rock that is definitely suffering since the UAS started working.

[SantaMonica]

Another 7 days and it should be fairly thick.

[KevinZ]

All right, another week and it's still growing. Water parameters are still great. I already had to clean it a little around the outflow holes for the water because they were covered by the green slime. What do you think? The middle looks a little yellow to me, should I reduce the hours on?