What happened when you ran with and witout a Skimmer Thread!

[sklywag]

Well........kind of hard to say. If I think about it. It seems when I have way oversized scrubbers I have no problems.
On my first 90 g I had a 10x10-12 horizontal screen and tank was great. Went vertical with same screen. Great.

Set up a 45g with a 10x10-12 screen and after a few months, great. Set up new 90g with a smaller screen, 5x9 and not so great. Always using 23 watt CFLs on both sides and great growth.

I have no idea. I'm leaning towards the square inch per gallon. Don't the 3D and floating/river/whatever with the stringy things tend to grow more and intended to let it grow more for longer seem to add to volume is what is working or what we're trying to achieve? Along with split screens to stagger cleanings?

Crazy thing is with new sump I'm building the scrubber would be smaller than now. More like 5x4 which will be closer to new guidelines. Argh.........

Just bought a Foxface and another Tang along with 50 more Hermits and getting ready to buy another 50 Nerites. Maybe my clean up crew is lacking. Trying to remember what I had going in my last 90 gallon. But then is that the scrubber working or them?

[Floyd R Turbo]

I think one of the things that you are facing is the fact that chemistry within a tank can shift over the course of time. This is what a lot of people do not consider. Also, when you take all your rock and stock from one tank to the next tank, and then to the next tank, you change flow patterns, light levels, etc - these can all affect overall tank chemistry.

There are so many factors that we don't generally consider, a lot of these might be insignificant but there might be something in there making a difference.

I would say that if you used the same size CFLs on the 90g screen as the 45g screen (meaning that your 45g screen had 2x the light concentration?) you should be getting the same results.

Were you using one 23W on each side or two? What are you using now?

[sklywag]

One on each side within 3 or 4 inches of screen and with reflectors.

Just did a 5 gallon water change. More so vacuuming out algae as I pulled it off rock and scraped back wall. Been running only 1 T5 coral for the past couple of days to help. The few Nerites I have do an awesome job.

Amazes me that with all the light I have in my sump area and running my ATS for 18 on that my sump is a clear as can be. You'd think there'd be algae there too.

[greenmachine]

Now I am confused! I may have to eat my words! I took the skimmer off line last week and over the course of a few days my water started to get a touch cloudy,nothing bad but the water did loose its "sparkley" look. So I put the skimmer back in the sump 2 days ago and the water looks great again? I do NOT WANT to run a skimmer but I love the look of the water when it's running. I do hate the fact that I am removing all that natural coral food! My system is all soft corals with one LPS (hammer). SO the question is To skim or not to skim?? Like I said before I ran this system for about 5 years with the scrubber ONLY and it always looked great and there was never any algae in the display. Just the last few month I have been getting a little algae in the display and this slight "tinge/cloud" to the water. Maye I need to tweek something on the scrubber? Il try to post some pics of the screen later

[rog2961]

I've been running my scrubber for a solid 2 months now. The most I can get out of it is a couple days of green hair algae, and then it turns into this light brown/gray mush. Once this occurs the algae stops growing. I am cleaning it weekly, I have 2 lights on either side that are pretty much up against the acrylic splash guard. Flow is the drain, which is also supplemented by another pump. I've set everything up according to guidelines and still cannot get the big growth. I have since added a skimmer in addition to the scrubber and have watched my nitrates fall consistently. I will say the algae in my display is non existant, and that my screen is rather large for my bioload.

[greenmachine]

here is my screen 3 days after a lite cleaning

[Floyd R Turbo]

When you have a screen that is oversized per the load (bioload, feeding, etc) then you can encounter an issue with getting GHA to grow because the growth is spread out over too wide of an area.

rog I just checked your posts and I remember you had a brand new tank with 2x 10x10 screens then you went down to 1 10x10 screen. With that big of a screen on a new tank with little to no load, I would not expect much growth. Also if you started with truly "dead" everything, you might not have much diversity of life in the tank, it is my experience that the best scrubbers work on a tank with a lot of different life.

A skimmer can knock out nitrates pretty well if they are not too high and feeding is not too heavy, I've seen that happen. But once you start to get a lot of bioload and feeding it wont keep up, the opposite is the case with the scrubber. The more diversity in the tank, the better the scrubber performs.

[rog2961]

When you have a screen that is oversized per the load (bioload, feeding, etc) then you can encounter an issue with getting GHA to grow because the growth is spread out over too wide of an area.

rog I just checked your posts and I remember you had a brand new tank with 2x 10x10 screens then you went down to 1 10x10 screen. With that big of a screen on a new tank with little to no load, I would not expect much growth. Also if you started with truly "dead" everything, you might not have much diversity of life in the tank, it is my experience that the best scrubbers work on a tank with a lot of different life.

A skimmer can knock out nitrates pretty well if they are not too high and feeding is not too heavy, I've seen that happen. But once you start to get a lot of bioload and feeding it wont keep up, the opposite is the case with the scrubber. The more diversity in the tank, the better the scrubber performs.

Yup, I tried everything you said, but I still do not have great results (i still need to get pics). Thus the reason for the purchase of a skimmer. It does grow, Just not very well. Not anything like the pics the guy above just posted. I do plan on keeping it running for a bit longer as I like how my display has 0 algae. I STILL cannot get the air in the drain to go away and it really is quite loud. I've tried a couple different overflow drains, none of which work well.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Getting a Durso or Stockman type drain to run quite is almost an art form.

[rog2961]

Getting a Durso or Stockman type drain to run quite is almost an art form.

So it sounds like the 5 minutes I spent setting it up wasnt sufficient enough time to tune the sound? How much more can you change? I have a valve on the air line and have adjusted it pretyt much every way and it still doesn't quiet down.