Iron can't be limiting in one place and not in another. It's just a simple case of the scrubber being too weak.
If you want to post complete pics of your tank and scrubber we can look at it again.
Iron can't be limiting in one place and not in another. It's just a simple case of the scrubber being too weak.
If you want to post complete pics of your tank and scrubber we can look at it again.
Sometimes you are REALLY frustrating.....
As I said at the beginning, I have lots of bubble algae growth, and slower macro/hair algae growth, AND I have read a couple places that bubble algae seems less iron limited then other types of algae. Since my algae scrubber is SERIOUSLY overpowered for the amount I feed (not even including my sump macro algae, which alone ahould be more then plenty) and yet the type of algae in my scrubber cant out compete the type of algae I am having issues with in my display, that leads me to believe that the bubble algae in my display has some hidden advantage.
Perhaps bubble algae needs less iron then scrubber hair algae, or perhaps less potassium, or perhaps the sight of my face in the mornings when the lights comes on scares it into reproducing, I dont know for sure. However, I do know that iron can be a limiting factor in scrubber growth and macro algae growth, and that I have removed a whole lot of scrubber algae and macro algae, that probably contained a lot of iron, and have never added any back in, except the small amount I feed.
I literally never add iron to any of my tanks with scrubbers, and each tank produces varying amounts of algae. I'm not completely sure that iron limitation is your issue.
If you have macros in the sump that are surviving, your scrubber is weak, no matter if it has 1 million watts.
But macroalgae and single cell algae can assimilate organic substances, can't they? So even if the inorganics test low, it may be that the N & P is bound organically, and this would then be scavenged by the bubble algae perhaps.
I am not sure that Iron is the limitation, I just wanted to try it and see if it helped, but I wanted an idea of what other people here had done with it first. Now I know that you have success without any iron addition, and I assume no water changes in some of those tanks, its probably not my limiting factor.
That is pretty much your only answer to everything, and while I will say that nothing as complex as a reef system is ever that simple, I am not going to get into a long drawn out argument with you about my scrubber, that has been fruitless for both of us in past. My current scrubber is one of Floyds early L2 models, that had been modified to have 12 deep red LEDs, 4 royal blues, runs 16 hours a day and flows ~600GPH, I check it every couple days and usually clean it weekly. Now, if you want to argue with Floyd that my scrubber is not capable of handling 1 cube a day of food, that is up to you two, but I imagine that he would disagree with your estimation that it is underpowered.
Floyds scrubber is great, I have nothing but good things to say about it even though mine is an older model. I am sure his newer ones work even better.
My issue is that my macro sump growth, and my GHA scrubber growth are slowing down recently, while my bubble algae is plodding along at the same speed as ever. It doesnt grow fast, but it just keeps growing steadily. In the last 6 months I have completely torn apart the entire DT twice to manually remove all the bubble algae I can, and even then it just keeps coming, slowly but surely.
I also get a small amount of short (1") tough hair algae, its green, but clearly not the normal GHA, it never grows very tall. It doesnt really bother me, but it is the only algae tbt grows in the DT besides the bubble algae.
This alone will cause tremendous amounts of nutrients to be added to the water, because you kill the periphyton on the rock, and the sponges etc in the rocks, which then decay slowly over the following month. You should never move rocks, flow, or light.I have completely torn apart the entire DT
I would differ with you on 'tremendous amounts of nutrients'. I would say that it would cause a partial cycle and would require a period of re-adjustment.
Joel's choice is between 2 evils: leave the DT alone with bubble algae decimating everything, or get rid of it and partially re-boot the tank. I've done the latter on several occasions to tanks in poor condition.
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