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Thread: Moving Bed & Algae Scrubber combo filter

  1. #41
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    Those turtles don't eat algae?

  2. #42

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    Several of my fish species eat it, some enthusiastically. The snails love it. Unfortunately, the turtles don't like it. I think I'll try it with them again, though.

  3. #43

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    Monthly update Mar08/16

    1. pH: 7.0
    2. Ammonia (NH3): 8.0+
    3. Nitrite (NO2): 1.0+
    4. Nitrate (NO3): 40+
    5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0

    Needless to say, this got my attention! I had noticed that the MBBR had a noxious odor for about a month or so, but I didn't realize it was most likely coming from dead/dying bacteria in the media. Fortunately, this happened in the turtle tank so it didn't cause any harm. Turtles live in the water, but don't breathe in the water. Had this occurred in the MBBR attached to the fish tank, I would have lost all the fish in the tank.

    I have two suspects about what happened. First, overheating of the MBBR; and, second, insufficient turnover/churning of the Hel-x media. The LEDs in the algae scrubber generate a fair amount of heat. To vent it, I had been propping up the Roughneck lid with a piece of wood. I've increased the venting by drilling several large holes in the lid.

    Click image for larger version

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    To get better overturning/churning of the Hel-x, I removed about 1/3 of it and washed the rest. I also changed the water intake flow valve to increase the flow rate. So the media seems to be overturning much better now. The foul odor is gone too. Assuming there is still live bacteria in the media, I expect it will take a couple weeks or so for the water params to fall back to normal again. Hopefully.

    BTW, some time ago I managed to break off a flow control air valve in the air intake into the inflowing water tube. This caused a bit of a mess, but fortunately I was able to plug the hole and drain the MBBR without getting too much water on the floor. This experience prompted me to redo the air such that the air lines to into the MBBR over the top of the rim, not into the input water tube. You can see the airlines in the second photo above. No more holes in the tubing for airlines!

  4. #44

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    Apr01/16

    1. pH: 7.0
    2. Ammonia (NH3): 0.5
    3. Nitrite (NO2): 2.0
    4. Nitrate (NO3): 40.0+
    5. Phosphate (PO4): 0.0

    This is taking far longer than I expected to start cycling again. It still has a ways to go. There are lots of Hel-x media with little or no apparent bacterial colonization, so my guess is that something killed the bacteria. But I have no idea what. I will probably have to purchase some live bacteria to inoculate the Hel-x again.

    The ammonia is down only because I added a reactor loaded with Ammo-Carb. It's about expended and I'm going to replace it with Zeolite. Note that nitrite is up, which I interpret to mean there is some bacteria in the media converting ammonia to nitrite, but none or very little bacteria converting nitrite to nitrate. I am testing pH in this tank daily and keeping it up mostly with powdered dolomite and cuttlebone. If I fail to do so, pH will crash within a couple days down to about 6.0. If pH drops below 6.6 I add a couple of 1/4 teaspoons of baking soda to boost it quickly. All this is for the benefit of the bacteria (whatever there is of it still alive) and the algae scrubber.

  5. #45
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    What is bringing the pH down?

  6. #46

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    Quote Originally Posted by SantaMonica View Post
    What is bringing the pH down?
    My guess is a combination of ammonia and nitrate. Ammonia peaked 'off the chart' with my API Ammonia Test kit. At that level and pretty much any/everything above 1ppm I had to bump up the pH daily. Now it's every couple of days. Before the ammonia spiked I still had to bump up the pH every few days or so. The only reasons I can come up with are ammonia and nitrate. I think 'old tank syndrome' is just another name for nitrates.

  7. #47

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    Apr03

    I bought some Seachem Stability today so I can try to re-inoculate the bacteria. I now wonder whether the lights from the algae scrubber killed the bacteria? Any ideas about that? I am going to add some opaque baffling to prevent light going down into the lower part of the filter container. I can't think of anything else at this point unless some gremlin dumped a bottle of bleach into the tank when my back was turned.

  8. #48
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    Light won't affect bacteria directly.

  9. #49

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    Apr23

    It looks like the cycle has restarted successfully. Ammonia went to 0.0 about 10 days ago and I took the AmmoCarb reactor offline. Ammonia is still 0.0, so I presume the biofiltration is working.

    As for why the crash occurred. pH in this tank consistently falls for some reason, maybe because of the bioload imposed by the turtles. I now suspect that pH fell to 6.0 or below and the bacteria in the MBBR either died or just stopped metabolizing. For the past several weeks I have tested pH either daily or every couple of days and added baking soda, ground dolomite and/or ground cuttlebone to keep the pH at 7.0 or above. So far I've added nearly half a bottle of Seachem Stability over the past couple of weeks to recolonize the Hel-x media. With the pH remaining above 7.0 the bacteria appear to be functioning again. Also, algae in the scrubber is growing much more vigorously!

    I guess the lesson here is keep pH at 7.0 or above! So I'm doing that in all my other tanks as well, although none of them have the drop in pH of this tank.

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