Announcing: SCRUB-A-CUBE

[rissas dad]

Okay I've taken the plunge! Been reading about scrubbers for a couple years, even back to my old fish-only tank. I have a SURF8 on the way, and want to post my experiences with it as it goes online and hopefully, eventually, enables me to stop using expensive (ie always replensishing) forms of nutrient removal. I plan to keep doing bi-weekly water changes and detritus removal as well as skimming. I want to replace GFO use with dripping lanthanum chloride. Chemi-pure, nitrate sponge, porous media, chaeto, bio-pellets, vodka dosing (all of which I am doing now) hopefully will be no more. I am trying to do a reef as well as big fish, the primary one being a 14" vlamingi tang i've had for five years from my old FO tank. I just cant part with her, she has a great personality and lets me pet her as well as being showtime-beautiful. That being said, her along with my 9" blochii tang (had two years) I kind of have a nutrient problem as you could imagine. I can keep some corals ok but the majority are beyond my system. Thats okay, but the corals I do have dont really grow very much, and think that is due to phosphates. I would like to keep more types of corals as well as have them thrive and grow.

The tank has been running since Feb 2013.
Seems like a good time to talk numbers,
This is an average the majority of the time.

phophates .26 to .4
nitrates 20-40
salinity 1.023
ph 8.0
calcium 450
alk 9.6
temp 78-80

I use Hanna digital whenever possible. The others are Salifert.

THE TANK & SYSTEM

60"x60"x28" tall cube 1.0" acrylic, center overflow, four sided viewing, in its own dedicated tank room
approx 60gal sump, approx 40gal standalone tub refugium
2x 7" x 14" mesh filter socks (replace with clean ones every other day)
1 Eshopps skimmer 8"dia x 22" tall
1 reef oct skimmer 6"dia x 22" tall
Avast media reactor (GFO) high quality IMO!
large inverted cone reactor w/biopellets
DIY trickle filters sitting on eggcrate mesh in refugium (1 w/nitrate sponge, 1 w/seachem matrix, 1 w/3 bags of chemipure, 1 w/GFO)
UV sterilizer
chaeto in fuge
additional 1L bucket of seachem matrix in fuge
Maxspect GYRE for flow in tank (recommended!)
4x return pumps (in sump) various rates total approx 7500gal/hr
I dose 20ml of vodka daily, dose BRS calcium and alk weekly


The SantaMonica SURF8 is in transit. I will be floating it temporarily in the display tank as it begins to grow out. I am doing this as it will eventually go in my fuge where my trickle filters are now. I dont want to remove any current filtration until the ATS is successfully growing algae as I dont want to have my numbers go up before the scrubber can do its job. I hope to do this thread in order to help others in deciding if an ATS if for them, or not. I believe it will work as I not only read things here and other forums, but also talked to some who have them and use them on customer tanks. I have also read all the negative opinions about them. I intend to find out for myself, and believe me, if this will help my tank it should help yours too. Please post your questions and especially your experiences with your systems. Thanks for looking all!

Rick
Concord NC

[SantaMonica]

Welcome.

Let's keep that girl happy!

[rissas dad]

Quick update:

Have to hand it to you SA, so far things have gone as predicted. Growth started out very slow. Took nearly a week before the SURF8 even had any color on the surfaces inside. Then 10-14 days later some dark greenish growth started to appear, more days the growth thickened and started to look "hairy". Two weeks ago (27th) I harvested for the first time. Not much but perhaps 20% fill of the two areas inside the SURF. Nice thick green algae, little dark though. Didnt check again until the Jan 3rd, harvested again, about the same amount but some was the nice bright green this time. Currently have the SURF8 down in my refugium having removed my pain-in-the-ass DIY trickle filters, running 18hrs a day, and on the nice big Hilea air pump which is nearly silent by the way. The last couple weeks have noticed some of my rocks turning brownish. You have explained this as growout due to phos leaching out as they are pulled out of the water column. Can confirm this as my phophates have been as low as undetectable recently, which has never happened to me before. I will say that I am helping the ATS with GFO currently though, and will continue to do so until I get full growth. Nitrates are still the same. If I may go back to the rock algae growth, I have all "RealReef" rock and only have brown growth on areas which have thinned areas of purple coating. I think this is due to lighting and fading, not sure as I havent gotten much support from them on why this happened in my tank. Some areas held up fine and most have been covered with normal coraline growth but some has faded to almost white, and its those areas alone that have seen the brown algae growth along with the phosphate drop.

Anyway, thanks SA. your product so far is working great as advertised. Think I'm going to harvest every 10-14 days instead of weekly, at least until the areas fill in more.

[SantaMonica]

Great to hear.

The reason for the brown on the fading-coralline areas is because coralline has a natural defense against algae. This is good because once covered in pink, that is what helps keep cyano away.