Hello,
I've built a big scrubber as you can see in the pictures. The scrubber is doing it's job, N03 (Nitrates) undetectable with standard Salifert tester. Only 0.0 to 0.1 ammonia. Scrubber has been going for 4 months now. P04 (phosphate) is 0.0 undetectable with Salifert tester. I'm running 6 lights, four of them 2700K CFL's the two middle ones are 6500K cfl grow lamps. I am still running the lights 24/7
Although the scrubber is working, I am concerned about two problems. My Toadstool and Pulsating Xenias which were huge before I built the scrubber are shrinking to nothing. My red mushrooms are small all the time now but before were also huge. Now my plate coral is not opening. My torch is dying and hammer is shrinking also. Although my regular Xenia and Candy Cane are doing ok still. My water params are ok but Mg and Ca is a bit high but everything checks out ok.
PH 8.1 Mg 1500 dKH 8.0 Ca 485 N03 0.0 Amm 0.1 P04 0.0 Temp 79.0 F. S.G. 1.025
All perfect numbers.
I know that some corals do ok with little Phosphate, but others need more. Could it be from running the lights 24/7 be stripping too much Phosphate from my system? And in turn killing my corals? And also, I am getting too much Slime Stringy Brown algae in the scrubber. No hair algae in my 125 gallon System at all. I have two screens which I clean by alternating the cleaning of one screen every week. I do have some green in scrubber but the Brown is out of control.
Any thoughts or advice would be appreciated. Should I get timers for the scrubber lights and alternate? and should I feed the system more to get better Green algae? Thanks. Pictures of scrubber attached.