Moes scrubber

[SantaMonica]

Looks nice. Can you lower the level of the bottom water any?

[Moe]

Not sure how to be honest. It sort of just pools and doesn't raise or lower. The flow through the pipe exiting is pretty good. Still need to do a splash shield & a comp fan for ventialtion.
I'm also going to point a couple of fans at the bulbs. Ive seen that you can get better bulb life, better PAR and better brightness using this technique (with T5's) so I assume that its the same for CFL's.

[Moe]

Ok so i'll post my test results.

temp 26 C, 1.025, cal 420, mg unknown, alk 11, pH 8.8 (highest i've ever recorded), NO3 0 (attribute this to the clam, also explains Xenia dieing),

phosphate 2.0 and this is making my (very few) acro frags look worse for wear, I assume.

Good news, I tested last month and it was 3ppm which means the decreased feedings have done something, and the scrubber must've had some input - it didn't grow nearly enough though.

Starting to get better growth on the scrubber. I'll post a photo after this week to show everyone how its going.

By the way I have a pink clove coral. Is that a Xenia or something else?

[SantaMonica]

With phosphate that high, you are going to have brown/black growth, so you'll want to clean every 3 to 4 days.

[Moe]

yeah it looks like really brown/black, squared inch clumps at the moment. Do I clean it when its covered the whole thing or do I clean every 3-4 days regardless?

[SantaMonica]

Regardless. Get it all off of the screen.

[Moe]

ok so this was... yesterday me thinks



this is today before



after



is this a good enough clean?

by the way, thank you very much santa monica you've been a massive help so far.

Hmm. I wouldn't mind adding to the before and after collection... my tank isn't so dramatic though. Theres no massive outbreaks of hair algae like some people have. Ive got some small amounts Cyano growing on stuff though. I might take a photo of that. And maybe some coraline growth as it progresses.

[SantaMonica]

Looks like a decent first week of growth. You can get a lot more if you get some bigger reflectors; 50% of the light is being lost to the sides, so make that the next thing you work on if you are going to do any further improvements. Overall though it looks good.

[Moe]

Well I just cleaned my 3rd screen. My phosphates are still at around 2.0 whats going on? they may have dropped to like 1.8 but I cant really tell. Def not much happening.

[SantaMonica]

I need to see some growth pic right before you clean. The growth pic you posted earlier is not going to filter anything. Do a basic review:

0.5 actual (not equivalent) fluorescent watts per gallon MINIMUM.
1.0 actual (not equivalent) fluorescent watts per gallon for HIGH filtering.
1.0 square inches of screen per gallon, with bulbs on BOTH sides. (10 x 10 = 100 square inches = 100 gal)
2.0 square inches of screen per gallon, if ONE sided.
18 hours of lights ON, and 6 hours of lights OFF, each day.
Flow is 24 hours, and is 35 gph per inch of width of screen, EVEN IF one sided.
Very rough screen made of roughed-up-like-a-cactus plastic canvas.