I've heard a few other reports of clearer water too. Since you understand redox better than me, maybe you could elaborate on the process that may be occuring to clear the water, and I can post it around.
I've heard a few other reports of clearer water too. Since you understand redox better than me, maybe you could elaborate on the process that may be occuring to clear the water, and I can post it around.
I'm not 100% sure on why it clears the water, but I know from practice, that introducing an ozonisor into an aquarium and getting the redox level about right, (yes, it can be too high), then it helps break down waste in the water faster, so I presume that it's clearer because it helps bacteria break down the waste more efficiently.
I've rebuilt the pipe today, as the previous version wasn't giving even flow over the whole mesh. I've gone for PVC-C (was told it was MUPVC, but it says PVC-C on the side) and it cuts much more easily than the previous plastic (I think it may have been ABS, however the ABS/PVC cement glue I had wouldn't glue it to itself). The cut is much neater, and I've put a 90 degree bend to connect the pipe to the pump so that the weight of the water/pipe won't cause it to kink:
[attachment=1:2t3m7cgv]TOM_3875.jpg[/attachment:2t3m7cgv]
Also, turning the lights off at night for 8 hours has made a HUGE difference:
[attachment=0:2t3m7cgv]TOM_3873.jpg[/attachment:2t3m7cgv]
You can see the growth is nearly even across the mesh now. There are a few streaks where the water flow was virtually 0 because of the pipe "pinching" in the middle, this has now been fixed and I'm expecting the whole mesh to be brown in 3-4 days. Also, there's a fair bit of hair algae growing nicely on the mesh.
Lastly, I did a quick nitrate test last night, it's currently at 6ppm and I've been overfeeding the two perc clowns for about a week and not done a single water change in over a month (or used any sort of product like seachem prime). It's clearly having a visible affect on the nitrates already, even without large growth on the mesh yet.
Screen looks much better. What was N to start with?
It's now completely covered with brown algae, and there is a fairly significant amount of hair algae growth.
The nitrates before were 10ppm before starting the ATS, so they've been very slowly dropping (however as I said before, I've been doubling the food over the last week or so, and no water changes)
As you can see, the brown/red algae now covers all the holes in the mesh, there is a fair amount of hair algae, and quite a lot of interesting green stringy algae I can't identify.
Best news of all, I'm no longer cleaning the glass in the tank, the glass at the top that makes the brace for the tank was covered in brown and hair algae, is now virtually clean, and for a test I've not cleaned it at all and there was 1-2" long hair algae all over it.
I'm now using my metal halides, and absolutely no brown algae on the sand (with a little help from the new blue cheecked goby).
I've now added a copperbanded butterfly fish (who is being a pain to feed, as is usual with them) and the goby, I've now trippled the food again, putting about 1.5 blocks of frozen food in the tank every day. The nitrates have still not dropped, but they've stuck at around 6ppm since the algae scrubber started and have not risen despite no water changes in 2 months and about 6 times the food being added every day.
Unfortunately the water isn't quite so clear now, thanks to the goby who makes it his mission to find every grain of sand and silt on the bottom and all the liverocks and move it around lol, but saying that, it's not too bad :lol:
Do you guys think it's time for the first harvest to stop any die-off from the algae underneath?
I think we can say that the re-circulating design definitely works, even at the slow pace of a peristaltic pump, going at 6 litres/hour (1.6 US gal/hour).
However, as the water is very slowly fed back, I won't be getting the advantage of the higher oxygen in the water, but it certainly works as a phosphate/nitrate reducer.
I'm going to keep my skimmer turned on for now, but at a low enough volume of air that it doesn't pull anything out, but is enough to effectively aerate the tank.
Well just got my phosphate test kit and did a test...
*drumroll*.... 0ppm
It's the API phophate test kit, and it was the very lightest green on the salt water card (0ppm)
That's a great result, especially as I'm now feeding tonnes into the tank, 1 block of brine shrimp and 1 of mysis plus some live brine (fed with live phyto a an hour before feeding to the fish) and some pellet foods.
However, my nitrates have just started to creep up to 10ppm, but I'm not suprised as I've put a massive amount of food into the tank over the last week to get my copperband to eat (which he now is, loves frozen mysis + live brine!), which includes 3 muscles, which he completely ignored.
I still can't get over the phosphate test, and how low the nitrates are considering there's not been a water change in 2 months and so much food has gone in.
I think I'm actually going to do my first harvest/clean of the screen and see how it goes, there is now quite a lot of hair algae on one side and a fair bit of macro, spaghetti-like, algae on the other.
Sweet!
So you're just pumping out of the sump to the screen and back again?
I'd probably clean the screen now.
Hey what's that comment about turning the lights off makes a huge difference? What lights? What difference?
Hey that's awesome! Yep time for a cleaning. clean just half now, the other half in a week.
It's a re-circulating filter, so I've got a sump that is in our loft/attic, with a 6lph/(1.6gal/h) peristaltic pump that sucks water up into the sump, very slowly, then a 1200lph (317gal/h) pump that pumps water from the sump over the screen and back down into the sump and around again. Then there's an overflow at the other end that overflows the 6lph down back into the tank.Originally Posted by kcress
I had the lights running 24x7 for the first few weeks. I was actually getting almost no growth where the lights shone the brightest on the screen, but was getting growth at the bottom of the screen where there was little light. By giving the algae a break every night by turning the lights off on a timer, the opposite happened, and now there quite a lot of growth where the lights are brightest and less down the bottom where there's less light. Running the lights 24x7 clearly isn't a good environment for algal growth.
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