FW to SW ats

[allnatural]

hello santa monica,
i have a question about my diy ats. im a big fan of yours and have enjoyed reading all the info you have put out there on ats. im starting my reef tank after 6 months of research and have made my own sump/refugium, lights, water filter, rocks, and ats.
after making my rocks using garfs directions i have them soaking in a freshwater tub in my back yard. they should soak for 6 weeks or more. i got to thinking that i could kill two birds with one stone and put my pump in the rock tub and hooked up my ats. knowing the sun will start my algea growth on my ats screen. seems like a great idea to me but, heres my question, will the algea that grows using this fresh water survive once i hook my ats up to my reef tank? also i was wondering if i could use some aquatic fw plant fertilizer in my rock soaking fw tub to promote my algea growth? thank you and i look forward to hearing your view on this as i have high reguards for your input.
thank you,
michael strauch
(allnatural)
denver, colorado.

[SantaMonica]

Usually you can use a scrubber while cycling live rock, because the things that are dying in the rock will make ammonia, nitrate and phosphate, which let the scrubber grow. But if you made your rock yourself from scratch, I don't know if there will be any ammonia or nitrite/nitrate to feed the scrubber, since there is no life that is dying in the rock. But then again, the only reason you put a scrubber on cycling rock is to keep the ammonia low, which keeps more of the live things from dying. Since your home made rock has no live things, I don't see a reason to run a scrubber on it until it's in your tank.

Thus is does not matter if the FW growth would survive. Although I don't think it would. And it would not matter anyway, since new SW growth would fill the screen in just a few days.

[allnatural]

i see. that makes sense. that was why i wondered about som fertilizer or the like. so what your saying is that its best for me to wait and hook up my ats to my reef tank while im running my cycle? and that once my cycle is complete and i add my cleen up crew my ats should be in full swing and operational?

[SantaMonica]

yes

[allnatural]

it makes so much sense to use this filter. i cant wait to show off my tank to the naysayers. what are your thoughts about a refugium? i had planned on one with a deep sand bed to house critter populations and the denytrifying process. i guess that wont matter with an ats.

[SantaMonica]

A scrubber will give you millions of baby white pods (dust specks). But if you want grown copepods, or any amphipods, or mini stars, etc, then you'll need a place for them to grow. That would be the reason for a fuge. However you don't want any macro's in the fuge because they will be starved out by the scrubber. Just use rock rubble, or some floating poly filters, which are good because they don't trap waste.

[allnatural]

rr instead of dsb?

[SantaMonica]

Rock rubble grows larger pods than a dsb, or a ssb. For de-nitrification, you can have a dsb as a backup. I like rock better because it does not build up waste in it.

[allnatural]

ive been having a really hard time sticking to the plan i layed out. not so much a bad thing but what youve told me leads me to another idea that i had about incorporating another 30 gal tank intoo my system as like a different part of the reef as a display tank. mybe i could use the 30 gal for a dsb with some see horses in it....?

[allnatural]

the only problem there is that my screen was designed for my 50 gal tank. what if i added some sea gras in the sea horse tank. 50 gal with 20 gal sump w/ ats hooked up to a 30 gal sh dt with a dsb with sea grass.