My 70 Gallon Scrubbed Tank

[srusso]

The tank is 3 months old,
Corals
frogspawn, sea fan, leather, green star polyps, valentine polyps, green polyps, Orange Ricordea
Fish
Yellow Tail Damsel, Ocellaris Clown, Coral Beauty, Lawnmower Blenny, Mandarin, Sixline
Clean up
Flame Shrimp, Nassarius snails, Turbo Astrea snails, and a blue leg hermit.

As you can see no skimmer, no GFO filter, no canister filter, and no bio balls... Just an algae turf scrubber...

[attachment=2:1s0lpyqh]457cd6d1-879a-f5b6.jpg[/attachment:1s0lpyqh]

My sump is a 20 gallon long with three baffles. On the left side just a mag3 return pump, on the right a "U" shaped acrylic shelf I found being thrown away at my job, turned it tall ways and filled it with live rock. The ATS drops between the shelf and traps the bubbles.The lighting for it are two shop lights with 27k 100w CFL bulbs. Rapped in clear folder sleeves.

[attachment=1:1s0lpyqh]457cd6d1-8d4d-0560.jpg[/attachment:1s0lpyqh]
(this pic was taken just before scrubber needed cleaning...)

Here is a pic of the tank

[attachment=0:1s0lpyqh]457cd6d1-8fe8-5364.jpg[/attachment:1s0lpyqh]

Thank you for starting this forum! Feel like it was a great way to start my first SW tank.

[SantaMonica]

Sounds like you are having a great start. If you can increase the lighting, you'll get greener growth quicker; otherwise you can just wait more weeks. Your growth is still pretty dark, so you'll want to be cleaning more often.

[srusso]

Sounds like you are having a great start. If you can increase the lighting, you'll get greener growth quicker; otherwise you can just wait more weeks. Your growth is still pretty dark, so you'll want to be cleaning more often.

Increase? Wow I though you would say I have too much lighting! I may setup a PCF when I can. I will post a new pic of the growth this week... that pic was a bit old. Thanks for the info Santa!!!

[srusso]

Here is a current picture of the growth after 6 days

[SantaMonica]

Can you move the bulbs closer? I don't think you need the covers over the bulbs.

[srusso]

Can you move the bulbs closer? I don't think you need the covers over the bulbs.

I can, I will try this first. I though b/c I used 100watt CFL bulbs that they should be a bit farther from the screen... they are about 6" from the screen. Could it be that my flow is not strong enough? Or will that 2" make all the difference?

[SantaMonica]

They are not 100 watts, they are about 18 watts, which is weak. 6 inches is way to far for 18 watts.

[srusso]

They are not 100 watts, they are about 18 watts, which is weak. 6 inches is way to far for 18 watts.

Do they make higher wattage CFL's? Moving the bulbs closer is not going to be every easy but I will do what have too... I thought it was too much light this whole time because the center of my screen was starting to yellow by day 7... Thanks for all the help SantaMonica!!!

[SantaMonica]

What is N and P? Any nuisance algae? If there is no problem, then you are fine the way it is.

Yellow usually means it needs more flow, relative to the amount of light it has. More flow fixes it.

When the light is too close, you just get a bald spot like this:

[srusso]

What is N and P? Any nuisance algae? If there is no problem, then you are fine the way it is.

Yellow usually means it needs more flow, relative to the amount of light it has. More flow fixes it.

When the light is too close, you just get a bald spot like this:

No algae in the tank



Here is a shot of the scrubber, just before cleaning right now.