New scrubber questions, and introduction!

[SantaMonica]

Actually the one you made would be good for him too. Start with four 42 watt bulbs. Otherwise...

Tank Size Guideline:

0.5 actual (not equivalent) fluorescent watts per gallon MINIMUM [0.13 watts per liter].

1.0 actual (not equivalent) fluorescent watts per gallon for HIGH filtering [0.26 watts per liter].

1.0 square inches of screen per gallon, with bulbs on BOTH sides (10 x 10 = 100 square inches = 100 gal) [1.64 square cm per liter]

2.0 square inches of screen per gallon, if vertical but lit on just ONE side. [3.28 square cm per liter]

4.0 square inches of screen per gallon, if HORIZONTAL [6.56 square cm per liter].

1.5 actual (not equivalent) fluorescent watts per gallon if HORIZONTAL [0.4 watts per liter].

18 hours of lights ON, and 6 hours of lights OFF, each day.

Flow is 24 hours, and is at least 35 gph per inch of width of screen, EVEN IF one sided [60 lph per cm].

Very rough screen made of roughed-up-like-a-cactus plastic canvas.

Clean algae off of screen every SEVEN (7) days NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK.



Feeding Guidline:

Each cube of frozen food you feed per day needs 12 square inches of screen, with a light on both sides totaling 12 watts. Thus a nano that is fed one cube a day would need a screen 3 X 4 inches with a 6 watt bulb on each side. A larger tank that is fed 10 cubes a day would need a screen 10 X 12 inches with 60 watts of light on each side. If you feed flake, feeder fish, or anything else, you will need to blend it up super thick, strain out the excess water, pour it into a cube, and see how many cubes it is.

[Wavecookies]

update of growth on the second new screen

Pic taken today 2/4/11





I feed 2 cubes of rods food daily. I'm going to start dosing phyto once I move into my new place (wish me luck, i'm moving from a second floor apt. to another second floor apt....)

Also, I did a little experiment and want to know if I could periodically continue to do this without harming the corals. I figured in the wild that there is not sunshine 24/7 and decided to turn out all of my DT lights for a day. Much to my delight, the next day when I turned on the lights and started to blow the thisck algae around in the DT with a turkey baster, a lot of it willingly detached from the rocks. I contribute this to turning of the lights for 24 hrs and weakening it some while at the same time had the scrubber lights going as usual. I just blew it off the rocks and let it settle in places in the back where it doesnt get much of any light.

is it a good idea to practice this on a weekly basis to get rid of nuciance algae in the DT? how may days is it ok to turn out the DT lights without having any adverse affects on the corals?

I'm going to be taking Before and After current pictures of the scrubber at work on the DT. Ive been posting a lot of scrubber pics, but dont many of the DT. Pics to come of the DT soon

[SantaMonica]

It is not a good idea. When you kill the display algae, the nutrients go into the water; higher nutrients cause the scrubber to grow darker and with less green hair. Thus, your scrubber's filtering power drops.

If you want to remove display algae, pull it out of the tank.

[Wavecookies]

ok thanks. Ive been just pulling until i realized this little trick. Diddnt realize it would hinder the progress of the scrubber. I'll quit doing it now!

Thanks

[Wavecookies]

Finally moved the tank and everything is settled.

It has been a week after the move, and ive had quite a bit of die-off in the tank. A lot of coraline has died, and the scrubber had a bit of a rough new break-in period.

Water was tested yesterday @ LFS -

N03 - Zero ....YAY!

N04 - 0.30... BOO-OO!


Not too bad considering the 3 day ordeal to move the tank from one second story apartment to another second story apartment. Had 2 of my acro's die in the move, other than that everybody is doing great an accounted for!

New aquascape. Pic taken today.





btw...for those of you wondering why my back wall is bare, it used to be covered in beautiful coraline before the move. I knew it would die in the proces of moving the tank, and I couldnt stand the thought of staring at a white back wall, so I scraped it clean before it died to give it a chance of survival in the water column I hate the white overflow right now :P, and a lot of the die-off I had on the rocks ( my fault and totally preventable, it was just a very hectic move...)

[Wavecookies]

sorry about the crappy picture, it was taken with my camera phone. I'll get more pics of the tank and scrubber later today with my cam

[Wavecookies]

[Wavecookies]

updates of algae harvest today. its about double the size i harvested last week.

i have an insane amount of diatoms everywhere in my tank though, sand, rocks, some corals.... anything i can improve as far as the scrubber goes in order to combat this?

im sure it has to do with my old MH bulbs and the shift in spectrum.

I'm going the LED route soon ( 2 to 3 weeks max), just waiting to put the rest of the money together

[SantaMonica]

Spectrum shift won't matter once nutrients come down. Diatoms and anything else will go away, as long as your growth increases on the screen.

[Wavecookies]

anything else you think I could upgrade on my screen to make it better? this diatom bloom is really ugly all corals are doing well though. only the frogspawn is a little unhappy, and my undata as well.