Here's a customer's HOG3 or 3x or 3xx in saltwater. The Green Grabber® strings are shown touching (and rubbing) the glass, and when bubbles are rapid this has the effect of cleaning growth off of the glass so that more light gets through.
Here's a customer's HOG3 or 3x or 3xx in saltwater. The Green Grabber® strings are shown touching (and rubbing) the glass, and when bubbles are rapid this has the effect of cleaning growth off of the glass so that more light gets through.
This is a HOG1x (you can tell by the black LED heat sink at the bottom of the left side) in saltwater. It shows a few interesting things:
1. The growth is hand-harvestable (in saltwater) once you pull the inside part out of the water. For freshwater, you always need to brush it out with a toothbrush because freshwater growth is much thinner and more slimy.
2. The growth is concentrated in the middle, where the red light is strongest.
3. The growth is pushed up against the glass, preventing growth on the glass itself.
4. The top 2 cm of the inside (wet) part is above the waterline; this recirculates water inside the unit which makes nutrients lower inside the unit than outside, and is great for high nutrient water. Also it runs more quiet because no air bubbles are rising up, and it keeps almost all salt spray inside.
This customer's HOG3 or 3x or 3xx in saltwater shows a combination of slime and green hair. The Green Grabber® strings have most of growth, and should be cleaned by scraping the strings with your fingers. The Green Grabber rock textures can be brushed in a sink, but don't brush the strings because your brush will get stuck in them.
For freshwater, the HOG models without strings are best because freshwater only grows super slimey Spirogyro species, and must always be brushed in your sink because it's not thick enough to pull out by hand. So by not having strings, you don't have worry about your brush getting stuck in strings...
Here is a customer's old SURF2x in saltwater. This old model has the old light-frame which did not block the red light from getting out like the current models do. Light is the same though, pure red 660nm deep red, just like natural seaweed uses at the beach and reefs.
Some people ask why the inside of the SURF is white, which you can see with the algae pulled out in the second photo. The reason is because white reflects the red light back to the algae at the farthest point away from the light, which is where the light would be weakest. As opposed to a waterfall, where light travels mostly through air, the growth in a bubble upflow scrubber has to go through algae most of the way. So reflecting it back to the algae keeps it brighter, using the same wattage light.
The growth in this photo is almost all Cladphora. Add some vinegar and olive oil, and it's a great salad.
OK, this is more thick green growth then most people will get, but this customer's HOG3 or 3x or 3xx in saltwater is still fun to look at. This is mostly Ulva Fasciata, which looks like Easter basket filler; you can tell it's not Ulva Lactuca because there are no big "leaves", just thin strands...
This is a customer's SURF4 or 4x (or possibly half of a SURF8 or 8x) in saltwater. SURF models are best used only for saltwater, because of the strings which fill in the middle section for growth. Some SURF models never grows this green, or this thick, and sometimes grow black slime, but that's what the chemistry causes in those tanks (and, black slime does the best filtering of all algae types!).
For freshwater, it is better to not have strings; strings grow great in freshwater but are harder to brush the growth off of with a brush. So, our no-strings models like the smaller HOG and DROP models are great for that.
Nevertheless, here is a packed SURF model waiting for you to reach in a grab...
This customer's HOG.5 show a rare pattern of growth only in the middle. The growth is Ulva Fasciata and is common in saltwater; it looks just like Easter basket grass and is probably the favorite food of tangs.
This scrubber would be too small to do enough filtering for a typical tank with tangs, but if the only purpose is to feed the tangs, then it would supply a good bit of food a few times a week, by opening the case and letting the tangs pull the growth off.
This customer also made larger holes in the case, but this is not required unless you want the growth to flow out and feed the fish automatically. Matter of fact, the fish will learn to pull the growth out of the holes themselves, and will thus auto-trim the growth, so that no cleaning or harvesting is ever needed by you.
This same auto-feeding process happens in freshwater, although the growth is the thinner Cladophora (angel hair) or Spirogyra growth which goldfish, guppies, and of course herbivores love.
Last edited by SantaMonica; 05-29-2018 at 11:58 AM.
This is a customer's SURF2 or 2x or 2xx that has been running for quite a while in saltwater. In this photo, the water has been drained out (unlike most floating scrubber photos) so the growth has settled on the bottom, and has mixed with some darker slime where the light is very low (lower light, with higher nutrients, makes dark slime). Also some brown slime is around the edge of the lid light, which is also a low-light area. The Green Grabber rocky surfaces hold on to the slime well.
The strings can barely be seen, but are on the right side:
This customer in the UK has growth that almost looks like green candy in this SURF2 or 2x or 2xx. This scrubber is probably only a few weeks old, because the white Green Grabber rock walls have no growth on them yet. But they will.
This type of Surf growth is very rare, but the beauty of scrubbers is that they grow what they need to grow based on conditions. This one will probably start getting some brown slime on the Green Grabber rock walls, and then on the bottom underneath the green. If more food is given to the tank, the bright green will darken up to consume more of the nutrients (darker growth has more nutrients).
Also very neat with Surf models with this growth, is that you can just reach in and get a handful. Then just set the light back on it, and you are done. Of course if you are getting dark slime because of very high nutrients in the water, you'll still need to take it to your sink for a brushing.
Another photo of two SURF2 or 2x or 2xx scrubbers from the UK customer above. Here you can see the white edges of the Green Grabber rock surfaces are much more covered in growth, which is the normal process because algae eventually covers all rough surfaces that have the proper light and air/water interface turbulence.
Of more importance here, is the fact that there are two scrubbers instead of one. Two smaller scrubbers is always preferred over one larger one, because scrubbers actually remove nutrients from the water, but do so mostly when they are growing thick hair or thick slime algae. When you clean a scrubber all the way down to the white reflective surfaces, you don't have any more thick growth for a few days, and you will see the difference in how long your display glass stays clean and other ways. So by having a second scrubber that you clean on alternating schedules (one every 5 days, for example), you always have the other one growing thick and filtering.
Other aquarium filters, however, such as protein skimmers, filter socks, etc, don't remove any nutrients at all, and thus it doesn't matter if you only have one of them because cleaning it won't change anything.
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