Algae scrubber

imcosmokramer · #1 04-26-2011, 09:14 PM

has anyone here used one long-term?

Money pit · #2 04-26-2011, 10:40 PM

Bill, apparently at least from what I've read, as long as you remove the screen from the tank when you clean it, and clean every 7 days, the tank wont get green. Were you doing this and still getting green water? Mind you with a mixed reef, I'd be running carbon anyways.

GMGQ, yes I've looked at bioballs, at the moment I'm using prodibio, its working OK with 15% water changes. About as well as my old tank with 50% water changes as far as keeping NO3 down. If I got my calculator out I believe 50% water changes were cheaper. Being a more natural remedy along with the low cost is what catches my interest in the algae scrubbers. Provided of course they work.
My NO3 test kit kind of sucks, since the color of the dye is purple and the color chart is pink its difficult to tell what the reading is, but judging by the density of the color it looks like under 5 ppm NO3 using prodibio, so its working, but at $60 every 3 weeks it seems a bit expensive. My tank is a 40g with 30g sump, so I need to use as much as a 250g tank. If I went with Bio balls, I would have to by a reactor, as the only one I have now is running carbon. Or do the bio balls also polish the water?

GMGQ · #3 04-26-2011, 10:42 PM

No "bioballs," Bio-pellets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjnFvIzGzxE

Quote:

Originally Posted by Money pit

GMGQ, yes I've looked at bioballs, at the moment I'm using prodibio, its working OK with 15% water changes. About as well as my old tank with 50% water changes as far as keeping NO3 down. If I got my calculator out I believe 50% water changes were cheaper. Being a more natural remedy along with the low cost is what catches my interest in the algae scrubbers. Provided of course they work.

Money pit · #4 04-26-2011, 10:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GMGQ

No "bioballs," Bio-pellets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjnFvIzGzxE

OOPS ya thats what I meant sorry, what I was thinking and writing were 2 different things

Money pit · #5 04-27-2011, 01:47 AM

Bill what made you shut down your scrubber? Was it the green water, or because you couldn't get NO3 below5-10 ppm? Or was it just too much work?
Also did you see a large pod increase while it was in use?

plutoniumJoe · #6 04-27-2011, 02:16 AM

I ran ats for about 8 months last year on my 75gallon. I liked and it kept my nutrients down even with heavy feeding and heavy bio-load. When I switched to my 200g I always intended to include another ats but the real estate below ended up getting too crowded (poor planning).

I never had green or yellow water, always scrapped 50% a week. It also helped keep my tank cooler in the summer.

Doug · #7 04-27-2011, 02:21 AM

Scrubber technology has been around awhile. I will try find some more of my threads. I once posted several links to some great ones on RC. Of course thats old school and we did it all wrong, according to a certain person .

.

http://96.31.86.198/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=7739

Bblinks · #8 04-27-2011, 05:33 AM

Hey guys. Jeff from Jl Aquatics made one for his 29 gallon biocube. He showed me some pictures and it does look very interesting. The way he did it looked super clean, he used a 5 gallon tank with 2 x 9w coralife mini fixture on either side of the tank. Mesh screen with a 1 inch PVC running across the top. He said it was extremely effective against diatom algae and his fish seems to be a lot happier. If anyone have any questions, he will be the guy to ask. IMO if you are running a smaller system then it might be worth your time to look into it but for larger systems like mine 200-500 gallon tank, I don't think it's worth the realestate and effort to set up some thing significant. I run biopellets on my system, although I still run rowaphos to zero out the left over phosphate I still think it is the easiest system to run on a large reef tank that has problems with phosphate or nitrate, Just my 2 pennies.

Bill · #9 04-26-2011, 10:52 PM

Money pit, yes I removed the screen when cleaning and still got the green cloudy water. It was a great experiment but I agree with GMGO, I started a sulfur denitrator and now have zero P&N. I heard good things about using BioPellets also. They both work by providing a food source and a surface area for the denitrifying bacteria that remove phosphate and nitrate.