Algae Scrubber Disaster

[KevinK]

Originally Posted by Titus99

Might be waiting a while still with red light. 6500k would be optimal

we have to se how mine wil develope, as on reefsanctuary, thy talk about soly the red to be best

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/...er-basics.html

[Proteus]

Maybe so. Red though simulates fall sun. Where blue so to speak is spring summer

[intarsiabox]

I could see detritus being build up in the algae and screen and when disturbed to clean it it could be releasing a lot of it back into the tank causing an ammonia spike. Just a thought!

[monocus]

i use red and white led and have great growth.when i clean my screen i lightly scrub it with a nail brush then rinse it with a sprayer,leaving some algae on.i designed my screen to slide off(pvc is not glued and held in place by a pvc cap)so nothing gets knocked into my sump.

[ocean diver]

Ya I remove my screen to clean it therefore nothing falls into the sump, sounds like you have some stuff getting back into the tank when you clean off your algae screen, try removing it to clean it.

[Jaws]

Actually I always remove it to clean it but the contamination happens before I replace the screen. It's definitely happening when I take it offline and remove the screen. I modified a large aquafuge in order to build a waterfall scrubber so that water from my sump gets pumped up to the top of the aquafuge and falls down the screen and empties out the bottom back into my sump. But because it's under my tank in the cabinet, I had to make it tall enough so that the bottom of the scrubber is above the top of my sump so it empties back into the sump. As a result the top of scrubber is only an inch and a half from the ceiling of my stand. When I pull the screen out I have to bend it over the top of the scrubber and it tends to squeeze a bit against the acrylic of the aquafuge and ends up straining a bit of the water that's in the algae back into the sump. Just water though, no algae and barely any water at all. That's why I'm so surprised at how quickly it affects the breathing and overall health of my fish. Within 5 minutes they start swimming into rocks and each other and their coloration looks horrible. Definitely looks like ammonia spiking to me. I just can't understand why its happening and how it's happening so quickly. I do have a large bioload but my parameters have been WAY better since adding the algae scrubber and they should be more reliable than this. It's a mature scrubber too so it's nice thick green hair algae that's growing.

[ocean diver]

umm well could you give us some pictures of the algae scrubber in action and maybe we can figure out what is going on. I take mine out and clean the screen then put it back and turn the pump back on and have never had any issues.

[Borderjumper]

That's weird! I've lost fish 3 times after cleaning the sides of a tank. Just basic mag float scraping... Nothing on the mag float, nothing on my hands.

As you said within MINUTES the fish are stunned, lay on the bottom and are dead almost immediately. The funny thing is it killed the smaller fish almost instantly while a few bigger ones swim around like nothing's happening.

Victoria Killer Algae maybe? I now clean the glass on my tanks a 1/4 a day I'm so freaked!