Algae Scrubber Disaster

[MarkoD]

Is the height of the bubbles in your skimmer effected when you turn off the scrubber?

[Doug]

Back about 10yrs ago when I ran my turf scrubber, {oh ya we did that despite what, nevermind, }. Anyways, I always scraped my 240sq. in. screen in the fishroom sink. But at times I did have some get in the aquarium for various reasons and, the odd time, I fed some of the algae to my tangs. That would be the good looking pieces and not the slimy stuff.

Although I had some alk. problems back then with my 225g, I never had a problem with fish loss. I dont recall any large difference in my tanks after scraping the screen. Sometime when I slacked in upkeep it had a ton of algae on it and I would remove it right to the screen without problems.

Others I imagine remove a lot of algae from their refugiums without problems to. Just a weird thing to figure out.

[PoonTang]

I would bet its oxygen related. Ammonia just cant form that fast and high nitrates would affect your corals alot sooner than your fish.

[Jaws]

Well I don't have any corals at the moment so I don't think I'll have any inclination about that. Seems weird that oxygen would be affected though if a tank has overflows where water falls into the sump plus all the surface interruption I have from having lots of flow. Unless I'm not understanding something.

[Jaws]

Originally Posted by MarkoD

Is the height of the bubbles in your skimmer effected when you turn off the scrubber?

I've never checked this but I don't believe so. I'll check later.

Thanks for all your input guys. I'm still baffled by the whole thing. Is it possible I'm taking too long to clean the screen?

[reefwars]

have you posted tis on algaescrubber.net or on RC in the scrubber forumn to see what they have to say about it , there may be similiar cases??

[Myka]

Originally Posted by monocus

my scrubber is built the same way sitting on my sump with 2" clearance to the top of my stand.i've never had any problem while or after changing.it almost sounds like your o2 is very low in your tank and when you turn the pumps off the o2 is rapidly depleted.you shouldn't be getting a spike in ammonia by changing your algae scrubber which soaks up nitrates and phosphates

Exactly what I was thinking, it does sound like oxygen deprivation. Ammonia won't spike that fast. I'm not really confident that oxygen would deplete so badly in only 5 minutes though. I have a hard time believing your tank is so overstocked that one of several pumps being off causes almost immediate oxygen deprivation.

Do you have a skimmer on this tank? Are the return pump and powerheads still operating while you clean the ATS?

[Jaws]

Yes and the skimmer and the return pump was still running during the most recent crash.

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[Jaws]

Originally Posted by reefwars

have you posted tis on algaescrubber.net or on RC in the scrubber forumn to see what they have to say about it , there may be similiar cases??

I'll give that a try. Thanks.

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[Myka]

Originally Posted by Jaws

Yes and the skimmer and the return pump was still running during the most recent crash.

Yeah, O2 deprivation doesn't sound very likely either then. I agree that asking on www.algaescrubber.net is probably a good idea at this point!

Please update when you find out the cause of your problems. I'm interested to hear.