Mega-Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover Replaces Skimmer, Refugium, Everything - Page 10

Ok Sly it looks to me like about one week worth of growth. How many days has it been? And did you split the light up into two separate bulbs?

Ok if today is day 10, then the first pic was day 7, and the second pic was day 9. Kinda slow growth for having two 23w cfl bulbs. I'd like to find the problem. Did you rub algae? Can you get a pic of the flow at the very bottom of the screen? How many inches are the bulbs from the screen? I think I know what's wrong but I'll get your answers first.

If the lights are 2-3 inches from the top of the screen, then that's it. But I think overall you'll be fine. Nothing to fix right now. It can be a fine tuning thing later. The pulsed flow can only help. Your last pic looked to be about 5 days away from it's first very-mild cleaning.

Today's build of the day is another one made from a gravel vac. These are easy because you don't need a special cutting tool to cut the slot in the pipe:

I just finished up some diagrams of the most-used screen installations. The overflow-feed is good because it usually has a very large flow capacity, but, you can't turn off the return pump for too long or the screen will dry out. Also, pulsing the flow is not easy:




The pump-feed below will free you from the return pump, and makes it very easy to pulse the flow using a timer. But the pump must be able to deliver 35 gph per inch of width of the screen:




The sumpless-feed (or "bucket"), which was the original design, is how you get the screen up above the tank. The pump in this case goes in the tank itself. Also, the walls of the bucket let you flow more without worrying about water spraying sideways:

Yea I'd say about 5 days to a cleaning (one side only).

Reminder Of The Day:

Yellowing of the water: This is due to cleaning or scraping the screen while the screen is still in the tank water system (i.e., "in-system"). When you break algae strands, they release their chlorophyll related chemical contents, which drain downwards. If your screen is still in-system when you clean it, it drains into your tank system water, causing yellowing. Another cause of yellowing is not cleaning your screen at all. Solution: Clean your screen at least once a week, and do it by taking it to the sink and running tap water over while you clean it.

You mean awesome :)

As you see, once it kicks in, it really kicks in. So at soon as you get your N and P test, you should be good to go for your first cleaning on ONE side. But do test first, because you need to be able to check for changes before and after cleaning.

Anybody here in the Los Angeles area have N and P problems, and want to test a bucket? My acrylic scrubber is getting ready to be functional by itself, so I'll be taking the bucket offline in a few days. This bucket has an original pre-grown screen from IA, and now is almost completely covered with real red/brown turf. It has four lights instead of two, and it also has a fan sitting on top. Comes with pump and timer too.

If you have high N and P, and you are willing to test N and P every day (I'll supply the Salifert kits if needed) and write it down in a log, then you can borrow it. Would be just a loan though. PM me if there is any interest.

jski711 on the RS site says his scrubber fixed up his pH:

"my ph was dropping too low because i wasn't running my skimmer. the skimmer would help get rid of a lot of the co2 that was comming from the effluent of the reactor into the tank. so i turned my reactor off and i couldn't run my skimmer because of a medication i put in my tank, the skimmer would just overflow with bubbles in a matter of seconds. so i was running no skimmer and no reactor for about a month and a half. then after installing the scrubber i noticed that my ph was on the rise and has been high sometimes 8.5ish. so i figured the extra co2 from the reactor would bring the ph down and also help with micro growth. no more ph problems, im amazed at how much this scrubber has raised my ph. again awesome idea santamonica!!!"

Perfect. Another screenful or two and your N and P will be cut in half.

Here are some interesting technical points taken out of the current issues of Advanced Aquarist:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2008/8/aafeature3
http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2008/9/aafeature2


"Greater than 97% of the organic matter in the oceans is in the form of DOC"

"The majority of the DOC in the oceans is consumed over a time span on the order of hours-to-weeks."

"The generally accepted value of deep ocean TOC (DOC in this instance) ranges from 0.45 - 0.60 ppm, a number that appears to be insensitive to collection location. On reefs, however, the DOC (and TOC) value is considerably higher. Even with this point noted, the values of DOC on reefs from the South Pacific to Japan to the Caribbean to the Red Sea are remarkably consistent in their range: 0.7 - 1.6 ppm"

"Bacteria are a critical component in the food web of the reef, as they occupy the role of 'middle man' in the transfer of energy from the source (sunlight) to the consumers on the reef"

"sponges are some of the most prolific repositories of marine bacteria. In fact, some sponges have been studied as effective bioremediation agents in marine aquaculture as a consequence of their exceptional ability to absorb TOC"

"Where does the DOC go ... studies suggest that it is rapidly consumed by bacteria that live in and on the coral itself and not by bacteria present in the water column. Shutting down these endogenous bacteria by antibiotic treatment abolished DOC uptake."

"In total, these data unequivocally demonstrate that the [skimmer] is not required to deplete the aquarium water of TOC. Apparently, naturally biological processes are sufficient in and of themselves to return the post-feeding TOC levels to their pre-feeding values after about 4 hrs or so ... Clearly the skimmer is doing something, given the copious residue accumulated in the collection cup at the end of the week. Perhaps, however, the residue removed by the skimmer is only a rather small, even inconsequential, portion of the entire TOC load that develops in the aquarium water over the course of a week."

Reminder Of The Day:

What Scrubbers Consume: Algae scrubbers consume INORGANIC nitrate and phosphate. These things are what your test kits read, and what the nuisance algae on your rocks and glass require to live. What scrubbers don't consume is ORGANIC nitrate and phosphate. Organic nitrate and phosphate have another name: Food. Any and every piece of food you put into your tank has nitrate and phosphate in them, but they are organic. Scrubbers leave them in the water for the corals to eat. Skimmers do the opposite: Skimmers remove the organic nitrate and phosphate (food), and leave in the inorganic nitrate and phosphate; these inorganics are then used by the nuisance algae on your rocks and glass to grow.