Several Updates:
1. Change CFL or T5 bulbs every THREE MONTHS!
2. Wattage recommendation: 0.5 Watts per gallon for medium filtering. 1.0 for high filtering.
3. CFL bulbs: 55W is the max that works good. If you need more watts, get two or three smaller ones, or go to T5HO (best)
4. Skimmer overflow: Be careful of your skimmer overflowing (if it does not have an overflow tube.) The rotting food in the skimmer cups has been growing bacteria, and thus producing ammonia, so if it overflows into your sump, the ammonia can kill things. If this happens, then a scrubber removes this ammonia from the water (skimmers do not remove ammonia; they only make ammonia in the cup.)
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6. Surges are not recommended for scrubbers, because (1) the have not shown to improve operations, (2) they are hard to diy, (2) they are noisy/messy, and (4) they reduce the filtering contact time with the water.
7. Cleaning: If your screen goes up into the pipe, you can clean the screen extra good in that area, so that less algae will grow up into the pipe.
8. Purple growth: If your screen is new, and you are getting thin purple growth in spots, it is probably cyano because of weak lighting. If your screen is 3 months old or more, and you start getting purple growth, feel it. If it's is furry, then it's turf. If it's not furry, then it cyano.
9. Never run the lighting 24/7.
10. Cyano in display: Sometimes, after an algae scrubber has removed most of the nuisance algae in a tank, cyano will grow a bit more. This is normal, because cyano does not eat the same thing that nuisance algae does (thus, the cyano now has less competition). But the cyano will reduce too eventually. The cyano occurs because it has the capability of getting nitrogen directly from the water, without needing Nitrate, Nitrate or Ammonia/Ammonium (which is what algae gets nitrogen from). But as the scrubber continues to filter, the cyano will have a harder and harder time holding on.
11. Why "polished" water is bad: The "clean" water look you get with a skimmer and other mechanical filters is because the food (i.e, waste "protein") has been removed from the water. This is what you want if you have just large fish. But if you want a "real" natural reef, you don't want to do this. Go diving some time and look at the water on a natural reef; there are millions of specks and dots and particles and things floating in the water in a super thick soup. And that's just six inches in front of your face. These things are what feed everything, including small fish.
