Mega-Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover Replaces Skimmer, Refugium, part 1-4

That's a good start! I that the glass you said you were using? Looks like a nylon cloth. Or do you mean fiberglass?

Did you rub algae into the screen to start?

Today I thought I'd show what's up with my screen. I'm back to using just my main original bucket (that started with pre-grown screen), since the 2nd bucket that I used for the build thread is on loan to the lfs. I'll be posting progress pics of that soon. But for my tank/screen, N and P are zero of course. I check every day unless I forget. The main development has been true green turf, i.e, not green hair or slime. Now, hair and slime are always there (they grow right over everything else), but I started noticing that after regular cleanings there were still some green remaining. I thought I was just rushing and missing it, but it got to be too much green. So on the next cleaning I used the camera, and when cleaning I found for the first time true green turf. I also let it grow more than I normally would, so the pics would show more:

Here is the screen just before cleaning, looking down into the bucket (both sides looked about the same).


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/ScreenBeforeCleaning08-27-08.jpg


Here is the screen pulled out (still not cleaned):


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/ScreenBeforeCleaningRemoved08-27-08.jpg


Here is the screen after a regular cleaning (scrubbing) with fingernails and toothbrush. Note that tons of green remains:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/ScreenAfterCleaning08-27-08.jpg


Here is the screen after scraping with a razor blade:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/ScreenAfterScraping08-27-08.jpg


Note how most of the green turf is on the top half of the screen, near the lights. The flow is the same; only the light is stronger near the top (the very top is only one inch from the lights). It had been exactly on one month since I'd used a razor before this. It took that long for the real turf to grow (both red/brown and green). Real turf takes so long because it is very tightly packed and strong, with very little water. It looks like the green turf grows a bit faster than the red/brown, however, and is not quite as strong; it grows longer too. However I still could not scrub it off with my fingernails or a toothbrush, no matter how hard I tried. Only the razor could get it off. Took about 5 minutes; not bad for a month of growing.

Anyways, intrigued by this green turf, I went down to the beach with a camera so I could search for what I've been wanting for a while: Pics of how real turf lives. Sure enough I found it on the pylings of the pier at Paradise Cove (just north of Malibu):


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/TurfBeach.jpg


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/TurfBeachCloseup.jpg


It's exacty what was on my screen. The white specs you see are sand. In order to get the second (closup) pic, I had to pinch the turf very hard and pull it out... like pulling out plant roots; then I held it up for the pic. Note also that it's low tide, which means that the turf holds its color and stays alive for many hours in direct sunlight with no water. Further down the beach I found the same turf on rocks that were 100 feet away from the water.

So, like I said before, real turf is used to living out of the water, and that's why I say that to simulate this (as Aday's machine does) you need some type of on-off-on pulsed flow, and the easiest way I could think to do this was a wavemaker timer (although, as I'll post soon, other folks are coming up with ingenious ways too.)

And again, the importance of light is clearly apparent with this green turf, since it grew no more that 6" away from the lights at the top. And lastly, it does look like some of the red/brown is being replaced by the green, which makes sense since the original red/brown came from IA with their different nutrients and lighting.

If you want you can sandpaper the plastic. You want it as rough (or holes) as possible, so when you clean it there will still be algae remaining on it.

Reader Hits Zero!

'Gone Postal' who is on the RS site, becomes the first homebuilt screen user to reach zero nitrate. No pics from him yet, but he says, "My trates hit 0 for the first time in the 5 months that my tank has been up. The lowest i had ever gotten them to was 5. I built my setup [9 days ago]. I have some growth, but nothing too spectacular. The screen is completely covered in brown, but it seems as if it's just surface algae - not really hair algae, etc like I'd originally expected. Comes off really easy. If I just wipe my finger across, the screen is clear again."

And here's a second person below, with the build-of-the-day. He says "I am currently running this system, and I'm hoping to reduce my nitrates from a steady 20 down to zero. Here's my set up on the 2nd week. (water is supplied from the output of my UV filter)". Note that he drilled his pipe, instead of cutting a slot in it; he said he did not have a rotary cutting tool, and thus he had to make it only one-sided:

2 Weeks Overload At the LFS!


One day I was in my LFS, and he was complaining of N and P being "crazy high" in one of his FO retail displays. I looked at what he was currently doing for filtration... G4 skimmer, bio balls, Phosban reactor, 2 Ocean Clear mechanical filters, and a UV on a 300 gal FO display, and he is feeding 16 cubes a day. He is currently building a custom acrylic waterfall box turf filter like I outlined in the first page of my RC post, but it's not finished yet. He says he has to keep N and P under control by changing 100g every two weeks. The bio balls seem mostly under water; to me, that would reduce their power. Also he thinks he might need to remove the mechanical filters.

Since my bucket-build thread was done, and since I completed the pics of it for the first week, I thought it was wasting its potential trying to filter my 90 since my 90 also has the original pre-grown turf bucket already working. So I asked the LFS guy if he'd like to borrow my bucket. He said yes, so I went right away to get it, and told him to measure N and P meanwhile. I had to wrap the screen in wet towels to keep it from drying out, but otherwise the whole bucket was light and easy to carry in the car. When I got there he showed me his test (Red Sea, I think), and they were deep dark colors. But I wanted to use Salifert so they'd correspond with my tank, so I used my kits to measure: N = 50, P = Off the chart (very deep dark blue). His main goal was to stop the daily rise in N and P, especially N, which had been rising an average of 1 per day.

So we set the bucket on top of his sump so it would just drain down, and hooked up one of his pumps to the waterfall pipe (no wavemaker timer), and hooked up the lights to one of his timers (18 hours on), and away it went. Here are the day-by-day measurements:


....................N...........P.............Comment
.
day 1..........50...........1.5+............
day 2..........50...........1.5+............
day 3..........50...........1.5+............
day 4..........50...........1.5+.........Cleaned; Iron added
day 5..........*............*...............Not measured; Original diatoms gone
day 6..........*............*...............Not measured; Waiting for WC
day 7..........*............*...............Not measured; he did 100g WC
day 8..........50...........1.5+.........WC did almost nothing, N and P same
day 9..........45?..........1.5+.........Screen about 75% full
day 10.........45...........1.5+.........Screen about 80% full
day 11..........*............*..............Store Closed Labor Day
day 12..........*............*..............Store Closed
day 13.........40?..........1.5+........95% full; bottom completely full
day 14.........35!..........1.5+........Starting to develop spots; Cleaned


And here are the pics. Note that the in-bucket pics were done with the water still flowing, since after crawling under wooden beams to get to the bucket, I had forgotten to unplug the pump; so thereafter all pics needed the pump running so they would match:

First, here is the left half of the display, and the right half (all are one system connected together):

. . . .


Here's the bio balls in the sump; Note high water level:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSbioBalls.jpg


His G4 skimmer and Phosban reactor:




His mechanical filters:




Here's the bucket as delivered, with screen wrapped to stay wet:




The bucket was put behind the wood shelves, on top of the sump, between the tanks:




Day 0: This is the screen as delivered, after the one-week test thread was finished:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay00.jpg


Day 1, Cleaned bottom of bucket:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay01.jpg


Day 2:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay02.jpg


Day 3:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay03.jpg


Day 3, Removed:


(hi-res was blurry)


Day 3, Cleaned:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay03cleaned.jpg


Day 4:


http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay04.jpg


Day 5: Skip
Day 6: Skip

Day 7:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay07.jpg


Day 8:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay08.jpg


Day 9:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay09.jpg


Day 10:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay10.jpg


Day 11: Skip
Day 12: Skip

Day 13:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay13.jpg


Day 14:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay14.jpg


Day 14, Removed (flash); Removed (no-Flash):


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay14removed.jpg


Day 14, Closeup of spots:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay14closeup.jpg


Day 14, Cleaning:


http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay14cleaning.jpg


Day 14, Cleaned:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay14cleaned.jpg


Day 14, reinstalled:


Hi-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/LFSscreenDay14reinstalled.jpg


Results:





Now, this bucket is way undersized for this application. It's only 144 sq in, with just average CFL lights, and the lights are not right-up-next to the screen (due to bucket design) the way they should be for optimum performance. His tank is 300 gallons, highly fed, with no rock and no sand. But the idea is not to see if N and P can be reduced; instead it's to see how fast a screen can grow with basically unlimited nutrients. Secondarily, yes, I'd like to see how much of a dent an undersized screen can make in N and P, as long as it is cleaned properly. (The acrylic box he's building is 300 sq in, and is only 4 inches thick... he's going to place several 150 watts along the vertical walls.)

P was always off the scale, although it was indeed getting to be a lighter blue. But since blue blocks a lot of light, you cannot tell how much off the scale it is because it starts looking gray.

In the first few days of the bucket test, there was major green growth. And the growth was in clumps, as opposed to how it grew in my system, which was more of an even film of brown and green. My guess is that since nutrients are so high in his tank, once a single spot of green starts on the screen, that algae is no longer limited by trying to attach itself; it now is only limited by how fast it can multiply (which with unlimited nutrients, is astronomically fast). I can only imagine if the bucket had proper lighting (like his new acrylic box will), how fast/much it would grow.

His main objective (not mine) was indeed N and P reduction. So on day 3, I figured I'd clean the screen even though it still had bare spots on it (it had only had a week to grow on my tank). The screen is not his only filter, so I did not have to clean just one side. Pulling out the screen, it was apparent that the stronger growth was on the upper part, near the light, showing once again the importance of strong light. I cleaned both sides and put it back; for some reason it cleaned all the way down to the bare screen, not leaving much behind. I used a toothbrush, but didn't scrub that hard. We also added some iron for the first time ever in this tank.

Disappointment on Day 5. Hardly any growth. I think what happend was the the base-growth that was on the screen when I brought it was from the one-week test on my 90, which means it would be a certain type of algae (diatoms, I believe). However his tank has different chemistry and as you saw in the pics started off with green hair clumps right away. So the base of brown diatoms died, and thus the screen basically went back to brand new in his tank.

This being the case, he could not wait any longer and said he needs to change water to get the numbers down. He did a 100 gal change (on 300 total volume) on Day 6, and I came back on Day 7 to measure: Almost no change! I think he's got detritus in the bio balls or the mechanical filter, or somewhere. Nevertheless, it's still a good nutrient source for my growth test.

Growth is solid again by Day 8. Have not seen this type of growth before... big clumps of dark brown slimey stuff, right next to areas of empty screen. Mine had always filled in evenly, but this is doing it in clumps. Almost looks like someone threw mud on the screen. Regardless, the flow goes right over the clumps with no problem. This time, I'm going to let the screen fill up before I clean it, otherwise only the same areas will start growing. Only after previously-grown areas fill up will the empty areas start growing.

By Day 13, the bottom of the screen was packed, and the top had only a few empty places left. The N test looked like it was coming down, but I did not really expect it too since the tank was so heavily loaded. I wanted to clean the screen that day, but the LFS guy was impressed that the N was not rising like it usually does, and even possibly dropping. Day 14, the end of two weeks, the N actually tested about 35. He was amazed, since it normally goes up every day. He wanted to keep it as-is, but I could see some spots developing on the screen from the pods, so I said we better clean it now.

After pulling the screen out, it was easy to see the spots. It had been 10 days since cleaning; way overdue. Definitely time to clean under tap water. The feel of the algae was amazing... like tar spilled on the beach that had been drying for a while. The screen seemed to weigh a full pound. I put it in the sink and just pushed the algae off the screen with my fingers (not fingernails). This was not turf, but it was thick and heavy. There is no timer on this setup, just constant flow, so I'm not really expecting turf to develop anyway.

So I put it back into operation. He's still waiting on his custom acrylic box to be delivered, so until then this bucket will have to work alone.

lima that's great to hear. Did you clean yet? Now about N? Can you do pics before and after cleaning?