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

Amphiprion said:
There are various phases the tank will go through, which is why there is a resurgence of algae in the meantime (I noted something similar when using GFO, which tapered off after a while). GHA is far more efficient in terms of both assimilation as well as the level of nutrients in which it can thrive. A scrubber will thrive and continue to filter long after Chaetomorpha stops growing. It requires much more surface area of Chaetomorpha to get the same job done. FWIW, that screen size is suitable for ~40 gallons if both sides are lighted, which is a conservative estimate.

I agree, however, that scrubbers aren't for everyone. It is just disheartening when things aren't portrayed clearly about scrubbers, since the previous post was a bit misleading without the clarification you just provided. They are a viable filtration method capable of removing very, very significant quantities of dissolved nutrients very quickly. In my experience, not even bacterial additives can compare in that regard. Such additives can theoretically get nutrients lower overall, though, and do so cheaper (considering the energy costs and space for a scrubber). I'm just not a fan of the other unknowns associated with organic carbon dosing.
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They are a viable filtration method yes, but only suited for certain applications. I did not mean to mislead, I posted my own experience, stating that the scrubber did not preform as desired and that it required more maintenance. It also cost me more to assemble than a small wad of chaeto did (not counting the light). I do not have experience with bacterial additives, I have not used them.

I'm going to note that the dimensions of 8x5 was a conservative estimate, I will find my scrubber's screen tomorrow and post the actual measurements. I made the screen as large as my sump allowed.

SantaMonica - my return pumps were and are two MJ1200s that is very good flow for a 20 gallon tank even considering head loss. This screen was set up originally to be double sided however due to a lack of room under the stand and the heat two lamps produced, it wasn't an option.

One good thing however in favor of the algae scrubber is that it is a good habitat for pods.
 
I'd still be interested to see more test results for the people who are using these. Ideally, I would like to see more people that have setup a fresh scrubber and keep test results frequently to show the actual benefits they are achieving. I think it would definately lend more support to the claims and maybe even sway a few more folks in that direction (myself included).
 
oscar, you can go to his website and or any of the large reef sites and there are a bunch of real good stories on every one. There are also a couple of not so good ones of course. mostly because people tried to make the scrubber outside of the permaters that SM has set or didnt do thier weekly cleaning. Yellow water seems to be a somewhat common one. easily fixed by cleaning the screen once a week. If you veri from the plan it probably won't do as well.
I am personally keeping track of my perameters and have taken before pictures of my tank. I'm only 2 weeks into it so I havnt grown enough turf to actually notice a difference yet. It takes a while.

Like amp eluded to, alot of people think thier scrubber is failing because Hir algae is poping up in places it never had before. when actually this may be a good sign showing that you've actually removed the phosphates from the water and it is now leaching out of the rocks and is giving the HA a new place to grow. this will last a while until it has all leached out. Same thing would happen with a GFO reactor.

I love the idea of the scrubber simply because it is efficient, Ive seen loads of good results, its cheap, you can remove the crap that the macros are soaking up, and It will hopefully grow enough pods that I can get a sixline to go with my FAT mandarin.
If you put some cheato in with an established scrubber the cheato would die off after a while. That alone shows which one has more power to pull nitrates and phosphates.

My phosphates are currently .5
Nitrates 40
and my rocks have no purple on them at all, just a fine layer of green on everything and a few patches of thick hair algae.
 
the fact that your nitrates are 40 say a lot. they should be 0 to barely noticeable. you need waterchanges and more waterchanges they work much better than a scrubber to remove nitrates. your phospate too should be 0. even in undetectable amounts phosphate will cause significant algae growth. If the water that you use has large amounts of phosphates, you'll never be able to out battle your GHA, no matter how many scrubbers you have. In this case you should be using distilled water or even better RODI.

As to the scrubber being cheap and efficient, I don't really think so. I put chaeto in with my scrubber while I had one and the chaeto did not die, it grew in fact.

chaeto will usually cost you 10$ shipped(sometimes I see it going for the price of shipping). plus you can sell out your chaeto when it grows out. my scrubber on the other hand cost me around 20$ for the screen, pvc, connectors, etc (not counting the light)

Jstvd8, how long has your tank been running? and what were your parameters before the scrubber?

<3Oscar, sorry I didn't keep good track of my parameters when I had the scrubber. I do have before and after tank shots though.
 
Actually, water changes are largely inefficient at controlling nitrate. Using them actually creates more of a seesaw effect, with a large rebound of nitrate in the water column shortly afterward. Other controls are much more effective for longer periods of time. The problem is intensified in tanks that have considerable amounts of nitrate. It requires many, many water changes to begin to control a serious problem--after which you've spent hundreds on salt mix, especially if the tank is larger. There are simply better ways to control it in the long term. Exceptions would be fairly small tanks, in which case large, frequent water changes are much more viable, affordable long term options.

As for the ongoing cost of a scrubber, that largely depends on the setup, scrubber size, etc. I am using the same amount of lighting I used for Chaetomorpha and I use a branch of my return to feed it (that previously fed various media reactors), so the cost is exactly the same in my case. Everybody's mileage will vary in regards to this.

I'm sorry that your experience with scrubbers was not a good one, though many of the symptoms you described are consistent with improper setup and/or maintenance. Maybe in the future, if you decide to try one again, follow some of the newer guidelines as closely as possible and see if things turn out any differently. That being said, you are dealing with using a living thing, so there are always variables. In my experience, I couldn't even get turf to grow until I started feeding heavily. Once it settled in, the results were significant. I feed very heavy amounts of food with no rise in dissolved N or P. My two gripes are the frequent maintenance-and what I'm dealing with now--the fact that it can die. My brand new return pump, plus my new backup, gave out again, so I've been without a pump for close to a month now. That's another story. As you can imagine, the scrubber didn't last too long without water flow. Those are the only real cons I've experienced.
 
I measured my old screen and its ~11"x~6.5" again it was single sided. I set it up as detailed in this article, and I even found my post and SantaMonica's suggestion:

Markushka said:
I think I might want to try this. Im setting up a 20 tall reef, and I have limited funds to work with. My main light's a 150w MH, and i've a 18w PC that I could use for the filter. Im also limited in space (whatever I can fit in the stand.) Im thinking of using a 5 gallon bucket as the sump/filter. Any opinions?
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SantaMonica said:
A small 4 X 10 single sided screen with one 23 Watt CFL FLOODLIGHT will do it all. Don't user your 18 w pc. Check the links below for ideas.
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I did end up using a 23 watt, and even ran double sided for a bit as I mentioned above. Now you are telling me that single sided is no good? you did recommend it.

SantaMonica said:
This is why I don't recommend single sided. Single-sided scrubbers are hardly ever set up correctly, and even when they are, the algae islands will restrict flow. Cyano on the screen is from lack of flow. And that is what happened here.
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I also feel that keeping up on water changes and doing small 10-20% changes weekly helps the tank a lot. If they aren't effective, and rather detrimental then why is it standard procedure in freshwater too? secondly, if you'd kept up on water changes and did not over feed or overstock you wouldn't have nitrates through the roof.

I don't know how much salt costs for you Amphiprion but a 5 gallon bucket cost around 50$ thats 200 gallons worth. now if your tank is 1000 gallons, I can see salt costs getting high for waterchanges. But I don't think there are many here who have that problem. But lets say you have a big tank, 75 gallons. To do a 10% WC it'll cost you $1.88 for salt. Do it once a week and its $7.52 a month, $97.76 a year. If you don't overfeed, you may even get away with bi-monthly WCs cutting the monthly and yearly numbers in half.

Sorry to hear of your pump troubles, hope you can get em back on line soon.
 
Markushka said:
I measured my old screen and its ~11"x~6.5" again it was single sided. I set it up as detailed in this article, and I even found my post and SantaMonica's suggestion:





I did end up using a 23 watt, and even ran double sided for a bit as I mentioned above. Now you are telling me that single sided is no good? you did recommend it.



I also feel that keeping up on water changes and doing small 10-20% changes weekly helps the tank a lot. If they aren't effective, and rather detrimental then why is it standard procedure in freshwater too? secondly, if you'd kept up on water changes and did not over feed or overstock you wouldn't have nitrates through the roof.

I don't know how much salt costs for you Amphiprion but a 5 gallon bucket cost around 50$ thats 200 gallons worth. now if your tank is 1000 gallons, I can see salt costs getting high for waterchanges. But I don't think there are many here who have that problem. But lets say you have a big tank, 75 gallons. To do a 10% WC it'll cost you $1.88 for salt. Do it once a week and its $7.52 a month, $97.76 a year. If you don't overfeed, you may even get away with bi-monthly WCs cutting the monthly and yearly numbers in half.

Sorry to hear of your pump troubles, hope you can get em back on line soon.
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What color temperature bulbs did you use and how often did you change them? How often did you clean your screen when it was growing cyanobacteria?

I think you have misunderstood. I never said water changes were detrimental (though they can be in rare cases). I said they were largely inefficient when dealing with something like nitrate and/or phosphate. To get the same amount of export capability with water changes as compared to other options, you'd be changing considerable percentages of water, very, very regularly--hence the salt costs. But because N and P tend to be much higher in interstitial water spaces between sand grains and in rock pores, suddenly depleting the water column of N and P will only cause a net diffusion from rocks and sand, replenishing the water column concentrations in fairly short order. If you have something in place to continually reduce soluble N and P, then you skirt this.

It is also unrealistic to think that 10-20% weekly water changes are solely responsible for lower N and P levels--there are other mechanisms in place that can account for that far more. Water changes are much better at controlling other parameters, such as increases in various metals, anions, etc. If they were better at controlling things like nitrate, all but the largest tanks would have no need for things like GFO, nitrate reductors, scrubbers, etc. This is also due to the fact that no tank is created equally, even by the same person. One tank may need frequent, necessary care, while another can literally sit there and do spectacularly. Take a look at Randy Holmes-Farley's water change article to see some of this. It did not take the rebound effect into account, though, but it did consider accumulation.
 
I wouldnt consider 40ppm through the roof. as I've seen reef tanks with much might than that before (much nicer than my tank) I do 10% a week on my 90 gallon (55g sump/fuge with about 30 gallons of actual water in that tank.)
my scrubber has only been up for 2 weeks now and is in no way growing enough turf to actually reduce the nitrates or phosphates in my tank. As stated by SM it will most likley take about 8 weeks before it is really up to full power, once there it will continue to work to keep nitrates and phosphates at 0.
This isnt an overnight application like a skimmer, it takes a bit of time for it to establish itself. Patience is on the menu.
 
Jstdv8 said:
oscar, you can go to his website and or any of the large reef sites and there are a bunch of real good stories on every one. There are also a couple of not so good ones of course. mostly because people tried to make the scrubber outside of the permaters that SM has set or didnt do thier weekly cleaning. Yellow water seems to be a somewhat common one. easily fixed by cleaning the screen once a week. If you veri from the plan it probably won't do as well.
I am personally keeping track of my perameters and have taken before pictures of my tank. I'm only 2 weeks into it so I havnt grown enough turf to actually notice a difference yet. It takes a while.

Like amp eluded to, alot of people think thier scrubber is failing because Hir algae is poping up in places it never had before. when actually this may be a good sign showing that you've actually removed the phosphates from the water and it is now leaching out of the rocks and is giving the HA a new place to grow. this will last a while until it has all leached out. Same thing would happen with a GFO reactor.

I love the idea of the scrubber simply because it is efficient, Ive seen loads of good results, its cheap, you can remove the crap that the macros are soaking up, and It will hopefully grow enough pods that I can get a sixline to go with my FAT mandarin.
If you put some cheato in with an established scrubber the cheato would die off after a while. That alone shows which one has more power to pull nitrates and phosphates.

My phosphates are currently .5
Nitrates 40
and my rocks have no purple on them at all, just a fine layer of green on everything and a few patches of thick hair algae.
Click to expand...

Firstly, thanks for posting your test results :) That's what I'm interested in. Stories can often be misleading, but establishing a set of facts provides much more substantial support. Also the more people that post their actual test results (especially if they include them over a period of time) the more acurate the sample of information may be. I only want this information because I find the idea very interesting and want to look at it more objectively before I make the investment.

Perhaps I need to setup a followup thread in which people could post that sort of information? This one seems more like a How-to guide and I don't mean to take away from the valuable information presented on that front.

Also, I've got a sixline in with my Mandarin and both are fat and happy :) so I hope you do end up getting a sixline sometime, they are a joy! My rocks are largely purple and pink with some almost greyish blue areas, with the exception of some new bare rock I added that hasn't had the life spread to it yet. I get some hair algae here and there, but the newest member of my tank, a yellow tang, takes care of it. My Nitrates stay at a near constant 10 ppm, but occasionally drop down to 5ppm. As far as I know, I've never hit 0 Nitrates. I need to check my phosphates though, I've fallen behind on that one.

I look forward to seeing how the project goes for you!
 
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