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

Sploke said:
The problem with having organisms in the display to eat it is that its not really removing it from the system. By using macroalgae or a turf scrubber, you are actually exporting nutrients. The algae sucks it up, and you pull it out and throw it away. If there is something in the tank eating the algae, the algae sucks the nutrients up, it gets eaten, and it gets put right back into the tank through the waste of whatever is eating it (less whatever is burned off in the form of calories by the organism doing the eating). That is why cleaning the screen on a turf scrubber is so vital - you use the turf to suck nitrate and phosphate out of the water column, then literally manually remove it from the system when you scrub the screen and throw the algae away.
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Yeah...I would rather have it elsewhere than on my rocks in the display as well...I rip chunks of it out of the system on occasion. You think if I have a scrubber in my sump, the turf in the system will die off? Would the same thing happen if I ran a reactor with GFO? What happens to it when it dies? It just bleaches and disintegrates?
 
Here are a couple of pics of my scrubber after one week up and running. I replaced my 90 gal with a 120 last week, the tank has a 55 gal sump. I roughed up the screens, but have only been running one spot light while I tested ran the system (am going to buy another light sometime this week). I will add more pics later after the whole system gets a little age under its belt.

IMG_1272.JPG IMG_1273.JPG
 
You think if I have a scrubber in my sump, the turf in the system will die off? Would the same thing happen if I ran a reactor with GFO? What happens to it when it dies? It just bleaches and disintegrates?
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Yes the scrubber will cause any algae in the display to go away. No need to remove it by hand. It does not turn white... just loosens up and goes away. Sometimes it flakes off if there is old coralline behind it.

Puffer: Add some extra roughed-up sheets to your screen while it's still new. And put the lights in the middle. The flow should be like a river.
 
Should I have the screens doubled up (have them laying on top of each other)? I am going to rearrange all the pipes and try some different things because I slowed how quickly I can drain the tray and had to cut back the water going to the tray (I'm probably going to be working on the plumbing and lights alot to get it the way I want). Thanks for your help.
 
Why Algae Works

More Info:

Algae and Human Affairs, By Carole A. Lembi, J. Robert Waaland, Phycological Society of America
www.PSAalgae.org
www.AlgaeBase.org


WhyAlgaeWorks.jpg



Text: 90 percent of all living matter (except bacteria) in the ocean is algae of all forms and colors. The remaining 10% (except bacteria) of all living matter in the ocean is: Corals, Plants, Sponges, Worms, Snails, Clams, Octopi, Shrimp, Crabs, Pods, Urchins, Starfish, Small Fish, Medium Fish, Big Fish, Sharks, Whales, Giant Squids, and Everything Else. The algae is what does all the filtering of the waste from the animals, and the algae is also what feeds all the animals through the various food webs.

Aquariums, however (especially ones without refugiums), have no algae to do the filtering or feeding. So all the filtering has to be done manually with equipment, and all the feeding has to be done manually too. At least with a refugium, there is some filtering and feeding, although most refugiums are far too small to do all of it. Scrubbers are powerful enough to do all the filtering by themselves, and can do a lot of the feeding too, if copepods are the food that is desired.
 
Successes Update:

Jlinzmaier on the RC site: "An ATS is the easiest and the cheapest DIY project I've ever done. Not to mention it has been more effective at nutrient management than carbon dosing, and has only affected the corals positively (no chance of stripping nutrients too fast or too low as you might run into with carbon source dosing.) The maintenance of it only takes 5-10 minutes once or twice a week. Total cost for the project was no more than $30 and it took about 45 min to build."

Pistolshrimp on the SARK site: "i have one of these in my sump, not eleborate though jus got one cfl spotlight on it, but they do a good job, hardly eva have to wipe my glass, it transfers 90% of the algea growth from my tank to the screen."

Trichome on the CR site: "I installed one on my 29g tank and it is working better than my AquaC Remora that is rated for up to 75g. Best part about it is its cheap as hell to install and i was able to remove a pump from my set up to save money on electricity."

Jennyfish on the AP site: "i use an ATS but i also use a skimmer, i do find since i added the ATS i have no phosphates, and my water is crystal clear with no bad algaes growing."

Schnitm on the algae scrubber site: "Our friend was moving to a new house, and her 90 gallon system wasn't moving with her. So it took 10 hours to move everything [to my daughter's room] and we're just about to put the fish back in. I decide I'll test the water first. I have never seen a nitrate test change color so fast. By the time I'd finished shaking the vial it had maxed out. After some RO/DI dillution I finally got a reading along with some others from my Red Sea Marine Lab kit:

Nitrates: 300
Nitrite: 0.3
Ammonia: 0.25
Phosphate: 5.0

After freaking out and figuring I'd done something wrong and effectively killed my daughter's new aquarium, I decided I'd better test the water the fish were still in. It had come straight from the top of the tank that morning. I got something like:

Nitrates: 400
Nitrite: 0.4
Ammonia: 0.25
Phosphate: 5.0

Seems the fish had been living in this and we'd just dilluted it some with the water change from toping off the tank. 3 anemones and a dozen soft corals were living in this too. So, in go the fish. I'm running around trying to figure out what to do. The protien skimmer is dead and hasn't worked for more than a year (thanks for telling me now!). The LFS store is closed because their moving too. I'd been "priming" an ATS screen in my shop using wastewater from our Bio Cube. It had been going for about 2 weeks and was nicely green but not thick at all yet. What the heck...I slap it in the sump and start it running with 4 CFL floods from WalMart. Then to bed to have nightmares of my daughter waking to a tank full of death.

To my pleasant surprise, the next morning everything was alive and, apparently, well! I go to work installing the hood, chiller, etc. By that evening I took another water sample and got:

Nitrates: 200
Nitrite: 0.2+
Ammonia: 0.25
Phosphate: 5.0

Everything seemed fine. I'm wondering if I'd messed up the readings on Thursday. Saturday was mostly a day off. The ATS had grown thick already so I scraped it. Just a few measurements:

Nitrates: not measured
Nitrite: 0.2
Ammonia: 0.25
Phosphate: not measured

Last night's water parameters:

Nitrates: 15 (I kid you not. 15. Checked this over and over. The 10X dillution I started with showed undetectable. I'd needed a 10X dillution before, just to get a reading. Got this 15 on straight tank water.)

Nitrite: 0.2
Ammonia: trace
Phosphate: 3.0

Thursday night I thought I was in the middle of a slow motion trainwreck, but by today all looks good. Thaks to all who have contributed! You lead me down the right path.
 
Update: RC has un-blocked "scrubber", "algaescrubber", and other scrubber-related words.

Update: Algae on rocks: If you are building a scrubber to help remove algae from your rocks, don't remove the algae from the rocks manually. Let it stay there so it can do some filtering while your scrubber starts growing. The algae on the rocks will start disappearing after you have cleand off about three scrubber screens. It's also fun to watch it disappear.
 
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