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

The trick of skimmer popularity

In my reading of what is going on lately with the discussions of skimmer vs. skimmerless tanks, I'm seeing the same fallacy repeated over and over and over, usually by the most experienced reefers who have been around the longest: "Because everyone uses skimmers, a skimmer must be required or else they wouldn't use one." Or, "Every Tank-Of-The-Month has a skimmer, therefore a skimmer is required to give you the best chance of a TOTM."

It's all completely irrelevant. I can't believe how many people fall for this line of reasoning. This trick is taught in Debate class in high school; It's called "Appeal to Poplulariy", otherwise known at Argumentum ad populum...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

On a side note, realize that many people are paid to promote skimmers. Millions of dollars are put into the marketing and promotion of skimmers, and some of that money goes into the pockets of the people who are posting reasons to have skimmers. Also, there must be a hundred companies who make skimmers, and all of them have promotion budgets. The job of promotion is to "get the word out". How many Algae Scrubber companies have promotion budgets? Zero, because there are no companies. Scrubbers are DIY. This is why the "popular thinking" is to use a skimmer... because skimmers are all anyone reads about. Promotion is my day job, and this is exactly how it works.
 
Update: Cleaning algae off of the rocks.

If you are running a scrubber to help remove algae from the display, try first running the scrubber without manually removing algae off of the rocks. This is because when you scrub algae off of the rocks (or if you put a lawnmower or similar in) while the rocks are still in the tank, the algae will float around and die, causing a nutrient spike. It's better to let the scrubber slowly remove the algae for you. This will prevent spikes, and is less work too.

However, if there are LOTS of algae in the display (so much so that the phosphate and nitrate tests are zero), then your scrubber may not easily compete, even after many weeks. So if after four weeks you don't notice a reduction in algae in the display, then slowly start removing algae manually from the display (or, add a small algae eater). Don't remove TOO much algae at once (or don't get TOO big of an algae eater) because that will generate a spike too. Once the algae in the display has been reduced some, your scrubber should be able to take over from there, and all the rest of the nuisance algae should slowly go away.

Note: This does not apply if you remove the rocks from the system before cleaning. Removing rocks can be done at any time, but is much more work.
 
New Year Update: Screen Roughness

It's becoming more and more clear how important a rough screen is. A year ago it was thought that lighting was most important, but only because you could see new growth easily from stronger light. The effects of a smooth screen are not nearly as obvious, because you start losing small pieces of algae off the screen bit-by-bit, but they are covered up by the other algae. So here is an example of how fast a brand-new screen can grow; it is just 4 days old, but it is two layers of cactus-rough plastic canvas:

FourDaysRoughScreen.jpg




Which gives us a new goal:

Sticker.jpg
 
SantaMonica said:
The trick of skimmer popularity

In my reading of what is going on lately with the discussions of skimmer vs. skimmerless tanks, I'm seeing the same fallacy repeated over and over and over, usually by the most experienced reefers who have been around the longest: "Because everyone uses skimmers, a skimmer must be required or else they wouldn't use one." Or, "Every Tank-Of-The-Month has a skimmer, therefore a skimmer is required to give you the best chance of a TOTM."

It's all completely irrelevant. I can't believe how many people fall for this line of reasoning. This trick is taught in Debate class in high school; It's called "Appeal to Poplulariy", otherwise known at Argumentum ad populum...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

On a side note, realize that many people are paid to promote skimmers. Millions of dollars are put into the marketing and promotion of skimmers, and some of that money goes into the pockets of the people who are posting reasons to have skimmers. Also, there must be a hundred companies who make skimmers, and all of them have promotion budgets. The job of promotion is to "get the word out". How many Algae Scrubber companies have promotion budgets? Zero, because there are no companies. Scrubbers are DIY. This is why the "popular thinking" is to use a skimmer... because skimmers are all anyone reads about. Promotion is my day job, and this is exactly how it works.
Click to expand...

I've always had faith in the nutrient uptake capabilities of algae. But up until recently, most folks, including myself, looked at algal filtration (namely scrubbers) as having their own set of problems. With newer techniques, it is only recently becoming more obvious that the previous supposed drawbacks were only an artifact of practice and methodology--that with some minor changes, they can be avoided (yellowing comes to mind). I've been running a scrubber with some of the newer methods for months and I am happy with it, despite some design drawbacks that I am ironing out. I still use my skimmer, but only until I am happy with the amount and quality of algae that is growing on the screen. I still may run the skimmer occasionally with extra heavy feedings to ease some of the burden, though.
 
Several updates:

1. The algae that does the filtering in the oceans (algae is 90 percent of all life, except for bacteria) is planktonic, meaning they are small particles floating in the water. This is why the ocean is greenish in color. The tiny bit of algae on the beaches is not enough to do any filtering for an entire ocean.

2. Brown-to-Green. Algae on your screen will start off brown, then go to green, after several cleanings. But brown aglae STILL filters; it's just that it's the type of algae that grows when nutrients are high. If your screen never turns green, you are still getting filtering from the brown; it's just that your scrubber is not strong enough to get nutrients low enough to grow green (based on how much you are currently feeding).

3. Real turf algae (the kinds that is tough like carpet) is not needed. Last year I posted that real turf was best, but now it's been shown that in DIY aquarium scrubbers, green hair and even brown slime filters just as well. And that's a good thing because real turf almost never grows because it gets covered up by green and brown (unless you use a surge, which kills the green and brown with lack of flow.)

4. Fish-only tanks don't need tiny particles of food in the water, and thus don't benefit as much from scrubbers. However if you are going to run a skimmerless fish-only tank, and if you are not going to have any mechanical filter at all (like a filter sock), one thing you can do is use very little flow in the display, so that all fish waste will fall to the bottom. Then, make sure you have enough cleanup's on the bottom to break the waste up into tiny particles. The quicker the particles are broken up, the quicker bacteria can convert them into ammonia, nitrate and phosphate, and the quicker the scrubber can absorb these things. However if you are going to have any mechanical filters at all (including a skimmer), then you want high flow along the bottom of the tank so that the particles will get taken away to the filters for removal.

5. T5 bulbs are better, for the same wattage, because all the power is distributed evenly across the screen. CFL bulbs have to be moved further away, because the center spot gets too much power, but the farther spots don't get enough. T5 scrubbers are MUCH harder to build, however.

6. I keep hearing "Yes, skimmers DO remove nitrate and phosphate! They just do it by removing organics BEFORE they break down into nitrates and phosphates". That's just great. Organics, before they "break down", are called FOOD. Yes, FOOD. So yes, skimmers DO remove FOOD (i.e, "protein"). But saying that removing FOOD is the same as removing nitrates and phosphates is like saying removing BEER, before you drink it, is the same as removing the pee after you drink it. Wouldn't you rather have the beer, and then remove the pee? Skimmers remove the food that you put in the tank. Scrubbers remove the "pee" after the tank eats the food.

7. Horizontal (one-sided) screens are only recommended for nano tanks, and only if the screen is narrow (no more than 4 inches wide) so that the water flows like a river. If you try to do horizontal screens on bigger tanks, the screen will have to be wider, and what will happen is that when algae tries to grow thick, it will block the flow from getting past it (it will even block flow to itself). If the screen is 4 inches wide or less, and if the flow is very high, the water will pile up and get over the algae. But on wider screens it won't, and any algae downstream of the thick algae will have it's flow cut off. And for any horizontal screen, make sure you put a solid sheet under it, to keep the water from falling through.

8. Cloudiness is caused by underlying algae layers dying (from not cleaning); if you look at these layers, they look like wheat, and they fall right off of the screen. Green or yellow water, however, is caused by cleaning the screen in the water, without removing it first and taking it to the sink; the strands of algae break and put colored stuff into the water.

9. Algae video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB2XlpD-Ld4
 
Hi SantaMonica,

Thanks always for your updates.

I have been running a small 10G tank now for about 5 months, never used a skimmer, my only filtration is the scrubber.
I just want to let you know that i always use 8 White power LED's as light source
and that my tank has no algea problem. I get lots of green hair/slime alea every week on the scrubber..

Question i have, does the algea take out stuff like Strontium, iodide etc etc, and if that is the case do you recomend dosing that in if i want to keep waterchanges to miniumum. Or is it better to keep doing partial waterchanges and so keep those kinds of parameters ok.

Thanks
 
Yes a nano can get away with things that a bigger tank/scrubber can't. So I'm glad to hear that your led's are working for you.

Scrubbers/algae do not remove strontium, calcium, mag, and really not any alk. They do remove iron and iodine, but the food you feed is loaded with both of these, especially if you feed nori (think how much iron is in spinach). So, only cal, alk, and mag need to be dosed or waterchanged.
 
all i gotta say is wow. looks like using ATS is easier then skimmer and for a DIY type like me alot easier to rig up. my idea is to tak 10 gallon and make an internal over flow that get lit by a CFL to one end of the tank, kinda like my picture illustrates.

Reefin.jpg
 
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