I've been doing reading on your scrubber and am looking for input on what would best suite my system. I'm thinking the L2. I'm currently feeding a cube every other day and have continued issues with nitrates and phosphates no matter the skimming, filter media of GFO and Purigen, and make shift refugium. This brings my phosphates to .05, but there are still issues with cotton candy algae, being the biggest pain of what is growing, along with some cyano in a low flow area. The nutrients in my water column are also browning my SPS. As I am running a HOB overflow, I'm thinking that running such a scrubber off of one of the Rio quiet drives as you suggest with it being suspended above the sump on the brackets, as the sump is a standard 20 long, with the gate valve. As the man who knows more about these scrubbers than anyone else, what are your thoughts towards this as a solution to this issue?
So do you still have nitrates detectable? Algae scrubbers are very good at reducing nitrates, sometimes phosphates are a bit of a battle still but at worst it will reduce your reliance on GFO, at best, eliminate it. L2 for 1/2 cube/day is a bit of overkill but sometimes that what you need to get a tank back on track. Then you can dial it back, or stock it up. 20L is a smaller sump, but it will do, the L2 just needs the physical space to fit, and you can set it on the corner of the tank if you want and have the drain in the inside corner so it takes up less overall space.
Space isn't an issue since the 'refugium' is currently a junk light over a colander where algae grows. Simple to remove. And with the sump itself located behind the tank, it can easily sit on top of the system. When it comes to nitrates being detectable, they never have been since the algae growth simply absorbs it. And the algae is so deep in the rocks physical removal always pulls out rock with it, only to be covered back up in a weeks time. The goal is to to reduce the amount of media being run on top of reduction of algae.
Well that's good (that it's not bryopsis) because that's a lot more difficult to eradicate. Cyano is the toughest and last to go, because it can modify the environment around it to suit it's needs. But it will go away, along with other nuisance algae, eventually.
