I recently purchased an l4 scrubber for a new 180g setup I am building. I am starting this tank fresh and do not have a bio load of fish yet however have added a bunch of frags recently. I started this tank a week ago and have fed the tank a few times with nori or flakefood. I have tried seeding the screen with algae from sabbaths l2 screen 2 times but the algae keeps dying or decaying and turning into a white film... I have attached a picture because I cannot think of a good way to describe it other then a white slime. Is there a way to still get my scrubber kicked in without initiating a cycle on the tank? Right now I am still reading 0 ammonia.
With no or a low nutrient load, I just think the scrubber may be having trouble supporting growth. White slime is a new one to me. How many hours/day are the LEDs on? One solid photoperiod or multiple? Here is what my gut says: 1) Feed the tank coral food only. Like Oyster-feast, or the like. Target feed the corals if you can. Allow them to be the bio-load. 2) Run a very minimal photoperiod on the scrubber. Like maybe 15-30 minutes per period, and only 2 or 4 or these a day. 3) Reduce the flow so that you are just getting enough flow to provide even coverage. I don't think you will be able to fully avoid a cycle, test daily for ammonia and if you see any, increase the flow on the scrubber. Anyone else?
What do you guys think about just running one side of the scrubber lights until he needs more. Sent from my mobile Don
Here is the same side 24 hours later... I added 3 bottles of some instant ocean Bio Spira which is supposed to prevent any spikes or tank cycle. Seems that 1 day later a lot more of the screen is turning green although I still have the white slime which I think was caused from the 2 times I tried seeding the screen with algae from sabaths L2... I still have not cleaned the screen or rinsed it... It has been running for 9 days now. Curious if anyone has any suggestions on Sabbaths suggestion or where to go from here.
I was thinking about this and the only time that I had white algae was when I left for a week and about a day or so before I got home, a fish got sucked on to the intake and screen flow got choked off, algae died. So here the algae is dying because it has no "food" I think. I would start dosing ammonia. You need to create the cycle process in your tank no matter what, the scrubber will take the edge off it but it will still be there and needs to be there. Get the Ace Hardware brand janitorial strength stuff and dose your tank up to 1ppm. Dose, test 15min later, dose again if needed. Then daily: test, dose, wait 15, test. I did this on a 225 FW tank seeded with bioballs in the sump. I was dosed up to about 3ppm and it stayed there for several days, then started to drop, then rapidly. I was dosing 1/4 cup/day for 2 weeks and it would suck all the ammonia down by the next day, Nitrite was still there but in 2 weeks it would fully convert ammonia to Nitrate in 24 hours. I tried to keep ammonia between 1 and 4 ppm during that time. Above 4ppm and you stall out the cycle. below 1ppm and it takes too long. If you have LR in the tank or LS and you don't want to kill it, then dose a lot less, or add shrimp in a fine mesh bag. As to the shrimp I can't recall but I think you're supposed to boil it or something. Maybe raw is OK but something is telling me no.
I suppose white algae would be the extreme version of yellow rubber algae. Way, way too much light and zero nutrients. So you need a lot less light and a lot more nutrients. And you still need to cycle the tank at some level. Auuugh ok just recalled the first few posts - frags in tank. Ok the bottom line is you need to provide a food source for the tank/corals/scrubber. Lower the light period way down and feed the snot out of the corals. Lots of flow in the tank would be good. Maybe a small fish or two as well.
Checked again tonight and the whole screen on one side is green... Seeing good algae growth quickly now. It appears like one of the birdsnests is receding but the other corals all look great.
Keep an eye on the birdsnest. Is it a green ORA? I had a lot of trouble keeping those for some reason.
It is a hyacinth pink birds nest... yea hopefully everything else keeps going well. here is a pic of the frags I was able to pick up from a friend in fargo.
I would think that now that you have algae on the screen. It will handle a small bio-load at this point. I can't seem to keep birds nest either.
How many hours/day are you running the lights? I would increase flow a bit and lighting a bit. That growth indicates your nutrients are rising, or at least more than the screen can absorb at the current photoperiod - have you tested them?
Sabbath came over today to help with the move... I added my 3 fish to the tank and a few more corals. The algae is thicker now and growing better on both sides of the screen. We opened the flow the rest of the way on the pump and I am going to change my light schedule to 9 hours constant instead of 2 hours on and 2 hours off for 8 hours on total. I will probably do my first cleaning tomorrow sometime.
