11 days in, cleaned the slot and scraped the screen a bit. I think it's pretty good growth for the age, what do you guys think?
Very good results! May I ask? -What does your display algae looks like to get this good of growth. -What is your light schedule each day?
Yes, that's great for 11 days from scratch. You shouldn't need to scrape until the 3rd week or so, just rub it with your fingertips under running water, that should suffice. If you get some longer strands you can use the backs of your fingernails to pick/scrape those off. But try to leave as much growth on the screen as possible for the first month, unless you get an explosion of hair algae that requires you to actually scrape (it can happen)
I do have some hair algae in the display, also what looks like dyno to me. Long thread with a bubble on the tip. The first 5 days I ran 5 hours lit and 3 hours off for a total of 15 hours. My thoughts were that this might kick start some growth, I guess it worked to some extent as the screen started browning. I then switched it to the recommended 9 hours, 1 hour on and 1 hour off for a total of 9 hours overnight.
Will do, thanks for the tip. I did have some growth at the slot so I'll keep that clean. Is this an indication of my flow being too slow? I haven't measured the flow, just keeping a smooth flow over the entire screen.
Do you have the inlet ball valve turned back a bit? If so, you can probably open it a little. The algae grows at the slot very well and will slow down the flow a bit. Once this starts, then you can increase the pump flow to compensate. The pump was tested at nearly 300 GPH at 13" of vertical head, so even if you get a ton of growth at the slot, it should still force 200 GPH across the screen.
Thanks, will throttle it up. Still have some algae in the display I had to siphon out, but I think that is from removing the bio-pellets reactor the same day I installed the L2. Probably should have waited a week or two. Question, should I run the lights for 9 hours straight now, or just keep the one hour on, one hour off, for 9 hours that I am doing now?
