Lion-O's Surf2 Thread

He's done really well to give this thing a 6 month trial without any success.

 

Memories.. I had the same Voltron set, won it as a raffle prize selling coupon books for little league. I even kept mine in the box (I believe it cost like $100 at the time, around '86). About 10 years later I went looking for it (several moves later, thought it was packed away safely in a box), only to learn my mom sold it at a garage sale for like $10. I was so mad. She also sold a collection of comics someone gave me growing up, literally thousands of them, going back as far as the '30's, and she also sold the entire lot (4 good size boxes full) for $5. I know there were several $1000 comics in those boxes. Hindsight is always 20/20 though.. I had no idea at that young ago how much things really would go for 20+ years later. Heck, we would all be millionaires if we could go back and just make a few simple investments at the right time, like in Apple or Microsoft.

Anyway... sorry that was so off topic, just brought back a lot of memories. lol.. as for as the Surf2 issue, I am of the opinion of 'toss it in the trash'. With the people on this forum, it should be a piece of cake to design a nano scrubber that actually works instead of trying to fix you know whos disasters (which I really don't see it ever working the way it is designed).

 

Ive been looking at my failure with the copepod scrubber, and perhaps their is a link.It seems FACT that bacterial populations control algae and vice versa given the chance. Not gonna pick bits out of this report because it's all relevant and I would just end up copying and pasting the whole lot.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08927014.2013.828712?noFrame=true

Is there a common link between these failing scrubbers and their tanks. Ie. are they bacterially deficient in variation for example, and do they require more mature live rock in the system. Or perhaps they would benefit from being matured in the dark for a few weeks.

Edit - this seems like a good candidate for the "pod circle" phenomena also

 

Fk it, I'll post it on the thread. Will probably get me banned but I don't really give a toss.

 

Hello all There are too many forums for this stuff! Turbo, did you stop using reefcentral for some reason? I swear I recognize your avatar...

Anyway, for clarification, I am 27 years old and own all of voltron and thundercats on dvd. Though there is the obvious thundercat reference, my alias (here , there , and on reefcentral) is actually more a tribute to my favorite fish (lions).

Onto business :- I'm not pointing fingers at anyone I just want to get my display algae free. I've had this tank since 2009 and despite all the progress we've made it always seems to spike in algae during vacations. I was HOPING when I found out about algae scrubbers that this could really help me out... and in doing my research came across the surf which seemed to be a very legitimate product. However as noted I've run it for quite some time and my growth has gone from the original pretty green to the new slimy orange. I've never had a good harvest.

I'm willing to try anything once so I was thinking I'd proceed with the cleaning and removing media for a week. I can also test my params again but the thing that really annoys me about those test kits is how the color is just always slightly subjectively hard to read. A bit of a pet peeve since high school bio/chem I suppose. Why can't everything just be digital (and affordable) ?

Anywho, I'll try and subscribe to this thread and will do whatever the consensus thinks is best! Let me know if there is any other tank history I can provide.

 

now watching.

 

The kits I have are...

Marine Lab (by red sea) tests for ... ph, alk, nh3/nh4, no2, no3
elos po4
&
salifert silicate test.

I also usually bring a water sample with me when i visit the LFS and ask them to test my water, cause its free and easy

So you want me to do a po4 test? anything else?

 

Just did a quick test and the phosphates report back around 0 (my scale is 0 , .05 , .1 , big #s). The liquid is very clear with barely a hint of blue. So that looks good.

One thing I was debating was trying a chemi clean treatment, or something like that? The only reason is I had on occasion seen a few spots that looked kind of red in the reef like the red slime i had treated for in the past. Right now its not a concern, but maybe it would help with the slime in the scrubber? Idunno, just throwing it out there.

 

Lion O

I'm not advocating the use of chemi clean, just letting you know my experience.

Just before I tore down my scrubber due to lack of algae growth, I dosed the tank with chemi clean because I battled cyano for years without success. It was the reason I started a scrubber in the first place. I had cyano growing on my screen as well. After one dose, the red slime was completely eradicated from the tank, screen included. It didn't harm the small amount of algae I had on the screen at the time. FWIW

 

As predicted, another one less of them and another one more of you!

 

What triggered it?

 

I have used chemi clean twice in the past when red slime was a problem, and it targeted it out nicely. All the other algae remained. Corals/fish unharmed. I'm not saying I'll use it now, but it's something i've got in the back pocket.