Lion-O's Surf2 Thread

I'm about to just throw in the towel with this thing.

I'm a very patient person but week after week I'm cleaning it out and just removing colored slime. And the algae in the display continues to bloom at pretty much the best it has been.

I even added a kole yellow tang to try to get him munching on it, but he doesn't seem interested lol. He gobbles up his nori every day and I think he helps keep the glass clean (at least, that's what I think hes doing... really he looks like hes yelling at the glass and gumming it! ).

 

That's going to take some digging for sure. I wish I could say I kept a journal of weekly progress but the thought never occurred to me. I thought a pic now and then would suffice :\

I'll dig through my old post, and emails/pics and get back to you. I might be able to draw up a rough timeline.

 

I have not read through your posts here or on the Scrubber site but if you have a lot of algae in the display you might need to cut the lights WAY back to 25-50% of the time and even remove some algae by hand. The lights in the display tank might be overpowering or out competing your surf2 device.

 

Ok, here goes - I think this is going to be as good as I can provide.

Tank up and running - Dec 2009
purchased 5/28/13
shipped 6/13
arrived & installed 6/26/13

7/1 - fusion 700 air pump to max (for maximum bubblage)

7/9 - so far no growth. 22 hours a day light. Rubbed in some "seed" algae from display

7/26 - Thin green layer starting to spread in the scrubber

<6 week vacation>

9/30 - Entire scrubber is covered in green, but no tangible growth

10/1 - Light scrubbing with a toothbrush in the sink
At this point, started doing this cleaning once every 1-2 weeks

10/18 - Green no longer, yellow/brownish color (like Cali kelp forest)

11/2 - Same thing

11/10 - Lights down to 18 hrs/day

1/1 - Lights bumped back up to 22 hrs/day

1/14 - Removed filter sock and phosban from the tank

2/1 - Changed to two 6 hour photoperiods

2/3 - Added the filter sock and phosban back into tank

 

Turbo, do you have a link to your scrubbers? I would be interested to check them out.

 

I am glad you said that!!! I almost posted about a waterfall scrubber being much for efficient then the air bubble scrubber in my opinion. I have built many different type scrubbers in my day but I get the best results from my LED waterfall scrubber. I still maintain a horizontal on my QT/pod production tank due to necessity and I did have a air bubble scrubber lit on both sides that grew tons of 3D algae but still didnt cut it so it was changed to a waterfall type. Turbo's scrubbers are second to none in my opinion and if I was not able build one I would buy his.