Hi all, I thought I would tell my story about my L3 I purchased and set up. First off Let me tell you about my Reef tank. Before I even set the tank up I had planned on putting an L3 on it. Because one of the guys in my local reef club has an L2 on his 180 gal reef tank. His tank has such great coral growth and his water parameters are always stable so I knew I had to have one for my set up. Especially since I knew I would be adding sps corals down the road. So any way back to my tank a 75 gallon reef tank. I filled my tank on 9/10/13. My plan was to run a Life Reef protein skimmer and the L3 in my sump and this would be my only filtration beside the 60lbs of live rock in my tank. Bud was running a little behind on making scrubbers because of a material shortage so I went ahead and started my tank before I got it thinking the scrubber would be here in a few weeks just about time tank would start showing signs of Nitrates. Well this is what happened I used some dried live rock that had been out of water for 7 months. It looked really clean so I rinsed it off and used it. Plus I took some other live rock out of another system I had going in the house to seed the tank. I also used some Bio spira to seed the tank, I wanted it cycled quickly. So I threw in couple fish 24 hrs after I started it knowing that there would not be a hard cycle with the use of Bio Spira. (I have used it before. Stuff is great!) So sure enough 6 days later ammonia was gone. ( it never got any higher than .1 for those of you shaking your heads right....lol) Nitrates were at .03 The next day I started to notice some algae on the glass of the tank didn't think much about it at all looked normal. Two days later I had a major problem and I knew it because I had massive amounts of hair algae every where in the tank. I was shocked never had that happen before in a new tank less than 10 days old. I knew I had not put any nutrients that would be causing this so I was confused on why this was happening. So I tested A= 0.0 Nitrites = 0.0 Nitrates = .02 ALK = 13 Cal = 420 Mag = 1380 So now I'm really confused. So a few more days go by and the hair algae is getting really bad and growing fast. ( some of it already 6 inches long coming off the rocks and glass. Keep in mind already have some corals in the tank., So I test again and get the same results.... So now I begin to think my test results are incorrect. So I get some water out of the tank and head to the local fish store. They got very close to the same results I was getting. So I'm going crazy now on the way home trying to figure out where this algae is coming from. So I decide even though I know I haven't put any nutrients in the tank I'm going to check phosphates, so I get home pull out my Hana Checker and test it. BAMM! Results come back at .2! that's right .2 not .02. So not having the scrubber yet I had to get those levels down quickly or I was going to have a long fight with this algae and tank. So I call a buddy reefer to get some GFO from him and start a reactor I had here at the house. 24 hours after I added the GFO and carbon it pulled my phosphates down to .06 two days later I checked them again they were down to .03. This was a Friday and happened to be the day my L3 showed up. BTW the reason the phosphates were so bad in a new tank were, the dry rock I used wasn't clean enough and carried it into the system then got wet again and leached it out into the water. Ok now your up to speed on my tank. So I opened it up and was impressed with the quality and workmanship. I soon realized I didn't have enough room to put it on top of my sump and still have enough clearance to clean it. So I had to make a acrylic shelf for it to sit on inside my sump. This took days to complete with drying time. So Monday evening on 10/7/13 I install my L3 into my system. I plumbed it in off my return pump line to the tank. So I have roughly about 420 gph going into the L3. I set the flow as hard as I could get it without having water go out the emergency drain on the side. I also made the shelf it is sitting on to be only 1 inch off my sump water line level. (I have check valves on my tank so I don't get any back flow from tank into sump when power is off) I put it 1 inch above water line because I didn't want to have to use a valve on it to control water noise. So my main drain is 2 inches under my water line in sump and emergency drain is 1 inch under water line. It is silent, yep silent no water noise at all. worked like a champ. So set my lights on the L3 to be on 10 hours a night. I checked my scrubber screen a couple times using a mirror with the scrubber lights on always and it didn't look like I was getting any growth. I fact I email Bud and told him that..he made couple suggestions. I never changed anything in the set up. I left it to run. Today 10/18/13 I was doing some cleaning in the tank to try to siphon some of the algae out. Because for last couple days I noticed it was starting to die off and some of it was getting pretty slimy. So I get done with that and decide I better take out the screen on my L3 for the first time. I shocked and very impressed at the same time when I got it out. remember this is only 11 days my scrubber has been running now. Attached are some picture of my screen and tank. I wish I would have taken a few pictures of it when the algae was at it's worst, but I didn't. Just trust when I say it was really really bad! Long hair algae every where! stringing all over 6 and 8 inches off everything. I will also post a couple picture of the tank today. There still some algae but it is no longer growing. In fact it is receding at a very fast rate. I'm think in another week or so it will completely gone no signs of it any where. Today these were my tank levels. Please keep in mind I have not done any water changes at all. Until today when I siphoned off 15 gallons taking dead algae out. I did my testing before I started today these were the results. Am =.0 nitrites = .0 nitrates =.02 phosphates = .01 ALK = 11 Cal = 450 Mag = 1380 I'm very very please with the result of my L3. I will update this again next week when I clean the screen again. Oh I did up the lights on my L3 today after I clean the screen to run 12 hours at night now. My lights are still set on low intensity in the scrubber.
Garf I had to delete your post, for some reason it got stuck under moderation along with the thread and I kept getting a database error. Stupid vB.
No probs Floyd. It was just a remark on the length of the initial post and how fantastically well his scrubber was working anyway
Can't quite tell from the pics but you should have the wires coming out if the top of the fixtures (grommets up). I suppose down would be also as long as they're both down (only matters on L3 as the LED arrangement is different)
It's all good! That's the kind of initial post I like to see, because it saves people from asking things like 'where did you get your LR, how old is your tank, what do your water tests read' etc.
Here's what my screen looked like on Day 18 of L3 running. This was with lights on 12 hours a night. I'm going to kick the lights up to 14 hours a night now. This stuff was thick had to work to get it off the screen..lol Tank is looking better and better all the time. Corals are doing Great!
That's an impressive start. Really impressive! I think you are on the high end of the bell curve for pre-scrubber tank conditions. Appears they were pretty optimal for growing algae.
