New L2

Yup, just the swipe with the brush across the whole screen, "stripes" is another cleaning technique but you would need more GHA to do that (involves scraping an "X" pattern on one side, "#" pattern on other)

 

Nope, I would leave it be. Looks like you did swipe off the dark growth from the last pic, but nothing has grown back in it's place...but, the areas where you have GHA, it looks very good. Sometimes screen start like this, with clumps/wads of growth. Not really sure why that happens but it's a good sign at this point, so leave it completely alone, all settings the same, probably check it in 5-6 days

Progressing slowly, but progressing

 

Pick at the clumps but only a tiny bit - like, grab right in the center of a clump and pull off a chunk but only once. Repeat for all clumps. Light rinse, scrub top edge (the smooth part of the screen) and back in for 7 days.

 

Same as before, thin it out a bit, let it grow 9 days or so then

 

Just got a look at these pics on my PC monitor, just to verify, you cleaned off the screen on 8/9 or 8/10 by picking off / thinning out the clumps, correct? The pic from yesterday looks very similar, so that is good (growth is consistent, where you have it) and looks like it's a bit more growth. It also looks like the parts of the screen where you can still see the mesh pattern are more green and brown than they are that almond/gray color in the 8/2 pics (which is essentially bare screen/mortar) am I seeing that correctly?

When you thin out and rinse the screen, do those parts of the screen (where the mesh pattern is still visible) go back to that almond/grey color, or is there a thin coating of some kind of algae that sticks on after rinsing?

Either way it's looking stronger, I'd let it go minimum 9 or 10 days, maybe 14

 

It's on track for being a slow starter lol how about that for an answer

But seriously, it's been what I would call very slow/finicky to get rolling, and now that it's getting going, it's probably on the slow end of the bell curve for ramping up from there. The patchy growth is something that I can't explain: why one spot on the screen grows in and another doesn't...it's not a position relative to the LEDs or flow, just random. Never been able to explain why that happens, but it will eventually fill in everywhere. Until that happens, you're still on the path of holding the light levels on the lower end of intensity, but you can increase duration now because the more barren areas are getting coloration. So that's good

As soon as you start to see more like 50-75% of the mesh pattern filled in/covered up, then you can start increasing intensity.

Thank you for keeping up this thread and posting pics. It helps a lot of people who lurk and might be seeing similar results, but they just don't post at all

 

I think I suck at checking this thread...caught me at on a super-busy day!

I think you can do a more aggressive harvest - use the scraper and "drag" it across the screen with light pressure without scraping it against the screen, at least not too hard. The idea is, remove a bunch of algae but leave some behind, and don't scrub away the mortar.

Do that to both sides, light rinse, scrub the top edge, back in.

Add hours. What are you at now for duration and intensity?