Hi Turbo, I did a mistake this week I turned of water flow in my scrubber for like a day or two and lights were left on (15 hours). So the screen dried out and coraline algae in the scrubber died. There is some little growth starting to happen but yellowish not green! SO QUESTION HERE; does this mean it will be like starting with a brand new screen? Lmk please so I can reduce feeding accordingly. Thank you
If you cook it hard, and the screen ends up with a white crust on it, you have to vinegar-soak that screen and scrub everything off and start over. If it didn't quite get that cooked, you can re-start it without going back to square one I'm guessing that happened right after you cleaned it, so it's probably cooked...
Hi turbo thanks for answering not really sure I can tell the difference. Here is a pic I just took now. Lmk whet you think please. If was like 2 to 3 days after I cleaned it.
Given that brownish algae shall I increase photo period? It is at 15 hours now. I am very scared right now, because i know once nitrates start going up, i will loose all of my SPS (non acropora).
it doesn't look like there's much white encrustation, it would look like a solid (opaque) white coating. I'd say you're just starting over rinse the slime off, rub with fingertips under running water, etc, just like starting over pics out of the scrubber would be better, I still can't really tell for sure but you would be able to see white encrustation like a layer of hard calcium
Ok, sounds good i guess there is no white film because i just gave it a good cleaning with a brush (i know i should not go that far) as part of my regular cleaning. So there was not much of a film algae all over that would make it encrust/get cooked across the whole canvas. i looked closer with my eyes (camera cannot capture it) there was no film encrusting, just those opaque square and the plastic canvas. Questions: 1. How often should i take it out to clean the slime? once a week? 2. Shall i increase photo period? thanks again
treat like a new screen, limited photoperiod until you have growth that can absorb that amount of light clean as many as 2-3 times/week for slime, rub/rinse FYI I never use a brush on my screen, only on the top edge. Over-cleaning should be avoided. In most cases, scraping + rinse is all you want to do.
Thank you, will clean 2-3 times a week. Noted for the brush use, will skip that going forward. Question: you think it is a good idea to play with vinegar dosing in small amounts (in the interim while the scrubber catches up) to curb nitrates? Just want your thoughts on this please. Nitrates: - last week was zero so i fed a bit higher than normal last week - now it is like 2-5 ppm
It looks like you have a hotspot where the lights are located. If you can, back them away from the scrubber a bit. If you can't, you can try a diffuser plate (which might have to be inside the scrubber, depending on how hot those lights get). Alternatively, you can break up the photoperiod into multiple on/off cycles throughout the day, which may help. If you leave it alone, it should fill in eventually.
Ok thanks for the reply - actually the lights are very strong but i have TWO LAYERS of teflon heat resistant white sheets to diffuse that light, but i guess i need another layer. My fear is that if i diffuse the center (with another layer) where led is the outside of the screen will get much less light that algae needs to grow. any thoughts? thx
