Steve's L2

Going to start with a progression post, details will follow later as I have time.



Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

Week 5

Week 6

Week 7

Week 8

Week 9 - 14 days growth




Week 10

 

Week 11 - 14 days growth






Those bumbs are the first real sign I've seen of any kind of "3D" growth. Yay for bumps.


Cleaned screen.


Nitrates @ 8
Phosphates @ .02


Still having to clean the display tank glass and rocks every couple of days. Thinking about adding another powerhead to the display tank to up the flow to see if that slows down growth on the rocks and sandbed.


I am going to do another round of larger water changes, 3 @ 30 gallons each this week. I'd like to get the Nitrates down to below 4ppm.


Lighting this last couple weeks has been 4 hours on 4 hours off repeating. I have observed decent, if not better, growth using this cycle. No way to tell if it was due to the lighting change or the screen maturing more.


Plan from now on is to keep the 4 hour on 4 hour off lighting and to clean only one side of the screen every seven days.

 

Week 12 - a day late - 8 days growth








Cleaned one side, letting the other go 14 days.


Nitrates @ 8
Phosphates @ .02

 

Week 13


14 days growth side



6 days growth side



Cleaned 14 days growth side



Nitrates @ 8
Phosphates @ 0


I'm probably feeding 3 maybe even 4 cubes per day some days. I still get quite a bit of algae growth in the display tank and frag tank. I'm thinking about shortening the light cycle on both just a bit.


When I have time to switch around some plumbing I'm going to try injecting bubbles on the screen just for fun.


While I still haven't had the results that I'm looking for, which is this scrubber to out-compete the algae in the display and frag tanks, each week the screen has been better than the last for as long as it has been setup. My tank has never looked healthier, and my nitrates and phosphates are not out of control.

 

I guess I have been counting a cube as a single cube of frozen coming from the common trays the food comes in or a somewhat similarly sized piece broken off a frozen sheet or an eyeballed pinch of pellets. Perhaps I should be more careful with my feeding

Which type of cube would this be more similar to? Is there a post about cube sizes I should re-read?

 

I'll plan on upping the hours at some point. I like to change one thing at a time though so I can see the effect better. Right now I'm still watching for the effects of alternating cleaning one side every 14 days.

Thanks Bud

 

Week 15



Nitrates @ 6
Phosphates @ .02

Here is what I am dealing with in my display. I am hoping the scrubber eventually kicks this.






From what I now understand, this is cyano, and I'm thinking I might try a 3 days and nights lights out while I leave the scrubber going.

 

I had kicked this a while back with a GFO reactor but my nitrates kept going up and up. I started the scrubber to keep nitrates in check. I stopped the GFO when I started the scrubber and the cyano came back almost immediately. I could definitely hook up a reactor with carbon in it again, I haven't done that in a while. I've never run a skimmer on this system.

My pH fluctuates quite a bit. I could probably level this out a bit if I ran the scrubber for a longer period at night instead of on the 4 hour on/off schedule. Here is a graph from the apex.

 

Week 17 1/2 (3 days late)

17 days growth side

10 days growth side



First cleaning where it was actually worth taking a 3d picture


A LOT more growth this cleaning. Not sure if it is the extra 3 days or if something else is going on. I haven't done a water change in 3 weeks. I'll update this post later with test results, been too busy to maintain the tank at all lately

Nitrates @ 6
Phosphates @ .02

 

I think to get any more flow through the scrubber I'd have to switch out the barbed fitting with the larger one like we talked about, I still haven't gotten to that yet. I also haven't gotten around to putting bubbles on the screen, I'd like to give that a try at some point. Neat idea taking the diffuser off one side, I could always make sure to put the side that is on its second week towards the LEDs without the diffuser.

At this point I'm just tinkering for the sake of tinkering. The scrubber seem to be doing great, thanks bud

 

Yes I am undersized on my scrubber with my current feeding habits. At some point in the future I will be setting up a larger scrubber because I want to feed even more. In the meantime I figure I'll see how far I can push the L2

Only scraping one side a week is a strategy to improve overall growth and harvest. I guess the only way to know if it is really working or if I am actually halving the nutrient export would be to weigh each harvest. I do think that by letting each side grow another week and alternating harvest that I have seen a significant increase in growth on both sides.

I no longer alternate 3 hours on and 3 hours off. That was an effort to make sure the algae wasn't burning as the screen matured. When I switched to one straight photoperiod it seemed to help now that the screen is mature.

Its also worth noting that I think my scrubber is actually limited by phosphates as they always test fairly low while my nitrates wont come down any further unless I do a water change.