Ultra-High Nutrient Tank - No Scrubber Growth

So here's a tricky one for y'all to pick apart. First, a quick background.

Tank is in a Japanese Steakhouse. 225 FOWLR. When I came across it, it looked like this



Nitrates well off the scale (over 800 on API, extrapolated after diluting sample water with fresh SW) and Phos who knows.

With 1 fish alive



And one that I found under a rock when emptying the tank, and he was blind and barely alive



He died a few weeks later.

I pulled the fish & bio-balls out into a temp tank



Soaked all the rocks in freshwater, sprayed with bleach, rinsed, etc...Then sanded down the main tank (took 2 weeks @ 2 hours/day) and set it all up again.





That was almost 3 years ago.

Now, because the owner hasn't wanted to pay for monthly water changes, and they really didn't seem to be making much of a dent, the tank is back to super high nutrients.

The result is N is over 400, and P is around 6.5, both using diluted samples. Please do not crucify me!!! LOL

I added an L2 (original version) in October of 2012. I wanted to see how it would perform. Turns out, it doesn't - at all.



The only growth I get is in the bottom of the box:







...and it's sort of like a skin of algae





Then there is some emerald green growth inside the slot pipe - deep inside it, like where there is nearly zero light, and some brown growth right at the bottom of the screen (underwater)





This is what it looks like, week after week, for over 3 months. The screen is bare white, like it was brand new, and the only growth is at the slot pipe junction and up into the pipe, and in the corners and bottom of the box.

I have tried running the lights 24/7 (for one week, a month into it) but for the most part I run the lights 1 hour on, 1 hour off, for a total "on" time of 12 hours/day.

So what is the deal here? Nutrients too high for algae to grow? No presence of proper strain of algae?

Is it just high P, just high N, or both? Could I run GFO to pull down P? I recall a thread about high P inhibiting algae growth. They clean the tank with a algae mop once a week and there is hardly any growth.

The restaurant changed owners last year, and the new owner wants to turn it into a full-blown reef tank (and so do I!!). I can do a PWC if I really need to, but it's a PITA on this tank. I was hoping that the algae scrubber would at least make a dent in the nutrients - I haven't even bothered to re-test.

To my knowledge, no one has tried putting an algae scrubber on a tank that is this high in nutrients. So maybe there is a limit to what the scrubber can do. If that is the case, this tank is well beyond it.

So I'll leave it to the study-diggers to dig up something that might explain this...

 

Please put that into layman's terms LOL!! I think what you're trying to say is that if I add GFO, I may end up creating an environment that will allow the scrubber to start growing? Or is it that the excess P in the tank is actually preventing cyano (and hair algae) from completely taking over?

 

And...just to make things more interesting with this discussion...let's compare The Japanese Steakhouse tank to the Chinese Restaurant Tank I previously mentioned.

Here is the album showing before and after the initial clean-up of the Chinese Restaurant tank back in late 2011: http://s611.photobucket.com/albums/tt191/FloydRTurbo/Second Customer FOWLR/?start=all

That pic of the sponge in the sump is 100% clogged. They hadn't done any maintenance in 3 years - none - just top offs. So I cleaned up the sump and got it working right, scrubbed all the rocks, siphoned out 1/2 of the gravel (no choice - it was a 1/2" thick layer of detritus bound to the top of the gravel) eventually added more LR, got rid of the bio-balls, put in filter socks and a skimmer, it was doing OK. But the owner got lazy on adding top-off water and would just unplug the skimmer when the pump started sucking air, and didn't want to spend $$ on water changes anymore, just filter socks, so I sold the skimmer and now I just replace filter socks every so often and he tops off with water from the local grocery store's drinking water system.

I replaced the lamps in the Coralife 4x96W Power Compact fixture about a year ago and the GHA in the tank completely exploded. Here is what it looks like now, a year after I did that.







Now before you go chastising me on this one as well...I tried my best on this tank at one time. The owner I was dealing with spoke decent English, then as I mentioned he told me to stop all maintenance ($$ issues) and then he sold the restaurant to his uncle and now only one guy speaks English there and he is the cashier. So what I have resorted to is making this tank my next scrubber test tank for no charge (maybe just free food). At least, that was the plan.

But the reason I post these is that the N and P in this tank was also sky-high. N was over 1100 when I started in 2011, and I did a series of rock-scrubbing and huge PWCs (sometimes 3x in a week) to get it down below 100, where it stayed pretty well until the owner stopped the skimmer and told me to minimize maintenance.

When I changed the lights and the GHA exploded, I saw the N drop 200 points in 2 weeks. Not kidding. Haven't tested it lately though. But I know that P is high as well.

So this is a case that could challenge the thoughts presented about the Japanese Steakhouse tank. Why is this high-nutrient tank growing algae so well?

Consider the differences:

1) I didn't tear this tank down and soak the rocks
2) I have never dipped the rocks in FW or anything
3) tank is fed one table shrimp/day, the puffer decimates it and the damsels eat the remains
4) tank has much higher lighting in a smaller volume, shallower tank (4x96W in 125 vs 4x65w in 225)
5) the Chinese tank has a CUC, or at least it did at one time. Japanese tank has no CUC (yet)

For anyone thinking about getting into the maintenance business, these are the kinds of situations you will come across all the time. Poorly maintained systems that need an overhaul, and clients unwilling to spend the money to have it done. Be thankful when you find the ones that want to, because their tanks end up looking like this:









And the scrubber works like it should

 

That is very interesting. The water does have a very brown tint. I wouldn't have made such a connection.

 

Not to take away from this thread/site, but there is a good amount of discussion on the mirror thread on the scrubber site also

http://algaescrubber.net/forums/sho...Nutrient-Tank-No-Scrubber-Growth&goto=newpost

 

So, a new development.

One of the guys in our club, with a 220g reef decided the other day to get out. $10k setup. He pieced it all out and I got:

All the Live Rock - 200 lb +
All the Live Sand - 2-4" worth
All the fish (10" Vlamingii Tang, Yellow Tang, Desjardini Sailfin Tang, Bicolor Angel, Flameback Angel, Coral Beauty Angel, Blue Damsel, Firefish, and 20 Chromis)
All the Clean-up Crew
Geo Kalk Reactor
100g polypro mixing station turnkey setup (pump, plumbing, etc - all in)

All for $950.

Oh yeah if anyone needs a 220 RR tank, $500 for tank, custom metal stand, sump, and frag tank.

He also had a Geo 6x24 calcium reactor, 70 frags, 2 MP60s, custom LED lighting, and lots of other stuff he pieced out on R2R, RC, and locally. So I didn't get $10k for $1k.

Anyways, all the fish/rock/sand/CUC are going in this tank. The plan now is to take everything out, sell all the fish (not reef safe anyways), replace the sump with a 40B, put in skimmer, filter socks, scrubber, bioballs (temp), clean pumps, replace plumbing hoses, put in newly acquired sand/rock, then give it a few days and then fish.

Meanwhile I need to go get all this, and then out it in temp tanks at my house while I prep for the whole process locally.

So, I spent tonight building scrubbers like a madman. Got about a dozen boxes 50% done. Going to keep going through the weekend and hammer out as much stock as I can so no one is waiting (including you Don & Joel!!)