We be scrubbin!

You can see how nasty my sandbed is. Also starting to see some cyano and green hair algae as you can see on some of the rocks. Nothing too major but I don't want it to get any worse. I feel like I have decent flow. I have two jebao rw8's with about a 1" wave rocking.

 

And this is the hard part of the hobby balancing nutrients for good growth but At the same time keeping em in check to combat algae. I have noticed a real boom in growth on about everything in the system so maybe I'm at a new phase. I've never had the uglies used GFO from the start to keep that from happening. until I started the scrubba then I stopped GFO.

 

Funny you mention blasting the rocks and cleaning them out I did that the last water change last Friday and I could tell a difference wow were they nasty. That helped a lot I've been dosing Esv bionic for about 2 months now all numbers are good 420 cal alk was 10.4 and mag was 1350 last time I checked it nitrate 0 phosphate 0 I have 5 ceriths snails which are great and two turbo snails 5nerites which don't appear to do much at all haha. And some like you say evil hermit crabs. I'll blast my rocks off at next water change again that really seemed to help.

 

Well I've had a outbreak of cyano so I got looking into it and found out one of these cheap lights had stopped working and the other one had one side bright and the other string was real dim hard to tell how long it's been that way. May be coincidence about the timing with the cyano. If I were to go to CFL light would I need one 23 watt 3000k for each side? Not real sure I'll have room for the domes is my only problem that's why I went with the slim form factor of the led lights. But just didn't work out. So for now until I can figure something out with space I'm going to have to go to refugiam for awhile. Sucks. I still have faith in a scrubber just need better lights.

 

I wasn't really too happy with the led ones I got anyway. Am I right in my understanding that I would need two dome reflectors with approx 23 watt CFL in the 2700-3000k range? My screen is 6X4". I checked phosphate after taking scrubber off and it was .04ppm. Nitrate still 0. So I'd like to get it back going.

 

Good idea I'm not too worried about light bleed though usually on when I'm asleep anyway. Just getting it to fit smaller would be beneficial so I'll give it a go and see if the cfl floods work out. Am I correct with the spectrum I guess as long as it's a daylight bulb it'll work. But I keep seeing that many use the 2700-3000K does it work better than the 5600k?

 

So I'm in the process of starting back up got the dome reflectors. Walmart doesn't sell the cfl anymore and Lowes and depot is converting to led equivalent. My question is will these work led 60 watt equivelant 9 led watts and 2700k

 

Well a update to my system I had to use chemiclean on the red slime I don't think it was cyano because it was showing no response to h202 so used chemiclean and it wiped it out and everything is back on track.my guess it was spirulina. One of my frozen foods contains spirulina. Well kind of noticed ever since I took my scrubber off even though my growth wasn't much to brag about but I have been getting phosphate readings. Last night it read .02 with Hanna but it has a accuracy of .04 so looks like I'm gonna go ahead and place my scrubber back on somehow. Mainly because after getting rid of the slime growth I've been getting hair algae. I'd much rather do the scrubber than GFO. I have my old acrylic box still but ditched the led lights since they went out and bought two of the 5-1/2" reflectors and will be buying two floodlights in the 2700k range. I'll repost once I get everything going. I just don't think the chaeto refugiam will be as good as a scrubber