its been about 3 weeks now with the L2 running. The screen is filled with the same strange algae I got on my DIY scrubber. Kind of a green/yellow spongy slime that sticks pretty well on the screen. My question is my light is turned just above the lowest setting. When should I turn it up? Or is the lowest setting good?
When you say the lowest setting, that would be at around the 10 or 11 o'clock position - is that where you have it at? If so, set it to the 6 o'clock position, that's where you should generally start. How many hours/day are you running the lights? How much flow are you pushing? Is it enough flow that you start to get the "arcing" effect (significantly more flow on one side of the screen)?
I had the light set right about at 6 o'clock a little closer to 7 but I turned it up. Flow wise I have the rio you sent with the kit. I have it turned down a hair to keep the nose down but otherwise it's almost full open and I do get more flow on one side. I have the light set the same as my DIY scrubber, 17 hours on 7 hours off.
Dial the flow back just enough to get a more even coverage and set the dial to 5 o'clock. Run 20 hours. See what happens. Hope you don't mind being a bit of a test case!! It won't do any harm, just interested if what works for me will work for you
here it is after one week with recommended settings. Like I said. It's like a spongy/slimey algae. Not like cyano. It's thick and hard to remove. It's hard to post on my phone but here is a pic link https://flic.kr/p/J4ALZS
Click "Share" then copy/paste the BB Code link Code: [url=https://flic.kr/p/J4ALZS][img]https://c5.staticflickr.com/9/8851/27607718924_1d98ccd04f_z.jpg[/img]Untitled[/url] by [url=https://www.flickr.com/photos/52011253@N08/]b4tn[/url], on Flickr You can chop out everything but what is between the IMG sections, or this below, which is all you need. The rest is flickr serving itself. Code: [img]https://c5.staticflickr.com/9/8851/27607718924_1d98ccd04f_z.jpg[/img]
So on that note, that is the telltale over-lighting typically, and quite a case of it. It generally means, not enough nutrients for the light you are providing. So, a little more information might be due here, my 5 o'clock recommendation may have been the wrong direction...sorry... What size tank? What are the N and P readings? How heavily is the tank stocked? How much and what do you feed, on a daily average, over a week? Do you have any algae problems in the tank that you are fighting? What other filtration are you running? IIRC you have the rio 1400: in this case that might actually be too much, at least, right now. If you didn't already, make sure you have it dialed back so that you are just getting a even coverage. This might be lower than you think you need. Then, dial the light intensity back to about the 8 o'clock position, same hours. Get back to me on the above. I do see some green around the edges but mostly the yellow goo. You will want to remove that, which might take some effort if it's firmly attached. At the same time, you don't want to remove the mortar, at least, not too much of it. So you will want to use the denture toothbrush (blue/green brush) and gently work at it, light pressure, slow swipe, not hard fast scrubbing. Kind of like I show in this video at about the 6:15 point
Thanks, it's a 75 gallon display 40 gallon sump. I have a reef octo 150 skimmer and a filter sock. That's about it for filteration other than about 80 pounds of rock. My N and P have always been unreadable after my cycle and the tank is almost a year old. I don't currently have any algae problems other than the brown slimey/dusty hair that grows on my glass and occasionally on the sand. The scrubber for me was more of a preventative/export solution. As for live stock and feeding. I have the following fish: One spot foxface Coral beauty 2 occeleris clowns Blue green chromis Corris wrasse Cleaner shrimp Tons of cerith snails A few hermits And lastly some nerrites. Corals is an assortment of LPS, SPS, and Zoas. I feed about a cube a day of frozen homemade food, a pinch or two of new life spectrum pellets, and a 2x2 sheet of nori daily.
I think there isn't much for the scrubber to consume, so it will probably take longer for GHA to get established. So I would reduce light to 8 o'clock and also reduce hours to 9/day
Making progress now. Light is at 8 o'clock and its on for 9 hours. I did notice that my sandbed has started turning brown in areas since doing this but might just be coincidence. After cleaning the screen I did turn the flow down a hair more for more even coverage. This 5 days since my last pic
That's looking better - the coverage is even and I can see the green starting to fill in ^ now is the time for this. Try just fingertips first, if the dark stuff won't come off that easily, drag the toothbrush across it, that should dislodge it. Leave as much green behind as possible - it should hold on much better than the dark slime stuff.
Two weeks later. I am now getting a dark green/red slime. Running 9 hours at the 8 o'clock position. When cleaning off he slime it comes off very easy and exposes bare screen. Should I increase the light cycle time or increase the intensity? Clean the screen more often?
Sorry...weekend threw me off, Friday messages got thrown into the life blender!! I can see quite a bit of green around the edges which means you are not over-lighting, the dark slime might be blocking...you're getting a combination of things here, which is kind of tough to troubleshoot. So when you clean, does everything come off, across the entire screen? Or is it just in the middle? The 8 o'clock position seems to have helped the screen start to fill in - which has been a long road to get there... If you have GHA that stays attached around the edges when you rinse (I'm guessing this is the case) then bump the lights to 6 o'clock, and then check for that slime growth every 3-5 days and swipe it off if you see enough of it. Don't let the slime layer stay there for more than a couple days. I've seen this before and it typically is a phase, the slime layer will persist for months - it can tend to delay or prevent GHA from attaching, but once you get a base of GHA under that, the slime will just grow on top of it and you won't need to worry about it. Eventually it will go away but I've seen this on my own scrubber, once the GHA gets "rolling" it seems to just disappear.
also when you say "bare screen" does that mean there is literally no growth of any kind underneath, or just that you can see the screen pattern / no holes filled in (but there is some spotty coloration to it)?
