Dealing with an emergency

Raising alk will lower the CA. You can use baking soda, alk/dkh buffer, whatever you choose, the result will be the same.
As for the steps on reducing/slowing the algae, these are the steps that people have listed. There is no other effective way, short of maybe manually ripping the stuff out as needed. The second thing to consider is if the algae is that bad, theres a chance your scrubber may not ever fully mature, as all the algae in the main tank will use up the nutrients well before the unestablished scrubber has a chance.

 

Exactly.

Thanks for the info

 

On my Phosphate kit if levels are real high it will show as 0 make sure you dont need to delute test so as to getproper reading. Very high concentrations will cause a precipation of regent and be mistaken for low level

 

Just wanted to give everyone an update.

After messing with my scrubber yesterday I noticed the flow was off some.

I found out that the filter/protection pad thingy on the sump pump had so much built up stuff on i,t it lower the flow drastically. I took the pad off off for now. It still has a plastic guard on it though.

Tank lights have been off since yesterday. No algae in tank (small amount if any)

Scrubber had an explosion of growth and it is really picking up.
With everything that I did, I also moved around the lighting on the scrubber a little bit.

Going to feed the fish a small portion today.

I noticed the corals look a little better and have their mouths open.



Tonight what I would like to do is, turn on the tank lights for about 3 hours. Then, after an hour of the lights off, I'm going to put in some more PhytoPlex and try to target feed again.

Will update again tomorrow.

 

What is the update on the scrubber growth?

 

Still using mine, and love it. I will do a cleaning tomorrow, someone post here and remind me.

 

Cleaning every 7 days, right?

 

Yep, I have let it go over a 1 or 2 days, but yea every week. I haven't change water in like 2 months, just topping it off.

I really need to do some some testing today too.

Be back in a few, gonna go do my weekly maintenance now.

 

Mt computer is being retarded, so I'll have to post some pictures later.

 

I haven't had an algae problem since.

Only clean half every 7 days.

Before cleaning it today.



Close-up




And after.



You can see better close ups and more pictures here.

After every weekly cleaning, I always throw a few chunks in my tank for my Yellow Tang. It loves it. I have been doing this since the first cleaning (over 3 months now).

Did some testing today:

Ph: 8.3
Kh: 115
Ca: 500
P04: .25 or Less
N02: .1 or Less
N03: 5 or Less
Am: 0

I have been running the turf scrubber close to 4 months now.

I was having Ca problems, corals where all shriveled up, nothing looked like is was doing well at all. My Ca was really, really high. So for about a 3 weeks to a month I did water changes every week on Sunday. Once it was in check though, everything took off.

My Ca is still slightly high today, but I'm going to keep it there.

I haven't done a water change in about 2 months now. I just top the tank off.

I do not have to clean the glass every couple hours or everyday. I clean the glass about once or twice a week (I have to clean/ scrap the coraline off more than the algae). Coraline has taken off, corals are flourishing, mushrooms are splitting like crazy, everything is doing superb.

Within the last month, 1 mushroom has laid 4 little ones underneath it, while doubling in size. The other mushroom laid 3 little ones. This one isn't as big as the other, but it never was to begin with.

I had to take out some hermit crabs because they were growing so fast they were trying to kill the turbo snails.

Edit: Corrected the dates, I was off a couple of weeks.