help with my algae turf scrubber...

May be your reading your Red Sea wrong

 

not possible... I read the directions and even watched thier you tube video. I'm reading the regent that was used and using thier chart. am I missing something??? please do tell.

 

Ok, having gone over your previous post again. I'm beginning to agree with you that it may be the Red Sea kit hate to admit it as I just bought the Pro one myself. However I'm getting no where near the kind of readings that you are. So I'm going to make myself feel better here and say....my kits better then yours! LOL Lets hope you new one is accurate.

 

As I previously stated, per 1" of width you should have a water flow of 35gph. That being said with a 13.5 scrubber your water flow should be in the range of 472.5gph minimum. I mean if your happy with the flow then it's your scrubber. Changing the lights is the best option in my opinion though. And I would change both not one or the other. Since you know you have bad salt take of that first though.

 

I understood you originally about the 35 GPH... as I stated I have a 2100 GPH pump... My tank uses 850 gph. I have a ball valve that I tweek down to exacly 472 GPH as I got the same in my calculation. as I ststed I used a 5 gallon bucket and a timer to determine what is 472 GPH. see my point? anyway I think we are both saying the same thing. In terms of the bulbs I hear you but I'm going to wait and fix the issues that I have with my salt and test kits to be sure that its not that. once this happens and I still don't have success I will move onto bulbs and try differant color temp. thanks for your suggestion and I appreciate your help immensely.

 

I'm sertain of two things...

#1 your test kit is better than mine

#2 this is a fluke thing and rarely happens with this brand as I've heard tons of good things about red sea. plain to see the quality of the kit that we are dealing with one of the best. I'm sure this is an isolated occurance.

I must admit posting here forced me to do the multitude of tests needed to see clearly that something was wrong with A and B. I never tested so much at one time in 15 yeas. lol thanks for pushing me to thing outside the box.

 

Sorry i was the first to reply and then haven't payed you any attention since then, i feel like this could be bad for our relationship...

So GHA is not as effective as turf algae. If you read santamonica's rants one of his main points is that Turf algae, in the ocean, is the biggest exporter of nutrients. Although the green hair is easier to get, easier to scrape off, and you feel like your dumping more off, it doesn't use up as much nutrients as the turf. But since your scrubber is so young you won't be getting turf just yet. What you want to do is keep it going and to clean it earlier, before it gets that thick. The turf will take hold on the screen and can't grow if the light is getting to the screen because its covered by thick black sludge or GHA.

Another thing you should look into is your lighting. I know your lighting won't be as easy to change as a regular cfl bulb, but you want the light to be at a lower warmer color. For most fuges and growing macro algae people run a 65k bulb, if i remember correctly (i'm too lazy to go read what my bulb says) you should actually use an even lower color tempt bulb. You're not trying to grow macro algae, you're going for a very specific algae, and although any nutrient export is good, why not get the most effective one?

I don't know about your test kits, thats a bummer though. If you have any friends with tanks maybe ask to borrow their test kit and see which set its closer to. hope that helps.

 

I got my new red sea test kit today and did the gammet of tests again... here is what I found:

red dea Mg = 1800
salifert mg = 1450

red sea alk = 9.1 dkh
tropic marin alk = 8 dkh

red sea ca = 560
salifert ca = 430

I am starting to think that red sea tests are just off... especially the mag... its off the charts high as compared to salifert. Alk tests similar and cal even though close it still reads higher than salifert. I tend to trust salifert as I've been using it for some time but I will purchase one more test kit by another company alltogether for mag. and see what type of results I'm gonna get befor I take action on my main tank. I plan on taking no action for cal and alk but raising alk from 9 to 10 (a small adjustment). but if mag. is higher than 1500 I'm going to try and reduce it by water changes.

 

don't buy red sea products they are off. after red sea replacing a test kit the new one was off as well. way off too. I tested against three other test kits... going back to salifert. treid and tested to be good.

 

Lack of green is usually always weak lighting in relation to the level of nutrients.

All algae reduces phosphate. GHA does it faster, however, because it reaches up and into the light and water flow, and therefore access more nutrients and photosynthesis.

It is algae, just a dark growth which block light and flow from reaching the "roots". Thus, the roots die and let go, putting nutrients back into the water.

I don't know your screen size, but 72 total watts should be on a maximum of 72 square inches, such as 6 X 12. This would be one 23 watts cfl on each side, with a big round reflector. But more wattage is needed to get greener, quicker; such as 42 watts on each side, with big round reflectors. If the screen is too big compared to the wattage, you will only get a brown covering.

I've never heard of mag slowing down a scrubber. A po4 reactor would, however. Your salt has no effect.

Definitely not; won't grow at all. You want 2700 or 3000k only.

GHA, which filters the best, want very high light levels.

Correct.

Not true at all. Actually the opposite. The biggest, and almost the only, "exporter" of nutrients in the ocean is phytoplankton. Phytoplankton does all the filtering, and all the feeding, in the oceans and lakes. It also produces half the oxygen on the earth.

Opposite. GHA is harder get because it requires more light, and it consumes the most nutrients because it has the most 3D surface area in contact with light and flow.

Turf "takes hold" of screens with weak light. If the light is at least one watt per square inch (more is preferred), the GHA will out-compete and grow instead, and filter more.

Correct.

Most important is that screen sizes have finally been figured out:

Scrubbers are now sized according to feeding. Nutrients "in" (feeding) must equal nutrients "out" (scrubber growth), no matter how many gallons you have. So...

An example VERTICAL waterfall screen size is 3 X 4 inches = 12 square inches of screen (7.5 X 10 cm = 75 sq cm) with a total of 12 real watts (not equivalent) of fluorescent light for 18 hours a day. If all 12 watts are on one side, it is a 1-sided screen. If 6 watts are on each side, it is a 2-sided screen, but the total is still 12 watts for 18 hours a day. This screen size and wattage should be able to handle the following amounts of daily feeding:

1 frozen cube per day (2-sided screen), or
1/2 frozen cube per day (1-sided screen), or
10 pinches of flake food per day (2-sided screen), or
5 pinches of flake food per day (1-sided screen), or
10 square inches (60 sq cm) of nori per day (2-sided screen), or
5 square inches (30 sq cm) of nori per day (1-sided screen), or
0.1 dry ounce (2.8 grams) of pellet food per day (2-sided screen), or
0.05 dry ounce (1.4 grams) of pellet food per day (1-sided screen)

High-wattage technique: Double the wattage, and cut the hours in half (to 9 per day). This will get brown screens to grow green much faster. Thus the example above would be 12 watts on each side, for a total of 24 watts, but for only 9 hours per day. If growth starts to turn YELLOW, then increase the flow, or add iron, or reduce the number of hours. And since the bulbs are operating for 9 hours instead of 18, they will last 6 months instead of 3 months.

Very rough screen made of roughed-up-like-a-cactus plastic canvas.

Clean algae off of screen every 7 to 14 days, so that you can see the white screen material.