why NOT use an ATS?

thats not so bad then.
i was under the impression they would need topping up more frequently.


thought i'd read about pods living in the ats somewhere, seems like a tough life for them tho lol.
would you expect similar pod numbers to a good fuge? or less so?

 

Powerman has a lot of good points. Additionally, skimmers have become less costly and more efficient. Biopellets are still relatively new, and until the cost comes down, I'll stick with straight vodka. My skimmer draws 23 watts, where the ATS that I had used around 4x as much power. I used the drain water so I didn't need a separate pump. For me, the skimmer/ vodka nutrient export system has worked so well, I don't need to look elsewhere. I did see where Inland Aquatics runs ATS's on all of their 40,000 gallons of water. The concept still interests me.

 

I put about 5 inches in my reactor 5 months ago, I probably still have over 4 inches left.


edit: you could probably expect your tank to go through that amount twice a fast, since my tank is a 40 and you have a 70.

 

Did the math my reactor holds 385 ml, so I probably went through about 30-50 ml in that time.

 

i'm actually planning on upgrading to a 90 now lol (before it even got wet!)
but those numbers seem quite reasonable.
i'll look into those a bit more too
thanks

 

Pods eat algae. You make a fuge for them to populate. They can eat micro algae... but throwing so cheato in there gives them a fod source and habitate and soaks up N and P. So what ever the pods eat... that is not nutrient export but recycling.

ATS has to kill pods. The pods eat the algae, but detach it from the screen and causes pluggage... so you don't want them even though you will have lots and want to kill them regularly to keep the ATS running well.

Bottom line is that while pods may recycle some nutrients int he fuge.... over all when you harvest cheato you are exporting nitrients period. When you are cleaning a ATS you are exporting nutrients as well... but you are killing pods.... Seems quite counter productive to me.

One knock the ATS crowd has is against skimmers taking food out of the water column..... yet every two weeks or more your soul intention is killing off your pod population in the ATS. Does not quite add up for me.

 

thats interesting, i think i'd much rather encourage pods to be growing than regularly cleaning them off.

while the idea is still very intriguing, perhaps an ats is not for me.

thanks for the input everyone, very much appreciated.