Tank Journal: Miracles 144

Scrubber installation



Pump with DIY strainer (plastic canvas!!), plumbing...



Drain



Bubble trap for scrubber effluent (plastic canvas!!!)



New slot tube, cut on a table saw, 14.5" long instead of 20" (half of screen shown here)



Running, drains silent, just as planned



The whole she-bang

 

So I installed the scrubber on 12/17 (Saturday) and cleaned it for the first time yesterday (12/26 Monday). I only have pics from my cell phone and when I download them, you'll be amazed! I got a solid handful of thick, bright green growth! It was so thick that it was difficult to scrape off the screen, which hasn't been the case in a while (the top-of-tank temporary setup was not ideal)

The amount of algae harvested easily matched record growth for this system. What is interesting is that this was done on 30% less screen material (14.5" vs 20").

Also, the most interesting part - PO4 tested 0.01. It's never been below 0.09 (due to Nitrate limitation), so time will tell if this is a trend!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyq77XhvUw4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl14nclROCg

 

Screen growth, first harvest 12/26/2011, 10 days growth:









Phosphate has crept back up to 0.10. Same issue as before, this tank has to be Nitrate limited. I am going to start working in some Calcium Nitrate and see what happens. First though, I have to get a handle on Alk and Cal uptake and switch to Kalwasser. Anyone have a handy calculator for that?

The system sucks down 2g of water per day out of the ATO. I add 6 fl oz of BRS Alk to every 5g bucket and this seems to be holding the Alk steady, dropping a little every week. Started out high (11.2) and is now around 10 or so, each time I test it drops a little bit. Calcium is dropping about 10 points per day or so, I don't have quite as good of a handle on that though, need to be testing a little more often and writing results down. It seems that I add about 10 fl oz of BRS Cal twice a week, just upped it to the max 19 fl oz dose today. Also had to boost Mag the full 100 points which I haven't had to do in a long time, all indication of some serious growth happening!

 

There were times where I got the same amount of algae on a larger screen in 7 days. I cut 30% off the width of the screen before re-installing this.

For anyone interested in the filtering capacity of this size screen, it is 14.5" wide x about 6 inches tall (effectively) so it's 87 square inches, which can handle over 7 cubes of food per day, or the equivalent thereof. Right now I'm having him feed about a little over half of that amount of DIY food - maybe 4 cubes/day, sometimes 5.

N is always zero (and I mean REALLY zero - like clear as a bell on Salifert), so much so that P doesn't get full absorbed, and it's rising. So I have to actually add Nitrate to get the P down.

Also, if I don't include the major PWC essentially performed during the 3 times in the last 8 months that this system was moved, I have done only one 20% PWC in the last year.

 

The pump valve is almost all the way open, and since there is almost zero head pressure with all the outlet valves set the way they are, I estimate that the head is about 6' meaning about 3000 GPH. Keep in mind that's a weir overflow, 16" wide, 3/4" of flow over it, no teeth. Makes a huge difference. With teeth, the flow would be about 1/3 of that. So if you are saying that you can't get more flow through the overflow without topping the tank, then your overflow is not big enough. you can take out the teeth and put in the 1/4" nylon screen like I did and keep the fish out of the overflow. But flow is also a function of the pipe diameter and type of overflow standpipe. I'm running a BeanAnimal 3-pipe full siphon and it can handle >4000 GPH, tuned back to about 95% of pump outflow

 

I got those at Ace Hardware in the rack of gaskets in the plumbing section

 

I guess you would just convert the starfish to a cube-equivalent. How big a starfish are we talking here?

 

Those are some hungry shrimp man. I would venture to guess a 3" CC star would be about 10 cubes equivalent, so over 5 days that's 2 cubes/day.

This sounds gross, but the more accurate way to figure this out (and take the water volume out of the equation) is to put the starfish in a blender, blend it up good, then strain out the water and pour the contents into an empty tray of Ocean Nutrition I or II cubes. Go buy yourself a Bass-O-Matic and have some fun!

 

Here's a few pics from today. Tank is doing great!











Can you believe I've moved this ^^^ 3 times (full tank moves) and never have broken a piece off??? It's scrolling up very nicely in this position!



I think I caught most of the fish in this shot below. Blue Tang, Scopas Tang, Flame Fin Tang, 2 black/white clowns, one of the 2 ocellaris, huge Chromis...missing is the other clown, the engineer goby, and the scooter blenny.



Going to add the Majestic Angel from Dave's tank (formerly Sone's) and possibly the Yellow Tang in my tank, but that might be one too many tangs. Also will be removing a few corals that don't seem to be happy (purple plate, dendro) and adding a 7" clam.

Also I switched to Kalkwasser in the ATO today. Mixed up a batch of saturated solution using vinegar in the RODI first, then diluted to 30% strength. Check Alk and Ph of it today against what I was using (3 fl oz of BRS alk in 5g) and the pH and Alk are about the same, so I'm not too worried about anything, and will probably increase the concentration at some point. Lots of testing in order over the next week!

 

New additions today



Yellow Tang, which is currently being summarily greeted by the Scopas Tang, who is trying to stick him with his barb



Majestic Angel hiding the in back corner

 

Video of the tangs & tank overview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjV64FR6ORQ

 

I'll post pics of what I found, basically it's a 1.5" plastic 2-part surface raceway for running cables along the wall, the top cover slides off and is a "C" shape, so I'm just going to silicone it to the top edge.