Algae issues? Why dont more people use algae scrubbers?

[italquam]

If I was setting up a new tank, my entire sump and filtration would be built around an algae turf scrubber and protein skimmer.

I’m done fighting a “refugium” and that mess. Hair algae eventually moves in and beats out chaeto (or other macros) every time. Not to mention they almost always light up your whole sump area, grow algae on all your equipment and it goes unchecked as most snails in the sump cause problems in time.

If your display can’t provide enough pods for your fish, you have a flawed design to begin with. Either not enough safe havens for pods or too many pod eating fish.

That is exactly what I did , I had GEO's reef design a sump to incorporate Turbo Aquatics Algae scrubber, and this was actually a prototype for a complete new model of sump now offered by GEO's reef. I highly recommend using Serdar and GEOs Reef

 

[VintageReefer]

That’s frickin sweet!

 

[ScubaSkeets]

***Everyone please read***
Especially @Garf @Thales @jda @Reefering1 and others that I may have missed

It may be a bit long winded, but please here me out (after Reefering1 quote)

Sure, and I agree. But the spark in this thread was stance that the ops ats solved/eradicated/ prevents/ all gha in display. Semantics, maybe. but the others, some of the highest level reefers(omitting myself) argue there's more to it. I'm just trying to bridge the gap. The definitive words chosen leave no wiggle room

You are 100% correct.

Speaking for myself, I should NOT have used "algae free". It's not just about semantics. It changes the entire definition and I totally agree with the folks that were "disagreeing" with me and I understand where they were coming from.
From my point of view at the time, here I am NOT seeing long hair GHA and those little tufts of dense mossy algae (what is that called anyway?) and thinking that is the ONLY algae when I should not have. I even posted those ugly 100%white/0%blues to mistakenly prove my point. And everyone else is "arguing" with me and rightfully so.

I was thinking "what the heck is wrong with these people?" when now I know I should have been thinking "what the heck is wrong with me?"
You guys were all trying to steer me in the right direction and I was just being stubborn, and at the time, I thought that was rightfully so.
Now I know, I was mistaken.

I have always been a firm believer that many fights, long term bitterness, and possibly even wars are caused by misunderstandings such as this. There are many levels of "he said. she said". Things need to be clarified and way too often, no one wants to admit when they are wrong.

I was wrong.

 

[Mikeltee]

You guys are a bad influence. I purchased a surf 2xx today. I chose it for the dual power supplies as I didn't want to get one too small or too big. I still have room to add another if need be. I had to get the skimmer out if there so I got a Reef Octopus EXT150. Of course I am worried about overflow so I got a Skimmate Locker and a leak detector. My FMM is full so I had to get another one of those as well... SMH

The good news is that I now will have room in my sump for liverock and the Surf shall make a great pod hotel. The goal with this new build was to keep a heavy supply of pods to use as a CUC and to keep the dinos away as well as keep a couple of mandarins fat and happy.

 

[VintageReefer]

You guys are a bad influence. I purchased a surf 2xx today.

Great purchase. My surf 2 has made me extremely happy. I have run it successfully with and without a skimmer - it had no impact on algae production in the surf.

Did you get an air pump and timer also?

 

[ScubaSkeets]

Great purchase. My surf 2 has made me extremely happy. I have run it successfully with and without a skimmer - it had no impact on algae production in the surf.

Did you get an air pump and timer also?

I'll continue to use my DIY one for now, but if I start to notice my tank looking like it did several times before, I might just purchase one of those too.
Looking at their website it says

SURF2 or SURF2x floating algae scrubber and seaweed cultivator - 2 cubes feeding per day​

What does "2 cubes feeding per day" mean?

Also, does it need an air pump? If it doesn't NEED one, what are the differences with and without one?

 

[VintageReefer]

I'll continue to use my DIY one for now, but if I start to notice my tank looking like it did several times before, I might just purchase one of those too.
Looking at their website it says

SURF2 or SURF2x floating algae scrubber and seaweed cultivator - 2 cubes feeding per day​

What does "2 cubes feeding per day" mean?

Also, does it need an air pump? If it doesn't NEED one, what are the differences with and without one?

The Santa Monica scrubbers are not based on tank size, they are based on the maximum daily tank feeding amount they are capable of removing from the water column.

Surf 2 can handle up to
2 Frozen cube, or
20 Pinches of flake, or
20 Square inches (125 square cm) of nori, or
5.6 grams of pellets
And your tank Phosphates test at .20 or less

Surf 2x is same as above, but for tanks with phosphate greater than .20

Additionally, every 50 lbs of phosphate bound problem rock counts as 1 cube of food.

For example if you feed 1 cube a day, but have 50 pounds of rock with nuisance algae problems, this rock will add 1 cube a day to your feeding, meaning that you would need a scrubber for 2 cubes a day

I used a regular surf 2 and fed 1 cube of frozen food a day and it still worked great. And when my rock became phosphate bound, it had the extra capability to fix that issue.

Yes you need a air pump, it is what provides the water circulation and oxygen inside the unit. Santa Monica doesn’t make or partner with air pump companies so you have to buy this separately. The description page for the scrubbers usually makes a recommendation for a air pump somewhere in it

 

[ScubaSkeets]

Ahhh...gotcha. Thanks!

 

[jda]

I was wrong.

I was never offended. All good.

You might want to consider putting a few sentences in the first post, if you can edit it. Otherwise, people won't read all the way through and you will get invited to discussions based on the emphatic first part of the thread without people seeing the balance that came later. This can help you. You can spend hours just having to catch people up. If you cannot edit it, type out a bit here and ask a mod to put it in the first part.

It can be as simple as - Edit: Please read to the end. While I was emphatic early about some things, they changed as the discussion progressed.

 

[mizimmer90]

I was never offended. All good.

Hmm... this certainly seemed a bit aggressive lol

Someday when your tank matures and you have a bit more experience and you figure out that everything that a dude who ran one of the largest reefs in captivity for a living, as well as reefers with more experience than you, was correct... have the guts to come back on here and let us know that you were wrong. Until then just remember some when/if the algae grows in your display as well as your fuge/ATS/whatever.

What you are looking for is biology and not physics.

 

[BeanAnimal]

The Santa Monica scrubbers are not based on tank size, they are based on the maximum daily tank feeding amount they are capable of removing from the water column.

Surf 2 can handle up to
2 Frozen cube, or
20 Pinches of flake, or
20 Square inches (125 square cm) of nori, or
5.6 grams of pellets
And your tank Phosphates test at .20 or less

Honestly - I have no problem with SMs scrubbers and from most accounts he makes a good product and is a good guy to deal with. But, as I eluded to prior, This is the BS that drives me insane. He started the "cubes per day" stuff early on as part of his sales rhetoric, along with pages of other made up cause/effect and pseudo-scientific hokum aimed to generating a following and sales.

Has he gone back and calculated the phosphate contents of all of that stuff and the average phosphate levels in a "typical" harvest per the rated size and makes those recommendations based on those measurements (now)... maybe. But the cube stuff started the day he decided to back out of our public ATS thread and start a business

 

[BeanAnimal]

As for the greater scrubber debate - you guys can have at it. I understand what the model presented here says, what the dozen papers Dr. Adey wrote say and will not argue with before/after assessments. There are a lot of variables and valid debate on both sides. I just happen to find the ATS more trouble than it is worth in my experience.

Who knows - I may fire the big waterfall scrubber up again one day and see. I have a bit of GHA in the display now.

Also - from above. Snails that don't "eat long hair gha" can still keep it at bay by eating it and anything else on the rock they run over before it gets a chance to take hold and become prolific.

Not an exact analog, but if you let the weeds grow, the deer will not eat the mature weeds. If you keep the grass mowed, they will eat the baby weeds and you never have mature weeds. Snails keep surfaces clean, even if some of the stuff they dislodge and/or damage is not actually eaten.

 

[VintageReefer]

Well, he’s an innovator lol
And he makes a good product and stands behind it. Granted I only needed customer service twice in 10 years, and it was 8 years apart, both times he provided excellent customer service. First time replacing part for free, second time I was waaaay out of warranty and had a power surge from a storm, and he replaced my part for 50% off

Other companies spec based on feeding also, I’m sure it’s generalizations but there does appear to be some thought and research behind it

 

[VintageReefer]

Snails that don't "eat long hair gha" can still keep it at bay by eating it and anything else on the rock they run over before it gets a chance to take hold and become prolific

Agree 100%. My comment was in response to Garf implying that 6 snails solved a long hair algae outbreak all over my tank. The problem I had was clearly beyond their help and they were not able to prevent it nor resolve it.

Garf just has a hard time believing the scrubber solved my issue, despite photos, and keeps coming up with ideas and assumptions out of left field that are ridiculous. I look forward to his next one, I find them amusing.

 

[BeanAnimal]

GHA (or other outbreaks) can be enigmatic with regard to abatement.

My system as at maybe 1.2 phosphate... I threw in the towel and just stopped dealing with it. The rock was saturated. Prior to that, I was using LaCl to keep it at .6 or so. One day, I just gave up.

I did not do a water change, skim, ATS or export ANYTHING for 5+ years.
I did not feed ANYTHING more than 3x a year at best, some flake or a cube or two and DOSED NOTHING.
GHA and other stuff grew likes weeds. I even gave up plucking it.
The tang and angel and hawkfish ALL survived living off the tank for 5 years! Fat and happy.
Salinity was pretty low (again nothing but top off water for 5 years, no salt, dosing, nothing). I owned no test kits.
LPS (brain) and plenty of Blue Ridge, mushrooms and leathers still alive.
At around year 6 - I decided to rehab.
Plopped in 10 astreas, 10 turbos and a tuxedo
Plucked some algae but decided that was way too much hassle.
Raised salinity to 34 or so.
Started 2 part dosing to bring Ca/Alk/Mag to accepted levels.
Phosphate was .35 Nitrate 20 (if I remember)
Tossed in a single Chemipure Elite
Started feeding the fish daily (1 cube of mysis or formula two)
Within 2 weeks 99.99% of ALL algea species were gone.

I have no idea what to attribute it to. I can make an educated guess, but won't.

Again, not going to try to dissuade anybody from using an ATS or regufuim, but am dubious about the claim of 1 jar of the stuff fixing all of your algae woes.

I do think they can be demonstrably useful in the right system. They just don't fit my current reefkeeping effort level time/benefit ratio.

 

[Turbo's Aquatics Verified Sponsor]

Me, watching this thread

I considered not responding as I am currently still on oxy post surgery and who knows what I might say. But then again, who knows what I might say any day. However I stuck with not responding for now. Then I flip flopped.

There is no money in studying Algae Scrubbers. I don't see anyone jumping in an providing funding for someone to do a study. Yet manufacturers are supposed to somehow pony up the dough for this to back up claims?

There are countless products on the marketplace (in general) that have been proven to work in the real world. While there might be misunderstandings about how a product works and meets the end goal, but when patterns emerge it's hard to call BS. Basically between about 2007-2008 and roughly 2012, the world of the anecdotal tipped the scales because there were enough people using Algae Scrubbers and having success to basically silence the flame-throwing naysayers (which were a pretty brutal bunch honestly).

It's a tool in the toolbox. The tool is not consistent from one manufacturer to another, which makes "it worked for me" difficult to apply. Everyone's tank is different, that's always a fallback, but the key here is any static filtration system generally works about the same - but a dynamic filter (living algae placed in an aggressive growth condition) is not going to be the same from one system to another + all the other factors of variation. That in and of itself would make a study difficult to design and output a meaningful result.

Time for more oxy. I'm out.

 

[Mikeltee]

Great purchase. My surf 2 has made me extremely happy. I have run it successfully with and without a skimmer - it had no impact on algae production in the surf.

Did you get an air pump and timer also?

I picked up a tetra ap 300 off ebay for
$40 and have an Apex. Do you run the lights 22 hours? My nutes are crazy. The skimmer is only pulling Nitrates. I measured 1.5phos and 12 Nit last night. Crazy ratio!

 

[BeanAnimal]

It's a tool in the toolbox. The tool is not consistent from one manufacturer to another, which makes "it worked for me" difficult to apply.

Time for more oxy. I'm out.

And you do make a very nice tool, provide top-notch customer service (you are on the very short list of vendors that I am happy to openly support) and I am glad we became friends over the last few decades.

As Bud can tell the rest of you, I am far from ANTI-ATS - I am just lazy and set in my ways

Be careful with that oxy.. it is not joke.

 

[Thales]

No one was really anti ATS back then or now. Folks had issues with the miracle claims made by people either selling ATS or by people who use ATS. Take away the miracle claims and you get a nice discussion about what might and might not be happening. Add the miracle claims and some people will want to see the evidence while others defend it because they feel it worked for them - and often take questions as attacks.
The hit and miss rate for ats still seems about 50%.

 

[ScubaSkeets]

Tossed in a single Chemipure Elite

Oh yeah. Thanks for reminding me. Tried that too several times with no success.
Doesn't mean they don't work. They just didn't in my tank and you can say that with just about ANY method. Some say it works. Some say it doesnt. I think it depends on alot of different variables that are different amongst all of us.
I highly doubt ANY product for anything in life can 100% positive for everyone. Just look at any product review. How can one product be raved by someone but have negative reviews by someone else.