Fuge vs Algae scrubber

[Heres_doe_]

Let’s see builds and have you tried both and what worked better for nutrient export

 

[VintageReefer]

Yes tried both. On this tank which has been running for 8 years. Was a sps reef for 4 years with sumps middle chamber setup as cheato fuge. I had heavy fish load and was broadcast feeding heavy for sps. Cheato exploded and grew solid for years. I sold excess weekly on the other forum. But. Hair algae always crept up in random places. Always struggled with nitrates and phosphates

Bought a Santa Monica surf 2 algae turf scrubber. It floats. Threw it in the middle chamber with the cheato. In 1 month not much happened. Between month 1 and 2…all hair algae in the tank died. All cheato turned white, stopped growing, and died. Then hair algae started coming out of my live rocks. Turns out they were all phosphate bound. Then nutrients bottomed out to zero. I had to reduce hours on the scrubber. It was so efficient it killed off all algae that wasn’t inside the unit itself. It literally sucked the phosphates out of my rock too.

Fast forward to 3 years ago - due to life changes I no longer had time or desire for sps and sold off the colonies. Lost motivation and tank had 4-5 corals, 1-2 fish, and became a hair algae infested mess for months.

Then decided I’m ready to get back into feeding and I want a lps dominant reef. Decided it’s time to figure out what’s going on and fix this tank. Turns out the scrubber air pump died. Replaced it. I’m about a month the hair algae was nearly gone. Then I could see all the thousands of aiptasia. Bought 14 berghia. In 2 months all the aiptasia was gone along with all the algae. Ok. Ready to go again.

Started adding frags. Upgraded lighting. Then over the last 2 years I’ve let my frags grow out. I’ve done zero water changes. My phosphates are consistently 0. Added a few fish. Now phosphates are 0-.02. Need to dose to bring phosphates to .05. Nitrates are typically 0. Need to dose to bring them to 2-5

I feed heavy. Dump in a mix of amino acids, gonipower, benereef, reef blizzard s a few times a week. Feed flake food daily to the fish. Even still my nutrients are always low. But the coral are thriving. So a few times a month I’ll add nitrates or phosphate to bring the numbers up and let them taper back down on their own

I’ve spiked phosphate to .34 and it was back down to .02 in like 2-3 days without any intervention or work from me

oh yea about a year ago my skimmer pump seized up and was not fixable. I ordered a replacement. It took a month. I noticed - no change in anything. Never hooked up the new pump. Sooo now I’ve been without water changes for 2+ years and without a skimmer for about a year. No issues. I add fw to replace evaporation and add a few ml of all for reef to replenish alk, ca, mag, and trace elements.

The scrubber simply works better than any filtration method I’ve run in 23 years of keeping reefs. It has replaced my cheato, phosphate reactor, skimmer and water changes.

I could cut the hours back and let my numbers go up a bit naturally but honestly the reef is in auto pilot and running great and I don’t wanna mess with it

These are all current pics from the last 2-30 days

 

[jason2459]

I used to use chaeto a long time ago and it never did well. Had lots of hair algae and other nuisance algaes. I tried caulerpa and it did well. Had lots of hair algae still.

Got into carbon dosing and greatly reduced my nuisance algae.

Got a @Turbo's Aquatics ATS and was the perfect complement to my system. I can't remember when I got my first one. It was a Rev 3. 2014 maybe? I have used turf scrubbers ever since then. I then bought a Rev 4 and currently still use it.

 

[Heres_doe_]

Yes tried both. On this tank which has been running for 8 years. Was a sps reef for 4 years with sumps middle chamber setup as cheato fuge. I had heavy fish load and was broadcast feeding heavy for sps. Cheato exploded and grew solid for years. I sold excess weekly on the other forum. But. Hair algae always crept up in random places. Always struggled with nitrates and phosphates

Bought a Santa Monica surf 2 algae turf scrubber. It floats. Threw it in the middle chamber with the cheato. In 1 month not much happened. Between month 1 and 2…all hair algae in the tank died. All cheato turned white, stopped growing, and died. Then hair algae started coming out of my live rocks. Turns out they were all phosphate bound. Then nutrients bottomed out to zero. I had to reduce hours on the scrubber. It was so efficient it killed off all algae that wasn’t inside the unit itself. It literally sucked the phosphates out of my rock too.

Fast forward to 3 years ago - due to life changes I no longer had time or desire for sps and sold off the colonies. Lost motivation and tank had 4-5 corals, 1-2 fish, and became a hair algae infested mess for months.

Then decided I’m ready to get back into feeding and I want a lps dominant reef. Decided it’s time to figure out what’s going on and fix this tank. Turns out the scrubber air pump died. Replaced it. I’m about a month the hair algae was nearly gone. Then I could see all the thousands of aiptasia. Bought 14 berghia. In 2 months all the aiptasia was gone along with all the algae. Ok. Ready to go again.

Started adding frags. Upgraded lighting. Then over the last 2 years I’ve let my frags grow out. I’ve done zero water changes. My phosphates are consistently 0. Added a few fish. Now phosphates are 0-.02. Need to dose to bring phosphates to .05. Nitrates are typically 0. Need to dose to bring them to 2-5

I feed heavy. Dump in a mix of amino acids, gonipower, benereef, reef blizzard s a few times a week. Feed flake food daily to the fish. Even still my nutrients are always low. But the coral are thriving. So a few times a month I’ll add nitrates or phosphate to bring the numbers up and let them taper back down on their own

I’ve spiked phosphate to .34 and it was back down to .02 in like 2-3 days without any intervention or work from me

oh yea about a year ago my skimmer pump seized up and was not fixable. I ordered a replacement. It took a month. I noticed - no change in anything. Never hooked up the new pump. Sooo now I’ve been without water changes for 2+ years and without a skimmer for about a year. No issues. I add fw to replace evaporation and add a few ml of all for reef to replenish alk, ca, mag, and trace elements.

The scrubber simply works better than any filtration method I’ve run in 23 years of keeping reefs. It has replaced my cheato, phosphate reactor, skimmer and water changes.

I could cut the hours back and let my numbers go up a bit naturally but honestly the reef is in auto pilot and running great and I don’t wanna mess with it

These are all current pics from the last 2-30 days

Beautiful tank man

 

[VintageReefer]

Beautiful tank man

Thank you! Don’t want to steal the thread but I got my own thread about it if you wanna see more

 

[Heres_doe_]

Thank you! Don’t want to steal the thread but I got my own thread about it if you wanna see more

Steal it as long as you educate lol

 

[Paleozoic_reefer]

Over the years I think I’ve tried them all to combat nuisance algae. Algae scrubbers, chaeto reactors, skimmer only, and finally after all hope was lost….a fuge! To me this was my eureka moment in reefing and has worked wonders for my tank. Currently I’m trying carbon dosing (vodka) to see if I can minimize the hair algae a bit more.

I’m currently starting up another tank and just added an extra baffle to start another, and bigger, fuge.

 

[VintageReefer]

When I ran sps reef and added the scrubber I almost lost everything. I was new to scrubbers and it was way more powerful than any nutrient method I used before. I bleached out a colony and other colonies started to fade. I messaged the seller - Santa Monica - and they guided me through adjusting it. Basically first few weeks you run 24x7 until you get growth, then you reduce hours to keep the algae the right color and to where your nutrients should be. I ended up dialing back to 18 hours a day. That was sweet spot for me. More hours = more growth = lower numbers. Less hours = higher nitrate and phosphate. I use a 5$ mechanical timer with the push down tabs

 

[jason2459]

And to add I still have a refugium filled with rocks and a reverse UGF. I'm just not trying to grow algae algae in it, just above it

 

[VintageReefer]

Mine with the lid off. It literally is a floating box with material inside for the algae to grow in, a lid with the led module. And an air pump feeding bubbles into it. With the lid on and cabinet shut, it’s silent

 

[jason2459]

Turbo's Rev 4

 

[jason2459]

FYI if you get into growing algae of any kind you may want to think about dosing iron.

I found it really helps not just algae too

DIY the DIY FE++ Ferrous citrate supplement

So, periodically I'll get into dosing something to see some kind of reaction and want to look at dosing some iron again. I've used Iron gluconate previously from supplement tablets and Seachem's Flourish iron. This time I wanted to make my own and was going to make up some iron(II) citrate...

www.reef2reef.com

Can get each of these in bulk and last for many many many years.

 

[Heres_doe_]

FYI if you get into growing algae of any kind you may want to think about dosing iron.

I found it really helps not just algae too

DIY the DIY FE++ Ferrous citrate supplement

So, periodically I'll get into dosing something to see some kind of reaction and want to look at dosing some iron again. I've used Iron gluconate previously from supplement tablets and Seachem's Flourish iron. This time I wanted to make my own and was going to make up some iron(II) citrate...

www.reef2reef.com

Can get each of these in bulk and last for many many many years.

I’ll be doing reef moonshine again. I was already with a tank and broke it down. It’s going up again just in a different way. I’ll be doing t5 and want to do a scrubber

 

[jason2459]

Not sure if moonshiners will recommend iron or not as natural levels are usually below detection limits. Anyone that uses moonshiner know or not?

I mean, would it freak out and recommend water changes to reduce the elevated levels if it detects FE at all?

Dosing will increase above natural levels.

 

[Heres_doe_]

Not sure if moonshiners will recommend iron or not as natural levels are usually below detection limits. Anyone that uses moonshiner know or not?

I mean, would it freak out and recommend water changes to reduce the elevated levels if it detects FE at all?

Dosing will increase above natural levels.

I dosed iron. Dosed everything that was lower did more expensive icp test to test for smaller things in water

 

[tsharpe291]

ive done fuge in the past but didn't have the best results with it. just hooked up turf scrubber this week so hoping I can share some positive results in the future.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Let’s see builds and have you tried both and what worked better for nutrient export

Ive had High success with algae scrubber and its benefits

 

[Heres_doe_]

ive done fuge in the past but didn't have the best results with it. just hooked up turf scrubber this week so hoping I can share some positive results in the future.

Keep this post updated won’t be about a few more weeks till tanks running

 

[NanJ]

Then hair algae started coming out of my live rocks. Turns out they were all phosphate bound.

Vintage Reefer - I am intrigued by your post about the algae scrubber. Could you explain what you mean by the quote above, please?

Last March we started using Reef Actif as a method for carbon dosing. We had a robust ball of chaeto in the refugium that has slowly gone away. That chaeto was contained in a basket I made out of fiberglass screen material. Hair algae is growing on the basket screen.

We still have some pockets of hair algae in the 300g display tank and the phosphates run 0.30 to 0.45 ppm. Eighteen months ago our display tank was overrun with hair algae so we have come a long way in the battle, fought by weekly rock scrubbing and blowing off. We run Seachem Phosgard in a reactor and have a robust skimmer.

But I think if we missed a few weeks of rock scrubbing the hair algae would come roaring back. Vintage Reefer’s story has piqued my interest.

 

[gsb67]

I’ve had my 180 gallon mixed reef for 18 years with fuge. Tried several times for a thriving fuge… never got there. Chaeto would always wither away, despite harvesting it.
Bought an algae scrubber… Amazing!! Nitrates and phosphate came down and tank growth improved. Algae scrubber hugely beneficial, can’t recommend more highly. True pricey, but within a month you’ll see big improvement!