JDtimk
Active Member
- Joined
- Sep 15, 2018
- Messages
- 221
- Reaction score
- 163
- What state or country do you live in
- New York
Its not often that I buy an expensive piece of reef equipment and feel that I really got my moneys worth. In this case with the purchase of the Surf 4x, I can say it works better than expected and is worth the hefty price tag. I like to buy well made and high performing equipment, even if it is a bit higher initial cost as I feel like it is worth it in the long run.
Some background on my tank. I have a three year old 120 gallon display plumbed to a 75 gal sump and a 75 gal frag tank, for an estimated 210 gallons of water volume. Tank inhabitants include 3 medium size tangs, small dwarf lionfish, 2 clownfish, a large RBTA, a bangaii cardinal, a splendid dottyback, and a bunch of coral LPS and SPS mostly with a few ricordea and zoas in there.
I feed 3 cubes of frozen Mysis/enriched brine shrimp each day. One 55 count size table shrimp every three days. a pinch of Mysis based pellets every couple of days. I also dose 15ml of aminos and 15 ml of carbs/vitamins each morning mixed in with a 1/8 tsp of reef powder, 1/8 tsp of golden pearl and dried rotifers. If needed I up the feedings a bit, but mostly this is my feeding routine.
I don't run a filter sock except when I do some major tank maintenance that stirs up detritus or something like that.
Before I installed the Surf 4x, I ran my skimmer 24/7 and while it was mostly adequate as far as my skimming needs goes, in combo with my very small DIY algae reactor that was largely inefficient, took up too much space and was ugly from a reefer's aesthetic perspective, it was not quiet managing the nutrient level as I wanted.
I started to get GHA built up in my frag tank, admittedly partly due to lack of maintenance and partly due to lack of flow and turnover in that tank. Once I stopped being lazy and got back on a decent maintenance schedule and needed to fight off the GHA in the frag tank, I decided I would use an algae scrubber to outcompete the unintentional second algae scrubber starting to take over in my frag tank. The situation was not dire, but I didn't want it to get out of hand either.
I installed the Surf 4x which has two sets of leds on two separate power sources so you can choose to run one or both at a time. I started out with one set of leds for 18 hours a day as recommended and after about 3 weeks when I saw medium algae growth coverage in the scrubber, I turned on the second set of leds. It took about 4 weeks total to obtain my first harvest of thick green hair algae, which was in part due to the low available nutrients in the water column.
I dosed a little extra iron in the sump next to the algae scrubber around week 3 once I saw some green growth and that seemed to kick the growth in the scrubber into overdrive.
My first harvest out of the algae scrubber was about a baseball size ball of algae after squeezing out the water and was about a half or third of the volume of algae in the scrubber in total. I am impressed at how well this scrubber grows algae now that it is fully up and running. For the size, this thing outperforms any form of algae grower I have ever used by a huge margin. The 4x model is rated for up to 120 gals, but I would say this may be more scrubbing than I actually need at full capability.
I have since had to reduce the hours of my skimmer after about week 5 of using the scrubber because it was already reducing the nutrient levels lower than I wanted when combined with the skimmer.
The scrubber is outcompeting the frag tank algae and it is slowly disappearing without any effort on my part to combat it.
Now I just have to find the balance of hours of active skimming and hours of active algae scrubbing to keep nutrients where I want them without making my corals sad.
If you need an algae scrubber don't hesitate to use a surf model scrubber and unless your tank is a certified cesspool of nutrients, you can probably get away with the next size scrubber down in recommended size.
Some background on my tank. I have a three year old 120 gallon display plumbed to a 75 gal sump and a 75 gal frag tank, for an estimated 210 gallons of water volume. Tank inhabitants include 3 medium size tangs, small dwarf lionfish, 2 clownfish, a large RBTA, a bangaii cardinal, a splendid dottyback, and a bunch of coral LPS and SPS mostly with a few ricordea and zoas in there.
I feed 3 cubes of frozen Mysis/enriched brine shrimp each day. One 55 count size table shrimp every three days. a pinch of Mysis based pellets every couple of days. I also dose 15ml of aminos and 15 ml of carbs/vitamins each morning mixed in with a 1/8 tsp of reef powder, 1/8 tsp of golden pearl and dried rotifers. If needed I up the feedings a bit, but mostly this is my feeding routine.
I don't run a filter sock except when I do some major tank maintenance that stirs up detritus or something like that.
Before I installed the Surf 4x, I ran my skimmer 24/7 and while it was mostly adequate as far as my skimming needs goes, in combo with my very small DIY algae reactor that was largely inefficient, took up too much space and was ugly from a reefer's aesthetic perspective, it was not quiet managing the nutrient level as I wanted.
I started to get GHA built up in my frag tank, admittedly partly due to lack of maintenance and partly due to lack of flow and turnover in that tank. Once I stopped being lazy and got back on a decent maintenance schedule and needed to fight off the GHA in the frag tank, I decided I would use an algae scrubber to outcompete the unintentional second algae scrubber starting to take over in my frag tank. The situation was not dire, but I didn't want it to get out of hand either.
I installed the Surf 4x which has two sets of leds on two separate power sources so you can choose to run one or both at a time. I started out with one set of leds for 18 hours a day as recommended and after about 3 weeks when I saw medium algae growth coverage in the scrubber, I turned on the second set of leds. It took about 4 weeks total to obtain my first harvest of thick green hair algae, which was in part due to the low available nutrients in the water column.
I dosed a little extra iron in the sump next to the algae scrubber around week 3 once I saw some green growth and that seemed to kick the growth in the scrubber into overdrive.
My first harvest out of the algae scrubber was about a baseball size ball of algae after squeezing out the water and was about a half or third of the volume of algae in the scrubber in total. I am impressed at how well this scrubber grows algae now that it is fully up and running. For the size, this thing outperforms any form of algae grower I have ever used by a huge margin. The 4x model is rated for up to 120 gals, but I would say this may be more scrubbing than I actually need at full capability.
I have since had to reduce the hours of my skimmer after about week 5 of using the scrubber because it was already reducing the nutrient levels lower than I wanted when combined with the skimmer.
The scrubber is outcompeting the frag tank algae and it is slowly disappearing without any effort on my part to combat it.
Now I just have to find the balance of hours of active skimming and hours of active algae scrubbing to keep nutrients where I want them without making my corals sad.
If you need an algae scrubber don't hesitate to use a surf model scrubber and unless your tank is a certified cesspool of nutrients, you can probably get away with the next size scrubber down in recommended size.
