So, I accidentally made an ATS, now what?

sbash · Apr 24, 2020

Hi Everybody!

I have a tank with some hair algae, so I thought I would put an HOB fuge on the tank...

I added a large HOB filter/pump thing to one of my tanks. I threw in some macro algae, stuck a light on top and walked away. The macro immediately was pushed out into the main tank and eaten by the tang. So, I stuck some 1/4" mesh in there to prevent that from happening again.

Well, here we are a week later, the macro is likely stunted, but the mesh is completely covered in algae; hence the title. I have always avoided ATSs due to being lazy and they seem like a lot of work. But, here we are.

So how does this work, do I just wait until it is completely full then hose it off, or just scrape the algae off, or replace the screen entirely (seems it would be easy to just alternate the screen out).

krash7172 · Apr 24, 2020

I scrape most of it off with a plastic scraper like a credit card. I do it lightly and leave some on. If you get rid of all of it, it can take a while to get going again.

GeoSquid · Apr 24, 2020

You should be scraping it once a week and rinse with fresh tap water after scraping.

sbash · Apr 24, 2020

krash7172 said:
I scrape most of it off with a plastic scraper like a credit card. I do it lightly and leave some on. If you get rid of all of it, it can take a while to get going again.

Plastic scraper, good call! I was wondering about it not restarting quickly enough if I swapped the mesh out...

GeoSquid said:
You should be scraping it once a week and rinse with fresh tap water after scraping.

Ugh... Once a week? LOL, this is why I avoided them in the past. I'm pulling the fish from this tank (it's supposed to be a frag tank, but ended up a beautiful lagoon), so the nutrients will taper off. Once all the GHA is gone, I might switch it back to a macro growing fuge... We'll see...

Thanks guys!