Mega Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover - DIY!

That screen should work fine. Something is wrong if you have no growth after one week. I'm guessing the light. Or the tank is brand new and you are not feeding.

Finally getting the 25 nano scrubber to have consistant results. Am testing one side of it here, on a FW 10 gal with some tetras, catfish, suckerfish, and a discus. 0, 0, 0, when feeding one frozen cube blood worms a day. No water changes, and top off with tap water (no chlorine remover added)...

SantaMonica said:

That screen should work fine. Something is wrong if you have no growth after one week. I'm guessing the light. Or the tank is brand new and you are not feeding.

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Yeah, his tank is still cycling.

Yepp i just started my tank up, I only have two pieces of live rock in there for a week, should i throw in some fish food or just let it do what its been doing?

If it's live rock then you don't want a cycle, so don't add food. If it was dead rock, yes you would add food.

Okay now my tank is done with a mini cycle it had and everything is at 0.. Do i need to do a water change now and 1 time every week or is that not reccomended?

Yes, you can do a water change now and get in the habit of doing regular water changes once a week or once every two weeks from this point on.

What is it that you would be doing the water change for

I don't know, just because i thought thats what you were supposed to do once a week with a saltwater tank.. lol. And I had a full sheet of brown algae grown on my screen this week, so should i start seeing the green algae growing soon? or is that not normal?

Green will grow soon if your lights are stronger. The algae is remove nitrate and phosphate from your water, so if you are doing water changes to remove nitrate and phosphate, you will not need to do them.

I'm going to updating my fuge soon and was thinking about adding a scrubber to my setup. I use a HOB overflow for my tank. Can I install a T fitting on the inlet tubing to the fuge and have the algae scrubber run off that? Some water would go into the skimmer section and then some would run into the scrubber. Not sure it that would work or not?

Also, can you feed that algae aquired from weekly cleaning to your tangs?

I use a sump, but that's essentially my setup Hiker. I've got to overflows coming into my sump. 1 goes through my scrubber, the other just drops right into the sump.

I'm only running 1 overflow so I'm wondering if it will be enough gph to run the scrubber? I think it would work, but how well is the question.

If you check at the beginning of this thread it has the flow rates needed, so you can do the math for your specific system.

I just found out something terrible... my algae scrubber bucket was covered with brown/black algae sediment :pooh: on the bottom i just looked inside and didnt realize how bad it was till my sand started turning brown this afternoon randomly....and it was creating microbubbles which were connecting to my rocks and just everywhere. :( so i turned everything off and completely cleaned out the bucket and scrubbed off my screen completely.. i hope this didnt ruin my whole tank... what am i doing wrong??? here are pics


The screen


Just a SMALL portion of what was on the bottom of my bucket, its a black bucket so pictures of that are kinda hard to get.

Can you please help me out..

I'm going to updating my fuge soon and was thinking about adding a scrubber to my setup. I use a HOB overflow for my tank. Can I install a T fitting on the inlet tubing to the fuge and have the algae scrubber run off that? Some water would go into the skimmer section and then some would run into the scrubber. Not sure it that would work or not?

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Will work. Just size the screen to match the amount of flow.

can you feed that algae aquired from weekly cleaning to your tangs?

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A little bit, yes

bucket was covered with brown/black algae sediment on the bottom

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Just clean the bottom too.

Okay thanks, I wasn't completely sure if this was normal, I probably just let it get way too out of control, so ill start cleaning the bottom of the bucket weekly then.

Edit: Its been a couple hours since i cleaned it out and got everything running again, and all the bubbles have left my display tank magically, i sifted all the sand and its looking good. I was freaking out and really didnt need to i guess. lol.

Vincenzo said:

I just found out something terrible... my algae scrubber bucket was covered with brown/black algae sediment :pooh: on the bottom i just looked inside and didnt realize how bad it was till my sand started turning brown this afternoon randomly....and it was creating microbubbles which were connecting to my rocks and just everywhere. :( so i turned everything off and completely cleaned out the bucket and scrubbed off my screen completely.. i hope this didnt ruin my whole tank... what am i doing wrong??? here are pics

The screen

Just a SMALL portion of what was on the bottom of my bucket, its a black bucket so pictures of that are kinda hard to get.

Can you please help me out..

Click to expand...

No big deal. Normal. When you clean the screen, just wipe down the bucket. I started my scrubber when cycling too. Initially the algae on the screen was brown as well. Once you are near the end of your cycle you're going to have diatoms on your sandbed. It's normal, and they will go away on their own. (Diatoms are a type of algae that you see regularly near the end of a cycle)...The brown that you're seeing on the screen and your sandbed is actually the skeletons of the diatoms all linked togther. As long as you have proper flow in your tank, and your scrubber is set up correctly they will go away on their own. It's normal and everybody goes through it. You should actually be happy to have them, because it means you're nearing the end or at the end of your cycle.

As far as the scrubber goes, it looks good so far. You've got a nice even amount of brown on the screen, which means you've got good even flow all the way across it. Within a few weeks once the screen has really started to work and you add fish, etc. the algae will/should start to turn green. If it doesn't, you need to adjust the flow or adjust the lights (more power or closer to screen). But for right now, what you've got is perfect and normal.

Sorry for the longwinded response. I know you're still new, so just want to give you as much info as possible. Do a Google Image search for Diatom Algae, and I'm sure that's what you're looking at on your sandbed. Like I said it's normal, the scrubber can't stop all of it, and they'll go away on their own. It's natural and an important part of the cycle. This is what they look like

That is exactly whats on my sandbed. Thank you so much for reassuring me of the whole thing, i was freakin out thinking i ruined the tank by not scrubbing off the bottom for so long but now all the bubbles have left, and the tank looks a lot cleaner after i cleaned out the bucket. But yeah after that first week ive had crazy fast growth on that screen it looks to be going good! :mrgreen:

This is my new algae scrubber that follow almost exactly to the recommended spec. (12" wide for 120g tank and using a dedicated pump for (a little more then) 420 gph), using a 10g tank (and drilled) has the container.

One side has 2 of those regular clip-on light holders:



and the other side has 2 hanging work light with metal reflective shield:



I tried to get the hanging light as close to the plastic canvas as possible. It's about 3" apart:



The light on the other side also about 3" away at the closest point.



It's been running 2 weeks and no green algae yet. Only light brownish stuff.