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View Full Version : Algae Scrubbing or Cheato in the fuge


eagle9252
11/25/2011, 09:31 AM
If you notice I get confused a lot sometimes. I have a fuge area setup in my sump 18wx12dx14h it has about 3” of LS, some LR pieces, two 300w heaters and about 330gph crossing the top of it. After you take out for the LS and LR it has about 10gal of water in it. I was going to add Cheato and a light; this was my intentions this weekend. I had some hair algae little green and mostly brown started growing about 3 weeks ago, some on like 3 rocks and the rest on the sand. Tank was about 4 weeks old at the time. I was told this was normal diatom bloom and it would go away. I could not stand the brown on the sand and I did a small 4gal WC and got the brown off the sand. I moved the PH around and got more flow in the tank. The small blue tang (¾”) was havin a feast. In like 2 days it was all gone.

Everything was going great. I don’t know if this has anything to do with it or if it just happened at the same time. There was a local guy that was moving and wanted to give me some corals as a payit forward, new tank gesture, (I’m still grateful for it) when we were talking about his tank while getting some corals and some frags out of his tank he mentioned that he just got his tank cleared up from a major green algae bloom. He stated he was real busy and did not realize that his canister filter had quit pumping. Again very thankful for the corals but do you think that this has anything to do with it?

So yesterday I spent a couple of hours cleaning the tank and peripherals, first major tank cleaning. I tested the water before starting and it had 0 AM, 8.2-8.3 PH, 0 Nitrites, about 20 Nitrates and SG 1.025. I vacuumed the sand which removed most of the clumps I had and some more sand. I did nothing on the rocks. The HOB overflow box best I could. I need a bendable brush. Tested it last night about 3 hrs after the WC w/ everything on and same for AM, PH, NI. The NA was about 10. So it dropped some. I removed about 26gal of water and about 1 1/2gal of sand. I had to replace about 27 ½ gal of water. It’s a 75gal DT and a 36gal sump with about 100gal water before the sand and rock displacement so maybe 90gal of water, if so it was a 30% WC

I’m going to get some carbon today and put it bag and put in the filter sock for the time being and have to decide on how I want to force water thru it. But while I was looking at how people are setting up their “carbon reactors” I ran across some other info on “Algae Scrubbing”.

So I guess the question is. How many people have done or tried it? Has it worked for you? Would not the Cheato in the fuge as everyone does not do it, or do both? The site I read claims that after the install they have removed their Cheato and PS from their system. They say that they have no Phosphates and Nitrates.

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc225/propane4x4/fish%20tank%20build/1123011556.jpg

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/cc225/propane4x4/fish%20tank%20build/DSC01710.jpg