Neptune Aquatics

When is the right time to add an algae scrubber?

Alexander1312 said:
I am not often in agreement with the majority here, but to answer your question about the best time to start: never.

Low nutrients do not prevent you from having algae. The scrubber takes out phosphates from the water column, but a ton of other good stuff, i.e., major and minor elements too which your corals will not have as a result.

If there is one concept which I learned not too long ago, is that every tool in reefing has a downside. And it comes down to being fully aware of it and weighing the pros and cons. We are often too quick in recommending something only because it works well - me included - and ignoring or not knowing the price this comes with it. Algae scrubber are a good example.

If tangs or rabbitfish/foxface are not an option, large clean up crew should fit into most tanks - large urchins or turbonsnails. Not the small stuff. They will knock stuff over though or test your glueing skills. It made my glueing skills stronger.
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Thank you for taking the time to explain it in the best way I’m currently working on getting more clean up crew
 
Kensington Reefer said:
When you do
I encourage you to add multiple fish at the same time to reduce aggression from existing fish.
And, if you can I would pull the Scopes and add the new fish at the same time
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I really appreciate the help and guidance
I’ll put them in acclimation box for a week or so
For the scopes I know it’s well known as an aggressive fish but surprisingly, the one I have is not aggressive at all
 
mac96 said:
I really appreciate the help and guidance
I’ll put them in acclimation box for a week or so
For the scopes I know it’s well known as an aggressive fish but surprisingly, the one I have is not aggressive at all
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I’m not really a big fan of acclimation boxes. They tend to be too small for the fish inside.
I’ve never used one for that purpose
 
This box discussion is interesting. In 100% of the cases when I did not use an acclimation box something bad happened to the fish I introduced. I am using a rather large one though (14 inch, not big enough for a grown up puffer), and agree many of these boxes seem too small. And the mirror is still always needed, at least for me.

My conclusion is that the box itself does not lead to less agression, but it helps the fish to get acclimated (funny, that is their name) to the water conditions, reduces stress from e.g. shipping or transport, and gives it a better chance to cope with the agression once it is released.
 
I recently restarted a 110 gallon display tank + 30 gallon sump. It is only month 2 and when I started seeing my rocks explode with hair algae I went out and bought 40 snails (of which 10 were small bumble bee snails) which is in addition to my bare bones crew of 2 tangs, 2 tuxedo urchin, 5 Trochus snails and 10 bumblebee snails. Less than one week later and 70% of my rocks have been cleared of hair algae.

If uglies is an issue you should first try to control that via 1) feeding less (most people feed too much and/or super inefficiently—for my feedings there is close to zero waste since I try to keep particulates and wasted food to near zero), 2) get more herbivore fish, and/or 3) get more snails/crabs/urchin/etc. Turf scrubber is a potential solution but you should have that further down the list if at all possible.
 
Slingfox said:
I recently restarted a 110 gallon display tank + 30 gallon sump. It is only month 2 and when I started seeing my rocks explode with hair algae I went out and bought 40 snails (of which 10 were small bumble bee snails) which is in addition to my bare bones crew of 2 tangs, 2 tuxedo urchin, 5 Trochus snails and 10 bumblebee snails. Less than one week later and 70% of my rocks have been cleared of hair algae.

If uglies is an issue you should first try to control that via 1) feeding less (most people feed too much and/or super inefficiently—for my feedings there is close to zero waste since I try to keep particulates and wasted food to near zero), 2) get more herbivore fish, and/or 3) get more snails/crabs/urchin/etc. Turf scrubber is a potential solution but you should have that further down the list if at all possible.
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I agree with most of this except I think most people feed way, way too little. This idea that you should avoid feeding too much is one of the biggest misconceptions in the hobby.

I wonder how many new reefers see algae, start feeding way less, then watch their issues worsen as the algae consumes all the nutrients from the water that are no longer being replaced by food. Corals die, Dino’s and algae continue to outcompete and take over. A tale as old as time.
 
derek_SR said:
I agree with most of this except I think most people feed way, way too little. This idea that you should avoid feeding too much is one of the biggest misconceptions in the hobby.

I wonder how many new reefers see algae, start feeding way less, then watch their issues worsen as the algae consumes all the nutrients from the water that are no longer being replaced by food. Corals die, Dino’s and algae continue to outcompete and take over. A tale as old as time.
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I will admit that I actually don’t know what most people do but when I started the hobby I fed way too much which resulted in my tank showing phosphates levels above 1.0 for months on end and an explosion of vermitid snails. I literally had thousands of vermitids in my display tank. They covered every surface on the underside of my rocks and were starting to infest the lighted areas of the tanks too. I also had massive amounts of spaghetti worms.

My view of what is “normal” is likely skewed by how I used to feed and seeing the many “Help, Algae is Taking Over My Tank!” threads on Reef2Reef.

Now that I think about it, there are many people I read about or saw videos on who only feed once a day or once every few days. That doesn’t sound great for the fish. Even under my “much less than before feeding regime” my fish get fed 5-6 times a day and are thick despite the reduce volume of food. Keeping the fish well fed help keep them from fighting to much (or so I hope). I am now mostly trying to balance how much I feed vs. export via coral, Reefmat, and protein skimmer. I took my lighted refugium offline—-hoping to keep it that way if possible.

If I could restart everything I would likely add fish more slowly. That way I could feed whatever I wanted and then gradually scale up the fish and CUC load as coral grew out and required more nutrients.
 
Oh wow you feed 5-6 times a day I feed only twice and that’s about it.
Tbh the 2 times before that when I started this tank I add copepods and never had the ugly stage but this time I just wanted to confirm and see if the copepods are doing the job
 
mac96 said:
Oh wow you feed 5-6 times a day I feed only twice and that’s about it.
Tbh the 2 times before that when I started this tank I add copepods and never had the ugly stage but this time I just wanted to confirm and see if the copepods are doing the job
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Yes, four times pellets on an auto feeder, one time frozen at night, and I also usually put in few square inches of nori in the morning (not doing so now since I want tangs to focus on the rockwork for a few weeks). I have anthias so it is recommended to feed them multiple times a day. My tank is pretty chill since the fish get enough food on a steady stream but I closely observed the feedings to ensure there is absolutely zero waste (ie, when I feed frozen it is gone in 2-3 minutes maximum). That is what led me to cut my pellet volume by 50% twice and frozen by 1/3rd. This has helped me get nutrients in a better spot even with a refugium offline.

The controlled feedings also helped me solve a vermitid snail infestation (I used to have thousands in the display tank—now I can’t find any in the main display). I hope to increase fish and food load whenever my coral grown out more.
 
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