# Algae Turf Scrubbing



## brianhellno (Jun 16, 2008)

I've seen some recent hype about these things around the web and decided what the hell I'll give it a shot. As far as aquariums go Turf Scrubbing is using controlled algae growth to reduce nitrates and phosphates to near undetectable levels in aquariums. Also from what I understand they are damn efficient bio filters and can even "ungrow" all the algae in a tank. Usually they are used on saltwater tanks and they seem effective on freshwater tanks so I decided to try one out.

I have a 125 gallon aquarium with five six inch piranha, six giant danios and about twenty or so black convict babies all smaller than an inch. I had a four inch black convict named "Sinbad" but they killed him a couple days ago. Damn.

The filtration is an XP4 which takes care of all the mechanical and has every basket loaded with biological media. I also have an Emperor 400 that I use only for the biowheels and the return for the sump. Anyways I've already had the scrubber up and running for about a week. Ammonia and Nitrite are at 0 so that's a good sign. Nitrate was at 80 PPM (a little high i know) at the beginning of the week and I still need to test it. I feed about three times a day twice a day I feed the danios and the baby convicts and I feed the piranha once a day. I'm doing regular water changes which usually is at least once a week but can be as many as three times a week.

Anyways I'll let the pictures and captions walk you through the setup and what I hope to accomplish:









This is the screen the first day I set it up. I used a home built PVC overflow and hooked the screen into the outlet. I have a light faced at it that puts out over 4000 lumens so I figured that should be enough.









The heart of the system is a Danner Mag Drive 9.5. Its basically the return. I used a rubbermaid container as the sump. Also that giant turd looking thing is peat moss.









This is day three. You can already start to see the algae starting to grow. A good sign.









This is the intake tube in the tank. It works I guess although ugly as sin....









This was around day 6. All I can say is that is nasty.









For fear of clogging the intake to the sump I decided to split the return so the Mag pump would not only act as the return to the tank but also pump water over the screen. The rate of flow over the screen is much faster and a lot more solid looking.









Here's the new position of the screen. I cleaned it a little remove some of the "crap" the filter collected.









The return. I plumbed it straight into the emperor 400 so I would never have to worry about back siphon.









It's hard to see in the picture but the entire back wall of my tank should be black (the background) but instead its brown because of algae.









This was the con that was in there. RIP Sinbad.









These are the douche bags that did him in. (I'm really not that upset I mean they are piranha)









Umm... A full tank shot for the hell of it.

And that basically brings you up to speed where I'm at in the experiment. My goal is to "ungrow" all the algae from the tank to the screen and to reduce nitrates to 0. I should probably test nitrates again to see if the scrubber being run for a week changed anything but I just finished tank maintenance and I really don't want to right now. Not to mention I just did a water change so I don't know if it would matter if I tested for them. Questions, comments, hell even suggestions I'm open to anything. I'll keep things updated as events unfold.


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## lo4life (Aug 12, 2008)

Hmm concept seems like it would work. Im not that smart so I could be wrong LOL...


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## Linford (Oct 26, 2006)

Does the turf scrub have any chemical compounds contained within the fibres? If they are usually used in marine (saltwater) aquariums I shouldnt see any problem in using it within a tropical tank.

Seems so have cleaned up your amazon swords a fair but. All I can further suggest is:

- Frequant (daily) water changes
- and remember to rinse out the turf scrub

Good luck and continue to post photos of updates, I'm interested in how this will work out.


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## brianhellno (Jun 16, 2008)

The turf scrubber is actually just a fish tank divider I had lying around but I'm sure you could probably use anything to grow the algae on. So no unsafe chemicals or anything. As for an update the algae growing on the screen seems to be gaining momentum and growing faster. I've decided to take the advise of daily water changes because it sounds like it will not only help me acheive my goal of "ungrowing" all the algae in the tank but hopefully it will bring the nitrates to 0 faster.

Also I've scrubbed all the algae off of the front of the tank and it doesn't appear to have attempted to grow back yet so that could be a good sign. I'm going to leave the back of the tank alone though for the purpose of the experiment.


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## caribad (Jul 27, 2008)

I'm sure algae scrubbers could work in freshwater as well as salt water, but you made need to experiment more with different media, or even different plants. I'd bet a shallow aquarium or rubbermaid sump filled with Java Moss could work wonders at lowering Nitrates in the main tank. Note many algae scrubbers either have a 24 hour light period, or the algae is illuminated when the tank lights are off. Anacharis would be the freshwater equivalent of Caulerpa, man that stuff is a fast growing Nitrate SPONGE!


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## Big-Kev (Mar 29, 2008)

The algae will do exactly what your expecting it to. However, it looks like you have live plants in your tank and I beleive the algae will also quickly use up the nutrients
in the water that the display plants require.


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## caribad (Jul 27, 2008)

To solve the above mentioned problem by Big-Kev you would want to use a slow release fertilizer in your substrate to feed the plants in display at their roots. I would say it would work well, but their are a lot of factors in play, such as carbon dioxide consumption and oxygen saturation, pH swings (ORP). That is why I mentioned many reef tanks have algae scrubbers that are on either 24/7, or that are lit at night.


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## brianhellno (Jun 16, 2008)

Hit my first snag. The algae seems to like the environment in the rubbermaid bin so much that its not only growing on the screen that I intended it to grow on its completely overrun the entire thing. This will make it more difficult to remove algae during cleaning of the screen but at the same time when I clean the screen the excess algae will act as a buffer to let the algae regrow pb the screen. I guess I'm still in debate as to if this should be considered a problem and if so what the solution should be.


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## brianhellno (Jun 16, 2008)

OK first test of water parameters and so far things are looking pretty good. I have done a water change every other day and I recently cleaned the Turf Scrubber again because the algae growth is really starting to take off. Anyways here goes:

Water Temp: 78 degrees F
PH: 8.0
Ammonia: 0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: 5 ppm

The way I see it 5 ppm Nitrate isn't half bad. When I get time I'll probably test the nitrates in my water so I know what exactly is going on. I know the water changes helped tremendously so I'm going to go a few day without doing a water change and retest everything. The goal is to hopefully have Nitrate stay the same or maybe even be lower.

I guess a question I have for someone with more experience is do you have to perform water changes if your nitrates never rise? I thought the purpose of a water changes is to remove excess nitrates and waste but if their is no traces of Nitrates would you be able to get away with doing water changes at greater intervals? Just to remove things stuck in the substrate.


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