Expert only

Whats the deal with the non-photosynthetic gorgans,sea fans,squirts,and sponges? How do you feed them enough, yet keep the water pristine? Multiple feedings per day with heavy skimming and an algae scrubber?

dang, I knew I shoulda went to that speaker on Sunday at seamax on the non-photo corals haha

I'm sure someone knows more, but from what I know, the pure amount of food they require, and the food size they require (often plankton or smaller) makes them very difficult to keep alive. Much like anthias, big fish, small mouth, selective feeding habits, except these corals are big coral, small mouth, selective feeding habits

The way I do it is when I turn off the return pump to feed my fishies I add a few drops of phyto to the tank. The fish don't care and the water is clear again in 20 minutes, but YMMV.

That sounds simple Pat! drop a little phyto in front of the sea squirt with the pump off. Hmm I think I can risk 20$ on one and attempt that. Well that is if my tank ever comes.

If you want it to get more of the food, Cut a plastic bottle in half and put it over the coral. Then you squirt the "food" under the bottle and wait 20 minutes while watching it eat.

Thats even cooler!

I think how most people do the non-photosynthetic tanks is with heavy skimming, lots of water changes and some type of organic carbon source. Even with all that people still have nutrient problems.

I wonder if an algae scrubber would help with the nutrient export along with the heavy skimming.

Carbon would do a pretty good job too.

Originally Posted by Variko

I wonder if an algae scrubber would help with the nutrient export along with the heavy skimming.

From everything ive read about em i would ditch the idea of an algae scrubber.. there are much more efficient and easier to use methods out there. but having never used one personally i cant tell you first hand how well they work. plus on an individual level since every situation is different there's no way to tell just how much it would help if any.

Originally Posted by Kerickson978

From everything ive read about em i would ditch the idea of an algae scrubber.. there are much more efficient and easier to use methods out there. but having never used one personally i cant tell you first hand how well they work. plus on an individual level since every situation is different there's no way to tell just how much it would help if any.

I couldn't agree more.

I dont like carbon. I havent liked it since I had freshwater fish. I swapped from carbon to DE filtration and it made a huge difference. If you dont change the carbon enough, and it is very difficult to know when it is time, it releases phosphates back in the water. Scrubbers are new. Very new. If you read from the people who have tried them, sucessfully, they are thrilled with the results. The more they are studied the more researchers are finding other benefits they provide. Examples: They have found natural antibiotics on the algae. Pods grow in large numbers on the scrubbers. Here is what my research had led me to. The people who have them set up correctly, and harvested them religiously, love them. The people who are the most vocal about them not working have been people who havent tried one. In the middle are the people who tried one years ago, before good scrubber designs were understood, and people who didnt clean them weekly or didnt have them set up correctly to begin with. Nutrient export is nutrient export. If you remove uneaten food via skimming,throwout used carbon, harvest micro algae on a scrubber,cut back chaeto,trim a mangrove, or harvest xenia, it doesnt matter. You removed locked up nutrients.

My only concern is that I have read that some macros, and some soft corals have very slow growth, or die off from using a scrubber, due to how fast the scrubber out competes the macro and softies for nutrients. Ill start posting some of the info I have gathered on scrubbers. If I were doing a large predator tank, or an sps tank I absolutely would have a scrubber. My turtle will have one when I move him to his permanent home.

The file I have on algae scrubbers is too big to add here. hmm Help!

PM sent about the file.

One thing you need to remember about algae, especially turf algae is that algae releases chemicals that can stunt the growth or kill corals. Turf algae is well known to do this.

So stay with the macro and mangroves, then try a skimmer or algae scrubber if I get into trouble?

Thats how i would start.

Let me see if i can attach the file. Too big, let me try something else.

Heres a link to the article http://www.aquariumdomain.com/viewAr...?article_id=19

TY. What do you think Chris?

Well with out getting into a big rant im not a fan of them. The guy that started pushing them a few years back started threads on just about every reef forum on the net. A lot of the info he put out was cherry picked from research and not given in its full context. He likes to push the parts that talk about nutrient uptake but totally blows off the parts about leaky cell walls, the compounds that this algae gives off and so on. There is a video that he used (ill try and dig it up)that was a presentation by a marine biologist about the effects of marine algae on SPS corals (IIRC). There are a few clips from it where the marine biologist talk about how good this type of algae is at nutrient uptake but if you watch the whole video (which this person only wanted you to watch these short clips) you would see that its really about how easy these algaes will out compete and kill corals. As soon as you bring these points up to that person he would start saying that hes only going to respond to people that want to use one.

Do a search for "Mega-Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover Replaces Skimmer, Refugium, Everythin".

So what I had read about lps,softies,clams,and macro being killed from the scrubber rapidly taking up too many nutrients was spot on? I had read on another forum people using the scrubbers with sps, and non photo stuff, with heavy feeding, being very successful. Apparently the heavy feeding, no skimmer and frequent algae scrubber cleaning was the key. It also works very well in fowlr tanks with large predators. Of course this was all on the internet, and Ive gotten a ton of bad advice from other forums on other topics...Please I wont be offended voice your concerns.