Probably not. Put a fish in and don’t feed it. You will have ammonia and if a bio filter is functioning, nitrate will be the end product of the nitrogen cycle which will certainly ensue.
Anybody use an Algea scrubber?
- Thread starter Thalassa
- Start date
Of course not. You need a bio load. You put food into a tank the fish eat it and excrete waste that gets broken down to ammonia nitrite nitrate. If you do not feed them they will start breaking down their own tissue and organs to survive this will create waste and then when they eventually die they will break down the same waste until all the waste is consumed then eventually you get back to zero. You need an input to get an output nothing comes from nothing.
Is this just some kind of a fun project for you, a bit of tinkering as it were? This hog thing costs $150, which is a little pricy in my book.
It claims to "eliminate" the need to perform water changes, which quite frankly, any serious hobbyist knows is utter crap.
And all for a 30g tank!!! How long does it take to do a cheap water change to keep your nitrate down? Or do you have high nitrate out of the tap, which would sort of better explain your need to go down this exploratory route?
It claims to "eliminate" the need to perform water changes, which quite frankly, any serious hobbyist knows is utter crap.
And all for a 30g tank!!! How long does it take to do a cheap water change to keep your nitrate down? Or do you have high nitrate out of the tap, which would sort of better explain your need to go down this exploratory route?
I really like to do experiments. I dicked around with seachem matrix but never got a measurable delta. If the scrubber can reduce the number of water changes that would be a bonus. Right now I do a weekly and get up to 30-40 ppm. Would like to get to under 10ppm.
There is a lot of stuff on algae scrubbers on the forum. One member, I can't link his name for some reason, he hasn't been on for ages anyway, well he started a huge thread, it had well over 500 posts by the end if memory serves me correctly.
The thing I can't get my head around with them is that yes, using the correct powerful lighting, you can grow algae like wildfire. It will suck nitrates right out of your water when the algae is at its max. But, and this is a huge but for me. The algae grows that fast and thick you have to harvest it in thick clumps, otherwise it takes over. So, how could it be called a successful method of nitrate removal if one minute it's sucking loads of nitrate out, only to reduce considerably when you harvest it. And then it takes time for it to build up again to maximise its potential.
As I understand it nitrate removal would be up down up down up down with this method, which means it's no better than a water change schedule where your nitrate is up on water change day, and down straight after your water change, only to rise slowly again before your next change.
I haven’t set my diy waterfall scrubber back up yet after some insulating of the sump but I ran it for 4 months and my nitrates never passed 20ppm with one wc per week with 3 large rays and a school of bass being fed heavy. The algae will feed directly on the ammonia before the nitrates. I noticed after mine was established my ph buffer up from 6.5 to 7 presuming it’s from the algae consuming the ammonia directly. If I didn’t have stingrays I don’t think I would have had many detectable nitrates.
