Santa Monica UAS ATS Turf Scrubber review - hog and surf - EPIC FAILURE

The cell phone flash washed the green out of it, making it appear brown. It's actually quite green with specs of red/purple. I noticed small flecks of green for the first time yesterday, but didn't expect this much growth in a day :)
 
entry #4:

Checked the ATS last night. The surf4 has some more green and purple speckles of algae growing. The hog3 has some algae forming on the sump glass, but still none in on the material in the scrubber yet.

The air pump has been relocated to the other side of the wall, getting the noisy thing out of the stand. The tubing run is aprox 18' long. I added thumbscrew style air valves inline just upstream of the scrubbers for ease of tuning the air bubbles. After tuning they are all bubbling great with little to no visible effect by adding the many feet of extra tubing.
 
I'm on the "Yes and no" front here...

Having a scrubber in place BEFORE gha/bryopsis is a great deterrent!
Having a scrubber in place AFTER gha/bryopsis, probably just slows it down.

Maybe harvesting/exporting enough nutrients can get us to the point of starving gha/bryopsis...but then I think that would be ULNS and the scrubber would struggle to grow as well...no? At least at that point it would effectively be like putting in in place "before nuisance algae"....hoping that's the case! :)

Right now mine is just "sliming"...cleaning it each week to try and get something "hairy" going in there~
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The hog3 has some algae forming on the sump glass, but still none in on the material in the scrubber yet
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Sounds like it's either covered up too much, or it did not get covered at all.

Right now mine is just "sliming"
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Needs a complete toothbrush cleaning under running water in the sink, so that you can see all the white surfaces again and no dark stuff; also all the vent holes should be cleaned every week.
 
entry #5:

End of week two. No Change to the light schedule, carbon dosing amount or other factors. Air pump volume is that same as in update #4.

nitrate 7.92ppm, 1.8 on the hach specrtophotometer (has been hovering between 1.5 and 1.9 for several weeks.)
po4 .11 on the same meter (changing GFO today)

See the above post for the pic of the surf4 growth and pending light change. The hog3 hasn't had enough time to change since removing more of the fabric light blocker.
 
intermidiate update;

I plugged in the second set of lights on the surf4 last night. Also the first bits of green can be seen in the hog3!
 
HOG3, you can just start to see algae in the photos, there are little tufts growing here and there.

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SURF4, the algae is filling in. It's not hair algae or slime. It's a green algae I've never seen before growing very short almost like a green coraline.
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This looks complicated. But great customer service though, I have to admit. My next step is getting one. Great job Josh.
 
maazreef said:
This looks complicated. But great customer service though, I have to admit. My next step is getting one. Great job Josh.
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Thanks. There really is nothing complicated about them, nor are they a lot of work. They aren't growing handfuls of hair algae yet, but I've never had hair algae in my system. Do date the only work has been; installing them, adjusting the fabric light blocker and hitting the surf with a tooth brush once.
 
entry #6:

End of week three. The last couple posts document the recent light changes. Carbon dosing amount is not being changed even though Nitrates are climbing to a new high. Air pump volume is that same as in update #4.

nitrate 9.24ppm, 2.1 on the hach specrtophotometer (has been hovering between 1.5 and 1.9 for several weeks.)
po4 .04ppm on the same meter (changing gfo dropped last weeks reading as expected)
 
I just got my hog1x yesterday (i didn't find out about the group buy until too late). Mine is going on my mantis setup that i'm putting together right now :)


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