http://www.saltwaterfish.com/vb/showthread.php?t=330606
Read it all, thinking of adding it to my tank… what do you guys think?
Have read about them before. They are essentially a refugium. They will help with nitrates and nutrient reduction but I think they’re more gimmicky then anything else. They won’t clean the water well enough to keep SPS happy.
Interesting topic that has been debated over for a long time.
It seems to me that Anthony Calfo is against recommending turf scrubbers to small scale aquarist and coral farmers. He wrote a good deal about it in his “Coral Propagation” book and started off by saying, "Algae scrubbers are the subjects of much debate among aquarists.(you can see in the thread you linked debate started instantly as with most things in the hobby) He also encouraged people who were into the topic and wanted to read more to reference Dynamic Aquaria by Dr. Walter Adey.
One thing to be said is that any individual who has band softies from there “SPS only” systems would be crazy for using this method. Algae that would grow in this sort of environment can release toxins which will compete with and slow the growth of stony corals.
I’m happy enough with my results with water changes, so I won’t be adding anything like this myself any time soon. Though it could be a cool experiment and would be an interesting fuge-esk type add on.
hmm ive read of this recently in another forum, pretty interesting, i wonder if it would work. might be something to add to our “mythbusters” series this up coming year
i have olny read about 4 pages and from my observations i think it woul be great for FO and softies. ill read up some more once i have some more time.
I’d always be skeptical of anything with the words ‘Mega-powerful’ in it!
The guy who wrote it is obviously bias and full of himself. But it might be an addition to a tank. I didnt read the whole thing, but it seems like it would be an interesting experiment.
You guys were saying that the algae realeases toxins that will inhibit growth. So is that a reason not to get it on a system with stony corals. I was thinking of running this right from the over flow, then skimmer, then the real refugium, then the phos and carbon…
So from what you guys are saying its not worth it, and can actually hurt…
I dont know either way… thats why i posted to get a nice little debate going. I dont really take peoples post on major forums worth a grain of rice. I feel like everyone on major forums is going to tend to trend to extremes. that is why i wanted to have a nice in house discussion.
You’ll read threads about how skimmers pull out all the good stuff. You’ll read threads about how T5 bulbs suck and MH rock and others that say MH sock and T5s rock. Fact is there is a lot in this hobby that is still debated and much of it is because certain things work with certain set ups.
Many algaes to release certain chemicals that will slow the growth of corals. Now if you are not running a coral farm and running a biz that finically depends on optimum growth, then it may not be as much of an issue. Some people have stopped keeping Caulerpa algae for there reputation of releasing horrible toxins, but that is yet another debated topic in the hobby and there are plenty of aquariums including one maintained by Chris Brightwell(Marine chemist) that actively grow stonies in a system with massive in line fuges of Caulerpa.
If you have the room you could do one of these small scale. One of the things that Calfo wrote about was that the scale of turf scrubbers should be equal to the sides of your walls. So “aquarist maintaining 180 gallon reef tanks with 30 square feet of surface area will need an algal scrubber nearly as large!”. I’m personally not saying that a smaller one won’t help in some way, but they certainly won’t replace the need for other types of filtration.
[quote=“Marchingbandjs, post:1, topic:2482”]
Read it all[/quote]
[quote=“Marchingbandjs, post:7, topic:2482”]
I didnt read the whole thing[/quote]
Contradicting yourself, lol.
what a asinine person… lol… i skimmed it all i didn’t read it all… happy…