6 replies to this topic

[ibm450]

Hi all
first of all, i would like to say a big thankyou to Alize and hubby brett for taking their time to take me under their wing and teach me with the basics of fish keeping and excellent support for the newbie fishing woes i went through.

before i meet Altize and brett, i was totally lost and went almost broke as i just basically bought what ever the LFS suggested, and only now after meeting with the lovely and knowldgeable couple, i have realised how much unnecessary items i have bought since xmas for my sons 21 Gallon AquarWorld MT50, all in one tank and how worried i was over unnecessary things !

My tank has finally cycled:

0 ammonia
0 nitrite
5 - 10 nitrate
3 softness
7.5 - 7.8 ph i think

lost 1 BN, pepermint, beautiful little thing it was, possible by either toxins of un established tank or over feeding.

At the moment i have a very basic set of community fish that i started off with, just to cycle the tank and are currently doing fine. they are:

2 x bronze cories,
2 x white female mollies
1 black male mollie.

now that i have a good, very basic understanding to aquarioum setups, many thanks to Alize and brett, i was thinking about making a algae scrubber after loosing the BN, found at this link

Algae scrubber

as not only do i enjoy making DYI projects but found this simple idea very interesting in regards to using algae as a bio - filter so to speak to feed of on the nitrates produced as nitrate is a good source of food for algae to grow (the algae reduces the nitrate, phosphate and ammonia levels) which in return, in theory, reduce the need of changing the water for lowering the 3 basic paramaters, obiviously not for other problems, which water change outs are the only good thing to do .

please express your thoughts on this idea as i was told that there are some very bright people on this site.

Or possibly this could be a food for thought or trial experiment project at the next meeting, or has any one tried this out already? Seems to be ideal for both FW and SW tanks.....


cheers

tolga

[Cawdor]

That's a very neat idea I have to say.
Glad you got help from our fellow club members

[dazzabozza]

Gday Tolga

Welcome to the forum. It's great to hear about people like Alize & hubby Brett going out of their way to help out others, in person too! My involvement with the PCS (as well as a lot of other people here) pretty much revolves around this concept.

The DIY Algae scrubber looks like an interesting project. It seems they're designing it for smaller applications as it's already used on larger scales (macro algae refigiums in marine set ups and heavily planted tanks in freshwater).

(marine refugium)


I'm interested to know how efficient it would be in a freshwater aquarium as their example seems to revolve around saltwater. And whether you could propagate enough algae to have an effect (based on a small surface area).

One downside I can see is you're encouraging algae growth within the unit. If a pest algae was to establish itself and make it's way into the display tank then that would be a pain.

Still worthwhile someone trying the idea out though and posting their results!


Daz

[ibm450]

cheers for the replies, and yes many thanks to Alize and brett

well the concept behind the algae scrubber to my understanding is that only a small area of media is concentrated on harvesting / growing algae and because of that, all the algae concentrates growing purely only in that 1 spot, the scrubber area.

i half made the project at work, i work away in the mines and gets very boring up there at nights.

i made the light source, sourced a small piece of shade cloth as the algae media, 2 x 20L buckets (1 as the algae sump and the other bucket as a pretend tank) and a 550l/p small sub pump. but i havnt glued all the pieces together as my work colleges always hit me up for a game of squash after work (better then hitting the booze every night i suppose lol)

the light is a 22W CF put inside of a air tight pickle jar, lol as it was the only jar i could find to fit a cf into, so no water will splash onto the CF. small piece of shade cloth as it has many open weaving on it so water and oxygen runs over it perfectly and acts as good bonding surface for the algae - ive already had wierd looks from the cleaners when they see my contraption in my room

i possibly will take a small testing kit with me and journal the results and possibly use red shrimps or a small domino tetra as the test subject when i go to port hedland next time.

but what you'll think about discussing this concept at the next club meeting?

[dazzabozza]

but what you'll think about discussing this concept at the next club meeting?

Next meet is the March Auction so that's a no go. We've got a speaker pencilled in for the April meeting (more info to come on this soon).

Having this as a topic at a meeting is a possibility assuming we can find someone that has experience in it. By then you would have mastered it and you can be the guest speaker! I'll also do some searching to see if I can find someone suitable.

In the meantime I'm sure there's plenty of members that would like to have a yarn with you before, after or during the break interval on the night.

Daz

[Hydonia]

Thank you Tolga for your kind words. Anything we can do to help, but by now you know that. These two guys are great as well, and it sounds like we are all looking forward to your ideas! If you do master it before May, I think you would make a great guest speaker ( if you don't have to fly out the day after that is!)

[ibm450]

No worries Alize, anytime and definately yes ill go with you when purchasing my next proper tank one day

yea, unfortunately the meetings fall on Tuesday nights at 8pm and i fly out Wednesday morning at 3am so unfortunately, i wont be able to make it...bugger. but, ill wont be negative as there is always a way to all meet up one day

but in the mean time, i would love to aqua hop and check out peoples setups and get more excellent advise and gather more knowledge as i can see this will be a newly found hobby that ill be investing time and $ into it in the long run.

BTW i live south of the river, Kwinana


tolga