The Dynamic Aquarium, algae turf scrubbing

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I really like this idea because tumbling purigen in the BRS reactor is problematic. This looks easy to replace the purigen and looks like it should work. The filter is only $65 so I am going to try it. Love that purigen but it's light as snow.
 
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Have been using the Lifegard fluidized filter with purigen for a week now as per the Youtube video. Hung it on the frag tank. First, it doesn't tumble like it does in the video. After considerable fiddling, I can get it to work okay, but all the lighter purigen particles are now in the frag tank. I even made a floss post filter to try and catch them but they are elusive. Will siphon them out but don't think they are causing any damage. I had the same problem with the BSR dual reactor, the finer purigen particles would clog the foam pads within hours. While I like regenerating purigen and it does lower organic levels, I am pretty fed up with it.

Even with the big skimmer and turf scrubber, I have so much bio load I cannot get phosphates below .2 but using GFO for phosphates and purigen for everything else, I get the levels down to .02 where SPS corals like it. Kind of a belt and suspenders approach. Natural methods first with chemical filtration catching what's left.
 
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Have been using the Lifegard fluidized filter with purigen for a week now as per the Youtube video. First, it doesn't tumble like it does in the video. After considerable fiddling, I can get it to work okay, but all the lighter purigen particles are now in the frag tank. I even made a floss post filter to try and catch them but they are elusive. Will siphon them out but don't think they are causing any damage. I had the same problem with the BSR dual reactor, the finer purigen particles would clog the foam pads within hours. While I like regenerating purigen and it does lower organic levels, I am pretty fed up with it.

Even with the big skimmer and turf scrubber, I have so much bio load I cannot get phosphates below .2 but using GFO and purigen I get the levels down to .02 where SPS corals like it. Kind of a belt and suspenders approach. Natural methods first with chemical filtration catching what's left.

I had the same reaction with the brs dual reactor clogging the foam pads too,..I'm currently using my reef octopus bio pellet reactor with a combo of gfo and carbon and no clogs
 
New pics from a few minutes ago.
 

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Purigen doesn't need to tumble at all to do it's job. If you reduce the flow to keep it settled it would be a much better way to go. People apply tumbling to media that doesn't benefit the media. As long as you have water flow through the Purigen you'll get the results you're looking for without any of the hassle. The slight increase in flow that keeps it suspended is causing the mess, not the media. Tumbling is great for keeping GFO from turning into a mud ball. Purigen will never compact like that anyway. If you really want high flow through the fluidized bed filter you can always run it in a bag and crank the flow up as much as you like. Just because other media can't be run in a bag inside of a reactor doesn't mean Purigen shouldn't.
 
Good point. It doesn't work well in the BRS reactor either. Bagging it may be the way to go long term. It does develop a film on the particles that causes mine to clump together, that's why I thought keeping it suspended would be more efficient than laying a bag of it in the sump.
 
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Well, it's always more fun to try out an idea. They say nothing ventured nothing gained.

With enough flow, running it in a bag inside the FBF just might give it enough movement to keep it from clumping. I've never had it clump on me in any of the many many tanks I've used it in, but you aren't the first person to say it does that. I believe it's more common in tanks that use a good bit of calcium additions like kalk or two part. I could be off about this but I suspect calcium or carbonate precipitation binding. That's just wild speculation on my part.
 
That's good to hear. What did you end up doing to keep the beads from escaping? Did you bag it inside the reactor or use another method?
 
Gonna buy some blue tuxedo urchins tomorrow to try to knock down excessive coraline algae. It is everywhere and clogging my power heads. Takes a metal scrapper to remove it from the front and side tank walls, Time for some of it to go. Hope they also like a bit of bubble algae as my sumps are getting too much of that as well. All the rocks are covered 95% in corals, so I don't think they can do much damage there, but everywhere else is fair game.
 

I really like this idea because tumbling purigen in the BRS reactor is problematic. This looks easy to replace the purigen and looks like it should work. The filter is only $65 so I am going to try it. Love that purigen but it's light as snow.

This is awesome. Can a fw tank benefit from this??
 
The problems I been seeing is even with weekly WC my nitrates are over 40ppm. That's in my little 20 gallon housing 4 goldies n is filtered by a Fluval 306 which is packed with bio media. I even have a couple of bio media bags in the tank, I'm seeding em to kick start the cycle in the 90 gallon when its up n running. So what if I ran a reactor just like in that video and have the little power head for it in the return pump section of the sump?
 
It doesn't work as well for me as the video showed. Don't know what the difference was, but it works and should work in your application as well.
 
gravereaper0 said:
The problems I been seeing is even with weekly WC my nitrates are over 40ppm. That's in my little 20 gallon housing 4 goldies n is filtered by a Fluval 306 which is packed with bio media. I even have a couple of bio media bags in the tank, I'm seeding em to kick start the cycle in the 90 gallon when its up n running. So what if I ran a reactor just like in that video and have the little power head for it in the return pump section of the sump?

The problem is that goldfish can't be kept properly in a 20 gallon. I wish that wasn't the case but I've seen that same problem a few times. You'd have way better results with tropical fish in a 20. If you must keep them, try to keep the temp at about 70° max and feed them very lightly. Purigen would help a little, but it won't change the fact that these are messy fish in a small tank.
 
Some observations since acquiring the LEDs and a PAR meter. As I have mentioned before, the Chinese LEDs were a big improvement over a 20 year old MH/Actinic system.

I am a bit surprised at how little light some of these corals need to grow and prosper. And how much some of them soak up.

Common Acros are doing well from 280-500 PAR, many of the Acros are growing well at 300 PAR.
Fancier Acros (you know who you are...) seem to need 400-+500 PAR and very careful handling as bleaching is just a nudge away from the light values they prosper at. This may well be one of the reasons, besides low tolerance for phosphates, that these corals sometimes don't do well. High flow is also needed if high PAR values are used.
Capricornus seems to like about 200-300 PAR
GSP can grow at 50 PAR, but do better at 120-180 PAR
Zoas are about the same, but really do well at even higher PAR levels like 400.
Frogspawn and hammers seem to like 200-300 PAR
Mushrooms grow from an amazing 10 PAR and stop growing at about 300-400 PAR
Soft corals would grow from 50 PAR to 500 PAR, it just varies its length.
Green leather coral liked 100-200 PAR
Large green torch coral liked 200 PAR fine.
Trumpets and most millipora liked 350-500 PAR
Clams seem to like all you can give them. At least 400 PAR and in my frag system they get boosts of 1200 PAR for a few minutes out of every hour.

These are just general observations, they don't take into account flow and water quality, which I have done my best to optimize.
Will be making similar tests as I move from Chinese LED panels to broader spectrum LED panels soon.
 
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