pat8you
Aquarium Advice Addict
So before i start i would like to say that i am making no judgements for or agenst turf scrubbers at this point. I read over your thread at RC and agree that some of the users there, while offering some valid critisims, were very harsh and things did seem to get out of hand quickly which took away from the more educational debate on the benifits and drawbacks of this system.
I also watched the video that they linked you to about the causes of the death of corals. While i will admit that is was quite technical and some of it was a bit out of my reach i will say that it did bring up some concerncs about this system. It did mention that turf algea in close proximty to corals (i assume they were talking about SPS) did cause an increase in pathogins and led to the death of the corals in about 24 hours. I was unsure what exactly they meant by "close proximity". They were discussing this in the natural enviroment of the coral and in lab experiments. So in the ocean close proximity could be with in a few hundred feet and in lab experiments this could be 2 inches. I was wondering if anyone could clarify how close the algea has to be in order to kill the corals. Since our aquariums are closed systems i wonder if this would even matter if they are close or not becuase aside from water changes anything that the algea leeched into the system that would kill corals would eventually build up in the water. Later in the video they discussed how a high concentration of DOC matter seemed to directly relate to the health of an overall reef. This seems to favor a system like algea scrubbers as opposed to skimmers which would take out much of the DOC's.
It would be helpful if some of the more educated people on this topic could link a few articles that are scientific and factual in nature as opposed to opinions or semi-experimental home trials. I would do an internet search my self but i fear that i don't know quite enough to sort out which articles are writen by credible sources and which articles are bias views that may not be entirely true. I'm looking for articles both for and against the system so i can make an educated decision if this system would be a good choice for the type of reef system i am looking to set up.
I also watched the video that they linked you to about the causes of the death of corals. While i will admit that is was quite technical and some of it was a bit out of my reach i will say that it did bring up some concerncs about this system. It did mention that turf algea in close proximty to corals (i assume they were talking about SPS) did cause an increase in pathogins and led to the death of the corals in about 24 hours. I was unsure what exactly they meant by "close proximity". They were discussing this in the natural enviroment of the coral and in lab experiments. So in the ocean close proximity could be with in a few hundred feet and in lab experiments this could be 2 inches. I was wondering if anyone could clarify how close the algea has to be in order to kill the corals. Since our aquariums are closed systems i wonder if this would even matter if they are close or not becuase aside from water changes anything that the algea leeched into the system that would kill corals would eventually build up in the water. Later in the video they discussed how a high concentration of DOC matter seemed to directly relate to the health of an overall reef. This seems to favor a system like algea scrubbers as opposed to skimmers which would take out much of the DOC's.
It would be helpful if some of the more educated people on this topic could link a few articles that are scientific and factual in nature as opposed to opinions or semi-experimental home trials. I would do an internet search my self but i fear that i don't know quite enough to sort out which articles are writen by credible sources and which articles are bias views that may not be entirely true. I'm looking for articles both for and against the system so i can make an educated decision if this system would be a good choice for the type of reef system i am looking to set up.