Nobody here wants 24" lights, right?

[bigbenji]

Sorry guys. I should have offered it locally first. I just assumed no one would be interested. John, I still owe you big time. If you can use these let me know.

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=5381328#post5381328

[selgado]

Thanks for the offer, but really, you don't owe me nothing :). I hadn't heard from you in a while. I was afraid of what you'd done in the mean time. I half expected you to have a 1000 gallon swimming pool reef by now as fast as you upgrade. ;)

[bigbenji]

It took me a year to go from 20g to 55. Maybe next year I'll be able to get a 75g. whhhhhhaaaaaappppp!!!!!! Then my wife smacks me and lets me know that I'm lucky I have a tank at all. Whaaaap!!! For telling you guys she hits me......

[Dubbin1]

Oh just stand up, be a man and say look women I'm getting a 250g tank and there is nothing you can do about it. I do think I would hear the beating from here though so maybe thats not such a good idea :)

[bigdaddyadam]

my god you sweet genius of a man you, I have been looking for a cheap easy, small way to incorperate a refugium into my 20 gallon for some time. I figured some macro might help with my hair algea, but until now I couldn't figure out a way to do it. want to explain exactly how you modified it to make the refugium? I used to have that exact filter somewhere, but threw it away, damn. or maybe you just want to sell it to me?

let me know.

[bigdaddyadam]

actually I am dumb, I do still have the filter, wanna give me some tips on how to mod it? what keeps the algea bits from going back into the tank? also what do you light yours with?

[bigdaddyadam]

okay, mine is the "mini" which is smaller, probably would be less effective. how long is yours? or more precisely how much room on the side of the tank is required? i still might want to buy it.

[bigbenji]

I had enough room on my 20g High tank for the ac500 and a bak-pak protein skimmer. I'll give it free to someone local who can use it. I bought an aquavase light for $4 on clearance and used that with it. There are pics in my gallery, but be kind, this was my first horrible hair algae outbreak. To keep the macro in the ac500, I cut up the gray plastic filter media containers it came with and used that as a screen. All I did was put in a baffle, cut the screen and place it, and I removed the plastic bit holding the input line on the pump. Now it swivels so the flow is more adjustable. I felt the flow was too much for my 20g, now it can be adjusted to a trickle if need be.

The pic is the last pic in my galler. There is a phosphate removing pad between the plastic screen and the output, because of my hair algae problem. I was hoping to kill it in an instant. I'm still using the original cheatto I recieved. Does anyone have any extra cheatto? I'm starting to think mine is actually plastic since it doesn't seem to be growing.

[bigdaddyadam]

did you find this to be of any effect against your hair algea?

I think I may design one from a power filter I saw at meijer, this one actaully has a built in strainer on the retun of the filter, very odd.

[bigdaddyadam]

also what did you use for the baffle?

[bigbenji]

Just a piece of plastic for the baffle, glued in place. There are tons of these being used by those at nano-reef.com. Did it fix the hair algae problem, no. The urchin I borrowed from Gary did. I used a phosphate sponge and phosphate remover and stopped using tap water for topoffs. Haven't seen hair algae since.

[bigdaddyadam]

well, I just scrubbed the rock again today and it is almost algea free, I am using some kent phosphate and silicate removing media as well. I think the stuff started from mt anemone spawning a few times. also I was using RO/DI from the machine at the local meijer. I realized a few weeks ago that their machine had not been serviced in 4 months. I alerted the staff at meijer and next time I came in the record showed it had just been serviced. so frequent water changes because of the spawning combined with poor water change water. I think that is the source, now I just want to prevent another outbreak/bring this one to a close. also it will be nice to have a more stable PH. I bought a 300 gal/hr power filter from meijer. has a lot of area fro refugium, also adjustable flow rate and built in strainer that will keep algea in. now to find some cheato or graciliaria and buy a copepod kit online.