Algae Scrubber Disaster
 

Everytime I clean my algae scrubber, it crashes my tank. WTF!!!!!! I always have to perform an immediate water change afterwards. I've lost an Achilles, two Bartlett anthias, and a sharknose goby already. I don't get it. It's growing algae like crazy. When I remove it, a small amount of the water thats absorbed into the algae gets squeezed out but if that's enough to crash a tank then these things are more dangerous than good.

I wonder if you have high nutrients and cleaning the scrubber stops scrubbing temperarily. Forcing a spike in nitrates and phosphates. Hence a waterchange to stabilize

How do you clean the scrubber? Is it possible it comes into contact with a chemical or something that could be contaminating the tank

how old is your scrubber ?

I build one last month with 8 red CREE led's, and are still waiting to have some form of algae forming on my mesh,

I do read somewhere that it is recomended to clean 50% and alternate this, in stead of cleaning the entire mesh at once

Might be waiting a while still with red light. 6500k would be optimal

we have to se how mine wil develope, as on reefsanctuary, thy talk about soly the red to be best

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/...er-basics.html

Maybe so. Red though simulates fall sun. Where blue so to speak is spring summer

I could see detritus being build up in the algae and screen and when disturbed to clean it it could be releasing a lot of it back into the tank causing an ammonia spike. Just a thought!

algae scrubber
 

i use red and white led and have great growth.when i clean my screen i lightly scrub it with a nail brush then rinse it with a sprayer,leaving some algae on.i designed my screen to slide off(pvc is not glued and held in place by a pvc cap)so nothing gets knocked into my sump.

Ya I remove my screen to clean it therefore nothing falls into the sump, sounds like you have some stuff getting back into the tank when you clean off your algae screen, try removing it to clean it.