NWMS,Nattural Waste Managment System for the marine aquarium

Extensive algae upon an affective nitrite and nitrate oxidising environment remote to the marine aquarium,if done right,will take care of all waste/nutrient control and complete the nitrite cycle better than a skimmer and live rock bio filtration.

The words algae scrubber that I have use at times for my set ups isn’t exactly right, an algae scrubber is based on a different principle and the way most hobbyists try to rely on what they call a refugium,is why I have used term algae scrubber.

A refugium,the way they are used and designed these days is semi useless with out more tech back up(reactors a such) as does the live rock form of bio filtering, they both need propping up.

An actual algae scrubber is the low level algae normally growing on the aquariums glass, that type of thing and other low level types, this is encouraged to grow on a flat surface or stepped as the water is violently, moved over it, this has to be massive in area to work, underwater world up the coast used to rely on one when it started, that was doomed as they took their water straight out if the canal back than, and as you can imagine canal water is unreliable at best.

The refugiums when they made sense, were in the past a spot to keep a new fish to see if it was not suited, a picked on fish for a while to recover, a mantis shrimp spot, somewhere for something you were unsure of until it goes into the tank or not suited in the display tank while still being in the tanks water!

Now the notion is a refugium can produce lots of plankton for the corals, a tiny little box can produce enough to do some of the feeding of corals, what a joke, you would need your whole yard as the refugium and a four foot tank off it!!

A refugium that is trendy now has a substrate (they try to call a deep sand bed at times) with caulerpa or similar growing in it, the caulerpa is virtually always to deep for the light in these to get serious growth and can possibly go to spore as the tanks are normally kept at to high of temp range to keep caulerpa (macro algae) comfortably or at their most nutrient extracting/converting best and it can get into your tank from a trendy refugium and be a problem, maybe!!

Substrates with life forms feeding or growing in the tank with them do not work affectively and over time will become a disadvantage not an advantage!!

If you want to build a natural waste managment system that works well with in two months and in years to come, it cannot have a standard substrate, it can be no deeper than 150 to 250 mil depending on the strength of lighting from the water level to the coral chunks that the algae will attach to.

There must be 15 to 30 mil supports under an egg crate floor to allow a water pump to be used to blow out under this floor for cleaning each two months.

The corals/calcium chunks placed on top of the egg crate at three layers reducing in size at each layer, if you can find some, should be rollers, poris dead coralline chunks or similar as they become part of the nitrite and nitrate oxidising cycle for the tank and most coral trace elements will come from these as well.

The algae and sponges will attaché to these coral chunks and form a tight water conditioning community as they reach for the light above, remember they do not have a substrate to absorb food from, plus a substrate pollutes the water any way, so they rely totally on what is in the water and remove it to photosynthesise for foods!!

When they photosytheseise, they covert all their intake into glucose for their needs and produce amino acids, strontium, harmless carbons, lots of trace elements are made by diverse life forms in the algae area in many ways, mainly by photosynthesis, the sponges consume nitrate/phosphates as such as well.

Once algae absorb nutrients, they are converted so if algae is killed or cut open the nutrients are not there any more, just valuable trace elements are present in the tisues and sap.

If you do your algae areas right, in a marine aquarium, other than the needed feeding of course, it will take care of everything!

Oils, fly sprays, sunscreen, paints,if it was on your hands when they went into the aquarium to do something, it will convert it and render it harmless.

It carries out all PH balancing, converts all of the nitrite cycle into trace elements to satisfy the corals algae clades and makes it own iodite,a polyatomic ion .

The more aggressive types of algae will convert nitrate into this useful iodite,which the corals algae can utilize as strontium for coral skeletal formation, excess unused iodite will than be reabsorbed by basic algae’s and converted into iodide and onto iodine!

(This bit of info came from a teacher of marine biologists years ago and I have seen it work beautifully!)

The algae areas I make are just from large plastic tubs, if to high, they can be cut down in height to suit, mine are at a length to suit two foot LED T8 blue and white tubes.

Before the water enters the algae area it should be pre filtered of all food particles you apply to your tank inhabitants, make sure no rubbish particles/detrites, gets to this area!

As the water leaves this environment I pre filter it as well, algae has some cell structure and as it breaks down this will block filtering areas further along.

For on going care of algae areas you need a somewhat violent over all current in there to help it keep clean of unwanted algae that will grow on the wanted algae, I use a paint brush to help keep the algae cleaned of the wrong algae.

The lighting over your algae area has to be still on before your aquarium lights come on and go back on before your aquarium lights go off.

So ensentialy,the main algae area out side of your tank,it’s lighting should be on for 18 hours per day at one time and off for 6 hours in the middle of the aquarium lightings (on) cycle.

This will make sure that there is photo stimulating light some where at all times over your water, whether it is directed at the small amount of photosyntheses in the aquarium algae, even with in the symbiotic coral clades there is photo food production and nutrient absorbing/converting, or in the most important nutrient controlling algae area, which is out side of the tank.

Algae produces some CO2 when photo affective lighting is unavailable, so there has to be algae elsewhere to absorb this PH damaging gas,thats why the lighting is off set to keep PH and (room to tank water) CO2 in balance or this will bring on continual disruptive PH crashes of minuscule sizes but at regular intervals or with some hobbyists, a tank killing PH disruption.

This is as usual via CO2 throwing out the balance at the heart of what we test for PH, the electromotive forces between the base and the acid!

When the lights go out, the CO2 comes out!!!!!!!!

Why not have stable CO2 and along with nutrients, these will feed your algae and it will convert them all into its intake and valuable trace elements for your corals!!

The way the ocean does it, is the reef makes waste, gases,etc- than they get washed along, than during photo affective lighting times,(day time mainly) the phytoplankton converts the majority of it for the next reef along the ways, that’s the cycle this thread is directed at.



Pics of a cheap, easy to make,natural waste managment system soon.

Excellent info as always - Thank you !

I am better understanding the underlining priciples now which is great and it makes sense which is great, i just need to figure out a way of adapting what I have to create such a thing..... I look forward to your pictures

Thanks again mate.

No worries mate, glad to help,lots of life forms sacrificed them selves for my basic understanding of how things function with in saltwater, the experimenting still goes on for me, not that much these days though.

The museum was very helpful as it used to give me contact details for help over the years as well,that was before the internet,but than again thats not always the best place to go,there are alot of opinions there.

I forgot to put in the rest of the thread,which was the lighting and the CO2 affects, sorry,but its in there now,pics later from Danny’s set up, when Danny picks up his tank and system form here and we sets it up at his place, its not pretty, but it will sustain more than one tank, it just works well,lol.

Once I am more organised with things, the glass a mate gave me,I am going to use in making a compact all in one for under tank use,just to show any one can make it compact as well,not my ugly ones,lol,lol.

The awkward thing in the past was to make it cleanable in such a confined space, that’s no worries now, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, nutrients all removed under the tank,no reactors, no skimmers, just a bank of LED tubes and one pump under the tank runs all this, including the circulating in the display tank!

Sadly the chiller will have to be next to the tank stand,oh well.

Don’t ever forget the most important thing for longevity for a marine aquarium and the main reason the internet twits can so easily shoot down the tricle filters,this was not just because of weak designing, it was the lack of serious pre filtering,thats what mainly killed them.

With out very good pre filtering, even with live rock bio filtering, it will degrade, slowly over years or quickly, your tanks potential will degrade!!!

More money for the shops when it does,lol,lol,not (if) it does!

Ignobolis wrote:Excellent info as always - Thank you !

i just need to figure out a way of adapting what I have to create such a thing

I am with you dude, the results of algae water conditioning is whats going to happen in my reef tank.
A mate is working on it,after reading here and further research on the net, its gonna happen.
Every thing we read on algae water conditioning gets me more interested and the tank journals I’ve read with others using algae have awesome corals.

Yes - anything close to the natural processes is the best long term proposition I believe and any chance of replicating this as best we can seems to prove to be the best outcome, be it lighting, internal configurations, currents and filteration etc...


Still love to see some pictures - I am a visual (less than clever) type of person....

This is the one i built to replace the load of rubbish i built quickly so my wife could have my shop bought and than altered Light fitting for LEDs for her freshwater tank.

This is totaly home made out of a tub from masters for the NWMS and rectangular down pipes and tomb stones from bunnings i made into the LED light fitting.

So good, thanks - I really appreciate the pic as Im sure others do ! - it looks and sounds simple enough - however for me it raises sooooooo many "but how do you" questions ???

I think I need to discover what you drink and make a delivery to your place someday.....

Well the algae I use that is in question is obviously referred to as part of the eukaryotic organisms and these single celled creatures are individuals and each nucleus encased in membrane is an individual.

There somewhat unique set up allows them to absorb through their exterior, the membrane, stuff like organic matter/carbon via osmotrophy, you could call it something like osmosis, water soluble matter entering through the membrane and most algae, the ones I use are mixotrophic,that means they can absorb the organic matter to feed upon and or photosynthesis it into glucose, and trace elements and so on.
Oh and have their own personal concoction of poison with their sap to ward of most munching pests.

This toxin is harmless unless the actual plant matter is eaten with the sap inside; it does not harm anything with in the aquarium as the next algae absorbs it and feeds/converts it, all gone!!

That’s one of many reason why there needs to be lights some where at all times over your water, the corals algae clades with their cells do not like that sap in concentrated amount!!

Most people do not realise that fish with some light some where at all times stress far less as well.

You see they don’t sleep they just lay there scared shitless as to what was that thing touching me, what was that! all night long! how would we like that?The stress would kill even our immune system.

Okay than you have your unicellular species and sponges that feed with out the use of photosynthesis, these I use as well, they take in the real crap and excrete, as in toilet time, this waste is oxidised into water soluble substances to be utilised by the other eukaryotic family member, caulerpa algae, they all work together to remove everything, totally!!!!!

Of course the types of material they grow on and the flow of water to this helps with the oxidising, that’s a biggy as well.

If algae is before a calcium environment, the co2 it releases when light is not available,co2 breaks down ever so slightly calcium based media, that contains,strontium,calcium,magnesium,than as the co2 goes further along the track there is light with other algae’s to absorb the tasty co2 and a cascaded section to blow off the co2,from more than one way,co2 is gone PH and KH remains stable!!