Algae Scrubber Advanced

Interesting, except I wonder what this disclaimer means:

"We ship directly from Hong Kong, China. Import duties, taxes and charges are not included in the item price or shipping charges. These charges are the buyer's responsibility."

I would expect about 2 out of every 10 of these to fail pretty quickly since they're cheap, but dang that is pretty cheap...
 
They will most likely put 'gift' on any customs forms thereby going past any fees... It seems common practice for shipments from China in general and i have no idea how legal that is. I don't know enough about LEDs to say much about them failing... it seems like such a simple thing that failure would be pretty hard to do. Then again just looking for failed parking videos shows how much failure people really can do on simple things.
 
Thanks for the link Gorgok.

Actually I found some 1W a little cheaper on E-bay. Going with 72 per side - 70% Red 660, 22% Red 630, and 8% RB. Going to order a few extra RB and CW for moonlights.

I realize that they might not be the best concerning effieincy, but they are surely better than the CFLs that I'm presently running.

Curious those who are presently running 1W LEDs, are yours about 2" from your screen?
 
I ordered from Cutter a while back for a group buy. I did quit a bit of searching and finally concluded that LEDs have no import fees/additional taxes/tariff/or what ever it is called. There is a rather lengthy Government document that spells it out (if interested I can try and find it again). I also did not have a problem with the shipment YMMV
 
el agulia, those LEDs you found on eBay, if the specs are real, are actually pretty good. And a fraction of the cost of other alternatives.

I'm just curious to find a similarly-cheap source for other wavelengths. iirc, your eBay find was 630nm?

Also curious how close people are putting LEDs to screens. I'd like to get mine as close as possible to take up less room. Ideally I'd like a skimmer I can put on the eurobrace of my tank, which means I have roughly 5" of width to work with, plus maybe a few more inches if absolutely required and I'll just let it hang over the edge of the brace.
 
der willie, do you mean a scrubber you can put on the euro? and what eBay listing are you referring to I can't find an eBay link.
 
Yeah, I want something I can set on my eurobrace, or hang above it. Basically, my canopy area is a rough 6' x 4' rectangle about 28" tall, and there's a ~5" eurobrace around the entire perimeter. I had originally thought of doing a long, very narrow trough-style, but I'm thinking that might not be optimal. Now I'm daydreaming of a self-enclosed vertical screen unit with LEDs. Ideally the whole thing would fit in an acrylic box large enough to house the screen, with a minimal thickness so it could be located right on the eurobrace.

The driving force here is that I'd love to actually get rid of my sump. Every time I open my stand doors I shake my head at the "waste" in terms of energy and space considering I have a roughly 75g sump and a gigantic pump, pretty much just to have a place to put the ATS. I have an overflow box into which I'd put ATO switches, a heater, and a submersible pump to run the ATS, and it would basically become an in-tank sump.

Edit - the above user had posted an ebay link in a thread in DIY, that's what I was referencing.

PS - my tank is relatively lightly stocked and I feed sparingly most of the time, so based on the "feeding size" I don't really need a large screen.
 
der_wille_zur_macht said:
el agulia, those LEDs you found on eBay, if the specs are real, are actually pretty good. And a fraction of the cost of other alternatives.

I'm just curious to find a similarly-cheap source for other wavelengths. iirc, your eBay find was 630nm?

Also curious how close people are putting LEDs to screens. I'd like to get mine as close as possible to take up less room. Ideally I'd like a skimmer I can put on the eurobrace of my tank, which means I have roughly 5" of width to work with, plus maybe a few more inches if absolutely required and I'll just let it hang over the edge of the brace.
Click to expand...

I'm at work and can't pull up E-Bay, but this E-Bay seller has about whatever you want. There is a link for the LEDs on a thread that I posted in DIY asking about drivers. Look in their seller's store.

Looks like I'm going to solder this ATS up before I finish my DT lighting phase 2.
 
Sounds like you have a good idea of what you need to have for a top-of-tank scrubber. That's what I'm running now and the main drawbacks are controlling the water drop into the tank and the bubbles that accompany it, and blocking the light from the DT. Both have caused an issue for me (it's on a temporary setup as I am housing the system while my customer's new tank is getting set up). The noise of the water dropping to the tank is also a concern.

Having some kind of baffle system or bubble diffuser that hangs into the tank for the effluent off the scrubber is pretty much a must have. Plus making all of this work without interfering with the DT lights.

Here's what mine looks like right now

DSC02108.jpg


doing with with LEDs would require quite a bit of black acrylic to shield the light. When that nice red light gets into the DT, esp at night, it's just a matter of time before you get some algae growing in there. Plus protecting the lights themselves with the acrylic enclosure.

Supposedly the new design is geared toward a sumpless setup, but no one will see that until March :(
 
I need to do a sketchup model, but my design idea is basically a big "U" of black acrylic. This will form the sides and bottom of the unit. The pipe will run across the top. A panel of clear acrylic will be located on each side of the screen (really close to the screen). These clear panels along with the black acrylic form the "wet" chamber around the screen. The black acrylic "U" will be a few inches wider than the panels, such that it extends out far enough to meet a flat aluminum panel on each side, which will form the outermost "wall" on each side. This will be the heatsink for the LEDs. There will be a loose piece of black acrylic on top for a lid.

This should form a light-tight box with zero leakage, but will expose the backs of the two heatsinks to free air for good cooling.

So the overall design is similar to your unit there, but with black acrylic on the "ends" and bottom, and a flat heatsink basically where you have your reflectors.

That just leaves the drain as a problem to solve and I don't see that as a huge obstacle. I'd imagine you could build a mini standpipe of some sort to help with bubble trapping. Plus if I'm dumping bubbles into a back corner of this gigantic tank it won't exactly be as noticeable as the same amount of bubbles in a typical tank.

How wide is your unit? How much narrower do you think you could get it? I guess this is based on, how close to the screens could you place an array of those 1W LEDs?
 
9.75" wide. Due to the components, can't get much closer.

There's probably a limit to how narrow you want the box to be, or how close you want the panels to be to the screen. Once the 3D growth kicks in, it can fill it up quick.

In most cases it's mandated by the diameter of the bulkhead flange if you have one, which is usually a little less than 3". I don't see a need to get any closer than 1.5" from screen to edge of lamp. For my 1W LED array I can't imagine it's any different, just far enough away so that you don't get any "spotting" effect. but that'll be part of the experiment as well.
 
If using 3W LEDs I'd go bare and put a diffuser plate next to the clear acrylic, then 3" wide box (inside) and 1-2" between LED and diffuser/acrylic, add the thickness of the stars and aluminum and you're right about 8" I think. If using 1W LEDs you might be able to go closer and no diffuser.

Oh hey I just talked to my hydro guy and they apparently have some new fixture coming out with a next generation LED that is not really considered a 3W because it puts out more lumens and uses less wattage. It's starting to get silly now because the current 3W chips don't use 3W, they use more like 2.2W and these new ones use even less power and produce more lumens.

It's kind of looking like the LED industry needs a new way to classify LEDs, not based on the wattage. Because that method is way outdated an only a marketing thing currently.
 
Floyd R Turbo said:
It's kind of looking like the LED industry needs a new way to classify LEDs, not based on the wattage. Because that method is way outdated an only a marketing thing currently.
Click to expand...

None of the real "players" from a marketing or manufacturing standpoint refer to the LEDs based on power dissipation, it's really only an approach that has sprung up at the hobby level. Anyways, I totally agree, it's a very meaningless term to the point of being harmful in how it's used.

But yeah, the LEDs I'm considering are "1W" LEDs anyways, so I'm hoping I can get them really close.
 
The 660s were double the price of the 625s at about $1.30 ea for the 660s.

Well the Test Dummy has ordered his 1W LEDs. If they get here before Christmas, I wonder if my wife would be too unhappy if I took them with us while traveling out of state for Christmas?

It would be a good chance to knock them out. I've been doing a side job and can hardly find time to do anything on the tank - Extra $$ for Christmas and some NICE Frags!!!
 
Tell her they are Christmas decorations. The green ones just aren't in yet. Show her a picture of Turbo's house she will have to approve :)
 
Here is a bit of good news. Someone was performing a test on a T5HO 3D scrubber with one side using a Nova Extreme 1127 (or whatever) with 2 2700-3000K T5HO lamps, and the other side was a e-Shine 50W or whatever that small fixture they have is - it matches the length of the Nova but is a bit narrower. This is the fixture http://www.eshinegrow.com/grow/3g-50w-led-grow-light.html

He did this for 10 or so weeks (he cleans "when he can" so some growth periods were longer) The results are telling:

After about 10 or so cleanings, without a doubt the LED side is better. Grows sooner, thicker, and one that I did not expect... the light penetrates deeper to keep the roots alive longer, which makes sense because since green absorbs blue and yellow, the red continues through it.
Click to expand...

Keep in mind that his system runs 2 of these scrubbers so the LED is outperforming not just 1 T5HO 2-lamp fixture, but 3.

This means I don't have to run my experiment against a T5HO, or at least it puts it on the back burner. If I get bored I might try to see how many T5HOs it takes to compare.

Incidentally the fixture I have runs all 1W Cree 630/435/455 and Bridgeluxe 660nm I believe.
 
It's been some time since ATS links and poss have been here.

Can some one redirect me to best in class examples of this technique? I want photos and actual results. I have run one for a year but ended up running with a skimmer to get the results I wanted.
 
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