Algae Scrubber Basics

Thanks, Bud. I found that 40 watt flood light with multiple 3w LEDs for $40.00, shipped, on ebay. I think I'm going to take a chance with ordering a custom combination of colors on it with 18 red and 2 blue. I sent the seller a picture of what I want, so hopefully they will get it correct. I just can't justify spending the extra $40.00 on the pair of lights for the 2 inch larger 30w fixture.

To diffuse the light, should I just put a material like is used in the Turbo L4 in front of the lights? If I use the light diffuser, should I also limit the photo period as well? If so, what would be a good light schedule for tank that is cycling with those lights?

Thanks for your help so far. Without it, I probably would have ordered the 20w flood lamp.
 
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I would just make sure that you very explicitly state the LED array. Like this:

R-R-R-R-R
R-B-R-R-R
R-R-R-B-R
R-R-R-R-R

As for the diffuser, yes, just take a sheet of the standard diamond diffuser stuff from Lowes (in the ceiling tile section, Plaskolite with green/white sticker usually) and score it with a box cutter and a straightedge. Do multiple scores until you cut through it. Don't try to 'score & snap' or you'll have shards everywhere and sharp edges :)

With a diffuser, you can actually go with a longer photoperiod, because the light is knocked down quite a bit. When you remove the diffuser, you generally want to reduce the photoperiod a bit also.
 
Thanks! That is the exact array that I sent them! We'll see if they screw it up or not when they arrive in a few weeks.

Any idea how far away from the screen these lights should be to get good coverage? I'm going to say that I will probably be going with an 8x6 screen and will be using the diffuser you suggested. I'm planning on making the ATS before the lights get here so I can get my tank and sump plumbed and running soon.
 
Well, I'm gonna go ahead and go with placing my lights 2 inches from he screen and see how it works. I will be making the scrubber sometime this week, just have to decide if I want to buy acrylic for the scrubber body or use the glass I have on hand from an old non-tempered 55 I tore apart. Any drawbacks to using glass over acrylic? I imagine weight will be an issue with glass, but it will probaby clean easier than acrylic. I'm leaning towards just buying acrylic for the ease and cutting the pieces. Would 1/8" thick be sufficient, or should I step up to 1/4"?
 
1/8" will be fine, acrylic will warp, polycarbonate (lexan) will warp less. Glass is heavy as you note and if you drop it in your glass sump, oops bad.
 
I haven't seen it brought up yet, but out of curiosity, does anyone have any experience with a vertical screen versus one at 45 degrees? I know there's a difference between a vertical and horizontal screen, but I wonder at what degree of slope do you cross into one or the other.
 
Or even, if we could come up with an equation that spans the requirements for completely horizontal versus vertical, make that a linear transition for all of the variables, and then test that to find how well the equation works, then I think that would be pretty informative.
 
As soon as you tilt, it becomes 1-sided, which is half efficient. Then as you increase the tilt, the algae islands get more problematic.
 
take it for what its worth, I have been using one at a 45* angle for a little over a year. its a full 8x11 sheet, on a 220g SPS system with a fairly heavy bioload- (36 fish)- that gets fed ALOT. several square inches of rods food or mysis everyday, plus squirts of oysterfeast and other coral foods. The srubber works for me, I dont have nuisance algea anywhere, I also dont run carbon or GFO.

Its the only scrubber i have ever set up, so could it work better if it were verticle? It might, but this works well. it does have islands that pop up, but the water just flows around, and grows other places, i clean it about once a week.
 
crn, there is that equation, both for screen dims and lighting.

12 sq in of screen for each cube of food fed per day

Figure sq in by L x W. mc-cro in your case, 8 x 11 = 88 sq in

88 / 12 = 7.3

If it were vertical and double-sided, lit on both sides, this is the screen capacity.

If it were vertical but lit only on one side, then the capacity is cut in half: 7.3 / 2 = 3.6

If horizontal or slanted, cut this in half again: 3.6 / 2 = 1.8

Of course these are numbers that are generated based on some educated guesses, which is mostly what we have to go on. Dr. Adey with the Smithsonian did some research into sizing in order to get production needed for various large dump bucket and/or surge scrubbers, and this really was the basis for sizing, but scaling can throw things off.

the mc-cro example is interesting because it's relatively long term. I would say that the single-sided vertical more fits your results. Which means that as long as the screen is not completely horizontal, then it would just be considered single-sided vertical. This throws all "slanted" scrubbers out of the horizontal (or "non-vertical") category really.

So, with that being said, do you think you feed around 3.5 cubes/day? Rod's food is pretty thin, so a square inch of rod's food might equate to abut 1.5 cubes or so.

Also are you running any other filtration at all? Skimmer? Pellets?

What is your scrubber lighting setup?

always interested to hear about successful large tank systems, and people are always asking "where are the successful SPS tanks" so please, divulge!!
 
If I averaged it out, 3.5 cubes per day is a good estimate.

I run a good skimmer in combination with the algae scrubber, no pellets, or carbon dosing, or anything else.. I have shallow sand bed, and bare bottom frag tank and sump, and i siphon the detritus from the sump about every weekend, takesusually less than 5g of water.

Here is a picture of the scrubber when I very first started it. the basic design is the same, but I am now using a Water Blaster 2000 pump for more flow, and added a second CFL bulb and reflector. I have never gotten the long stringy bright green algae that you see in some of the pics, its usually dark green, and dark brown, and if I dont feed enough I will see the algae start to lighten up. Just last night I installed one of the red/blue LED lights form ebay, just to try something different,and get light to skimmer without the bulbs being too close to the water during drain downs from power offs

 
the mc-cro example is interesting because it's relatively long term. I would say that the single-sided vertical more fits your results. Which means that as long as the screen is not completely horizontal, then it would just be considered single-sided vertical. This throws all "slanted" scrubbers out of the horizontal (or "non-vertical") category really.
Click to expand...

I might build one of these just to see if your last statement can be confirmed.
 
Hello all I am planning on building and algae scrubber using 50 of Steves Red 660 LEDS. I am also planning on using a full plastic canvas sheet so 10.5" x 13.5". My question is what would be a cheap, but good heatsink for 25 LEDs on each side of the scrubber? Also I am planning a traditional vertical waterfall ATS.

thanks for your comments.
 
I am setting up my 84 x 24 x 30 265 gallon tank again. ..I am pretty sure it is going to take me a year before I will even get close to the 10 cubes/day but I would rather dim the leds and shorten the photo period than adjust the sizing later.
 
I'm going to be running a small wet dry about 2.5 by 10 with filter sheets. Could i just put a 2700k bulb right above the filter floss? Would it work with a 6500k or is it best with 2700k?

i also have a par 30 1 uv 4 blue 2 cool white i think ill use tthis
 
Floyd R Turbo said:
crn, there is that equation, both for screen dims and lighting.

12 sq in of screen for each cube of food fed per day

If it were vertical and double-sided, lit on both sides, this is the screen capacity.

If it were vertical but lit only on one side, then the capacity is cut in half: 7.3 / 2 = 3.6

If horizontal or slanted, cut this in half again: 3.6 / 2 = 1.8

Of course these are numbers that are generated based on some educated guesses, which is mostly what we have to go on. Dr. Adey with the Smithsonian did some research into sizing in order to get production needed for various large dump bucket and/or surge scrubbers, and this really was the basis for sizing, but scaling can throw things off.

the mc-cro example is interesting because it's relatively long term. I would say that the single-sided vertical more fits your results. Which means that as long as the screen is not completely horizontal, then it would just be considered single-sided vertical. This throws all "slanted" scrubbers out of the horizontal (or "non-vertical") category really.
Click to expand...

I have been wondering why a scrubber that is lit on 1 side is "half the capacity" just because it is not 90 degrees vertical. If the flow is enough to have equal boundary layers, then what's the difference?
 
dre7606 said:
Hello all I am planning on building and algae scrubber using 50 of Steves Red 660 LEDS. I am also planning on using a full plastic canvas sheet so 10.5" x 13.5". My question is what would be a cheap, but good heatsink for 25 LEDs on each side of the scrubber? Also I am planning a traditional vertical waterfall ATS.

thanks for your comments.
Click to expand...

I would use sinks 8.4" x an inch or two short of the 13.5"/growable area, from probably heatsinkusa. 11" long are $33 each and change. You might find cheaper tube stock or something that may be adequate if you don't mind getting deeper into DIY to cut a few dollars, but it's not worth it IMO.
You can mount the LEDs right up to the edges so it doesn't need to be equal to screen size.
 
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