Algae Scrubber Basics

[spamreefnew]

ok ok..(head hung low) I guess your right what are /where are the expressions strips you speak of?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

http://www.expressions-ltd.com/Algae_Scrubber_LED_Light_p/led-grow-light.htm

I just looked it up and it's not as long as I thought, only 12" really in front of the LEDs.

Don't get me wrong, T5HO scrubbers will still work and if you need a scrubber that big and you happen to have the light fixtures available, and can get 2700K grow T5HO lamps cheap, then that might be the way to go if you want to see how a scrubber will work for you. A 2 lamp T5HO fixture is good for lighting a screen that is roughly 16-18" wide, maybe 20", and about 7" or 8" tall. That's about a 10 cube/day scrubber (EDIT: one 2-lamp fixture per side)

2700K 24" T5HO lamps are hard to find. 3000K are a little easier. on 1000bulb.com these will run you $3-4. The GE Starcoat ones can run you more, like $8. So 4 lamps is $12-$16. 3 lamp changes a year, that's $36-$48/year. The Expressions strips are $40 each so your payback is a couple years, but if you don't have the T5HO fixture already, that takes a chunk out of the difference.

Also a 10 cube/day scrubber is pretty big, is your tank big or do you feed a ton? Or have a big hair algae problem?

 

[SteveZZR]

The video is public youtube so that is a problem on your end.

Small bubbles do not create rapid flow because they don't move fast. It's not the bubbles, it's the motion they create that matters. Large bubbles move water fast. That's what you want.

Using rock does make it harder to clean, but you don't really ever want to totally "clean" a scrubber. You remove the growth and leave whatever it there for re-growth.

You can do a waterfall in a rear chamber but it's going to be one-sided unless you put a low-power waterproof LED panel on the other side (low power because it will be extremely close to the screen). Also tricky to do the slot pipe method in a biocube (I assume that is what you are referring to)

How would I achieve the waterfall effect in the rear chambers? Would I need a pump to push water over the baffle and drain the chamber down so there was somewhere for it to fall?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

That's the tricky part, which is why a waterfall scrubber is difficult to make work with a biocube. While the slot pipe is the best method, you can also do a single-sided scrubber that is slanted just off of vertical, with a panel under it or something (like a thin sheet of acrylic) to keep the water travelling down the screen instead of through it, and it will be kind of like a spillway scrubber. But you would need one of the chambers to be empty so that it was all above water. Got a pic of your rear chamber?

 

[SteveZZR]

Here's the rear. The tank is an AquaMedic Percula 90.

There's a weir on the left, square chamber in the corner behind it, an under baffle, through a sponge on a slide (will be cleaned every water change once tank is running), into a rectangular chamber, over-baffle into a return pump chamber.

The small one is actually a hole right through the tank for electricals. The skimmer has its own isolated chamber, I've put the skimmers output into the return chamber to promote flow through the skimmer (as opposed to input and output together in a box with two 20mm holes that passively allow water in and out).





I was thinking a U shaped channel angled downwards, starting over the skimmer chamber and ending at the weir chamber, small pump in skimmer chamber to supply the channel, and then build a long thin LED bar for it.

But that will make everything untidy and probably not get the RPO seal of approval (RPO - Reef Prevention Officer - Mrs).

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Yeah that setup is not very good for a waterfall scrubber. The best you could probably do is a trough scrubber which would be like you said, essentially a slanted horizontal raceway from the skimmer/return area back to the intake/weir area.

Even a standard UAS like a HOG scrubber would be hard to make work, because it's up against the wall.

This type of situation is what Santa Monica made his DROP.2 scrubber for though. You would just drop it in any chamber and off you go.

 

[SteveZZR]

Its actually 6" off the wall, to allow access to my mains, satellite, and aerial sockets if that helps?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Yeah then you might be able to put a HOG type unit back there. The water level looks a bit high though so you would want to make sure that you had something to take care of salt creep from bubbles.

 

[SteveZZR]

Yeah then you might be able to put a HOG type unit back there. The water level looks a bit high though so you would want to make sure that you had something to take care of salt creep from bubbles.

That's because I've got 5 fish, cuc, a clam, and various coral to acclimate as there's currently nothing in the tank - its an upgrade currently under way - so the extra water is going to come out during acclimatization

 

[q060310]

Hi guys, this is my first post on RC.

I am very new to the hobby (I don't even own a tank yet) however I am gathering ideas and planning what I want to eventually have, having read all two hundred odd pages of this thread I feel I would like an algae scrubber instead of a skimmer for a 100 gallon system I intend to setup.

I had an idea for a design to cut down on space needed, and have attached a picture.

The main principal I am working around is an 8" pipe section with an all round screen for algal growth, the light would then be suspended in the middle (e.g. 4" from each side)

Can anyone think of a reason this wouldn't work?

Thank you in advance.

Rich

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Welcome to RC!!

check the basics post in my signature and look for the sizing section. Scrubbers are sized based on feeding now, not tank size (until you start to get into really big tanks). I run a 2 cube/day scrubber (24 sq in lit on both sides) for my personal 120, another 144 in an office, and then a 4 cube/day scrubber 48 sq in) on a 200 in a restaurant.

Many have suggested the center-lit scrubber but I haven't seen anyone do it successfully long-term. You're welcome to give it a shot though! I think the biggest difficulty is getting even water flow

 

[q060310]

Thank you for the response and the welcome,

I will check of those posts more specifically, I am a way off even starting with anything (mainly because of £££) but I will keep an eye on this post and will give you all a look when I start the build

 

[Masoch]

Hi guys, this is my first post on RC.

I am very new to the hobby (I don't even own a tank yet) however I am gathering ideas and planning what I want to eventually have, having read all two hundred odd pages of this thread I feel I would like an algae scrubber instead of a skimmer for a 100 gallon system I intend to setup.

Hi Rich -- I've run a shocking number of filtration gadgets and systems over the year. Absolutely shocking.

With that in mind ... I used to run a waterfall-type scrubber on a 40. It worked great. But it was also a pain in the butt to clean and relatively loud (it sounded like, you know, a waterfall) and took up a fair bit of real estate in the sump. And created some salt creep around the sump. These days, I'm using one of Santa Monica's in-sump floating scrubbers on a 50. It has a few advantages compared to what I used to do.

• Low electrical cost (air pumps use very little power)
• Easy to clean (lift the light box, scoop out some algae, replace light box)
• Takes up little real estate

As a single source of nutrient removal, the surface scrubber was decent to excellent. But the air pump died on me which led to some nastiness -- I think it stopped moving air for 2 or 3 days before I caught it.

Which takes me back to an old principle in reefkeeping: it's good to have a backup. Or, in my case, a comparatively affordable (cheap?) Bubble Magus skimmer (a 3.5 cone). I don't get either much skimmate from the skimmer or a heck of a lot of algae from the scrubber, but I'm pretty certain one or the other could die while I'm on vacation and nothing bad would happen.

I also cleaned out the sump a few days ago. In my old 40, if I let it go for a year, there'd be mounds of detritus and pod condos in there. This time around, there was ... maybe ... 3 or 4 tablespoons of junk, and some of that was obviously sand.

All of which, I guess, is a rather long-winded way of saying it's good to run a skimmer and a scrubber.

 

[SantaMonica]

The round idea has been done a few times. Remember that it is 1-sided, unless you add strings to it. Cleaning looks hard, too.

 

[q060310]

Which takes me back to an old principle in reefkeeping: it's good to have a backup. Or, in my case, a comparatively affordable (cheap?) Bubble Magus skimmer (a 3.5 cone). I don't get either much skimmate from the skimmer or a heck of a lot of algae from the scrubber, but I'm pretty certain one or the other could die while I'm on vacation and nothing bad would happen.

I think that I will eventually run both however to start with for a new system (given the low bioload and the care and attention a new system always gets) I will run a scrubber and add a skimmer later in the build.

Having looked at the posts mentioned about the food quantity based algae scrubber I feel I probably won't need a big scrubber even on a 100, I only really want between 4-8 fish in total, the CuC and LPS are my main fixation (read obsession).

The round idea has been done a few times. Remember that it is 1-sided, unless you add strings to it. Cleaning looks hard, too.

The 1-sidedness isn't an issue as an 8" pipe has the circumference needed and obviously you can cut the pipe section to length for the surface area needed. As for cleaning I am going to attach the ends of the screen together with a velcro strip (sewn in to avoid adhesives) so I should be able to pull the screen apart at the join and slide it out past the light, hopefully making it easier to clean.

Thank you for the feedback guys.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

The 1-sidedness isn't an issue as an 8" pipe has the circumference needed

Single-sided is not just about growth area. The problem is that one-sided screens don't grow as well because there is no light on the other side of the screen, so the base of growth tends to start dying off a lot earlier in the growth cycle. This means you can't go as long between cleanings, and you can't let the algae grow into the exponential growth stage as it starts feeding itself.

Also with a one-sided vertical, you at least get water cascading over the backside of the screen and this keep the base alive. When you put a one-sided screen on a backplate (or cylinder as you are describing) then no water gets to the growth base and this can cause the die-off to happen even earlier.

 

[spamreefnew]

floyd, I don't doubt what you are saying but with that said when algae grows in the ocean it grows on a solid surface such as a rock and no light would reach the back side. I know I am comparing a scrubber to the ocean but it does get one thinking....

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

But ocean algae is suspended in the water and gets a lot of back & forth motion. A waterfall scrubber does not.

 

[q060310]

Single-sided is not just about growth area. The problem is that one-sided screens don't grow as well because there is no light on the other side of the screen, so the base of growth tends to start dying off a lot earlier in the growth cycle. This means you can't go as long between cleanings, and you can't let the algae grow into the exponential growth stage as it starts feeding itself.

Also with a one-sided vertical, you at least get water cascading over the backside of the screen and this keep the base alive. When you put a one-sided screen on a backplate (or cylinder as you are describing) then no water gets to the growth base and this can cause the die-off to happen even earlier.

Ok, I see, I hadn't considered that, I will have a think and a play with some ideas when I'm back at work (I'm very productive during work hours as you can see...)

Thanks again for the feedback, will post Monday/Tuesday with some ideas.

 

[SantaMonica]

when algae grows in the ocean it grows on a solid surface such as a rock and no light would reach the back side

Growth on a reef is constantly harvested by fish etc, which thus allows light and flow to constantly penetrate. This keeps the algae in high growth mode, which means high nutrient absorption mode.