Algae Scrubber Basics

[hkgar]

I'll cut LED by an hour and see if that helps. To be honest I was strongly contemplating going the other way and extending LED to 7 hours but I can always experiment with that once the algae in the DT is under control. I'll make that change this week.

Iread somewhere that SPS corals get little additional benefit from more than 6-8 hours of lighting. Do some checking in the SPS corals forum. You might try reducing lighting gradually and see how the corals react. My judgement of coral's growth is the uptake of Alk. I use a little over 2 dKH /day.

I feed quite heavy - my tangs eat at least a 4x8 sheet of Nori daily.

I have a ATS and also dose carbon to keep NO3 and PO4 under control.
Last reading were 5 and .07

My last harvest after 6 days was 400 grams of algae. See pictures. My screen is 9x10

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Thoughts on using a 20W LED flood light that uses multiple lights vs. just one to make the total wattage.

For example, between the following:

https://www.lightingever.com/20w-super-bright-led-flood-lights-ww.html

and

https://www.lightingever.com/1600lm-20w-outdoor-led-flood-lights-3400049-ww-us.html

The first one is part of the product line that 302 Aquatics uses. For that form factor of fixture, it's one of the better quality fixtures. Also it's IP66 so it's a bit better for water intrusion. 120 beam angle, wider is good

The second one looks like it has a diffuser lens. Not sure if that would be good or bad, I'm guessing that's done that way to reduce glare or for a wider dispersion. That one is IP65, 100 beam angle, not sure what the PE wire is. Between these two, I'd use the other one

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Iread somewhere that SPS corals get little additional benefit from more than 6-8 hours of lighting. Do some checking in the SPS corals forum. You might try reducing lighting gradually and see hoe the corals react. My judgement of coral's growth is the uptake of Alk. I use a little over 2 dKH /day.

I recall something about this as well, but I had no reference so I didn't bring it up....

 

[anothermineral]

The first one is part of the product line that 302 Aquatics uses. For that form factor of fixture, it's one of the better quality fixtures. Also it's IP66 so it's a bit better for water intrusion. 120 beam angle, wider is good

The second one looks like it has a diffuser lens. Not sure if that would be good or bad, I'm guessing that's done that way to reduce glare or for a wider dispersion. That one is IP65, 100 beam angle, not sure what the PE wire is. Between these two, I'd use the other one

Thanks for the quick reply. Appreciate it!

 

[hkgar]

I recall something about this as well, but I had no reference so I didn't bring it up....

I agree, that's why I suggested doing some individual research in the SPS forum.

If you think about the sun in the sky for an average of 12 hours a day, 2-3 hours in the morning and evening are at a small angle to the surface of the ocean with little penetrating light, but I am not a scientist and just thinking at a small angle much of the light bounces off and does not penetrate.

 

[iced98lx]

Iread somewhere that SPS corals get little additional benefit from more than 6-8 hours of lighting. Do some checking in the SPS corals forum. You might try reducing lighting gradually and see how the corals react. My judgement of coral's growth is the uptake of Alk. I use a little over 2 dKH /day.

My LED's are on 6 hours a day, so I'm right at the bottom. The T5's which are on quite a bit longer are just two 5 foot bulbs over a 180 gallon tank so I can see things in the morning, hardly providing sufficient growing PAR for the over 1/2 way down. I too measure my growth in ALK usage and recently went from relying on an AWC system to dosing to keep up, thus my comment that my current setup is working and using general caution on changing it, no matter what "they" say. I'm only a few years into this hobby and I've lived out the mantra that nothing good happens fast, but I can also personally attest that the wrong "slight tweak" can prove that bad things can happen much faster.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Thanks for the clarification on the lights - that makes sense now

 

[hkgar]

Back to the subject of the thread and the light discussion and some new reader doesn't get confused - I keep my ATS lights on 12 hours.

 

[Scrubber_steve]

Decided to let my screen go 14 days instead of the usual 7 day scrape.
Pretty happy; got more growth & stayed nice & green with almost no yellow die back.

Interesting growth in that despite the thickness & lushness there's no long strands hanging from the bottom of the screen.

 

[Horace]

Ok guys, Help me out there. I have to find a RELIABLE replacement option for my LEDs. I have approx a 7x7 hole cut in either side of my ATS enclosure, and now BOTH of my fixtures are dead. I dont mind building the LEDs if necessary, but I need it to be relieable and reasonable cost. I was considering building something using the Plant growth LED clusters from Led-group-buy (I used the reef version for my tank), but those are NOT cheap. They are about $60/ea just for the LED cluster, then I need to buy drivers etc. That will likely end up costing me $250 easily for two of those. So I am asking what are you guys using??!! I need something low profile.....

These are what I was using (50w grow lamps)

 

[Horace]

Well i got impatient and bought 2 of these. They are not red, but they look to be a decent option. I chose the Warm White version

 

[hkgar]

Ok guys, Help me out there. I have to find a RELIABLE replacement option for my LEDs. I have approx a 7x7 hole cut in either side of my ATS enclosure, and now BOTH of my fixtures are dead. I dont mind building the LEDs if necessary, but I need it to be relieable and reasonable cost. I was considering building something using the Plant growth LED clusters from Led-group-buy (I used the reef version for my tank), but those are NOT cheap. They are about $60/ea just for the LED cluster, then I need to buy drivers etc. That will likely end up costing me $250 easily for two of those. So I am asking what are you guys using??!! I need something low profile.....

These are what I was using (50w grow lamps)

http://www.stevesleds.com/Refugium-Sump-Algae-Scrubber-LED-Lighting-Systems_c_108.html

 

[SantaMonica]

Decided to let my screen go 14 days instead of the usual 7 day scrape

That's about as long as a waterfall screen can go, before root die-off. And even then, the growth needs to be light green.

 

[Scrubber_steve]

That's about as long as a waterfall screen can go, before root die-off. And even then, the growth needs to be light green.

Yes, wouldn't go longer than 14 days.

How was the color of the growth from my photo IYO?

 

[bozoreefer]

http://www.stevesleds.com/Refugium-Sump-Algae-Scrubber-LED-Lighting-Systems_c_108.html

How are these leds from Steve?

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

[pleasants9]

Has anyone tried using screen from outdoor screen enclosures?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

How are these leds from Steve?

I'm sure they're good, I've used thousands myself

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

FYI you can turn this off in your Tapatalk App. TT disabled the ability for site owners to globally disable it though.

Has anyone tried using screen from outdoor screen enclosures?

I've seen it done, but it was a long time ago, when people were experimenting with substrates. So for nothing really seems to stand up quite as well as the plastic canvas

 

[Horace]

Those LEDs from Steves seem AWFULLY expensive. If these LEDs that I ordered from ebay (assuming they last) are a FAR greater value.

 

[hkgar]

Those LEDs from Steves seem AWFULLY expensive. If these LEDs that I ordered from ebay (assuming they last) are a FAR greater value.

I have four of the Ebay product sitting on a shelf in my garage. After a couple months they started flashing every second. Replacements were sent but they too started to flash so I switched to stevesleds.com/.

 

[karimwassef]

So here is my feedback on solar ATS.

It's been running for two weeks now with nearly no growth! I realize it's November and Texas isn't the brightest in terms of sunlight, but I was still expecting something.

The new outdoor tank has seen its fair share of fluctuations due to the massive move or rock, sand, coral, fish, inverts and algae... temperature variation went from 64 to 87! Most things survived though. Only a few coral died but I suspect that was mostly due to the salinity, Alk and pH swings during the moves.

So I had expected the scrubber to consume the biproduct and turn it into algae but the weak sunlight just didn't cut it. I put my PAR sensor on and here's what I see:

<a href="http://s1062.photobucket.com/user/karimwassef/media/8D529205-DDE3-47AB-A7A7-655A40EAE89F_zps7avu5bwe.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1062.photobucket.com/albums/t496/karimwassef/8D529205-DDE3-47AB-A7A7-655A40EAE89F_zps7avu5bwe.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo 8D529205-DDE3-47AB-A7A7-655A40EAE89F_zps7avu5bwe.jpg"></a>

So I went from 1500 PAR 24 hrs a day to a 1000 PAR for 4-6 hrs!

I do get early shading from the fence and greenhouse sides but clearly not enough.

I added 2 x 100W LEDs for 19 hours to supplement the solar... will update as I have more.