Algae Scrubber Basics

[elviraveloz]

Feeding amount has to do with amount of fishes,size fishes and corals. I have a 10x10 screen and I feed 10 to 8 cubes a day that include 1/2 sheet nori. I have a large Naso Tang and the only way of keeping that puppy healthy is a good amount of healthy food.
That's why keeping a healthy large size Naso is a challenge with a good control level on nitrates and phosphates due to heavy feedings.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Oh, I hear you there. I maintain a 200g with an 8" Vlamingi Naso and about 24 other much smaller fish, and that Vlamingi is constantly begging for food. With 5 filter socks, RO NW-150 skimmer and 2 cube/day scrubber, it's barely keeping up as the owner loves to feed him...

 

[ca1ore]

My DIY waterfall scrubber - 15" x 12" plastic canvas mesh lit both side by ReefBreeders Fuge Light.




Will have to wait until after vacation to install.

 

[mbrady4him]

First try at ATS.
Please tell me if I'm way off here.
I like the design concept of this unit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P0ZITI0h6o I like that it is very easy to remove and put back the screen. So I'm thinking of making something similar to sit on top of my 75 gal sump that hangs down into the water. I just ordered 2 of the 20watt ebay LED grow light floods. Screen will be 10 x 13? flow about 450-500gph.
Question
1. With this design will I have trouble pushing 500 gph, will water spill over the open half of the screen tube?
2. Will this be enough light for the screen?
3. Is the screen size about right?
Tank 75DT, 40 Frag, 75 sump, about 150gal total volume.
Thanks for your help. Mark

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

1) if so, no big deal. As long as it doesn't create a nuisance for you (sound, salt creep, etc) and gets water to the screen

2) I would say most definitely not enough light. The LED flood lights are at best enough for a 5x5 area, MAYBE 6x6, so you would want 4 of these on each side (one on each 'quadrant'). For DIY LED arrays, I recommend one 3W 660nm Deep Red LED on each side of every 8 sq in of screen, minimum. For your screen this equates to 16 LED or about 50W per side (watt in this case being the 'nameplate' rating of the LED, as a 3W 660nm LED does not necessarily consume 3 actual watts). For the eBay floods I tend to recommend on the conservative side, hence 4x 20W floods.

3) 10x13=130 sq in /12 = 11 cubes/day based on the feeding guidelines. I would scale it at maximum so that it is no larger than 2x the feeding guideline. So you would be wanting to feed 5-6 cubes/day for this size screen (if the light, flow and roughness were on par)

So you're in the right ballpark. If you revisit the sizing and scale back, you may be able to use less light and flow and still get the filtration you want. Especially if this is not your only source of filtration.

 

[lokii_37]

I've been trying to catch up on the 250+ pages of reading on this thread.

I'm looking to get my algae scrubber set up and running in the near future. I've got a couple of questions off the top of my head tho.

Is 2.8g of pellet food really considered 1 cube? I weighed that many pellets out and that seems like enough to feed my 90G DT for several days. Is this weight after they have been soaked and have some water weight?

After reading the posts in Floyd's sig I think I will make a 7x7 scrubber with 1 23w cfl on each side. This should be enough for a 4 cube system right? After scaling it I should be able to get away with feeding 2 cubes a day.

I'm going to make a box for my scrubber screen this weekend. The box will allow me up up grade my up to 11x11 in the future as long as I can up grade my flow and light to compensate. I am also going to try to make it so I can make it a 3D scrubber with just a little extra plumbing.

Ill post some pics when I get it started.

 

[_shorty_]

Is 2.8g of pellet food really considered 1 cube? I weighed that many pellets out and that seems like enough to feed my 90G DT for several days. Is this weight after they have been soaked and have some water weight?

I'd never read/heard the 2.8g of pellet food thing. I always thought the general rule of thumb is by volume.. 'what will fit into the little plastic tray cube?'. For pellets, I'd say probably wet and gently pressed in. I don't think it's an exact science.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

He's referring to this from post #3255 on this thread (basics)

The cube-equivalent is defined as any ONE of the following:

1 frozen cube
10 pinches of flake food
10 square inches (60 sq cm) of nori
0.1 dry ounce (2.8 grams) of pellet food
3.25 mL of liquid coral food

But I'll agree, I don't know how that figure was arrived at. I was simply parroting what SM suggested, so IMO that's all open for questioning.

 

[phillipFL]

anyone know of a very small, low profile led or light i can use for a scrubber? ive got a project im trying with a HOB, and need somthing that doesnt take up too much space on top of it

 

[BCool]

anyone know of a very small, low profile led or light i can use for a scrubber? ive got a project im trying with a HOB, and need somthing that doesnt take up too much space on top of it

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Garden-Supp...952?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cd39c2328

These are fairly low profile.

 

[_shorty_]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Garden-Supp...952?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3cd39c2328

These are fairly low profile.

A good option. What are the actual demensions of one of those? (depth included) I didn't see any specified in my quick glance of the add.

Some of the most compact lights I've seen, however, are DIYs. The thickness of a heatsink and the LEDs themselves, and that's it... Depending on your heat sync, you can make some pretty compact lights.

BCool - didn't you DIY with some LED strips? How are those working out for you?

 

[daytek]

Using the same lights myself,have a look at this


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgIctmprtEc






.

 

[phillipFL]

Still a little larger than id like, may have to look into a small led kit

 

[lokii_37]

Here is the one I just built. I'm sure it will need a little tweaking.



The PVC going to the left drains back into the skimmer compartment of my sump. I came across something by accident. The box fills about halfway up then the syphon drains it out. As the water gets to the bulkhead the syphon breaks and the box fills again. I will adjust the height of the PVC so that the box will fill up more before it drains out.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

 

[lokii_37]

I will also be adding another light to the front so it will have lights on both sides.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

You basically made a Carlson Surge Device and put your scrubber in it, but with your plumbing like that, what did you expect to happen? Were you planning on the scrubber screen being submerged all the time?

 

[lokii_37]

You basically made a Carlson Surge Device and put your scrubber in it, but with your plumbing like that, what did you expect to happen? Were you planning on the scrubber screen being submerged all the time?

Oh I see yes I did. I'll have to do some more reading on Carlson surge devices. Do you see that as being detrimental? Do you think it will work if I set it up so the entire surge box fills, or should I just plumb it straight across?

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Hard to say, depends on the time it takes to fill and surge out. I have always thought that the best way to combine a waterfall and surge scrubber is to flood the compartment holding the screen quickly and allow it to drain out fast, so you have turbulent in and quick drainage, not slowly filling the screen and then letting it surge out to drain. This would more mimic the dump tray surging type horizontal scrubber action, the purpose of which is to provide a quick surge of rapidly moving water. So to me, slowly filling the waterfall box would cause a reduction in rapid water motion when the box is filling.

But with that being said, not many have tried it, so there's not much data/info to prove anything either way.

 

[lokii_37]

Well I guess I'll run with it for awhile and see how it does. Then report back here.

I have started to get green on the screen already but only above the surge fill line. Based on the reading I've done it appears to take a week for more for a screen to break in and even longer for it to fully mature. That being said I am not getting my hopes up about great algae growth already. I am leaning more towards having little bits of algea in the water column that got stuck in the roughed up screen.

 

[Floyd R Turbo]

Based on the reading I've done it appears to take a week for more for a screen to break in and even longer for it to fully mature.

"break in" and "mature" to me are synonymous, and while that does vary dependent on tank conditions and scrubber construction, it usually takes 4-6 weeks.

Based on what I have seen personally, I consider a screen to be mature when 50-75% of the holes remain solidly filled with algae after both sides are scraped and the screen is lightly rinsed. Usually you cannot get to this point in less than 3 weeks, but that's not saying that it couldn't happen given the right conditions.

Also that is not a hard-and-fast 'rule of maturity', because someone might get a solid mat of green growth in 10 days which returns quickly after cleaning and does effectively filter, even though it doesn't meet the above.