My first led algae scrubber

[crn005]

Tagging along. When I hooked up my decent scrubber (it was just the best I could do with limited space and equipment at the time) my tank was bad, but not that bad. Within the next month I saw some positive results (again, not perfect considering what I was working with) and it sold me on scrubbers. I look forward to seeing what yours does for you!

 

[Skinnysloth]

ummmm.. What is providing the current limiting for the LED's?

Nothing, perhaps. The wall wart is rated for 1A and it measured 12.37v with a multimeter. The led has a max 6.6v and two wired in series should be able to handle 13.2v. Maybe I'm playing with the leds' life expectancy and should get something with a lower amp rating. I guess I'll find out. :uhoh2:

 

[mcgyvr]

Nothing, perhaps. The wall wart is rated for 1A and it measured 12.37v with a multimeter. The led has a max 6.6v and two wired in series should be able to handle 13.2v. Maybe I'm playing with the leds' life expectancy and should get something with a lower amp rating. I guess I'll find out. :uhoh2:

you are testing/taxing the power supply which could easily result in a fire.. (worst case but def possible).. LED's require a "constant current" power supply or other method to limit the amount of current that can pass through them (resistor). A wallwart alone does not provide that. You just have a "constant voltage" power supply and are taxing it by really testing is own over current protection which in general is NEVER a good idea. Turn off the LED now and get a proper "constant current" power supply for those LEDs.

Sometimes it works with a battery (due to its own internal resistance) and sometimes it works with a wall wart when the LED's Vf is very close or slightly over the Vout of the power supply but its NEVER a good idea.

 

[Skinnysloth]

you are testing/taxing the power supply which could easily result in a fire.. (worst case but def possible).. LED's require a "constant current" power supply or other method to limit the amount of current that can pass through them (resistor). A wallwart alone does not provide that. You just have a "constant voltage" power supply and are taxing it by really testing is own over current protection which in general is NEVER a good idea. Turn off the LED now and get a proper "constant current" power supply for those LEDs.

Sometimes it works with a battery (due to its own internal resistance) and sometimes it works with a wall wart when the LED's Vf is very close or slightly over the Vout of the power supply but its NEVER a good idea.

Roger that. I have two 20w led with a proper constant current driver incoming in the next few days. When they get here, the 10w will be switched out.

 

[Skinnysloth]

Second week results.

After brushing with a toothbrush.

Looks like things are progressing well. Not much has changed in the display tank. I've manual removed some of the algae and it grew back like normal, but I expected that. Moving the algae from the tank to the algae scrubber will take some time and I'm okay with it. I received my two 20w 660nm red led that I will install next week, so hopefully that will increase growth and perhaps allow me to lower my light duration from 14 hours to 12 or less.

One thing I learned this week was after smelling something funky for the past week, I finally found the source. The legs I made for the scrubber was a great place for detritus to settle and rot. I had to take apart the whole scrubber and clean it out. The piping was only pressure fitted so I was able to do that without issue. I blocked the water flow to the legs (blue circle) with plastic wrap (red line) and so far, no more funky smell.

 

[kawaiix44]

Good work. I'm looking forward to it.

 

[SantaMonica]

You could let that screen grow another 7 days.

 

[Skinnysloth]

You could let that screen grow another 7 days.

I was under the impression that new screens were to be cleaned at 7 days regardless of the amount of growth. Is that out of date info or does that only apply to dark slimy growth?

And thanks for providing lots of the information needed for me to make this algae scrubber. The other site and the basic algae scrubber thread were really helpful.

 

[SantaMonica]

7 to 14 days. Sooner if black.

Glad the info helps

 

[Skinnysloth]

3rd week update

3rd week update

Screen at three weeks. It looked like the screen really took off this week. There was thicker and green growth this week.

Maybe this had something to do with it:

I added a 20w 660nm led to each side of the screen on Wednesday. I figured since I changed my display lighting to led, which is providing more light than my previous T5 4x54w setup, I needed to make sure the lighting for the ATS would be able to compete with the main display.

I also made sure to change the driver from a wall wart with a dimmer to a proper constant current driver as was suggested earlier.

From:

To:
20w driver

10w driver and 20w driver in its enclosure

With everything in place:

I'll probably start a new thread for my diy led lights for the display, but for now, just some info will have to suffice. The display is using:
2x50w 10k multichip led
2x50w 450nm multichip led
2x20w 420nm multichip led
1x20w 'super actinic blue hybrid' led (3 chips 20500k, 6 chips 453nm royal blue) located in the middle as there was a gap in lighting
These are driven at half their rated power except for the 420nm and super actinic blue which are driven at 1.75A out of the max of 2A. I'm looking to add four ocean coral white leds (tri-color led consisting of 470nm, 495nm, 660nm ) to give it a more natural 'full' spectrum look.

 

[garryclarkfl]

The best advice I can give is lots of removing rock out of the tank, elbow grease scrubbing, drop the hours on lighting for a while, watch your overfeeding, keep it up with algae scrubbing, along with extremely large water changes.

 

[Skinnysloth]

Time for a display tank comparison. Note, this is not just the result of the algae scrubber, in fact, I feel the contribution may have been minimal. This was mainly with manual removal and some peroxide dipping. Although I will say, purely through observation and not empirical measurement, the remove algae appear to return slower after manual removal. Ok, now for some pictures:

Before

After

It's a little harder to compare since I've changed my lighting from T5 with a bulb combination of UVL 454 Blue, UVL AquaBlue 14000k, UVL AquaSun 10000k and GE 6500k Daylight giving it a more yellow color to the LED combination mentioned above giving it a more blue/purple look.

 

[Skinnysloth]

Peroxide dipping before and after:

Frogspawn before:

After:

You can see one frogspawn head still clinging to life.

Acan before:

After:

The acan before picture was after some manual removal and brushing. I couldn't get to the algae between the acan heads very well with a brush and the peroxide dip took care of it.

 

[Skinnysloth]

Now for some scrubber algae pictures. The left picture was taken last week after letting it grow for 14 days. The right picture was taken today after 7 days of growth from the cleanup last week.

I have a new new led chip coming in next week that will help me with an experiment. These are the details of the new chip:

Old chip:

This new 10w chip has one blue led along with eight red ones. I intend to replace one 10w chip on one side with this chip and see if there will be any noticeable growth differences. I could have added a 3w blue led to one side, but wanted to keep the wattage along with other factors besides spectrum as similar as possible. The old red only chip was able to take more current 1050mA versus the red/blue chip's 350mA. If we are to believe the seller's specs, the luminous flux are similar at 500lm for the red only and 400-500lm for the red/blue led. This is a very crude experiment and a lot of other variables have not been accounted/standardized for both sides, but given the cost of the new chip+driver ($15), I thought I'd give it a go and see how it turns out.

 

[brandon429]

Great thread nice merger of two usually opposing methods. Peroxide first then follow up ats to control regrowth

 

[Skinnysloth]

Great thread nice merger of two usually opposing methods. Peroxide first then follow up ats to control regrowth

Thanks. Peroxide and an ats should not be mutually exclusive as long as you remove the object to be dipped from the tank. You probably don't want to dose peroxide to the tank directly as it would inhibit algae growth on the ats. Spot treatment in the tank may be fine with an ats already established, but I wouldn't do it unless absolutely necessary.

 

[ValorG]

Wow amazing results.

 

[Skinnysloth]

Left side is the one lit with a 20w (all red led) and a 10w (8 red and 1 blue led). Right side is 20w and 10w all red led.

Some observations:
Initially I had the lights on for 18hrs and off for 6hrs. As you can see on the red side (brownish growth), it was too long. The blue side looked similar 2 days in with that lighting schedule (brownish growth in the middle), but then I decreased it to the current 15hrs on, 9hrs off and the blue side recovered a lot better than the all red side. I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture, but the blue side had lots of tiny bubbles stuck to the algae, perhaps indicating greater photosynthetic activity. It appeared like the blue side had slightly more growth than the red side. It wasn't a drastic difference, but remember, the only lighting difference was one blue led. I'm going to let it go another week and see if the difference will be more apparent.

 

[H2OCulture]

I hate to be a downer for this situation, but you're going to need a MUCH larger scrubber to compete with that algae growth. You have a nice proof of concept with the right idea on how to do it, so bravo! A LED-lit scrubber would be a nice platform for all kinds of neat light combo experiments to generate the best algae growth.
Personally, I would tear down and start over if you want a clean situation. Go over to the reef chemistry forum to confirm this notion, but by now the nutrients are deep down into the rock work and the soft corals. Both, like the algae act as nutrient sponges that will slowly leak the chemicals back into the water, creating a recurring problem or worse; green water. Check out people with "Xenia" scrubbers or "Cyptic Zone" filtration systems to see proof of this concept. Hydrogen peroxide would work nicely, but its the nuclear option. Good luck with the recovery though, and future DIY scrubber builds.

 

[H2OCulture]

Please disregard my previous post. Typing on the phone and didn't see the second page. Looks great now! That peroxide dip worked great!