Wicked Easy Algae Turf Scrubber

[reret10]

Hi everyone!

Due to all the extra time at home from Coronavirus, I thought I'd work on getting my reef tank back in shape and give it a bit of an upgrade. It's made from your classic plastic canvas, an acrylic magazine holder from amazon, an old circulation pump and 3/4 inch PVC. Essentially, I drilled one intake (side) and two drain holes in the acrylic (on the opposite bottom corner). Then, I sliced a piece of PVC down the middle and zip-tied in the plastic canvas I roughed up with some sandpaper. I then plumbed the pump to my intake and set it up on a piece of glass between sump baffles.
Originally, it was wicked loud but I put in a Durso T Cap drain on one of the drain hole tubes and now it's virtually silent.
Currently its lit with a classic CFC bulb but if I like it in the long term, I might switch to LED for improved yield.
If anyone is curious about how it preforms, let me know and I'll continue to post updates on the algae growth and maintenance/longterm performance.
If you want more info on materials or the build, feel free to shoot me a PM or comment!
Cheers,
Ian

 

[MarAquatic]

Nice looks good

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

[reret10]

After just about 24 hours, the scrubber has accumulated a tad bit of algae. I think the spots on the canvas I roughed up with a rasp just caught some fragments of algae that were floating around in the water and they've begun to attach and grow.

For more context, the nitrates in my reef are currently around 20 ppm so I'm quite keen to lower them. My display also has a fair bit of green hair algae that I've been diligently removing manually so it's quite short but still there. I'm hoping within a few weeks I see a significant drop in nitrates as the scrubber is colonized. It's still quite silent but I'm probably going to add a lid to it as to limit water splashing. I'm somewhat worried about longterm salt creep and evaporation with that much exposed flowing water and a hot lamp but we'll see. I can fairly easily cut a bit of plastic to work.

The flow on the screen is really quite strong which I think is good. It's not so much that algae can't attach but theres a really solid flow going on. With the pump I'm using and the foot or so of head, I'm still looking a well over 100 GPH which should be decent for a scrubber of this size.

 

[hottuna]

Nice..It don;t have to be complicated to work..