Acrylic Scrubber Box

[Snowdog1968]

I am just starting the process of creating an Acrylic Box to house the nitrate scrubber. I am going with 24" length. Is saw a design here that used the acrylic. I think it was called the Santa Monica 120. It was 24"L x 6"W x 6"H. I was curious on the width, at that width the lights are roughly 3" away from the screens. Can I make the box narrower. basically just wide enough to house my return at the bottom which would be about 4". Does there have to be a minimum amount of space between the screens and the sides? My tank is 120 gallon with a 65 gallon sump. but in reality I have 240 lbs live rock and the sump only really has about 40 gallons of water in it. It has a refugium with chaeto now and nitrates are staying around 20 so I want to try the scrubber. I was thinking of using flourescents from Home depot, 24", 2 bulbs per unit on each side. The bulbs they have there are 20W, 2700 plant growing bulbs. Will this suffice. I was thinking of having a 24" x 8" screen. Is this big enought for my tank size? Are the bulbs strong enough. The cost is right at $5 bux a bulb and $19 for the units. I have 2 overflows from the tak to the sump. One of them is t'd to supply my refugium and I was thinking of teeing off the other to supply the scrubber with a ball valve to control the flow? Next is what size pipe are you using to hold the screen in. It looks like a 1" from the pictures but not 100% sure. Should I have 1.25" come right in and then 1.25" out of the scrubber back to the sump? Thanks in advance and am looking forward to building this tonight once the experts help me out with my questions here :)


Snowdog

[SantaMonica]

The width of my acrylic gives about 1" between the bulbs and the screen, so you can't make it more narrow. After a week, it's completely full. You can remove your chaeto... it just traps food. The Home Depot lights should work good for a 5" screen, however an 8" screen would need 3 (or 4 if in packs of 2). Remember that at least a half inch goes into the pipe, and another inch get flooded at the bottom, so those areas are not useful. So make the screen 10" high, with 4 bulbs per side. Your nitrate and phosphate will be wiped out. You'll need to use tie-wraps to keep the screen in the pipe. The pipe is 3/4", but you can use 1".

The overflow you want to use needs to supply enough flow. Your screen will be about 20" wide, which needs 20 X 35 = 700gph flow. You may need to combine overflows to get enough flow. Make the scrubber drain 2", to get as much of the "flood" out of their as possible. And you can aid this by slightly tilting the whole scrubber towards the drain.

Be sure you post you final idea/design before starting. A drawing would be great.

[Snowdog1968]

I have been thinking about this, Would it be better or just more work to have the incoming line "t" and goto each side of the 2 foot box. Then "t" again into two 3/4 inch pipes across the box with a screen on each one of them. That way you could remove one of the screens for cleaning and not scrape the other screen at all until the following week. or just put two screens together on one 3/4" pipe going across. I am not good at using drawing programs to draw it out for anyone.

Snowdog

[SantaMonica]

Sounds like either would work. But you should explain in more detail, or get someone to draw it, before trying it.