My new scrubber, LED 15w

[rleahaines]

I built and started up a scrubber today.

I have a 30 gal high reef aquarium with a few fish and mostly soft corals. The aquarium has been up and running using a sump, and a skimmer.
For quite some time I have had problems lowering nitrates.

http://i1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee496/rleahaines/scrubber003.jpg

At the present nitrates are about 180, and I have no idea about phosphate. I am assuming it is high as well because of problems I have keeping some kinds of corals. The soft leathers seem to like the soup they are in.

I have an old backpac refulgum that I tried to use 5 years ago to grow macro algae, didn't work very well. I modified it to put in a scrubber fairly easily. Basically all I needed to do was to get some pvc, a valve, some plastic canvas and so some minor surgery on one of the dividers. As others have said, cutting a slot for the screen was the hardest part. I didn't have a hole saw, so I ended up using a normal kitchen grater - worked pretty well - to rough up the plastic screen.
As this tank is only 30 gal I need only 60 sq. inches... the screen I used is 10 X 12' so it should work as a one sided scrubber.

http://i1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee496/rleahaines/scrubber001.jpg

I sent away for a red and blue LED grow light from a firm that sells that kind of thing to people who grow their own. It's 12" by 12" and can be set next to the box on the floor of my cabinet easily. No need for a fan. The light was only $24 so if it doesn't work, I am not out much. I have CFL bulbs and fixtures around the house if I need to use them.

Total cost to date - about 8 bucks for the PVC, elbow fittings, valve and less than a dollar for the plastic canvas. So not counting the gas back and forth to Home Depot and Michaels - about $33 so far.

Got it started tonight. Everything seems to be working.


http://i1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee496/rleahaines/scrubber005.jpg

I will post progress.

Rick

[fishbrain888]

Looks good. I'd like to know if those lights work for you. Keep us posted. =)

[kerry]

Nice build. The LED's seem to produce good growth. It helped my nitrates levels of about 80PPM to come down to zero-ish.

[Ace25]

I am going to take a guess and say you will not get any real growth out of that LED light. In this hobby, unless you DIY and know what your doing, then your not going to get by for "cheap" with much of anything. Read this article, it goes into explaining how cheap LED "Grow lights" are just a waste of $ and won't grow anything vs the $100-$200 lights that work very well.

http://www.myhydroponicgardening.com/uf ... ic-garden/ (http://www.myhydroponicgardening.com/ufo-led-grow-light-review-is-this-the-right-grow-light-for-your-hydroponic-garden/)

[fishbrain888]

Good article, Thank you. This quote is from the article "As a rule, you should never buy an LED grow light unless each LED has an output of 1 Watt." I wonder how true this is?

[Ace25]

Good article, Thank you. This quote is from the article "As a rule, you should never buy an LED grow light unless each LED has an output of 1 Watt." I wonder how true this is?
I would say that is pretty much "gospel" at this point. Anything less than 1w you wouldn't be able to put enough LEDs together to give you the output needed for good growth. Just not enough physical space. 1w really are the most ideal LED to use, just a little harder to build one yourself vs 3w LEDs. I see using 3w as a compromise. It works, just not the most ideal light source, but the ease of setting them up outweighs using 1w for me (the DIY type of person). If I were to buy a LED light for growing green things I would buy a 1w LED fixture.

[rleahaines]

The LED fixture is 15 W... Mostly red in the 660 range and blue in the 300?? range. Supposedly have been used successfully as grow lights for those who grow their own ... if you know what I mean... 8-)

Supposedly equivalent to 150 Watts incandesent bulbs.

I see some algae growth today, only up and running 2 days. Looks like other examples with other lights I have seen here.

I also tossed in some Cheato - and the tank has lots of live rock in it and great circulation from multiple pumps.

I am monitoring things, If I need to up the lighting, I can do so easily as I have CFL's and fixtures on hand. Just trying a lower heat and specific light frequency experiment first.

[rleahaines]

Checked Phosphate - now at 10 PPM

Nitrate - 30 PPM

It was higher than 100 last week before I started all this.

The NItrate seems to be dropping fast. Perhaps the combination of the scrubber, just starting to grow algae, and the cheato which seems to be growing fast under the new setup has done the trick.

[SantaMonica]

Doesn't take much algae growth to consume nutrients, if you had nothing consuming them before.

[rleahaines]

Here is the screen after 8 days... sorry about the glare

http://i1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee496/rleahaines/008.jpg

Looks like things are getting started. Started with bare screen with no seeding.

May need to supplement or change light source.

[rleahaines]

The LED fixture didn't seem to be working all that well. I think each individual LED is not strong enough to make a difference. I did some research here and on other sites. The key seems to be the individual LEDs involved in an array. If each one doesn't have enough power, you don't get the light energy you need.

I updated the setup with a home made fixture I made with a 28 Watt CFL bulb [100 watt equv] some aluminum foil and a box on Monday 12-19

http://i1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee496/rleahaines/homemadelightfixture.jpg

This is the growth I have since Monday

http://i1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee496/rleahaines/Algaegrowth12-22-4daysnewlightfix.jpg

I checked Nitrates and Phosphates...

The Nitrates dropped from 30 PPM last week to 0 !!!!! :o This really works!!!

http://i1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee496/rleahaines/Nitrate12-22.jpg

phosphate is still higher than would like, looks to be between 5 and 10 PPM

http://i1230.photobucket.com/albums/ee496/rleahaines/phosphate12-22.jpg


So far so good.... :D

[kerry]

Looking good so far. You really need to use the 3 watt LED's IMO, I have had great luck with them so far on my 10G horizontal. I will be upgrading it to the new technology when that info comes out. I have a single sided screed 2.75x6.75 and use four 3W 660nm LED's

[rleahaines]

Update..

Phosphate at about 5 PPM

Nitrate between 5 and 10 PPM

Getting good dark green algae growth. Starting to get heavy.

Using CFL bulb instead of LED - not getting hot - seems to work very well.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Just a point of clarification here. You have a 30g tank and you're running a 10x12 single sided screen. Going by the feeding-based method, that screen can handle 5 cubes per day. I would suggest

1) trim the bottom off the screen, leaving only about 1" max to 'dip' into the water (the rest does nothing for you)
2) reduce the width of the screen such that you have 24 square inches (L x W) of illuminated area for each cube you feed per day. This would probably mean you can reduce to 4 wide x 6 high. This will also dramatically increase your flow per inch and you may have to widen your slot a little if the overflow starts backing up.
3) Consider eliminating the shutoff valve, or just shut it completely. This valve being open is in effect lowering the pressure to the slot and allowing algae to grow into it and block flow more easily as the water has a secondary pressure relief path with zero resistance (bad for flow to screen)
4) Your reflector design is great, the aluminum foil may not be the best thing to use. If you can get a smooth material, like the one SM has http://www.santa-monica.cc/Flexible-Reflector_p_15.html that might deliver a little more light to the screen. The aluminum foil has a scattering effect. This is not so critical, just sayin'.
5) consider putting in a larger wattage CFL and cutting the hours down. Check out post #17 here http://algaescrubber.net/forums/showthread.php?1291-Algae-Scrubber-Basics-The-Summary

Still, with all that, You dropped N from >100 to less than 20 in a month. This shows how powerful these systems can be! You'll have this system down and clicking along in no time.

[rleahaines]

Just a point of clarification here. You have a 30g tank and you're running a 10x12 single sided screen. Going by the feeding-based method, that screen can handle 5 cubes per day. I would suggest

1) trim the bottom off the screen, leaving only about 1" max to 'dip' into the water (the rest does nothing for you)
2) reduce the width of the screen such that you have 24 square inches (L x W) of illuminated area for each cube you feed per day. This would probably mean you can reduce to 4 wide x 6 high. This will also dramatically increase your flow per inch and you may have to widen your slot a little if the overflow starts backing up.
3) Consider eliminating the shutoff valve, or just shut it completely. This valve being open is in effect lowering the pressure to the slot and allowing algae to grow into it and block flow more easily as the water has a secondary pressure relief path with zero resistance (bad for flow to screen)
4) Your reflector design is great, the aluminum foil may not be the best thing to use. If you can get a smooth material, like the one SM has http://www.santa-monica.cc/Flexible-Reflector_p_15.html that might deliver a little more light to the screen. The aluminum foil has a scattering effect. This is not so critical, just sayin'.
5) consider putting in a larger wattage CFL and cutting the hours down. Check out post #17 here http://algaescrubber.net/forums/showthread.php?1291-Algae-Scrubber-Basics-The-Summary

Still, with all that, You dropped N from >100 to less than 20 in a month. This shows how powerful these systems can be! You'll have this system down and clicking along in no time.

Some questions...

1. I am unclear about the sizing guidelines that depend on the amount of food.

I would think that this would depend on what is in the tank and how much food that the various critters consume. Since I have a one sided screen setup and feed around one cube a day plus one large pinch of food [about 1/2 teaspoon] per day, I wonder what screen size I need. I have great water flow as it is the gravity feed from the tank. According to your post, that would mean about 48 square inches...? 6 X 8 "



2.

In the tank I have 3 fairly good size fish, 4 different soft corals, about 60lbs. or so of live rock, a brittle starfish - who is getting pretty large, and multiple snails, hermit crabs, lots of pods, and lots of other critters living in the rock and gravel bed. The food I put in seems to be mostly eaten, although I think a lot ends up as crud in the gravel, etc.. Tank has been up for at least 7 years.

The current size screen - about 10X10" seems to be working very well with one CFL 28 Watts.. I realize that this may be overkill. I have trimmed the screen a bit and am looking into getting a stronger light source, and adjusting the timing as you suggest.

I also keep the shut off valve in the closed position. Only use it when I want to drain the tube so I can clean the screen easier.

I appreciate your help.

[SantaMonica]

The livestock can only consume what you put in the tank. So how much livestock there is does not matter.

If you want to increase filtering, the first thing is to make it 2-sided. This will double the filtering without even increasing wattage; you can use 14 watts on each side and get twice the filtering of 28 watts on one side.

[Floyd R Turbo]

SM, what did I miss here - if you run a 10 x 10 screen lit on one side by 28W, then make that a 2-sided screen lit by 14W on each side, I thought that was the same amount of filtering capacity, since the light is the same. It was my understanding that if you start with a double-lit screen, to get the equivalent filtering capacity on a single-lit screen you would use the same amount of total lighting, but double the area. Then for a horizontal you would need 4x the area of the double-lit and 1.5x the light. This is going way back to your initial recommendations years ago. Has something changed?

[SantaMonica]

2-sided screens hold on to the roots twice as long, for the same wattage. So they filter twice as much, for the same wattage.

Horizontal is even weaker than 1-sided, because of the slow flow.

[Floyd R Turbo]

That makes sense. So in effect, because the roots of the algae mat on a double-sided screen can hold on longer, you can go longer between cleanings (10 days vs 7) and the extra time in the exponential growth phase means double the filtering capacity, in the long run. But, if you were to clean a single sided screen and a double sided screen at, say, 6 days, they should have equal filtering capacity. So it is a different means by which the double-sided screen becomes more efficient. Do I have this correct?

[SantaMonica]

No the 1-sided starts letting go at about 3 days. Especially since mostly people trying 1-sided's tend to have nutrient problems and dark growth which does not let the gha grab on at all.