LED scrubber for a 120g reef tank

[molabecirovic]

Hi everyone

I just discovered this forum and seems to be a great place to get more info for my new project.
Over the lest few days I been working on adding a algae scrubber to the system. I use to have one installed running for about 6 months or so and it worked fine . It was installed between my frag tank and the refugium, it was running on the drain line from my frag tank water falling on the refugium. The problem with that setup was that some of the hair algea the was growing on the scrubber was falling on top of my chaeto and soon enough started taking over. Didn't take to long for the hair algae to pretty much take over in the refugium and kill most of the chaeto algae, also hair algea prety much covered everything in the frag tank too.
I decided to clean everything up and start fresh. I removed the scrubber, threw away the chaeto and scrubbed all the hair algae from everywhere. To some degree not the best of decisions as my phosphates went up quite a bit soon after that and also did my nitrates, a problem I didn't have in a long time.

I added some new chaetoe to the fuge again so I got it started. Still slightly battling to remove all the exes nutrients so I decided to add the scrubber again but this time a different design. Im using my old frag tank as the housing for the scrubber and I will be adding a 4'' sock in the scrubber tank drain so no hair algae will be leaching back to the refugeum, at least thats the plan ....

Now this time around I will be building a LED fixture for both the sides of the scrubber, before my scrubber was running on home depot reflectors and fluorescent bulbs.
As you can see in the pictures my scrubber is L shaped with 18'' x 8'' main screen and 8'' x 8'' side screen. Im not sure if I will need them both to be running but the main side will be running it for sure. I am planing on using 14 3w Philips Rebel ES 660nm Deep Red LED and 3 3w Philips Rebel ES Royal Blue LED 440-450nm in each side of the scrubber totaling to 81w as you can see in the drawing.

Am I in the right track or you see something not making much sense? Should I add more Blues? Should I use both my screens or the main one is enough?

Here are some pics of the build ...

http://s1286.photobucket.com/user/Molabecirovic/media/IMG_0674_zpsd8a5950d.jpg.html
http://s1286.photobucket.com/user/Molabecirovic/media/IMG_0677_zps1ec69a77.jpg.html
http://s1286.photobucket.com/user/Molabecirovic/media/scrubberLedplan_zps5cd2f3ed.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0

[Floyd R Turbo]

Welcome to the site!

Just a hint for you as far as posting pics goes, use the "IMG Code" link instead. Then, pics will pop up within the your post instead of showing up as links.

Like this

http://i1286.photobucket.com/albums/a616/Molabecirovic/IMG_0674_zpsd8a5950d.jpg

http://i1286.photobucket.com/albums/a616/Molabecirovic/IMG_0677_zps1ec69a77.jpg

http://i1286.photobucket.com/albums/a616/Molabecirovic/scrubberLedplan_zps5cd2f3ed.jpg

[Floyd R Turbo]

Also a few comments. #1 is that your screen area is HUGE, and way under lit. I think you need to review the current guidelines before going any further.

New guideline is based on feeding, 12 sq in per cube of food fed per day

18 x 8 = 144
8x8 = 64

Total 208 / 12 = 17 cubes/day. I seriously doubt you are feeding that much, am I right??

You probably only need a screen that is for 2-4 cubes/day for that size tank I'm guessing. This may change your whole perspective....

[itzrulez]

Floyd, what would be the amount of cubes for 2 clowns with some soft corals?
I'm from Brazil, and we don't measure feeding by this...
when you say a cube, you're saying a cube inch? 2,5cm x 2,5 cm x 2,5 cm?
tnx ;)

[SantaMonica]

No, one cube is a frozen fish cube is about 1cm X 1cm X 1cm and is about 3 grams.

[itzrulez]

Thank you SantaMonica.
How many cubes would I need to feed 2 clowns, and some soft corals?( young clowns)
in a 20g reef.

[molabecirovic]

Also a few comments. #1 is that your screen area is HUGE, and way under lit. I think you need to review the current guidelines before going any further.

New guideline is based on feeding, 12 sq in per cube of food fed per day

18 x 8 = 144
8x8 = 64

Total 208 / 12 = 17 cubes/day. I seriously doubt you are feeding that much, am I right??

You probably only need a screen that is for 2-4 cubes/day for that size tank I'm guessing. This may change your whole perspective....

You sure did change my perspective on this build.... I guess bigger is not always better :confused:
Ok so my feeding routine as I have a pretty heavy bio-load 26 fish, spa,lps, clams ... i feed I nori sheet 9x9 a day (for my tangs 2 large and 4 medium) and 4-6 cubes of frozen food with oyster feest and phytoplancton.
If I calculate using your formula for 6 cubes of frozen food I would need 72 sq/inches or thats 9x8, in which case my large screen of 18x8 is double the amount that i need. Is there any harm in oversizing the scrubber, or it would starve as there would not be enough nutrients in the water?



Thanks on the comments and advices :)

[molabecirovic]

Here is what I am thinking the led configuration could be for a 9x8 screen:

41394140

Any comments on the led's? more reds? more blues?

[Floyd R Turbo]

No, one cube is a frozen fish cube is about 1cm X 1cm X 1cm and is about 3 grams.

Ok. What is it. Is it 1cc or is it the size of one Ocean Nutrition cube. There was another thread where this was discussed and you gave sizes of the O.N. cube and that was much bigger, like 3cc. I don't think that issue was ever resolved.

[molabecirovic]

Just found the AScalculator, what a great tool to figure out what you need... As a result I need 150 sq/inch of screen, so my main 18x8=144 should do it. It specifies I need a minimum of 12Led so this is what I am thinking(I added a bit more 14led's):
4141

or should I use any blues? I just read one thread where if I use blues thy should be ran at half intensity? Do I actually need them at all? here is a pic.
4142

Thanks on reading :)

[Floyd R Turbo]

So you're really going to be feeding 12 cubes/day?

I'm not sure what the calculator says, but my personal guideline is one 660nm Deep Red LED on each side of each 2x2 section of screen, placed 2" from the screen with a diffuser at 1". That would be the maximum density. Minimum density would be one on each side of every 4x4 section of screen.

For a 144 sq in screen, that equates to 36 reds on each side maximum, and 9 on each side minimum. So 12 LEDs per side would be about right.

What I do for the arrangement is just put the reds on a square/rectangular grid, at 2" on center. Then, I place the half-power blues in the middle of those squares. not at every one.

Here's a pic of my L4 fixture

http://i611.photobucket.com/albums/tt191/FloydRTurbo/00%20Algae%20Scrubbers/Turbo%20L4/IMG_0438.jpg

That's for a screen that is ~13" wide and ~4" tall, one on each side

[molabecirovic]

I guess a sheet of nori per day makes a huge difference... i do feed a sheet of nori a day which is 72 sq/in, without the nori the calculation goes down to about 70sq/ in screen. also I am counting for 5 cubes a day and 3ml of coral food (phytoplancton, oysterfeest...).... all together comes to 157sq/inches. I figured my 144 screen should most likely do just fine than.

Based in your picture the blues are connected in parallel and everything else is in series, so the blues are more or less as one led as they share the power? what is the benefit of having the blues? If i do only reds, would that be wrong?


Thanks again in your comments

[Floyd R Turbo]

Yes the blues are essentially one LED, at least as far as the driver sees it (power wise). The result is that the combined output of 2 half-power blues is actually more than a single full power one, because LED get more efficient as you dim them. But for our purposes that's really negligible.

I do not count the blues into the overall "watts per sq in" calculation either. I consider them supplemental. The reds are the primary growth source.

You do not need the blues. But IMO they help. Some that added them in after running only reds noticed that growth appeared to become "sturdier" for lack of a better term.

[SantaMonica]

1 cc is about 3 grams of food.

I'd use less blues.

1 cube is probably ok for 2 clowns. Don't really need to feed the softies.

[molabecirovic]

Here is the scrubber temporally running on CFL bulbs (4x 43w with homedepot reflectors) until I get the led fixtures ready. I removed the small scrubber (8x8) section and left and only the larger side running (18x8). I need to change to led's soon the CFL's are releasing a lot of heat.

4143

[rygh]

Looking like a lot better mix of screen area/lighting! I think it will work a lot better.

Ideal would be to cut the middle out of that tank, and glue the sides back together.
So your new tank would only be about 6 inches wide. 3 inches on each side of screen.
With all lighting external, away from water.
It is not that hard to do that with a table saw.

For LED, instead of red+blue, consider "deep red" + "warm white".
I have been switching.
If you look at the spectrum of a warm white LED, there is a big spike of blue, then
it fills in a wide range of the upper spectrum.
If you look at specific ideal red wavelengths, the deeper red seems better.
So with the combination, you get it all.
Optimized deep red. Extra blue from the warm white.
Wide high end spectrum from the warm white.
But everyone has different ideas on what is the best LED.

[Floyd R Turbo]

I'm going to be testing this eventually. I think there may be some truth to this, but the intensity of anything outside of the deep red and violet LEDs is much greater, which is why I run the blues at 1/2 power. Same might go for WWs.

I would like to find out if there is any added benefit to re-inserting the "wasted bandwidth" as I have been calling it. Since switching to LEDs, and having over 100 units in the field with that mixture, I haven't seen anyone reporting that they have thick, yellow, rubbery growth, as I used to get all the time under broad-spectrum 2700K T5HO. This led me to think that the bandwidth between red and blue was somehow used differently and contributed to this type of growth. If it comes back under WW 2700K, that would be interesting.

[rygh]

I'm going to be testing this eventually. I think there may be some truth to this, but the intensity of anything outside of the deep red and violet LEDs is much greater, which is why I run the blues at 1/2 power. Same might go for WWs.

I would like to find out if there is any added benefit to re-inserting the "wasted bandwidth" as I have been calling it. Since switching to LEDs, and having over 100 units in the field with that mixture, I haven't seen anyone reporting that they have thick, yellow, rubbery growth, as I used to get all the time under broad-spectrum 2700K T5HO. This led me to think that the bandwidth between red and blue was somehow used differently and contributed to this type of growth. If it comes back under WW 2700K, that would be interesting.

Yes, you really have to wonder. I wish I had time for more experimentation like before.
(For discussion I included the old chlorophyll spectrum that includes the various cartinoids)
Those extra spectra may in fact help the wrong type of algae.

I run some warm whites, and no issues with yellow algae. But the red is far stronger.

My guess : It probably does not matter much, as long as you hit a decent overall intensity, and have a lot of red.
Warm whites are super cheap, so that may be a factor if nothing else.

[molabecirovic]

Well the Led's are done and running. This is the configuration I ended up using. I used 660 deep reds and 460 royal blues at 1/2 power.
4145

here are some pictures of the installed lights

41464147

I covered the tank with mirrors and aluminum tape as the red light is pretty strong and makes my closet look like a photography dark room ...

[Floyd R Turbo]

Perfect! Nice LED build!

[molabecirovic]

By the way thanks for all the advices :)

[molabecirovic]

I dont think this is good ...
4182

4183

I havent clean it for a week or more and this is what came out ... It scraped very easy, it almost looked like a infected wound, pretty nasty .... got it all cleaned up and started it again, lets see the second batch :confused:

[Floyd R Turbo]

That's good for only a week or so of growth from a bare screen. Most people don't even have enough to scrape.

[SantaMonica]

Roots started to die