Another LED scrubber

[cooper666]

Hi folks, heres a scrubber that I've built form these LED's, but all red. http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/New-12W-2Blue-554nm-4Red-660nm-Hydroponic-Plant-Flood-LED-Grow-Lights-265V-/321349639835?pt=AU_Seed_Starting_Hydroponics&hash=item4ad1ee5e9b and 250mm storm water pvc.

I used the scrubber calculator with 4 cubes of feed as the input to generate the screen, light and flow specs. I've used a 50mm pipe as the slot bar , this way It can be plumbed loosely and the need for annoying screw fittings has been avoided. A few cm of head within the spray bar provides enough pressure to deliver water to the screen. The 250mm pipe acts as a stand for all of the equipment and once refined, will contain the light.

The screen is much larger than specified by the calculator, this is to ensure that the bottom of the screen is in contact with the water level of my sump. I am running this on a fairly new system, 3 days and no real growth yet, just a bit of browning on the screen so far. My feed input is currently very low (1 cube per day), which will increase with the age of the tank. I am still running a skimmer.

http://i.imgur.com/yqvjk27.jpg


http://i.imgur.com/8AnbZJk.jpg

I'll pull it out and take more pics when it's due for it's first clean.

Build cost was approx $200 AUD

[kerry]

Very nice!!

[SantaMonica]

It's the tower scrubber :)

[cooper666]

I thought the Cadillac because its 10 X the size of its functional volume.

[cooper666]

Here's an update.

The scrubbers been turned on for about 2 months now and it's doing what it should. I's been through several stages of growth, so has the alae in my display tank, which is going through a general new tank algae cycle. Initially there was a diatom bloom, the screen went a bit brown, except for the main growth area where the light was focused which showed no growth. In the next stage the display grew hairy green algae, and so did the scrubber. The algal growth in the display has definatedly slowed since the screen started growing green hair.

This is the screen before and after its 3rd clean at about 2 months old.

http://i.imgur.com/utKpq2n.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/pwcOPMI.jpg?1


This is running with the lights on for 9 hours a day, I tried to increase it to 12 and it turned the centre of the screen yellow so I cut it back again.

Heres a couple of the display. There is still a fair bit of hair algae in the display, hopefully It wont last. I am feeding 2 cubes a day now, to accomodate my new fish. Heres a couple photos of the display.


http://i.imgur.com/r6MrkEl.jpg?1

http://i.imgur.com/ysBIpoG.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/0Eh5ES5.jpg

Enjoy.

[SantaMonica]

If you can somehow spread the light out more, you'll get stronger growth across the whole screen and you can run more hours. But seems to be doing very good now.

[cooper666]

I'm just glad that the lights worked!

The lights are already pulled back as far as they can go, I thaught this would be a very conservitive light distance as they are about 10cm (4 inches) away from the screen but maybe it's overkill.The bulk of the light appears to be focused on the area that i visualised as the main growth space. This appears as the bald patch on the middle of the cleaned screen and is the result of over cooking the algae during a week of 12 hour photoperiod.

I didnt expect the whole screen to green up the way it has. Looks like the cheap lights have some punch, I hope they last.

[tebo]

realy nice

[Pny]

Nice! Recognize this scrubber from the MASA forum.