DIY in tank waterfall scrubber

[isenhart]

I didn't feel like typing it all out so I made a video.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWLE78tE8D4

[SantaMonica]

Nice and easy filter cleaning coming up for you ;)

[isenhart]

Up and running.
64576458

[SantaMonica]

Love back walls that are covered.

[isenhart]

The color comes out better on the camera in white light.

64626463

[isenhart]

I converted my tank to salt about 3 weeks ago. I have 3 ~2" chromis in a 20 gallon tank. I could use a little help with an algae diagnosis. There is some green algae growing, but its covered in a yellow and/or white crust. It seems an awful lot like lime scale you might find inside an old shower head. Any thoughts?

6478
6479

[SantaMonica]

Looks pretty good.

[isenhart]

I'm at a loss. My scrubber was working really well in fresh water. The only thing I've change is adding salt, and different fish. A month ago, other than having a lot of white in color, the algae was growing and spreading. Now with the same setup it is shrinking and dying. I thought maybe there were no nitrates and phosphates to feed the algae, but my nitrates are really high. (I don't test for phosphates, the what shade of blue guessing game isn't accurate anyway.) I did a 50% water change, and 24 hours later the nitrates were high again. I tried reducing the led lighting, both the intensity and the duration with no effect. I then thought maybe there wasn't enough oxygen getting to the screen, so I added another piece of knitting canvas folded in half to break up the water flow. I even added my old upflow algae scrubber that has no life in it after a week.

If anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.
(About a 10 days ago I added the chaetomorpha to try and help my tank. It hasn't really grown any either.)

6486

I have a couple spots of this brown algae growing on my rocks if that helps the diagnosis any.

6487

[SantaMonica]

Looks like basic high-nutrient dark growth. Brush the screen, do 22 hours of light. Strong bulbs would help.

[isenhart]

After 2 months my waterfall scrubber isn't working. Brown algae is all over the main display tank and the green algae on the screen all but disappeared. It was working really well when set up in fresh water. I'm not sure why salt water doesn't work with the same conditions. Running the led's at 100% power seemed to work the best, so I'm going with more power!

6563

I removed the entire integrated filter and made it a little taller and wider. I then put into a 40 gallon breeder tank. I scratched up the old tank quiet a bit building the background in the tank. Lesson learned there, and petco had the $1 per gallon sale. $40 for a bigger tank, or $120 for new glass on the old smaller tank... The old tank will make a good sump some day.

Instead of placing the leds in the tank and trying to water proof them, I placed them outside the tank. I had a scrap piece of 7" channel aluminum I cut the sides off to use as a heat sink. I now have 10 3 watt red leds on two circuits I can dim or turn on/off separately.

65646565656665676568

Redesign day 1.

[SantaMonica]

I'm not sure how it's set up, but SW does work very different. A white screen material would also be best.

[isenhart]

I'm guessing I have too much light. I redid my lights, from being internal to external, two weeks ago. Since then 10 3w leds have been running @ 100% 18 hours a day ~4" from the screen. 1 week ago with no growth, I roughed up the screen more. I also added a piece of lava rock just to see if the screen was the problem. Today, I still have no growth.

The last two pictures are of cheato, the side facing the lights are turning yellow and pulls apart easy. The back side, getting less light, is dark green and has strong strands.

Thoughts? I can dim the led's or decrease the duration.

658365846585

[SantaMonica]

I think nutrients are too high, and are growing black slime which covers the screen. Scrub everything off of the screen every 3 days until you see some green stick to it. And get a white screen material if you can. Black screens in high nutrient water are bad combinations.

[isenhart]

I replaced the black with white/clear screen and ran it for a week. Not much green on it.

66026603

I was running 5 3watt leds on the outside of the tank for the last 2 months and I don't know why but I can't get this scrubber to take off.

66046605

So today I unplugged the lights on the outside and added the GEM5 lights to the inside of the tank. One black and one white, both have 3 lights above the water line and 2 below. I also have some cheato algae below my scrubber I use primarily as a bubble trap and small nutrient export.

660666076608

Gem5 lights test, day 1.

[isenhart]

After 1 week with the Gem5 lights. It's pretty much all brown algae, but it's the most growth I've had since converting to salt water.

66186619

[isenhart]

6628 6629
Second week with Gem5 lights, seven days growth. I forgot before pictures, but I scraped only half the screen to see which half grows better for the next week.

[SantaMonica]

Scrape it all off, so that you see the white of the screen.

[isenhart]

664566466647

5 days growth. Most of the algae is really dark, but the screen is green on the edges and brown in the middle. Reduce the light or leave it 18 hours a day?

[SantaMonica]

Leave it and do another 10 days.

[isenhart]

This weeks clean out. Under normal lighting it looks mostly brown. If I put a flashlight on it, it looks really green though not hair algae.

6652 6653

Cleaned up ready for next week with what was scrapped off the screen.

6654

[isenhart]

66676668

The growth this week is less than last week. There is some brown algae in the display tank and there is less of that this week too. Maybe the screen is too large for my bio load? I'm going to try one light for the next week and see what that does in case the light is too intense.

[SantaMonica]

Yes it's just running out of nutrients.

[isenhart]

66746675
This weeks clean out. I increased feeding slightly and removed one Gem5. I also only scraped half the screen. The intent was always to clean half at a time, and clean more often. That way there would always be algae doing some filtering. Not sure it will work or not, going to find out though.

[SantaMonica]

Yes divided cleaning works, although I might be easier to cut the screen in half and take out half at a time.

[isenhart]

66806681

4 days growth on 1/2 the screen, 1.5 weeks on the other half. It's starting to take off now.

[isenhart]

6685

This picture was taken a few days ago, I didn't have time to post it until now.

I'm not really getting anything that I would call hair algae. The water parameters are good, so I'm not too worried about what is or is not growing on the screen. I didn't scrape the screen this week to see what it looks like if I let it grow out. I also trimmed ~1/2" off the bottom of the screen. It stuck out just a little bit off the bottom and would hang up on the filter floss when ever I tried to change it.

[isenhart]

66866687

I think letting it go for 2 weeks didn't improve the growth. It in fact it has an increase of brown algae and added a couple of small patches of green algae in the display tank. Interestingly, the nitrite and nitrate are still undetectable.

[SantaMonica]

2 weeks is a bit much.

[isenhart]

Weekly harvest.

67116712

According to my fish log, I added this cheato to my tank back on 4/3. I have never removed any of it.

6714

Here it is today.

6713

I find it very interesting that it in 5 months the cheato has not really grown at all. The friend I got the cheato from says he throws out 5x that much cheato every week in his tank/sump. Granted his tank is 5x the size of mine, and he has a different light, but I would think it would have grown way more than it has in 5 months. It makes me wonder how effective my scrubber is despite it not really growing hair algae. I built a scrubber for him a couple weeks ago. I'm curious to see how the cheato does in his tank once his scrubber gets established.

[SantaMonica]

Yes your scrubber is over powering it.

[isenhart]

This weeks growth. I'm going to start dosing some ferrous gluconate, fergon iron supplement. We'll see how that looks next week.

6730

[SantaMonica]

Growth is fairly dark now; probably don't need it. Plus, that stuff has glucose carbon in it; better would be an inorganic version like Ken't Manganese+Iron. Or a rusty nail.

[isenhart]

What does glucose carbon do that's bad? Though a rusty nail would be cheaper.

[SantaMonica]

It's like carbon/sugar dosing.

[isenhart]

I've had this scrubber going for 6 months now. It grows algae, but not hair algae. For months it didn't seem to matter, the water always tested good. In the last couple of weeks Cyano has starting growing on the sand and some hair algae has started growing in the tank. I did a fairly large water change, it did not seem to slow the Cyano growth at all.

I made a change to the waterfall. Previously it had ~15 degree angle to reduced the sound of water splashing. Thinking that it might be restricting the air interface, I made it vertical. So far it has not made any difference in the algae type, color, growth, but it is louder. I also tried dosing a very small amount of Ferrous Sulfate, Iron, carbon/sugar. I added 28 mg to 5 gallons of the auto top off reservoir.

What I can't get my head around is this exact setup in fresh water worked perfectly. Why isn't it working when adding salt?

67636764676567666767

[SantaMonica]

FW is always easier to grow, I think because spirogyra is a very thin hair algae and blocks the least amount of light, and allows the most nutrient flow in/out of it. The salt in SW seems to allow thicker/darker growth to occur, which is great if you are making oil.

Your pictures now show very dark slime, which means it's trying to work but just needs more light. So max out the light, 24 hours (no timer), as near as possible to the screen. And clean the black slime as soon as it covers the screen.

[isenhart]

Ok, I used a toothbrush to clean half the screen to almost bare and added a second Gem5. Here's hoping.

[SantaMonica]

Clean the whole thing. You don't want any of that black slime on anything.

[isenhart]

Well this week I scrapped the screen every other day all week after brushing 1/2 the screen almost clean. 7 days later is looks exactly the same as it did last week. It still looks black until you shine a light on it, then it's green. I don't know if its just a natural cycle or scraping the screen more, but the cyano is almost gone. More hair algae in the tank though.

6785

I scraped the screen clean, brushed it, and I got out the hole saw again. Lets see what it looks like next week.

6786

If this screen doesn't start growing hair algae soon, I'm seriously thinking about cutting down a rock from the display tank that seems to support hair algae growth just fine.

[isenhart]

I'm still not having any luck with the screen, so I made a rock. Actually it's sand mortar/cement. I used a piece of lighting diffuser as rebar.

680668076808

I left the screen over the mortar for a couple of days.

6809

Here it is 4 days later. What has me baffled is the algae is pretty much the exact same green/black slime.

68106811

All cleaned up and ready for another week.

6812

[SantaMonica]

Well dark slime is always too little light compared to nutrients. But if GHA can start, it will reach out to the light and try to get more.

[isenhart]

There are 2 gem5 lights, the whole compartment is only 4", wide so they have to be ~2-3" from a ~7x7" screen/rock. I find it hard to believe that's not enough light for 2/3 of a cube per day with 7 fish, especially when the algae in the display is taken into consideration. It's easy enough to up the lighting to 24 hours a day for a few days, stay tuned for that.

[SantaMonica]

Yes 24 hours.

[isenhart]

Well 24 hours of light definitely got rid of the black/green. I'm not sure if it's an improvement or not?

68146815

[SantaMonica]

Let it fill in.

[isenhart]

I ran the lights continuous for ~72 hours. I back them off to 22 hours a day for rest of the week. I wonder if the lights are too intense. I have a clear acrylic piece at the bottom to hold filter floss. The best looking algae is behind that piece of acrylic. It's also possible that there is more water contact at the bottom. Thoughts?

6824682568266827

[SantaMonica]

It does look like burning in the middle.

[isenhart]

68436844.

This was 3 days growth at 20 hours a day of light.

684568466847

All cleaned up and ready to put back in.

[isenhart]

This weeks growth and cleanup. Still running 20 hours of light.

68646865

[SantaMonica]

Can you put another one of those scrubbers in there?

[isenhart]

I can make it a little taller, but I can't make a second one. Maybe do more water changes until it grows hair algae?

[SantaMonica]

Can you concentrate the light more? Also try 24 hours.

[isenhart]

For the last couple of weeks I've upped the water change schedule and added a 3rd light.

6962

The growth is lighter but it's still not growing the typical hair algae.

6963

This is about all I scrape off it anymore, whats on there has a strong attachment.

6964

[markstrimaran]

You might try adding actual, salt grown turf algae as seed, to start it growing. I left a screen in a creek, all summer in fresh water, I now have a very different algae's growing.

[SantaMonica]

The surface is currently 1-sided. A 2-sided surface will grow more, greener, quicker because there is less shading.

So maybe you can make it 2-sided.

[isenhart]

I might try the seeding idea. I do live 30 minutes from the Gulf coast. I'm sure there's some algae growing there.

Making it 2 sided would be difficult, the space it a total of 4" thick. I think the only way to do it would be with a reflector, and that will eventually get blocked as the algae grows.

I should add that even though my scrubber is not growing the "best" type of algae. I think my tank is doing well. Especially considering all I'm running for filtration besides red lights is activated carbon and water changes.

6965

[isenhart]

Well my tank was converted to salt water a little over a year ago. I've been running my algae scrubber ever since and it's still not growing the "desired" algae. I tried led's outside the tank, I tried 1, 2, & 3 gem5's in the tank. All at various lighting durations. (Currently running 3 GEM5's for 20 hours a day.) I tried dosing iron, hydrogen peroxide, and carbon/sugar. I've tried going 2 months without a water change, to 50% changes once a week.

701370147015

I gave up on the scrubber only method a couple of weeks ago and starting running GFO to beat back the cyano that was always on the scrubber and rocks nearest the lights. That beat back the cyano, and gave way to really nice green hair algae carpet in my tank. I thought that might make the scrubber take off, but nope.

70167017

I thought Maybe the bio load is too high, though you should be able to handle a high bio load if you change the water enough. I'm not convinced though, I still have quarantine tank setup with a trigger and blue tang in it due to aggression. I have 2 uas scrubbers going in it with a much smaller bio load. One scrubber is the same black/dark green slime, the other one hardly grows anything. Just to be sure it was not the lights, one has 3 leds while the other has 5, I switched the screens in the respective scrubbers and the screen growth swapped the dark green for little growth. If the nutrients were high, why would the slime die off leaving the screen empty instead of turning to hair algae?

70187019

It's definitely getting frustrating. I have a 300 gallon system sitting in my garage I'm waiting to set up. I really like the idea of an all natural plant/algae with fish and coral ecosystem, but what I've seen far is it's not working. Before I set up my bigger tank, I want to know if this is going to work or not....

After watching/reading about growing hydroponics under various lighting. It would seem that white led lights have the "best" growth compared to red. Subject to some interpretation of what the "best" plant looks like. So today I made another uas scrubber with 5 white 3w leds that I will add to my quarantine tank. Running head to head with the red ones should provide some insight. I need to try something different, the same old way isn't working.

70207021

[SantaMonica]

If the nutrients were high, why would the slime die off leaving the screen empty instead of turning to hair algae?

Because slime can't hold on.

[markstrimaran]

On freshwater, I have noticed 2700k CFL grow quite well.
It would be a good light to compare to the GEM 5,. Did you even try and seed a screen?
I get a lot off ugly brown slime on my waterfall. Then I also had a hydra colony growing. Which the scrubber eradicated.

[isenhart]

First week of running the white lights. I forgot that the forward voltage of the white led was greater and 5 white led needed 14 volts, so the 12 volt power supply I had didn't work.

Once I got that sorted out I reused about an 8 inch piece of screen that had been growing the same algae in both previous UAS's. The white UAS is longer than the red one it's replacing, so I also added some new screen at the same time. There isn't much new growth, and what is new is very red. I suspect its Cano bacteria. Also the previously dark green or black growth turned very red. I'm not sure if that is a result of spectrum or par. With the different voltage requirements it's hard to tell if the lights are at the same output. The pictures don't do the red coloration justice. You can see in the picture that there is red slime on the epoxy and the algae cleaned off looks red against my white sink compared to the greener growth on the right grown under red lights.

I switched the screens into the alternate red and white lights to see what it looks like next week.

703170327033

[SantaMonica]

Red is usually cyano from very weak light. Only a small part of the white spectrum can be used. I would do all red again but double the number of them.

[isenhart]

I didn't get a chance to post last weeks progress on the white lights.

706070617062

Todays cleanout is still pretty red, but its getting darker there are some green patches.

70637064

[isenhart]

For my in tank waterfall scrubber, I removed the "rock" and replaced it with a screen that was running in my quarantine tank. I then placed the rock in the display to keep the algae alive and see if it would grow any better in the display. In all fairness, I couldn't place it very high in the tank to get it close to the lights.

In one week it went from this

7065

To this,
70677066

The harvest is better from the screen too. I suspect its because the lights are too close to the rock and burns the growth. I don't think it has anything to do with the actual surface.

7068

[isenhart]

The red is giving way to green hair, pretty much in rings directly in front of the leds.

70697070

[SantaMonica]

Yes the black slime everywhere else shows that nutrients are very high and need the most light possible.

[isenhart]

Earlier this month marked the one year anniversary of running my 40 breeder with the in tank waterfall. This week I did a 50% water change every other day to see what the growth would look like. I'm still getting no hair algae. Lots of dense slime type of algae. It looks more green than the photos capture.

7130713171327133

[SantaMonica]

Seems fine. Is still pulling out nutrients.

[isenhart]

I didn't really make any changes this week. I left town for the weekend, so I did a cleanout after 3 days. Fast forward to seven days after that, and this was my growth.

71637164716571667167

[SantaMonica]

Yep nutrients were probably brought down low enough to allow the green hair to start.

[isenhart]

Two days growth.

71687169

[isenhart]

I'm still running 2 Gem5 lights for 20 hours a day. I harvest the algae twice a week. This is a typical looking clean out.

72667267

I do a 50% water change about every 3 months now running nothing more than the algae and carbon.

[SantaMonica]

Hot hot hot