I've found a way to hang my screen that makes it easy to remove and clean its 1 1/2 inch pipe split into halves and held in place with 2 zip ties it fits neatly into a bucket for transport to the sink for cleaning. I slide the zip ties to the side to remove the screen and slide them back into place when finished
Nice thinking and planning. This type of design was actually done by someone about 2 years ago, but have not heard from him. So maybe you can see how it will work out.
Yeah I remember seeing that design you refer to. The problem I see with this is that it is a no-pressure screen. That is, there is no mechanism to create pressure on the slot/screen point to keep it from clogging. So algae will grow into the slot area and the water will just flow out the ends of the half-pipe and you will get minimum filtration.
However, I do like your side reflector idea, cutting a dome reflector in half!
The ends of the half pipe have a seal made of silicon so it dosnt leak at all and i mask off the top 3/4 inch of the screen when i roughed it up so very little algae grows close the the slot. i cut the reflector in half to get the bulbs a little further away from the screen, had a little burnt algae when they where pointed strait at it. that setup has been running for over a year. i just got a new pump that will give me around 720 gph so im in the process of building a 18" wide version now with more light .will post pics when its up and running.
i have my new scrubber running now its 18"w x 13"h 234 sq inches on my 125g with my old lighting setup on it for now 4x 14w cfl's. im in the process of designing a new lighting setup. question is my old screen was 11"x13" and grew plenty of algae but never the light green stuff i tried using 4x 23w cfl's on it but they seemed to burn the algae a little even when backed further than 4" away so my thinking is that darker algae cant handle as many watts as the lighter stuff. my idea for the new lighting is 4x 18" 36w H tube fluorescent bulbs in custom reflectors 2 bulbs on each side, but i dont want to go through all the trouble of building that setup just to burn up my algae. any thoughts?
Interesting idea. Depends what you mean by "handle". If you mean continue to grow and absorb nutrients, then yes, light green is the best, because the extra flow in and around the loose strands give the algae the nutrients it needs for the chlorophyll to photosynthesize.darker algae cant handle as many watts as the lighter stuff
However your current setup may still grow the "light green stuff". Light green require low nutrinets; once your nutrinent come down, it will grow greener. T5's are always better, when compared to the same watts, but you might just wait and see how it goes. If you were "burning" (getting yellow) at 23 watts at 4", you probably did not have enough flow. Could try adding iron too.
nutrinets is my reason for building the bigger screen. i ran my old screen in the pics above for over a year with 40gph of flow per inch and as much light as i could throw at it without yellowing it but never but never got my phosphate down to zero. close but no cigar. i will give the iron a shot how much do you recommend?
Follow the instruction on the product. Then increase until your growth starts turning green. Too much iron is a poision, however.
Also, if your goal was zero P, your scrubber was just not strong enough. If you post pics of it, maybe the weakness could be seen.
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