First time scrubber!

[jimrawr]

Hi all. After having some GHA problems and doing some research, I ran into the idea about using a scrubber to grow the algae in my sump rather than on my live rock. I build a small scrubber which hardly fits in my sump, but it should be enough for me tank. I have a 92g corner tank with a 20g sump, and my screen is 9.5"x11". I use a Mag 7 for flow, but it tuned back. When I did a water test for GPH I got around 400gph so a bit higher than recommended. If I close the ball valve a bit, then I dont get good spread of water accross my screen. My lighting is 2x23" spiral bulbs. That was the highest my hardware store had, do you think I should get higher wattage bulbs? Also do you guys think my reflectors are OK? I dont have them exactly head onto the screen as you will see im pretty tight on space. So far its been up for 4 days and I do have some algae already starting to attach and grow, but very little. Any feedback would be nice

[Ace25]

Looks good to me. That is about the best your going to be able to do as far as flow/size. Too much flow is much better than to little (to some degree, obviously don't want 2000 GPH shooting out the slot). I also run a 700GPH pump on one of my ATS's and have it full open. I have a valve like you but I had the same issue, when I closed the valve slightly the flow wasn't reaching the ends for even coverage.

Your lighting.. well.. it is adequate and about the best you can do with CFL. Obviously if you can find slightly higher wattage (26w or 32w) it would be better, if you go much higher, like a 42w, then you will need to reduce the hours the light is on. I think the CFLs is the weakest part of your setup, but that is the "normal" lighting method, and I still use 42w CFLs on one of my scrubbers. It will work and will certainly help get the screen growing, but I think you would have much more growth if you looked into putting red LEDs for a light source instead of CFLs... down the road. Not something you need to do right away, just know in the future if you wanted more growth then going with some 1w or 3w Red LEDs will give you much more growth than any type/wattage CFL bulb out there.

[jimrawr]

So today is one week, I have some redish growth on it but not much.. Should I clean it or wait a week?? I don't think I'll be able to get much off even if I try to clean it

[SantaMonica]

Give it 14 days.

[jimrawr]

How long until you should start to see a reduction of algae in the DT? I ended up cleaning the screen last week(didnt see your post telling me to let it go until after it was cleaned) and I am getting more growth in the last 7 days than I did in the first seven days. Also I changed the bulbs from 23w spiral to 43w spirals. I will wait another 7 days before cleaning this time. Just curious as to when I should see an effect on my DT as the algae continues to grow

[jimrawr]

Here are some updated pics. The outsides that arent being hit with as much light are growing more green, and the high light area is more brown. Also what are all the little bubbles that seem to be trapped? Is that a good/bad sign?

[SantaMonica]

Bulbs are too strong. Switch back, or add iron.

Let grow 14 days.

[jimrawr]

SM, why do you think I need to add iron?? I have GHA growing in my DT without a problem.

Im curious to see what gave you that thought because ive been thinking my tank is iron deficient for awhile now since I was having problems growing macro in the sump

[SantaMonica]

Yellow grows mean low iron.

[jimrawr]

I cleaned my screen today, even though I wanted to wait a few more days, because my slot was getting clogged. I need to cover that area so its not getting light as to not clog. Anyways here are the pictures of the screen off. I was able to get around a small handfull of growth off the screen scraping with a credit card. MUCH more than my first seven days, and this was a ten day cycle. You can see the green is growing where there is less light, so I will go back to smaller 23w bulbs but not sure why when the recommended for my screen 9x11 is 50w.