WAK: I would think that all of the patents held the ATS back. Dr. Adey was the inventor, the top authority and the big proponent of the scrubbers, started in the early 90's. He also took most of the flak that was more like a firestorm over it as well. He licensed it but the market was too small in the environment of all of the criticism that the ATS received. Of course turf is a group of plants that include GHA and Adey grew that.
Unfortunately, he decided not to personally produce his scrubbers for the hobby market and instead pursued the commercial market where the money was/is. Throw in a sprinkling of royalty wars and the ATS fell out of what ever favor that it had because the only people that could say that they had one were the people that could build one. Some of his most efficient designs were complicated and you had to have some design and building savvy to get one.
I'm a designer so I built one while I was reading the book and then went on to version 2 which I still use today. I was just on here getting advice on interim lighting for it. http://algaescrubber.net/forums/show...he-Dump-Bucket I had some articles publish that featured it but I was a reed in the wind. You can see them on my web site although they are very out dated. You can also see that design of the ATS and renderings of my old and new tanks on my web site. http://asaherring.com I only saw a few other articles that got published. In case you can't tell, my avatar is a rendering of the splash from that dump bucket on my old tank.
Then the Miracle Mud guys came out with there system that featured caulerpa as the biggest part of there design but the mud was the thrust of their marketing, not the algae. I feel that for that reason, it was not ridiculed as much as the ATS. Between that and the refugium that Adey proposed, algae slowly gained ground and algae, mainly cheato gained acceptance as a means of removing excess waist that the skimmer couldn't handle.
Actually since algae had gained general, although reluctant acceptance, SantaMonica's "scrubber in a bucket" rekindled interest in the ATS. It was easy to make and cheap so lots of people started playing with it. He also got a firestorm of criticism as well but not nearly as much. That, in part is why he is here.
Patents are a two edged sword. I think that the last of Adey's Patents run out this year. It is hard to make money while working around patents and money drive advertizement and articles. The scrubber in a bucket does not fall under any patents that I know of.
Ace25 and ruddybop: Thanks for pointing that out. Sometimes people forget where they saw something first. It probably didn't saulve a problem that he was interested in at the time and when the new problem did come up, so did the idea! It is nice to get the credit for what you do. I'm sure that he has improved the UAS but since then.
ruddybop: I never built it. I moved on to a better way to grow plankton in tall tubes along the wall in the garage. I built a 2 axis CNC type robot to feed the cultures and that has taken a lot of my free time. You can also see that design, renderings and video on my site.
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Originally Posted by herring_fish
