Acorral's UAS test

[acorral]

This is my first prototype setup:

- 5" x 9" screen
- 5 x Deep Red 660 nm Osram Leds at 1000 mA
- Hagen Optima Airpump
- Traditional 5" blue airstone

This is on my sump on a 2 years old 400 gallon mixed reef running a Octopus XS 350 Skimmer and Biopellets running for 2 months but don't really kicking in nor helping with algae reduction on display tank

I don't really know what to expect since many say Biopellets outcompete algae scrubbers... for me that would mean on the first place that the algae on my DT must have already died and that is not true in my case

So I'm taking this as a first experiment with 3 objectives:

- Test the design factors for successfully making the bubbles rub the screen
- Test design factor to successfully illuminate a one sided mesh with red LEDs
- Test design factors on doing an easy to clean screen

If it happens that the UAS helps me with the algae on my DT outcompeteing my "not-working" biopellets, then that an extra for me !!!

After refining those design factors I have a friend with a 625 gallon reef tank that wants to give it a test in order to be able to go skimmerless and sumpless with a UAS, so I am planning on running this test for a few months and then install it on my friends tank, be sure I'll post that test here

[acorral]

Now the pictures:




And a short video:

[acorral]

This test has one week running...

I seeded it with some GHA I extracted from my display tank by just rubbing it, probably useless but I did it anyway...

I can see now some dinos and very few green spots on the mesh, I checked it at 1 week and decided not to clean anything until seeing a little bit more growth

I know that 5 LED's maybe little less than specified for this 1 sided screen, I satrted with that because I had those leds laying around collecting dust so I put them there... I already ordered 5 more LEDs, this time CREE 630 nm LED's to have them mixed along with one Royal blue that I have around here so the final configuration will be 5 Deep Red + 5 Red + 1 Royal Blue at 700 mA

My photoperiod is now set at 18 hours, I just read that for LED's I can reduce that to 12 so I will later today

[SantaMonica]

I'd keep it at 18 hours.

[acorral]

Little update at one week and 3 days from installation...

Found brilliant green strings of algae attahed to the glass between the leds and the UAS, removed it and thoroughly scrapped the glass to encourage algae not growing there and growing on the mesh

I also noticed dinos all over the place, diatoms or brown algae and some green spots on the screen

I noticed that the area just in front of the leds are shoing a yellow tone, not brown nor green, I've heard about that meaning roots dying... could it be that the LED's are too close? not enough flow? not enough food? help here on the meaning of yellow zones please

Guess on saturday that the second week ends I'll have something more interesting to scrape from the screen and take some pictures

[SantaMonica]

Pics please.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Review my thread, you are describing precisely what I experienced on my scrubber in the first week. Almost exactly.

[whites]

Wasnt expecting you to jump into the tank... very cool!!

[acorral]

Review my thread, you are describing precisely what I experienced on my scrubber in the first week. Almost exactly.

Thank you Floyd I have read your thread many times I know you made many changes:

-placed the leds as far as you could
-changed the spray bar
-placed the diffusor on blue led
-I couldn't findinformation about you re-roughing your screen but I guess you mentioned it, right?

Regarding the LED's distance I have placed the 1 inch farther than they used to and expecting to see some results

Regarding the spray bar... have you seen the video? I guess they are rubbing the screen correctly, what do you think? i have around a round spray bar that I can use but I guess that if it not broken don't fix it, on my limited unexperienced knowledge seeing the underwater video of the screen and the bubbles I guess they are rubbing the screen, what do you think? this is room for improvement?

I haven't been able to find the light diffusors you got, from where you got them?

Did you re-roughed your screen?

What of the factors you stated you think are the important ones and seeing my video what's your opinion?

[acorral]

Pictures from yesterday...

This is the algae I collected from one spot in the glass:


This is the screen at day 10, you can see the dinos, some green and a almost perfect round zone with very little yellow growth just in front of where the LED's are concentrated: