Acorral's UAS test

[acorral]

I am doing a waterfall bubble screen (tm) and I found that low lighting promoted green growth, then applying higher light accelerated growth when the screen was ready.

To low lighting you mean photoperiod? or light power?

[Garf]

To low lighting you mean photoperiod? or light power?

Light intensity.

[acorral]

I'm seeing negative effects on my tank, not caused by the UAS fro sure, most likely caused by the biopellets, one blue acropora bleaching from the base... I have heard about this kind of results with biopellets and now I'm seeing them first hand.

On the UAS factor... this week I'm not seeing the same algae growth as the last one, from what I can see with only 3 days of growth... I blame biopellets on this too

Do you think it would be safe to just unplug the biopellets to solve both issues? stop bleaching the acropora and leave nutrients for the UAS to mature faster...

Would the inmature UAS be capable of not letting my nutrient levels sky rocket? The biopellet reactor has running only 3 months

[SantaMonica]

Should not run pellets with a scrubber.

[acorral]

Should not run pellets with a scrubber.

Thank you santamonica, I know they are not meant to run together that's why I want to unplug the pellets, the question is regarding a word of advice on how to do the switch given the fact I am at week 3 of a new UAS that has not matured yet

[SantaMonica]

I would just remove them.

[acorral]

I would just remove them.

Done... just removed the biopellets from my system.

Another recent mods:
- Added a light diffuser
- Made a mirror array to convert it to 2 sided

On Sunday I'll receive the extra LED's I ordered so I will modify the lamp to have 11 leds, 10 red, 1 royal blue and have them positioned to be 2 sided as well as placing the mirror array inside the sump

So I'll be posting pics on monday for sure

[acorral]

Yesterday I cleaned up my UAS, well, just rinse it a little bit to get rid of some dinos and brown slime I didn't really scrub anything to let it spread a bit more:



As you can see there's still a yellow patch at the center, guess taht's being caused by tooo much light on the area given that the lamp had 5 LED's concentrated on that small area...

I made the following changes to the UAS:

- Made an in-sump embodiement 90 degree reflector to make it 2 sided
- Modified the lamp to have 4 Deep Red Osram LED's + 4 Red CREE LED's + 2 Red-Orange CREE LED's + 2 Royal Blue CREE LED's, giving a total of 12 LED's, 6 for each side, all of them are running in single circuit running at 700mA
- Added a light diffuser for the whole lamp

Lights ON with diffuser in place:


Lights ON without diffuser:


Top view:


Lights off without diffuser:


I'm placing the lamp 3 inches far from the tank and will be moving it closer slowly to avoid burning the algae with the increased light

Stay tuned for updates with the new setup

[acorral]

Regarding the results of unpluging the biopellet reactor... One day after shutting them down I saw a little cyano bloom on the sand that is slowly going away... My phosphate levels still are undetectable and nitrate level boosted from 0.1 to somewhere between 0.2 and 0.5

[acorral]

I'm getting very good results with the new reflector and leds, growing much more green and without the yellow center patch... Giving it a complete week to scrub and take more pics.

Phosphate still undetectable and nitrate beetween 0.5 and 0.2, acros stopped bleaching without the biopellets !!