I’ve had a 180 in my living room for almost 20 years.
All of the plumbing is routed downstairs to its own dedicated room.
I had an MMFI algae scrubber hooked in (upper left above) until about a year or so ago until it finally fell apart. I was unable to find any new scrubbers for sale, even at this site it looked iffy, so I bought three different plexiglass adhesives to try and fix up the old scrubber. But with all of the changes in technology, both lighting and design, I tossed out the old MMFI scrubber . Like I said, I would have gladly just bought a ready made scrubber, but the only one I found was here and sales didn’t look promising. I probably would’ve balked at the price anyway.
So I set out to build one on my own. Using some of the info here I bought the lights and two 2’ x 4’ sheets of 1/4” Acrylite. $300 already, good grief.
The scrubber is two feet long and I cut the sides and bases such that I could get them from one four foot sheet. I taped off the base prior to applying the two part Acrylic glue. This helps to align the sides and makes the build a little cleaner.
Glued one side on and then the other.
The two part glue is really strong. The below picture was my first attempt that I botched. I pulled on a side to test the joint strength. The plexiglass failed before the joint!
Here’s a picture of a bad patch of joint on the new scrubber, don’t know why the bubbles.
The rest of the joints looked like this. Probably should have let the glue sit for a minute after mixing to get the bubbles out.
All four sides on.
End caps on and a water test.
There was one leak, but not at the above suspected joint. I used the super thin adhesive to patch the leaking area and the result was no leaks as evidenced above.
Time for an old guy on his own this week to stop for dinner.
Time now to install bulkheads and light holders.
Next the input water tube.
And the lights.
Pretty simple, really, but the plexiglass is hard to work with. It warps and is not true. You really need jigs to do it clean.
Done, finally! Total cost is around $400, more if you include tools and the blade.
Then of course, I had to plumb it into the system. I don’t have to worry about light leakage since it has its own room, and that lets me fiddle around with the dimensions as well. The main objectives are usefulness and ease of cleaning. The MMFI scrubber was a real difficult to clean.
And a movie for you.
http://www.snekpete.com/Scrubber/Srub_short.wmv