UAS air flow vs. Water Flow

[rleahaines]

I have grown good algae with 1/4 LED wattage compared to CFL although the LED's had optics on them @ 90 degree's.

I'm going to see what develops in a week. Will post then with results.

[rleahaines]

Here is one weeks worth of growth.

I noticed that I am getting more growth where I have the Violet LED's - interesting.

To get it to work in my old skimmer I needed to split the screen into pieces.

Growth is dark green.

N = 0

P = 2 to 5 PPM going down.

[SantaMonica]

Looks good.

[rleahaines]

so far so good, Hair algae in tank seems to be slowly going away. Red Cyno has disappeared.

The scrubber is a bit noisy because of the air tube fed into the pump. I'm going to experiment a bit to see if I can reduce this.

Added some snails and a small damsel to the tank.

[rleahaines]

scraped algae off last night. Tested water. Nitrate at 0 Ph at .2 ppm so is going down.

I'm getting bright green algae on the glass, but not on the screen.

Running GFO and Carbon as well.

Still have hair algae, but not as much. Snails seem to be cleaning up red cynano.

My LED lights seem to have shorted out because of moisture.

How do you keep this from happening?

[rleahaines]

Update:

did some changes to the system. Now have new set of red and blue LED's as light source - using a plastic bottom from a salad mix I bought at the grocery store - works great as a splash shield.

The N is still at 0, P at about 0.2 - Hair algae is still in the DT but seems to not spread much and not growing back as much when I trim it back.

getting a Hanna Checker to use for lower levels of P so I can monitor it better. I am using carbon and GFO as well filtering the water.

Getting good dark green growth every week. Still not getting the crazy thick growth some are showing here.

I'll post some pics after I take some soon.

I have added more live rock to the system. Purchased some Xenia frags - idea is they will also soak up P in the system.

Rick

[SantaMonica]

Thick growth usually needs higher wattage or less nutrients.

[rleahaines]

I have 8 3W Phillips LED's for 24 total watts or equiv to 48 watts shining on a UAS through the wall of a glass aquarium - the distance between the LED's and the screen is about 3 inches - on a one sided screen that is 4" X 7" wide

I am currently feeding approx 1/2 cube twice per day or one cube per day of pellets, flake and sometimes frozen brine shrimp. I wet some down to see.

lights on 18 hours off 6 every day.

Cleaning usually once every 14 days or so. Getting dark green algae on screen - maybe 1/4 inch deep at most - I find lots of dark green sheets of algae on the glass as well which blocks some of the light - try to clean this off every 3 or 4 days.

The screen holes are basically filled with the algae, I scrape off as much as possible with scraper and brush when I clean.

As I said, N is at 0, P at 0.2 -

It has been running about a month in this configuration. I used the screen from an older waterfall scrubber that I ran for about 4 months.

I'm not complaining. Easy maintenance and has knocked out the Nitrate, just would like better growth and reduction of P without having to use GFO.

Rick

[SantaMonica]

Well as long as it's dark, you know you can increase watts or hours until you get yellow rubber.

[rleahaines]

Scraped the screen today, lots of growth, some bright green in one area, not quite yellow.

Got about a good handful of algae. I also have found that a piece of filter pad that I was using underneath the scrubber to position the bubble wand grew a whole lot of algae as well.

Just tossed this and put in a new piece. Could filter pads work as a scrubber screen? When full of algae, just toss and replace?

Algae in the DT seems to not be getting worse, too early yet to really see if it is getting better.

I am dosing kalkwasser and adding Purple Up to encourage coraline algae. I am seeing some what I think is green coraline growing here and there, some small purple spots etc.