Generation 4 ATS build

[rygh]

This build has really stalled.

The problem is the plumbing. Very frustrating.
My main tank is in the family room, and sump is in the garage, so drains have a long distance.
Before, the drains operated mostly in full-siphon, with a fairly low outlet point in the sump.
If I put the scrubber in the drain loop, there are two issues.
First, it raises the height of the drain output point in the sump.
Second, it breaks the siphon effect.
I did not think it would be all that different, but it was. As-is, the tank will overflow.
The drains are already dual 1+1/2 inch pipe, and going to 2 inches is a massive job.

I have some other ideas, but it is not looking great.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Well, you could always pump feed the scrubber.

[rygh]

Well, you could always pump feed the scrubber.

Yeah, I probably will.
Otherwise the plumbing becomes an endless mess. And risking tank overflow inside the house is really bad.
Plus a dedicated pump means I can have pressure in the slot, like normal.

I was really hoping to reduce the power use.
Although making the scrubber smaller plus lowering it will still help, since I can use a smaller pump.

[realtime3d]

Following along. I have a design very similar to yours. I have a 40g breeder sump with two parallel waterfall scrubbers fed directly by 1 of 2 corner overflows from my DT. Each scrubber is 17" long x 5" high and has 5 leds (4 red / 1 rblue) on each side running at 375mA. Both scrubbers are driven by a 25W driver. Both scrubbers sit on the rim of the aquarium where the glass normally sits. It's relatively new and incorporates some experiments to see the effects. Having two in parallel makes experiments somewhat easy.

One interesting side effect of the direct overflow into the tank is that the durso standpipe is causing air to mix with the water prior to flowing into the scrubbers. Because of the plumbing, one chamber gets the bubbles while the other because of flow regulation gets only water. The side with bubbles gets much better growth.

[Floyd R Turbo]

Make the pump bigger than you think you need is my advise. If you calculate that you need 300 GPH at the pipe, figure the head loss factor then go up 1 or 2 pump sizes and valve the pump back. If you get an underperforming scrubber, crank up the flow. I am seeing more and more that with LED scrubbers and high flow (over 50 GPH/in), the growth is great, once the screen is cured.

[rygh]

Very interesting data about the bubbles showing better growth. I had been thinking of experimenting with that a while back,
but never had the time.

Two smaller scrubbers is an interesting thought. I had really been focused on one large one, but two might allow me to have one on the returns,
and one on a pump.

Agree with Bud on the over sized pumps. Especially since throttling it back can reduce power used in the pump as well. (Depends on pumps/curves, but common)

I have two PanWorld 50PXX pumps, and one PanWorld 40PX (from old tank).
Having 3 50PXX is nice in case one fails. But not free.

[SantaMonica]

Multiple smaller screens are always better than one larger one. Redundancy, scalability, ongoing filtering with consistent nutrient management, are some of the benefits.

[rygh]

Once I started drawing everything, it quickly turned into a big mess.
Violating the old "Keep It Simple Stupid" principle.

So the latest plan is to just have a separate pump, internal to sump, for scrubber.
And leave the main tank returns alone.

Quick drawing enclosed.

The MJ-3000 drives 500 GPH at 4 feet of head. While the height is only about 1.5 feet,
I figure with the slot and all, about 500 GPH seems ok. Hopefully I can even avoid a valve.

Given 500 GPH max, and normal plastic canvas being 10.5 x 13.5.
I will probably make the screen about 12 x 13
So two screens, each 6 x 13.5, but figure 0.5 of the screen is up in the slot.
That is 41 GPH/inch of screen.
Overall screen is 156 sq inches. A bit more than half of my old scrubber.

(MJ-3000 is one option. I might get a Water Blaster 3000 instead)

[rygh]

I am back.
Knee injury, then some big plumbing problems in the tank. A new scrubber was much lower priority.

Some quick pictures of the new build.
First, most of the box, taped together.
Then some gluing.
And a new DC super-efficient pump. Picked it up cheap, but seems good.
The pump is controllable as well. I could even turn it down when LEDs are off.

[kotlec]

I could even turn it down when LEDs are off.

Not sure if this is good idea. Probably you mean slow it down ?