Pulsed flow

[cdm2012]

I hear ya. From what I can tell so far, is it seems to have a lot more flow across the screen than a standard UAS, which is what I like. But of course, it has only been in operation for 24 hours (the screen is from my one sided waterfall that I cleaned off yesterday). I'm excited to see what kind of results I get over the next week or so.

Another possible issue that I'm going to monitor is the lighting period. Currently I run my cfl 18 hours on and 6 hours off. Being that there are a few seconds of no rushing water on the screen (exposing it to direct light) I'm hoping the light does not burn the algae. I might have to reduce the hours or maybe even the wattage. But this is all conjecture right now.

[Devs]

This is what I had in mind on post 23...Nice job

I have a freshwater system and I put together a small CSS algae scrubber. The water feeds in via my overflow and once it fills almost to the top with water the water is then surged out rapidly. It also has an air pump on it running bubbles along the screen. I made it so the bubbles could run across the front of the screen or the back of it. Right now I have it the bubbles running along the back side until I come up with a way to hide the air-holes so they don't get filled with algae.

It works like a charm but it does produce a lot of bubbles when it surges into the sump. I have reduced that by placing a cup underneath the output pipe and covered the top of it with screen material. The majority of the bubbles get broken up by the screen and dissipate along the surface.

It fills up to about 80% allowing the water to completely cover the algae screen. I figure it is only filling about a half a gallons worth of water, so it doesn't affect the sump level too much. I don't use an ATO, but I could see where there would be a problem if I were to use a bigger container.

Any thoughts on this build...pro's and cons?

[Floyd R Turbo]

Well it will be interesting to see, I did not realize that you took this off a waterfall scrubber, I thought it was in operation like this for a while....

[cdm2012]

Thanks Dev!

Floyd, do you think I should start with a fresh new screen so we can monitor the results more accurately? I've got one ready to go!

[Floyd R Turbo]

I think you're fine. You can always try that at a later date.

[cdm2012]

I've been doing some additional research on Carlson Surge Systems and ATO's. Here is a quote that I found over on reefcentral.com: "

Mount the float switch in your sump level with the water when the surge tank is full. When the S tank dumps, water in the tank/sump will rise which wont hurt anything, and when the S tank fills up again, the float switch should still be up. When water evaporates, the auto top off will kick in when the sump water level is the lowest and the surge tank is nearly full. It might come on a little more frequent but it will still work good.

I've also noticed that most that are using CSS's are using them to create a surge effect and they want to move a lot of water so they use large containers with many gallons. I think if used with an algae scrubber you don't need a huge amount of water. So the sump level shouldn't rise too high or too low, although it will fluctuate to some degree.

[Floyd R Turbo]

This thought had also crossed my mind, regarding ATO function. With a low-volume, long-cycle CSS, the ATO would function a little better I would think. There would be a longer period of time when the box is full.

However something just popped into my head that may thwart my thought process on one of my units. The outlet of the CSS has to be underwater, does it not? Otherwise, the siphon wouldn't actually start and flush out the surge source container. This would be a problem in my unit because of the false bottom, I think a special scrubber body would need to be made to make this work right, extra space for the surge pipe or something.

[Garf]

This is how far I got with my effort, a few weeks back. Was gonna try and put the surge pipe in the back, make a partition for the screen to make the tank thinner and feed it with a wide slot pipe, but as you can see, never got far with it;

[cdm2012]

Yes, it has to be under the water.

Something else I found out in my case is that if the outlet was too deep into the sump it wouldn't work. This caused the water level in the scrubber to keep rising and it overflowed. So that is another reason why I have the outlet go into a cup. It maintains a constant water level no matter what level the sump is.

I also discovered that you have to have the correct level for the intake pipe as well. I experimented with letting the water pour in from the very top but when the water level was low in the unit, the water splashing noise was loud, PLUS the siphon would not start for some reason once it filled up with water. But when I placed the intake half-way down the unit or put it near the bottom the water rises quietly and the siphon starts every time. It took a little experimenting to get it working correctly, but once it did, it worked flawlessly.

But I'm wondering if a waterfall CSS could be made having water come in via the intake across a slotted pipe with an algae screen. With what I found, I don't think it would, so hopefully someone tries it to find out if that is possible.

But I'm sure you could easily run one off the outlet pipe but this would require 2 units one on top of each other. One for the CSS and the other for the algae scrubber. Hmm.....

[Garf]

The fact that the surge tube needs to be submerged is something I had forgot. I tried it with a chopped up old skimmer and it would surge for a few minutes then stop. However the end of the tube was not submerged. I've still got the bits for that, so that's another option I've got