Odd scrubber... lighting questions

[jedimasterben]

Hey guys. I made my new sump to have a combination of a skimmer, algae scrubber, and refugium (may or may not stay lit, depending on whether or not macroalgaes survive lol).

What do you think of this:



Water comes in the filter sock area in the rear left (probably won't run one, but in case I want to), to skimmer, and then flows up and over that angled glass in the front (that is where the scrubber screen will go), then the L shaped bit is the fuge, then flows into the return section.

Ok, so for that scrubber, the glass area is about 9"x10", and I plan to have a screen be that size. Flow rate will be roughly 700GPH over the screen, as it is powered by my return pump. I plan on doing something close to the Blu Coral method, so ultra-high-protein food at least once a week, and once the scrubber gets going, I will do a constant drip of the food. As it is now, my fish eat better than I do, with around three feedings daily.

I don't know what the filtration capacity of this scrubber will be - it is definitely not considered a UAS, but it is not particularly a waterfall scrubber either, so I'm not sure of the total filtration capacity. It will be lit with LEDs, all Luxeon Rebel and Rebel ES. I'm thinking somewhere around 16/4 deep red and royal blue at 700ma (350ma for the RB, they will be in parallel). So that's roughly 12,160mW of deep red light and around 2,400mW of royal blue light.

Any ideas as to the capacity? I don't think it will be able to take 100% of the filtration, but I'd like to have an idea of what I'm working with.

Thanks!

Ben

[SantaMonica]

Welcome.

It's a horizontal river. 90 square inches.

[jedimasterben]

So it is a single cube screen, and needs 16x deep red LEDs like I had thought?

[SantaMonica]

Seems about 2 cubes, and would need 36 watts = 12 stars.

[jedimasterben]

Oh, I figured that the numbers for a horizontal scrubber would be equivalent to the 1 sided screen. Cool.

And I've been wondering - is the wattage based on Chinese '3w' LEDs or higher-output ones like the Rebels?

[SantaMonica]

They are all counted the same, 3w

[jedimasterben]

But shouldn't we go by output and not by count? Because those cheap knockoffs on ebay have around half the output of a Rebel.

[SantaMonica]

Too difficult.

[jedimasterben]

Not particularly. 'If Rebels (or other high-powered LEDs), use XX, if no-name, use XX'.

At any rate, so if I am using Rebels, I have much more light than is recommended. This will not increase the filtering capacity of the scrubber, correct? Just means I can run it less hours for the same effect?

[SantaMonica]

More light will grow more, if there is enough flow, and attachment.