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Thread: First LED Scrubber Coming In Strong

  1. #1

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    First LED Scrubber Coming In Strong

    Here's my new baby. She runs on my drain lines, flowing about 500gph over a 10x5-inch screen. Water flows into the slot pipe from both directions and "piles up" in the middle of the screen a little, but it's better than the water rocketing off of one end IMHO. Powered by two screw-in LED grow lights from China (15 watts each), she seems to be breaking in hard and fast. The bulbs are mounted on a wooden base that is anchored to the block wall behind the sump. I built a simple acrylic box for the lights out of an old football helmet display case. I had to notch the box to get it past a brace in my frag tank stand, though. The screen is rougher than I imagined that a screen could be, and it seems to be paying off.

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    Two weeks
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    Three weeks

  2. #2
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    Looks like it's going to grow really well.

  3. #3

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    Between the 1st and 3rd cleanings my alkalinity went on a wild ride. I was dosing 12tsp of Reef Builder to a 125 gallon system per day at one point (which supposedly raises kh by 2 meq/L or 5.6dkh). It seems to have stabilized at 10dkh now during week four. I replace all evaporation with fully saturated kalkwasser from a reactor, but this humid summer has dropped my evaporation rate markedly. I want to use this as an excuse to add more fish.

  4. #4
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    A fan on the surface might help.

  5. #5

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    Yeah, I have a fan going. Without it the tank barely evaporates anything.

    I think I need to split my photo period. The algae grows green in spots but the surface burns and turns pale brown/grey. I've been running it 8 hours opposite my display. I'm thinking 2on/2off all day but leave it off for the 4-hour "high noon" in my display (my LEDs ramp up and down gently). Sound legit?

  6. #6
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    Yes try it.

  7. #7

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    Lights are still way too strong. After digging through some of the LED info on this forum, I think that I should have more like 10 watts, not 30. The lights are 1.5" from the screen, too. I've added CFLs (2x23w) to the other side, and that made things worse. I'm going to put black plastic canvas in front of the LEDs figuring that they will block about 2/3 of the light.

    I'm thinking I'll run the CFLs for 9 hours, and start with the LED only running 15 minutes in the middle of photoperiod. The screen looks like it wants to take off, but I just keep burning it to death.

  8. #8

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    I'm dosing a little Seachem Propel (iron) to see if that helps, too.

  9. #9
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    Shorter hours will certainly reduce the yellow.

  10. #10
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    I'm not sure if I would put canvas in front of the LED array, just reduce the overall total hours/day, and split the photoperiod up into multiples. A better thing to put in front of the array would be a diffuser, and if that's not enough, put small squares of black electrical tape on the diffuser lined up with the LED, particularly any LEDs that are not 660nm red (like royal blues, etc) as those will cause photosaturation

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