My DIY Waterfall vs DIY UAS

[water dog]

New to the forum as a member but have been reading it for a while and decided to try my luck with a ATS.

First I built a UAS lit on one side with big cfl and it grew very well but the noise drove me out of my mind being right next to my bed so as a cheap person with some experience with acrylic, decided to build a L2 version but smaller as my reef tank has but 1 clown and I feed maybe 1 cube a day. Screen is lit buy 4 phillips 660's and one 440 on each side, screen being 4.25" x 4.25" and fed by a rio pump with good flow.

I split my screen into two pieces (i was having a spike with phos when i cleaned the whole screen) and clean only one at a time. GHA has started growing on screen and I am seeing the one problem rock in main tank with gha growing much less than a month ago. Almost gone.

The lights, driver, heat sinks and acrylic all for $110 and I already had the rio pump.

Thanks to all you guys for your posts and designs that helped me out with my tank.

[SantaMonica]

Welcome,

Good to hear your nutrients are coming out. Pics would be nice. Once you get the waterfall drain set up right, it can be fairly quiet as long as it does not gurgle.

Yes an upflow scrubber (sounds like yours had a light shining through the glass) can be heard if the plastic case is thin. The correction would be to use thicker plastic, and/or reduce bubbles at night, or make a sealed floating version instead.

Interestingly, the newest upflow version to be posted soon does not float or go on the glass.

[water dog]

I have L1.5 lol, set up with the drain going into first chamber of sump with the main drain from my herbie overflow. It is super quite.

The diy upflow was made from 1/4" white acrylic that I had on hand with holes in bottom and top for flow. My air pump was a dual pump and set up outside of house trying to get the noise down but it failed to help. If it was anywhere else in my house and not so close to my bed I would have kept it.

I think your surf 2 unit would be a great unit for me and with a lot less noise but as I said, I am cheap.

I will try to post pics but only have experience with them on a fishing forum that I use in my crappie fishing guide service and don't know if it works the same way.

[water dog]

no gurgle

two screens cleaned on different times
left is 5 days old and right is two days.