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Thread: Busy Designing, help requested :)

  1. #1

    Join Date
    Apr 2014
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    Busy Designing, help requested :)

    Hi all, I'm busy trying to calculate the size of the surface area required for my vertical AS for a sea water setup. At the moment I have a 1600 litre tank (that's about 408 US gallons) If I understand SantaMonica and his formula correctly that means I need a 1.3meter squared (2015 square inches) double sided surface area? Seems so big. For a tank half that size they are running a much smaller unit (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD6kA3xDPaM ) it manages very well. I would struggle to fit the larger unit under my tank. Please tell me I've miscalculated or something. Busy Designing

  2. #2
    Administrator
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    Welcome from South Africa.

    Here are the size guidelines:

    Scrubbers are sized according to feeding. Nutrients "in" (feeding) must equal nutrients "out" (scrubber growth), no matter how many gallons or liters you have. So...

    An example VERTICAL upflow or waterfall screen size is 3 X 4 inches = 12 square inches of screen (7.5 X 10 cm = 75 sq cm) with a total of 12 real watts (not equivalent) of fluorescent light for 18 hours a day. If all 12 watts are on one side, it is a 1-sided screen. If 6 watts are on each side, it is a 2-sided screen, but the total is still 12 watts for 18 hours a day. This screen size and wattage should be able to handle the following amounts of daily feeding:

    1 frozen cube per day (2-sided screen), or
    1/2 frozen cube per day (1-sided screen), or
    10 pinches of flake food per day (2-sided screen), or
    5 pinches of flake food per day (1-sided screen), or
    10 square inches (60 sq cm) of nori per day (2-sided screen), or
    5 square inches (30 sq cm) of nori per day (1-sided screen), or
    0.1 dry ounce (2.8 grams) of pellet food per day (2-sided screen), or
    0.05 dry ounce (1.4 grams) of pellet food per day (1-sided screen)

    High-wattage technique: Double the wattage, and cut the hours in half (to 9 per day). This will get brown screens to grow green much faster. Thus the example above would be 12 watts on each side, for a total of 24 watts, but for only 9 hours per day. If growth starts to turn YELLOW, then increase the flow, or add iron, or reduce the number of hours. And since the bulbs are operating for 9 hours instead of 18, they will last 6 months instead of 3 months.

    HORIZONTAL screens: Multiply the screen size by 4, and the wattage by 1 1/2. Flow is 24 hours, and is at least 35 gph per inch of width of screen [60 lph per cm], EVEN IF one sided or horizontal.

    FLOATING SURFACE SCRUBBERS WITH RIBBONS: Screen size is the size of the box (Lenth X Width), and is 2-sided because the ribbons grow in 3D.

    LEDs: Use half the wattage as above. 660nm (red) is best. You can mix in a little 450nm (blue) if you want.

    Very rough screen made of roughed-up-like-a-cactus plastic canvas, unless floating surface, which would use gravel and strings instead.

    Clean algae:

    Every 7 to 21 days, or
    When it's black, or
    When it fills up, or
    When algae lets go, or
    When nutrients start to rise

  3. #3

    Join Date
    Apr 2014
    Location
    South Africa
    Posts
    2

    Thanks so much

    Thanks a lot for your help.

    I will try to send pictures as my build goes, I take delivery of the tank and fish on Friday, unfortunately I am new to salt water so I will have to adopt the existing system, for the sake of the fish, but plumb it for a Algae scrubber and then convert it slowly till its all cool. Gives me a bit of time to try build the scrubber properly.

  4. #4
    Administrator
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    Some pics and rough plans would help.

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