I've got an upflow algae scrubber already but its not the greatest design.
Made it out of a rubber maid container and have a screen and airstone attached and i do get a lot of brown and red growth but very little green.
It's been running for about 2 months now but i think my problem is when i clean it off nearly everything is coming off the screen and nothings sticking to it after its cleaned so then
it takes awhile to grow again.
Sounds like a weak light.
I just replaced the bulb.
It was a 23w cfl 2700k
The new bulb is a 26w cfl but i didn't realize until after i got home that its a 6500k
Will that make a difference or should i switch back to the 2700k bulb?
Light has been about 4-5 inches away from the scrubber as well.
Should i move it as close as possible?
Also how should the bubbles be flowing in the scrubber? In front of the screen? or in back of it? or right in the middle and breaking on the screen.
It was right in the middle but with doing that i noticed that a lot of bubbles were being collected on the algae and not breaking.So for the last few days its been in front of the screen.
A pic would be good.
I tried getting a picture but only had my iphone to use and if i use flash it flashes to soon and the pic is to dark to see and if i turn the light on and the flash off and try to get
a picture all i get is glare from it. Algae is still growing though even with the new 6500K bulb on it and with the new air stone i put in it seems to be working ok. I'm gonna give it a week or so and see what kind of growth i get and if its not at least the same as the old bulb then i will switch back to the 2700k bulb and move the bulb closer to the screen.
Well after a week of using the 6500k bulb i saw very little to no new growth so i switched it back to a 2700k bulb today and its a 43W actual usage bulb instead of the 23w like i originally used.I will wait 7 days and then post the results.
The 2700K will work the best, what size is your screen? Did you read the guidelines for the scrubber screen sizes? Also rough up your screen more, if its all coming off easy it needs to be rougher. Your screen CANNOT BE ROUGH ENOUGH!!! These scrubbers work if they are built right. Take your time and invest into it and it will show results.
150G. Reef/Mix
125G. 3 Regular Oscars/1 Jack Dempsey
75G. 20+ Africans
40G. Fish/Reef. Algae Scrubbers on ALL my SW
10G. SW Fish/Reef.
10G. SW Hospital/new fish quarantine/pod breeder tank
6 stage RO/DI system 200 GPD.
Screen is 5 x 5 roughly and i did follow the guide lines the best i could. Algae sticks to the screen pretty good i think i was just over cleaning it before and instead of just scrapping off the screen i was taking a tooth brush to it and basically getting everything off without even trying.
I'm gonna let it go another week or so with the new bulb and then just scrap off what i can and not over do it on the cleaning. I think that's where i went wrong for the most part.
Should i attach my screen to the back of the box with silicon or let it hang?
Right now its hanging in the middle and is attached through zip ties at the top.
The issue i have with this is sometimes the screen gets pushed into the stream of the air
bubbles and then all the algae on the screen gets tiny bubbles stuck over all of them.
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