Various upflow growth pictures

[SantaMonica]

This HOG1 or 1x on a customer's saltwater tank show a typical growth pattern after it runs for 6 months or a year. Every single grain of white Green Grabber® surface has growth attached, and you would not be able to brush the surfaces totally clean, because the growth would stay so attached that lots of growth would remain. If a scrubber reaches this stage, then it will survive almost anything except completely drying out. And, our UAS® upflow scrubbers (unlike waterfalls) can never dry out, because they are always underwater:







63

[SantaMonica]

This SURF2 or 2x looks like it is just starting out in saltwater. You can see some green growth in the corners, but the middle is still a light tan slime color.

In another week or so the compartment should be mostly green, and ready for a first hand-cleaning.

[SantaMonica]

Here's a great example of the power of bubbles. When the bubbles rub a rough surface, like the Green Grabber® white rocky textures on this DROP scrubber®, they create a turbulent air/water interface like waves hitting rocks at the beach, which causes the insulative boundary layer of water around the algal cells to be removed, thus allowing more nutrients to travel from the water to the algal cells. This allows the algae to absorb nutrients and grow (filter) faster. It's kind of like when a turbulent winter wind blows your jacket off, and more of the cold enters your body.

The turbulent air/water interface is described in Walter Adey's "Dynamic Aquaria" book; he invented the algae scrubber concept in the late 1970's.

[SantaMonica]

This HOG1 or 1x in saltwater shows a thick, dark slime. Slime pulls a lot of nutrients out of the water, but needs to be brushed out often so that the white Green Grabber rocks show again.

It's thick growth like this which pulls nutrients away from chaeto, and can kill chaeto five times as big. This is also the growth which can grow right on the chaeto itself, out-competing it and keeping light from reaching the chaeto. Dark slime wins!

Note that the top part is still white where it was above the waterline. This recirculates water and nutrients inside the case, which helps it to grow in very high nutrient water because the water rubs the algae repeatedly before exiting. This particular customer also inserted tubing into the top so the unit can be submerged without making bubbles in the rest of the aquarium, but this is not needed.







64

[SantaMonica]

To be notified when a new growth photo is posted, subscribe HERE

This customer's DROP1.2 scrubber looks to be brand new, and has the black plastic shade screen in place. This screen is included, to reduce the very strong red light (660 nanometer red) which reflects off of the bright white (and rough) Green Grabber algal attachment material when new. After the white surfaces get covered by some color of growth, reflection is less, and you can remove the black screen:

[SantaMonica]

Customer's DROP1.2 scrubber® showing how the super rough Green Grabber® rocky hard surfaces hold on to slime much better than plastic screens can. This is why you don't see thick slime on waterfall plastic screens very often... because it detaches and falls off, getting stuck in your other filters or floating around in your display. And fish don't really like to eat slime, so once it lets go you have lost your filter, made a mess, and not fed anybody.

The Green Grabber® super rough rocky surfaces hold on to that slime though, like rocks at the beach, so you can take the filter to your sink and brush the slime down the drain. Or better, brush it into your garden as a super fertilzer. More info:

http://algaescrubber.net/forums/show...he-best-filter

[SantaMonica]

This customer's DROP1.4x is a good example of the strength of the power-LEDs that are built into the Green Grabber® white rocky surfaces. When a light has enough illumination wattage, algae will be prevented ("photo-inhibited") from growing on the light itself, and you can see this on the 2 lights on the back, and the 2 lights on the left, that are still white with no growth on them (there are also 2 on the right that are not visible.)



Compare this to the weak lights that come with chaeto reactors; they cover themselves with growth and thus block light from reaching the chaeto. And if you don't wipe those lights clean, the filtering stops. The only way to avoid this problem with chaeto reactors is to use our GEM5® lights inside them; the light illumination wattages of GEM5 lights are the same as shown with this DROP1.4x, and this is why a GEM5 light will be used in our new SLIP.7 chaeto/waterfall/upflow combo reactor scrubber.

Don't be confused with lights that say they are high wattage lights; this is just the wattage at the plug or the power supply box which makes heat. This is not the wattage of light that is made into illumination. If it were, you would not get growth on the lights.

This particular DROP scrubber® has medium growth, mostly on the strings, and not yet on the door.

[SantaMonica]

Since algae is so good at pulling out nutrients, when you clean (harvest) it, it temporarily slows its filtering until it grows back. One trick is to harvest less, so that there is always a good amount of algae remaining, but that requires more often cleaning. Another other trick is to have 2 separate scrubbers, where you clean each one alternatly so that each one grows for 5 to 10 days. This is done in this video.

[SantaMonica]

This customer's HOG3 or 3x or 3xx is overly packed with a very light color of green hair algae. The middle (at the bottom) is more green, because it is getting more nurients (iron in this case) delivered to it by the upflowing bubbles. But the sides are getting less bubbles, and thus less iron, and stay yellow just like a plant that needs fertilizer. Thick growth like this makes it harder for bubbles to reach all areas of the growth.

So this could be done:

Harvest more often so it does not get as thick, which blocks nutrient flow.

Increase bubbles to deliver more nutrients.

Reduce hours of light.

Feed more, especially more iron in nori, etc.

Add a second scrubber, so each one takes longer to get thick, and clean them alternately.

[SantaMonica]

Customer's HOG1 or HOG1x inside wet part, lifted out of saltwater. This amount of growth is an average amount, after operating for a few months, for a small 10 to 20 gallon tank with a few small fish. If used on a larger tank, this amount would be useful mostly to feed back to the fish, since it is not enough for all the filtering.