The alginator

[the fonz]

Ok, I first saw santa Monicas forum about 2 months ago and I was sold. I have been researching ,planning, and building ever since. Finally I Have finished and have my "Alginator" in the line. Hasta la vista algae.
I went with the acrylic box design and tied it in line from my overflow (less pump noise, cheaper, and takes less space). The only thing I had a problem with my whole setup was drainage. The amount of water i neede to coat the entire screen was just filling up the box, so i had to add 2 more drains. Works like a champ so far.
Ok so here are the pictures from before.
Here is all the stubborn hair algae



I plumbed the alginator from both the overflow tubes (very good water coverage on the screen)


Some pictures of the unit and where I squeezed it in.


The screen after 3 days

I had to add drains because my flow was so strong (very easy)

Finally the drain system I came up with (trial and error)


I added a huge clump of polyester filter fiber (pillow stuffing) where the water finally enters the sump it took care of a lot of the micro bubbles


I will add more after it starts do its job. Hopefully they will be algae free pictures accept for the ones of the screen.

[ocean rock]

nice build m8 hope you start seeing results soon ,

[kcress]

Filter floss would normally be something you'd want to run screaming from(nitrate factory) but heck, with a TS it doesn't matter!

Nice job there!

[chrissu]

What's the latest with all that hair algae? Got any new pictures to post?

[the fonz]

Thanks guys. Yea shes starting to rid of the algae. Its not terminating it as fast as I hoped but i think after I build a nice algae base on the screen it should start speeding up. A tip for everyone out there --- If you think you have roughed the screen up enough, You're wrong. Get it as rough as you possibly can before you start runnig it. Otherwise your gonna wait 2 weeks and realize you need it rougher and have to wait even longer for it to seed itself. As for the pictures, By accident I got hammered this weekend and fell through ice into a canal. It was a bet, my buddy gets my tab for the next month if I could cross the canal. My iphone was in my pocket so its gonna be a few days before I can get any new pictures up. It was a very expensive fall.

[the fonz]

Finally I’m back in business.
I took the rocks out the a few days after my first post and cleaned them. My power went out and my screen dried up so i scraped the majority of it. A little algae grew after that in the main tank after that but disappeared in about a week. It definitely works a lot better then both skimmers I’ve used. I have some zoo's that looked like they were dead, after a week they started blooming again. I attribute this to the fine scrubbing of my alginator With just my skimmer running, my tank would look like it did before I cleaned it (algae everywhere).. Here are some of the new pictures taken today.

I had to build a new sump this one 12 in high. The old one was 18 inches high and made servicing the screen a pain in the butt.
I also hung the alginator from the top with 1$ carabineer clips to get the drain pipes to run to the end of the sump.

Another shot of how I ran everything. None of the pvc glued except the elbows in direct contact with the alginator.

A lot cleaner than before eh?


The little bit of what’s left after the power outage



Cleaning the screen takes about 5 min now that im able to drop the unit and get my arms in there

that is from one side and it is heavyy
Hope you enjoy

[SantaMonica]

A plate full from just one side... now that's scrubbin'.

[anders moon]

HOw does this scrubber work by new**?

[misoldier06]

hey what size tank is that? By the way... i LOVE your aquascaping.