hey guys been a long time lurker and finally have my scrubber online after some time. I filled my tank last week added soem 2nd hand live rock (was base rock) and was waiting for the substrate to settle. Well its pretty much settled and i have been doing a bit of ghost feeding and added some prawn to kick start the cycle to seed some of the other base rock i have in the tank.
The scrubber is going to be a overhead and is pretty much the same as SM's 100 but is approx 122 square inches. i am using T5 lighting with reflectors and 4000K globes as its the warmest ones i can find and should do to start with. The tank is a 50gal tank and am lighting it 1 side so that the 2inch^2 per gal applies. It was designed that big so that i can upgrade to a larger tank at some point and add another 2foot T5 unit for good scrubbing for a 100gal tank.
Scrubber during building.
I desiged the pipe to be a 1inch pipe as i was purchasing a different pump and it had a 1" outlet. I ended up getting an aquabee UP3000 and it has a 3/4" outlet so i just used a 3/4-->1" expander before the adjustable tap to control flow. I have found that the flow is pretty decent and after a bit i got it to sheet water out of the slot nicely. The screen is rought and i am just waiting for some growth to start.
How long after starting the scrubber can i start to add fish and some basic corals? I assume it is after a screen full or once it start to get green and filtering. There is not a very large bio load should i be adding more food to the tank to get some real ammonia and nitrates going then the scrubber will atleast have something to eat.
I'll take some pictures of it operating tonight and post em up. any comments and critisisms welcome