Many folks ask if anything needs to be dosed, if they stop doing water changes. If a reef tank, you'll certainly need to dose calcium and alkalinity. Then some magnesium when needed. And maybe Strontium. The easiest way to dose Cal and Alk is by mixing some powdered lime with your topoff water. For details, search for "kalkwasser dripping". The powder is cheap from here: http://store.mrswagesstore.com/mrswagpiclim.html
Everything else is supplied by the food you feed, and by the organics from the scrubber. This includes all the trace elements that you always hear about. Remember that in the ocean, 90% of all life (besides bacteria) is algae. Algae provides all the food for everything that lives in the ocean, by coverting the sun into organics. And included in these organics are the trace elements that your tank needs too. Cal and Alk, however, are inorganic, and are used up quickly by corals and coralline, so you need to dose them often or continuously. Mag is dosed when your test says to. And the same with Strontium.
Hi SantaMonica
Thank you for the fantastic run down on the benefits of scrubbers. I can see I have to get busy building.
Just one question though. My water supply has Chloramines added to it. What I do to prepare the new water for my tanks is to treat it first with appropriate chemicals which break the "bond" between the ammonia and chlorine then I filter it through bioballs to break the ammonia down into nitrite and then nitrate. This is all done external to my tanks in a rain water tank system outside. When the water has been processed I then heat it and pump it into the aquariums.
What I would like to know is if I set up an appropriate sized scubber on the "new" water outside:
(1) would the developed algae deal with the chloramines without adding a chloramine neutraliser at all?
and
(2) how quickly does the scrubber do its job? In other words if I set up the required size scrubber with the proper water flow how long would it take to strip the water of ammonia/nitrite/nitrate.
Forgot to say that my tanks are all fresh water.
Thanks
Barrie
Last edited by Barrie; March 30th, 2010 at 07:25 PM.
Reason: Missing Information
A scrubber does remove most of the "bad" things in tap water, but it is not known yet if they are ALL removed. And what certainly is not known is if they are removed fast enough for you to put tap water right into your tank. Chlorine is definitely NOT removed by scrubbers, but chlorine will evaporate in a day or so if the water is circulated in an open container BEFORE puting it in the tank. Chloramines (chlorine + ammonia), however, are another matter. They are added by some city water systems, and they are not removed by scrubbers (and they do not evaporate). So if you are not using RO or RODI water, you must use an additive to remove chloramines (if your city water has chloramines; ask them). Water from a well should be fine, since no chlorine or chloramines are added.
Some people are experimenting with using tap water instead of RO or RODI, but there are no results yet. A fish-only (no rock, no sand) tank is probably fine, if you have no chloramines, and if you let the water circulate for a day before using it (to remove chlorine). If you have chloramines, you can use an additive to remove the chlorine and chloramines right away, without having to wait a day.
If you have live rock, or live sand, or any corals or inverts at all, then your problem becomes copper. Copper can occur in city water or in wells. Yes a scrubber (i.e., algae) consumes copper, but the question is, will the copper be removed fast enough so that no damage occurs when you add the tap water. Nobody has tested this, so it would be an experiment. For best chances, you'd want an oversize scrubber, with powerful lighting, and strong flow, along with cleaning every 7 days no matter what. The best way would be to start with an new tank, and add your corals or inverts one at a time (cheapest first). This would be a good test for someone to try.
Thanks, I thought that may be the case. I will still use a scrubber on the water as it is being prepared to strip out the resultant nitrate I finally get after adding the chemicals to neutralise the chloramine. This should make the water A1 for use in the fish tanks.
One thing... you won't get much growth because you are not feeding yet. My guess is that you need a very powerful scrubber, yet small in area, do do anything, compared to what you would need for a tank that you feed. Nobody has tried this, so you can experiment. Try to make it 1/4 the area of what is recommended for a tank, but, use 2 watts per square inch. So a 5 X 5 = 25 square inch screen would normall get 25 total watts, so use 50.
Here is the design for the nano scrubber box. This can be easily built by giving the plans to an acrylic shop. They can either build it for you, or, they can cut the pieces for you and you can silicone it together (use only aquarium-safe silicone)...
Thanks for your replies but I think I should have explained my situation a little better at the start.
Between my tanks (around 50 tanks) I have a total of about 9000L (= 2377US gallons) of fish tank water to look after. Hence when doing a 1/3 water change, I am needing to condition 3000L of water per week. I usually cut this job in half by doing half the tanks on a Wedneday and the other half on Saturday/Sunday, so 1500L twice a week. The scrubber will have about 3 or 4 days to work on this 1500L of new water before it is introduced to the fish tanks as a water change.
I have a rain water tank to hold and condition this new water, so it's ready to use. To treat the Chloramines in our water supply I use Vitamin C (ascorbic acid). This only breaks the bond between the Ammonia and Chlorine so I am still left to deal with the ammonia in this new water. This what I am going to use the scrubber for.
The pump I will be using for the scrubber puts out 4500L per hour which is equal to 1188.7 US gallons per hour. 1188.7 divided by 35 (recommended) = 33.9 inches for the width of the screen. So I was going to build a scrubber that was maybe 3 feet long and perhaps with a screen depth of about 10 inches. It was going to be modelled on your "The Santa Monica 120 Acrylic" back on page 1 of this thread.
This would give 36 x 10 = 360 square inches of screen which I thought would be about right for using 1500L (396 US gallons) of water every 3 or 4 days. (2 water changes per week). The lighting I was going to use was something like this: http://www.aquariumproducts.com.au/c...=4314&catID=86
Giving an output of 4 x 39W = 156W (double lights both sides) but reading what you have above this may be way too low.
Does this all sound OK or do you think I should be reducing the size of the screen and further increasing the light output? I do need to keep in mind power consumption for this unit.
Thanks for your help
Barrie
Last edited by Barrie; April 2nd, 2010 at 05:45 PM.
Conceptually, this will work for your ammonia problem. Problem is, how powerful does the scrubber really need to be. Nobody knows. I do know, and have seen many times, that when people start their scrubbers on cycling tanks, growth is very slow until feeding starts (although it does solve the nutrient spike issue). And when growth is low, the solution is usually always to get stronger lights. That's why I recommended the levels I did. But it's certainly not proven, or even tested. So you would be the first.
You say put a total of four bulbs on the screen; I'd say use 8. A ten inch screen will not be getting any growth at the top and bottom with only 2 bulbs per side. It's going to be a question of power vs. speed. The more watts and flow and screen area you have, the quicker the ammonia will be removed.
Donny Mac on the MFT site: "i have built mine 1 year ago and it has made the maintenance of my tank so easy, the appearance of the glass and water is crystal clear. i keep coral and fish"
PRC on the LR site: "I tested my nitrates tonight. they are officially at ZERO. Couple of small details. I installed this DIY unit on a tank that was cycling. I started out with 20ppm Nitrates. i'm not running anything on this 90g tank except the algae scrubber. So within a 1 1/2 months I have a nice stable system. It may have taken a little less time, if I would have initially had the flow where I needed it. The entire thing took me less than 1 hr to make and install in my sump. And it works great. I use 4 lights (2 on each side). I'm using the lights recommended at the beginning of this thread. All I can say is the thing works... My nephew is running a skimmer, a filter, and has 100lbs. of rock and can't get his nitrates under 15ppm.. I spent .39 on a screen and have 0 nitrates."
Tristan on the LR site: "Im now convinced that the algae scrubber a more suitable than a skimmer. all the algae in my dt is gone!"
waucedah_joe on the RS site: "This thing works. When my [CFL] scrubber-prototype crashed [due to broken pump] my nitrates got up to 25 PPM before I was able to get this [LED scrubber] online, and then in 3 weeks they were near non detect level with the Salifert test kit. Rather than just say it's working for me, here's the datum:
Tank specs: 75g display w/ 40g sump. Heavily stocked. 1-3" blue tang, 1-3-1/2" powder brown tang, 2-Oscy clowns, 1-lawnmower blenny, 1-purple firefish, 1-manderin goby, 1-radiant wrass, 1-high fin goby, 3 BTA's, shrimp, crabs, 1-sand sifting star, 1-brittle star.
1/7 Return pump failed while out of town. Small CFL scrubber pretty much dead from drying up. Cleaned both sides and continued to use while working on new scrubber.
1/10 Nitrates 20 ppm. 20 gal water change
1/21 New scrubber on-line
1/24 Nitrates 25 ppm, old scrubber off-line. 20 gal water change. Last big water change. From here on out the only water change is 3-4 gallons every other week to replace water removed from vacumming detrius from return chamber of sump.
1/30 Nitrates 10 ppm
2/14 Nitrates 5 ppm
2/20 Nitrates 2.5 ppm
2/27 Nitrates <.2 ppm, Increased feeding 17% (from 5 cubes in two days to 6 cubes in two days. Mini icecube sized homemade frozen food. + small piece of nori every other day)
3/7 Nitrates 2.5ppm
3/14 Nitrates 2.5ppm
3/21 Nitrates 2.5ppm
No sugar, no skimmer, no macro algae. This is my only filter."
Rosenaa on the algae scrubber site: "Well its been a good while since I put up my ATS and I am very pleased! I had problems with red bubble algae and they are all gone now! Also coraline algae have sprung up everywhere and covering stone, glass and powerheads".
Inkidu on the algae scrubber site: "As far as this working, after several weeks with only a power head running, which feeds the scrubber, and some air pumps, there is absolutely nothing that is filtering besides the ats, my tank of 5 (say 5") discus and some cardinal tetra. My fish seem content (in fact I brought them back from the brink of death), I feed pretty heavily, the pea green water disappeared, and I have no algae in my tank. Thanks for all the help guys, I am going to call this a success."
Aeros on the algae scrubber site: "As a RO/DI is not within my budget at this time, I have been using tap water to top off and in my salt mix. [...] all my corals have doubled or tripled in size since December, and since adding my ATS all the hair algae has dissipated from the display (thanks mostly to the yellow tang) as well as the red cyano, and nitrates dropped from ~80 to ~10ppm. And pods galore!" All that being said, I will be investing in an RO/DI as soon as possible. For peace of mind mostly, and as part of an ATO set-up; manual topping off sucks."
Sillygoose on the RC site: "It's been two weeks since we scraped algae off of our new turf scrubber. As you can see in the pictures, growth has really taken off. Today, cleaning maybe 2/3 of the outer surfaces, we got 1 1/2 cups of algae off. The mat was 3/4-inch thick in places. The best part is that our NO3 is down from around 10 to below detect in 2 weeks without a water change. I can't tell if PO4 went down because I have a hard time with interpreting the test, but we are starting to see new coraline growth. It's very cool."
Gowingsgo on the RC site: I have been running a ATS for about 8 months now but set mine up with a skimmer. I built my sump with 5 separate chambers. (1 intake from main tank) (2 ATS) (3 skimmer) (4 fuge with live rock and sand so if I need to I can also put stuff in my sump) (5 return to main tank) I set mine up to remove algae from my display tank (and that is exactly what it is doing). But I have noticed that my skim-mate is much darker [note: scrubbers should not affect skimmate] and that I do not have to clean it as much (about once every week not every other day). also my nitrates have never been undetectable (more like 5+ ppm) but they have been 0 for the last 6 months now. [...] With turf scrubber [I have to clean the glass] once every 4 days, sometimes longer, without the scrubber I have had to clean the glass every day. [...] I love my ATS and don't think I would run a tank without one."
Lewk on the RC site: "I'm running a very simple scrubber on my 65 gallon. I've been using it since day one on the tank and my nitrates and phosphates have been at zero for several months now. I set everything up according to the algae scrubber site, and it's working great so far. I'm in the planning stages for a 135, and plan on using a scrubber there as well."
Then did a melt test; put the bulb in, and let it set with no water flow for a half hour. No acrylic softening. Then, poured boiling water into the compartments; still ok...
hi, i was wondering, how smart do you think it would be to start a SW tank with just this filter, live rock and sand? Im planning on starting with just FOWLR and slowly upgrading to a reef, ive got a 36 gallon bow and im thinking about building my tank around this filter, probably building it into my stand and such, This thread makes alot of sense and you cant argue with results, which is why im here. Has there been anyone that has started their tank fresh with just this filter? Id rather put forth the money from buying a skimmer into buying more LR and a RO/DI unit so thats why im asking. Thanks!
Many people have done it. It give the most food, and the most filtering, for a reef. Algae (phytoplankton) is what filters and feeds the entire ocean. As long as the fowlr stage is not overcrowded, you will be fine.
Finally, I have a combination that has some green. Had to up the flow on the one-sided screen from 50 to 75 GPH on the one screen (am not currently using the other screen), and reduce the lighting to 16 hours. Bulb is 1 inch (2.54 cm) from the screen. The bulb is setting on the bottom of the box at an angle, and the screen is also at an angle, and that's the reason that the burned-yellow part is at the bottom, and why the waterline is tilted:
(right click and "view image" to see the whole pic)
I cleaned it today, then sanded the clear window to diffuse the light. The bulb is so near to the screen that you are almost able to see the outline of the bulb in the growth. Scattering the light should help a lot; it's just a matter of how much.
To build this at home, you would just attach vinyl tubing to the pipe, and set the screen down evenly inside the box.
The word "nutrient" and "nutrition" are commonly mixed up when talking about reefs. Skimmers (in this case, air bubbles) only remove nutrition, which is fine if all you have is fish, but skimmers/bubbles have no affect on nutrients. "Nutrients" are Inorganic Nitrate, Inorganic (Ortho) phosphate, Ammonia, Ammonium, and Nitrite. Matter of fact, if you took a fresh batch of newly made saltwater and put a skimmer in it, then added pure nutrients, the skimmer would not have any skimmate at all. Algae, however, would start growing out of control. If, however, you added nutrition (phyto, plankton, ground up flakes, etc) to that same batch of saltwater, the skimmer would go crazy and remove it all.
Coral color: If you use zeo/vodka (with a skimmer) and have pale coral colors, it is not because the "nutrients are too low". It is because the FOOD is too low. The skimmer removes the food (almost all of it) that the corals need to eat. Turn the skimmer off and the colors will come back. Of course your nutrients (Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate) will come back too, but hopefully you now know how to fix that by now. Some people mistakenly try "adding nutrients" such as potasium nitrate, but that is the opposite of what is needed. Nutrients (Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate) are not needed; FOOD is needed. Eric Borneman says: "Adding potasium nitrate to a tank whose corals are losing color because of zeo/vodka dosing is the most convoluted, complex, unnatural and bizarre way to get to an end result that is so easily achieved other ways."
Screen Growth: Don't forget that the more algae you remove every week from your screen, the more nitrate and phosphate you are pulling out of your tank. Thus, the more growth, the lower your Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate will be in your tank, and, the more baby pods you will have in your water.
Bulbs: Importance of the light being consistant across the screen: CFL bulbs are cheap and easy, but they put all the light into one spot. So there is really no purpose in having a screen much larger than the bulb:
Although it was not an original benefit, enough people have now cycled there tanks using only a scrubber that it is now the recommended way. This means no skimmer, and no waterchanges. What generally happens is that you don't get a "cycle" at all, and you can add livestock in just a few days, after double and triple checking to make sure there is zero ammonia and nitrite.
Cycling your tank has the purpose of letting the dead stuff "get out" of the rock. This stuff died because the rock was out of the water for too long during shipping, and is now forming ammonia. Well, the favorite food of algae is ammonia, and next comes nitrite, and then nitrate. So since the ammonia will be kept low during cycling, more of the natural inhabitants in the rock will survive because they are not being poisoned. Also, this extra time that the scrubber gets to develop during the cycling will allow the screen to be more ready for when you start stocking. You can then start feeding your tank heavier, sooner, since the algae will already be available to absorb a lot of ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and phosphate. Growth on the screen, however, will be limited until you start feeding, because there is just not that much to filter during cycling, since a lot of the ammonia etc that develops during cycling is actually from animals that die during the cycling itself (because of high ammonia) and not from the shipping. So after you stock and start feeding, the screen will have much more growth. Usually takes just a few days to get all zero readings.
And you don't need to add anything to get a cycle going, either. Matter of fact, you don't want a cycle at all. A real "cycle" (meaning high ammonia readings) kills the things that were living in the "live" rock. The best situation would be to get a rock from the ocean and put it in your tank in 5 minutes. Everything would still be alive, and there would be no cycle at all. But the shipping process kills a lot, and when the dead stuff gets in your water, you get your cycle. So you certainly don't want to make more ammonia by adding anything to make it worse. Just let the scrubber eat the resulting ammonia, so that the water does not get any worse. A skimmer, amazingly, actually does more harm than good, because not only does it not remove any ammonia (which is what is killing the few things still living), it removes the living critters as they get out of the rock and start swimming around, before they can get back into the rock to hide.
Here is a super easy DIY nano tank that can easily be made at an acrylic or glass shop. You would want at least a 13 watt bulb no matter how small the nano:
Ddinox44 on the RS site: "I hated the constant drone of my skimmer which aided in the push [to get a scrubber]. I really do see an improvement and I believe my tank is healthier for it. Cleaned my screen today, tons of pods on it. Hurts to wash those critters down the drain after thinking of the money spent trying to stock them."
Docjames on the RS site: "No one in [Taiwan] has ever heard of such a thing, but my mind was determined to either be a success or a failure. At that time, the NO2 and No3 were all off the chart, unmeasureably high. That was 1 week ago. Then this morning, when I did the water check, NO2 was undetectable, NO3 was less than 12.5, PO4 was less than 0.5, Kh was 11 DKH (Sera testing kit), and Ca was 440. So I called up the LFS guy that I planned and purchased everything from, and he told me never in his business (he's had this store for decades) has he ever heard of anything like that. He had insisted that I purchased a good Protein skimmer prior to the start of the aquarium, of which I strongly refused and insisted that I'm going to be a pure ATS only filtration person. Tonight, he brought some fishes, shrimps and invert and they became the first inhabitants of my new aquarium."
Cheely13 on the RS site: "I have been using a alge scrubber for about 6 months now with no skimmer, the only thing i do is use a sock with carbon in it for my corals that i place in new every month i harvest one side every 7 days then the next week do the other side. My tank is very clear and seems to be doing very well. all tests are good. I do a 15 to 20 percent water change every week you know theres nothing like a good old water change."
Schwa on the RS site: "These things work great. I had some brown slimy algae in my display that was not going away no matter what I did so I decided to give a scrubber a shot and within 2 weeks of it running the slimy algae is gone out of my display. I am still running my skimmer and run GFO and carbon in the canister filter that powers my scrubber. My favorite, a tyree flower petal Montipora, has polyp extension that is starting to look like an acro millepora without the white sweeper in the middle. MY stuff is very happy right now the best I have seen in 3 years of reefkeeping. I am a firm believer in the algae scrubber and I think they are soon going to be here to stay for a while."
Amphiprion on the AC site: "Well, an update again. The scrubber is still progressing well. I'm starting to get a predominance of brown turf now, as opposed to the usual green. This stuff is a lot tougher, too. I'm now using a razor blade to scrape the screen, along with a toothbrush to try to get at least some of it off. At the same time, the tank is going through some algal succession as well. The bubble algae has stopped growing, and is now dying, as is much of the tough filamentous algae I had. I am getting a few patches of hair algae, however, I found that they all had one thing in common--they are areas that had deep holes with sand and detritus tended to collect. Extra particles would also settle in the algae itself, further feeding it. So, I scrubbed off the algae and removed it's food source and it has halted growth. The stuff is grasping at whatever it can to keep growing--but not while I'm around. There is a definite noticeable difference from when I started this scrubber. Feeding is at an all time high, while levels of N and P remain minimal to undetectable--PO4 about .01 ppm and NO3 undetectable. I'm feeding about 2 cubes of frozen food daily, plus pellets and coral food mix, which consists of rotifers, cyclops, and phytoplankton. I only have 2 clownfish now and a small handful of corals. I'm basically trying to test the limits of this scrubber and I've yet to stretch it even close to 100 percent."
Jstdv8 on the AC site: "So I tested my water today for nitrates and phosphates and both came back at 0. My phosphates have never been below .5 before. The screen is just starting to grow in and is no where near established like most pics I see of them, yet it seems to be working." Later: "Well, about 5 days ago I cleaned my screen and I added another light to the backside. One of my old 23 watt fully enclosed lights with the reflectors built in.
I also doubled my feeding now that I have a clown in there to help eat some of the stuff I'm dumping in there. The screen is really starting to grow some thick bubbly looking green algae on the side of the screen witht he two lights. The bubbly stuff is growing thickest on the 1" side nearest the 2nd light where there is little flow on the screen because of the tabs where it enters the pipe above (1" tabs on the left and right) both sides of the screen overall are seeing much better growth. Still a little weak, but certainly 10 times better than anything I've been seeing up until now. I'm going to play around with it and see if I can still get the same growth without the second light and continue the heavy feeding (also adding a much larger CUC) or if the second light is the hot ticket. I'm hoping to not have to use the second light as it's just more power consumption, but I'll see how it goes. If it truely needs more light I might build up something like SM's T-5 setup instead. I'm getting the zillions of miniture pods all over my front glass in my DT now. I have a mandarin and a sixline and will not hesitate to add more pod eating creatures in the future as there is way more than enough for everyone. phosphate and nitrate are still showing zero. Still have two large patches of GHA in the DT, but now that the screen is starting to grow faster I think I'll remove as much as I can during the next water change and hopefully get the screen to finally outcompete for the nutrients."
Kdc on the MD site: "built a scrubber for myself some time back. All i have to say is awesome! I have yet to see something that compares to it. it has literally taken all the work out of keeping marine fish. My nitrate level is zero, i have never seen that before, even using phosphate absorbers and skimmers. which are very expensive, and always missing with them. if anybody is skeptical dont be, this thing works and works very well."
Borge on the MD site: "don't remember how long ago I started my ATS, I've had some bad *** yellow algae (not diatoms or some easy to get a hand on algae) that grew on anything, and a heavy duty deltec 902 and ozone figthing a constant battle on those food particles, and loosing bigtime to this algae. of course its still there, but shrinking. BIGTIME. don't know any po4 numbers (seriously I hate testing for anything other than whats available at the LFS). What I do know is zero on the no3 (witch is ok considering all the algae) but no silicates and I didn't supply my tank with some new sand full of silicates! anyway today I found blank spots on my ats 6 or 7 days since last cleaning and pods ate greedy on my rug screen. now, base color on this thing is yellow for the algae, but don't you know it, it's turning green, as in long green hair, and coralline is showing up everywhere in the sump, together with a larger amount of baby snails and macros is growing... BIGTIME. Now I feel like I'm fighting a winning battle. oh... btw... my skimmer has been off for as long as the ats has been on... nothing is dying, everything looks more healthy than it's been for a 5 months. I feed just as much if not more, the fish hunts more and my banded goby is always out of his hole picking at things in the water column."
Allnatural on the MD site: "well my tank has been up for 6 weeks now. i used my ats from the very beginning. i had a very short cycle and only a small diatom bloom in my dt. it took a while for my screen to start but now it is turning green and i clean it weekly. i have yet to add any fish or corals but i did add a small cuc consisting of 3 turbo snails, 3 astrea snails and 4 nassarius snails. after the 3rd week my water parameters have been and consistantly remain perfect. NH3=0 no2=0 no3=0 po4=0 pH=8.4 cal=420 alk=13.4. i am adding my first corals this weekend. i thought i wouold see the usual algea bloom that most tanks get after the first month of operation but have yet to see any other then the initial diatoms. my copepod population is extreme and coraline is now covering my aragrocrete rocks i made. my live rock is still as healthy as the day i bought it. im so excited this tank is going to be sweet!!!!!"
Stevenkoh08 on the SG site: "i've my system running for quite awhile now... So far i nvr test no3, no2, po4 and amonia as i trust Algea scrubber alot. The algea did bloom but most of it is brown w/ abit of green. What's best of all is that my sand bed is clean, glass panel clean and the rocks u can't see any hair algea nor red/brown."
Scottt on the MOFIB site: "I run [a scrubber] on my 300gal combined broodstock and grow out. I siphon the tank bottoms weekly. Water changes are done with the siphoning, about 5% of total water volume weekly. Siphoning and algal scrubbing are my only nutrient export methods. Nitrates stay around 10ppm. I add buffer to keep the pH proper. My scrubber is a 2'x2' piece of acrylic at a slight angle (almost horizontal). 150w HPS about 10" above it. I'm planning on adding a skimmer one day. The more filtration the better. But, the scrubber does keep the nitrates really low. It's a 14pair system with about 500 juveniles currently. It seems like the more food I add, the faster the algae grows. I've had no problem with algal scrubbers, only success."
Geminianspark on the MOFIB site: "I currently have two tanks running with scrubbers. My 20g biocube is a mixed reef. The ONLY filtration on that tank is a 3.5" x 9" piece of acrylic with a piece of canvas glued on top that slants across the middle chamber with a fluroscent cabinet light over it. Granted, the size is smaller than SantaMonica's recommendations and i'm not technical so i have no clue how many gph run over it but that tank has been operational with ONLY the scrubber on it since october of '09. I have macro algaes popping up ... some red grac, and some grape calepura and a couple other things i've never seen before (I'm assuming due to the regular addition of calcium, mag and alk that i dose) but VERY Very small amounts of hair algae... less than a quarter inch spots in about three places that my snails keep mowed down for me. But again, mine is undersized for the size tank it's on so that, on top of the fact that i feed pretty heavily because of my sun coral has me hooked on these as filters. I only do water changes on this tank once a month or so and i only have to clean my glass about once every two weeks. Since putting that filter on the cube, it's been the best i've ever had my cube looking.. it's stocked full. I haven't had much fun building them as i'm not very handy with things but the difference in the way my corals looked with a skimmer and how they look with the scrubber is like someone added a super vitamin to the tank. From color to polyp extension to growth... i've seen improvements in all of them with no other changes in routine other than going an extra week without doing a water change. They have my vote."
Gigaah on the LR and MOFIB sites: "I personally vouch for the scrubber cycling. It dramaticly reduces the time from when you add water and rock to when you add fish. Generally a tank needs to have the beneficial bacteria multiply to the point where it can absorb the die off from the rocks and sustain livestock. The scrubber develops faster and starts removing the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate in a capacity to support livestock faster than having to just wait for the bacteria to grow to that point. After the bacteria of course does grow to do this the scrubber keeps doing what it does and creates what I've been calling "bullet proof chemistry" in your tank. Obviously as with any system the scrubber does have to be built properly in order to fill this role but that is a pretty beaten path by now and pretty specific instructions can be found as well. If it wasn't for the wealth of information I'd probably be doing things..what I'll from now on refer to as "The old way". I hope eventually to see massive fuges (not all fuges..just massive ones) and skimmers in a junk pile along with under-gravel filters and T12 lights. I will personally certify that an algaescrubber, if built properly, will withstand the most intense bioload and feeding! These devices are just unbelievably fantastic, its almost surreal. Highly oxygenated water, eats ammonia, nitrate, nitrite like crazy. Case and point, I stirred up some in my tank on two occasions. My ammonia spiked to 1.5 and 10 hrs later it was .25, 12hrs later it was zero. The scrubber on my main tank is about twice the reccomended size. A scrubber 3x the size would bear a heavy heavy bioload without skipping a beat, as long as its built properly (my biggest issue at first was making sure algae cannot grow into the water supply slit and choke the flow). I can feed my 55g 6+ cubes of food in a day and it won't even flinch. They eat phosphate and control algae with ease. To be honest, with all the bennefits from this more natural method of filtering its is obvious to me this is the best filtration system.. and especially for breeding as it adds great deal of oxygen to the water and keeps the parameters stable on a high bioload. If you have any questions at all about the system please ask. I can easily spew out build parameters as I've built two for myself and a two for friends. They are extreamly cheap too. I use no other method of filtering my tanks, mechanical, chemical, biological or otherwise on any of my tanks. I refuse to in fact."
Mrbncal on the scrubber site: "Well the horizontal version was a success, it grew algae, it lowered the "Big Three" numbers like it was supposed to... but... Theres always a but, it created a lot of salt creep and spray. In short, it was a maintenance headache. I was spending more time cleaning the inside of the stand and outside the sump walls than anything else. So I have switched to an in-sump vertical model. It does everything the other one did and is quieter and there is virtually no splash. Bulbs have been clean for three weeks now. Water is supplied with an independent powerhead to an old ehiem spraybar with 1/8" slot and 3/16" holes drilled every inch (am going to increase this to every half inch) and one plastic screen. Thats it. Works great, coral and fish are healthy like never before and I am even growing some gorgonians and doing great with dendros. Still dealing with the dreaded bubble algae and I get a "five o'clock shadow" of green algae on the display glass after a week or so but that is down from "heavy growth" every couple days, a year ago. After fourteen years in this hobby, its too simple to believe it works, but but it does and I am a believer."
Vanpytt on the scrubber site: "I've read all the Norwegian and Swedish forums about this [scrubber] subject, and none have posted results and pictures before me. I can conclude that this was a great success. My water values are perfect, more or less, im not running skimmer, don't change water, and feed alot. I'm going to be upgrading my current 130l into a 1k liter system (300l of wich is a sump) with 6*39w t5ho and acrylic diy box and fixtures. I'm not going to run anything except getting an UV filter for killing paracites and the well sized scrubber as standalone filtration in the sump. Will be posting pictures once the building starts."
Wak on the scrubber site: "Well i have a ten gallon nano reef. The nitrates in this tank were always around 20ppm, the filtering was a skimmer + small cannister filter and 10 pounds of live rock in the tank. Four weeks ago i found this info and decided to build a scrubber, I went for a one sided 30 degree sloping design the screen is 10 inch long by 2 inches wide and lit by 2 8watt linear t5 3500k tubes, flow about 200 litres per hour. Two weeks ago i took out the skimmer, Today my nitrates in the tank hit 0 for the first time ever thanks to this info"
Fholguera on the scrubber site: "I'm very happy with the results, my corals look very happy and the algea in my rocks is disappearing, the glass last longer without cleaning and the sand looks whitier. The kind of algea that grows in my scrubber it's starting to change, first it was a lot of filamentus and brown algea and now it's almost all filamentus and a little bit of ciano I think."
Bridgeport on the scrubber site: "Since I started this 55gal. close to two years ago, I had nothing but trouble from the start. Most of it was due to my lack of experience. The last time I had saltwater tanks was back in the 70's and as you know a lot has changed since then. Was plagued with green hair algae. After that cleared, then the red hair algae started, and lots of it. I started a scrubber about a year ago but didn't have it really going properly until about 5 months ago. Since then i am getting lots of growth. Most of the red hair algae [in the dispay] has disappeared. Just disconnected my hang on refugium about 2 weeks ago. The Cheato was dead and fouling the water. I did take the rocks out several months ago and cleaned them. Its a lot of work but it really helped to clean up the tank. My Algae Scrubber has gotten the Nitrates to 0 and the Phosphates to 0 and has disintegrated most of the red hair algae [in the display]."
Ihfarmboy75 on the scrubber site: "Ok, I'm sold. I have this scrubber on my 125 gallon African Cichlid tank and when I set it up on march 12th, my nitrate levels were 120 ppm. I was doing weekly 25-35% water changes and still couldn't get them under control. In a little over two months my nitrate levels have dropped to 5ppm and I would imagine they'll be zero in a few weeks."
Here is the longest I've let it grow... two weeks. The screen was full and touching the acrylic walls at 7 days, so it had another 7 days to fill upwards:
Well I thought it couldn't grow any more in two weeks, but this time it reached the top of the window and was getting ready to spill out the end. My other scrubber was not very grown yet, so I did not want to clean this one today, but I thought I better before it spills. Tests today were N02=0, NO3=2, P=.015? (very faint blue). Feeding is one silverside per week to the eel, 4.8 ml/day continuous feeding of Oysterfeast for the corals (very low amount, currently), and misc nori/daphnia for the fish. Pics:
Finally getting the 25 nano scrubber to have consistant results. Am testing one side of it here, on a FW 10 gal with some tetras, catfish, suckerfish, and a discus. 0, 0, 0, when feeding one frozen cube blood worms a day. No water changes, and top off with tap water (no chlorine remover added)...
Many people who have not built a scrubber properly (after August 1988) often say how the Great Barrier Reef aquarium was a scrubber "failure" because the corals did poorly. Apparently these people have not done much reading. In the early days of that aquarium, the scrubber was doing it's job great:
"The Reef Tank represents the first application of algal scrubber technology to large volume aquarium systems. Aquaria using conventional water purification methods (e.g. bacterial filters) generally have nutrient levels in parts per million, while algal scrubbers have maintained parts per billion concentrations [much lower], despite heavy biological loading in the Reef Tank. The success of the algal scrubbers in maintaining suitable water quality for a coral reef was demonstrated in the observed spawning of scleractinian corals and many other tank inhabitants."
But did you know that they did not add calcium? That's right, in 1988 they did not know that calcium needed to be added to a reef tank. Even five years after that, the Pittsburgh Zoo was just starting to test a "mesocosm" scrubber reef tank to see if calcium levels would drop:
"It was hypothesized that Ca2+ and the substitutive elements Sr2+ and Mg2+ might [!] have reduced concentrations in a coral reef microcosm due to continuous reuse of the same seawater as a consequence of the recycling process inherent in the coral reef mesocosm."
"The scleractinians (Montastrea, Madracis, Porites, Diploria, and Acropora) and calcareous alga (Halimeda and others) present in the coral reef mesocosm are the most likely organisms responsible for the significant reduction in concentration of the Ca2+ and Sr2+ cations."
"Ca is not normally a biolimiting element, and strontium is never a biolimiting element; HCO3 [alk] can be. It appears that, because of a minor [!] limitation in the design parameters of the mesocosm, these elements and compounds may have become limiting factors. [...] It is surprising that the organisms could deplete the thousands of gallons of seawater (three to six thousand) of these elements even within two or more years [!!].
"The calcification processes are little understood."
So then in the late 90's, the Barrier Reef aquarium start using up it's supply of calcium, and the folks there said "the corals grew poorly". Really. No calcium, and the corals grew poorly. So they "removed the scrubbers" and "experimented with the addition of calcium" sometime after 1998. Then in 2004 it "definitely improved a lot". Really.
Here is something new, different, and untested. I have not built one yet, but it should work for either SW or FW if the size and flow are correct. It is a vertical scrubber that you hang on the wall, and it requires NO electricity. It is a "low-light" scrubber:
I got the idea when reading a study about algae growth in freshwater streams:
"Algae inhabiting forested streams have the capacity to acclimate to low light intensity. These light conditions affect their photosynthetic efficiency, but do not impair growth rates, in particular, in the case of thin diatom-dominated communities."
In other words, they don't filter as much per square inch (or per square cm) of area, but they do operate on very low light. Apparently it is mostly diatoms that grow in these low-light conditions.
The advantage of a scrubber like this should be obvious: It requires no electricity to power the screen. It still requires a pump, however, since the top of the scrubber would (probably) be high above the top of the tank. The scrubber is designed to operate on the light already available in the room, which would vary greatly depending on how strong the light bulbs are in the room, and how much sunlight comes in through the windows. The more average light the room has, the smaller the scrubber can be. The less light, the bigger it needs to be. Basically, the scrubber uses more area to make up for less light. And since the light is so low, the type of algae that is able to survive is (apparently) mostly diatoms.
Just as with regular scrubbers, the wider the unit it, the more flow is required. So in the spirit of keeping it from consuming too much electricty, a smaller pump could be used if the unit were narrow and tall. But the bottom of the unit will need to drain into either the tank or the sump, so there will be a limit to how low the bottom can be. And the limit to the top will be the ceiling. A tradeoff will need to be made, maybe so that it looks like a vertical picture on the wall. Fortunately the flow does not need to be as much as a regular scrubber, since it is one-sided only.
It will have to be experimented with to see if a clear cover is needed to stop any water dropletts from splashing out. Many people have decorative waterfalls of the same size as these, and they have no cover on them, so maybe water dropletts getting on the floor will not happen. Evaporation would be high though, and this might be reason enough to consider a clear cover.
Cleaning could (apparently) be done by having a removeable screen or porous sheet, just like a regular scrubber has. It would be big though, and would drip as you took it out. Also it probably would not fit into a sink, and so would need a bathtub or shower (or outside) for cleaning. A possible fix for this might be a very flexibe woven plastic mesh, which you could fold up like a towell and easily clean in a sink. A material like this might not lay down flat when it's in the scrubber, however.
This type of scrubber would be easiest to try for somebody with a cement floor, lots of wall space, open widows or skylights, a low sump, high ceilings, and a big sink or patio for cleaning. I have no idea of the size required for the unit.
Each cube of frozen food you feed per day needs 12 square inches of screen, with a light on both sides totalling 12 watts. Thus a nano that is fed one cube a day would need a screen 3 X 4 inches with a 6 watt bulb on each side. A larger tank that is fed 10 cubes a day would need a screen 10 X 12 inches with 60 watts of light on each side.
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