Algae scrubber

[Money pit]

Ok so having been out of the hobby for a few years, there's quite a bit that I've forgotten. I decided to spend a good part of the long weekend refreshing my memory, and learning whats new in the last few years. I checked over at Marine Depot to catch up on both Calfo and Bornemans forums. Sad to see they are both closed now, but at least they are still available to read. Anyone know if these guys are still active somewhere on the internet ?
While I was there I came across this huge 95 page thread on algae scrubbers.

http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic89570-4-1.aspx

Some very interesting stuff. Apparently this is thread #2. #1 was started on RC.
The real reason for this post was to see if anyone here has given one of these a try, and if so how it worked out for them. Seems very basic and simple.

[tinman]

I have heard about these............very interesting!

[bryceschutte]

There was just a thread started on this topic a few days ago.

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=74796

[Money pit]

There was just a thread started on this topic a few days ago.

http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=74796


Strange, I did a search here for algae scrubber the other day, but nothing came up. Must have miss spelled it.

[cathyg_99]

ya that was me who stared it... i would love to try it out but i just dont have the room at the moment and dont want to pull all my sump apart to get a light in there... if anyone on canreef has it let me know if it helped thanks

[granitereef]

I plan on building one in the next couple of weeks.
I will keep you posted

[Bill]

I tried this last year. Phosphates went from 1-2ppm to zero and nitrates went from 20ppm down to 5-10ppm. This took about 3-4months.

It works, but needed lots of carbon to keep water from turning green and cloudy. Needed weekly cleaning and algae falls off the screen when it gets too thick. Can try double screen to help it attach better. I used a plastic screen from Walmart $1.60 ea and 2-23W coil CFL soft white for $6 for pack of 2 from Save on Foods.

Lots more info on algaescrubber dot net

[GMGQ]

Since you are getting back into the hobby, you may also want to look at Biopellets as well for reducing Nitrates and Phosphates. Much easier to setup than an algae scrubber, with pretty much zero maintenance for months at a time.

I started running them since January 2011 (when I had a tank overtaken by hair algae), and I have 0 Nitrates and 0 Phosphates at this point. I have not had to replenish the biopellets yet in these 4 months.

[imcosmokramer]

has anyone here used one long-term?

[Money pit]

Bill, apparently at least from what I've read, as long as you remove the screen from the tank when you clean it, and clean every 7 days, the tank wont get green. Were you doing this and still getting green water? Mind you with a mixed reef, I'd be running carbon anyways.

GMGQ, yes I've looked at bioballs, at the moment I'm using prodibio, its working OK with 15% water changes. About as well as my old tank with 50% water changes as far as keeping NO3 down. If I got my calculator out I believe 50% water changes were cheaper. Being a more natural remedy along with the low cost is what catches my interest in the algae scrubbers. Provided of course they work.
My NO3 test kit kind of sucks, since the color of the dye is purple and the color chart is pink its difficult to tell what the reading is, but judging by the density of the color it looks like under 5 ppm NO3 using prodibio, so its working, but at $60 every 3 weeks it seems a bit expensive. My tank is a 40g with 30g sump, so I need to use as much as a 250g tank. If I went with Bio balls, I would have to by a reactor, as the only one I have now is running carbon. Or do the bio balls also polish the water?

[GMGQ]

No "bioballs," Bio-pellets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjnFvIzGzxE



GMGQ, yes I've looked at bioballs, at the moment I'm using prodibio, its working OK with 15% water changes. About as well as my old tank with 50% water changes as far as keeping NO3 down. If I got my calculator out I believe 50% water changes were cheaper. Being a more natural remedy along with the low cost is what catches my interest in the algae scrubbers. Provided of course they work.

[Bill]

Money pit, yes I removed the screen when cleaning and still got the green cloudy water. It was a great experiment but I agree with GMGO, I started a sulfur denitrator and now have zero P&N. I heard good things about using BioPellets also. They both work by providing a food source and a surface area for the denitrifying bacteria that remove phosphate and nitrate.

[Money pit]

No "bioballs," Bio-pellets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjnFvIzGzxE

OOPS ya thats what I meant sorry, what I was thinking and writing were 2 different things

[Money pit]

Bill what made you shut down your scrubber? Was it the green water, or because you couldn't get NO3 below5-10 ppm? Or was it just too much work?
Also did you see a large pod increase while it was in use?

[plutoniumJoe]

I ran ats for about 8 months last year on my 75gallon. I liked and it kept my nutrients down even with heavy feeding and heavy bio-load. When I switched to my 200g I always intended to include another ats but the real estate below ended up getting too crowded (poor planning).

I never had green or yellow water, always scrapped 50% a week. It also helped keep my tank cooler in the summer.

[Doug]

Scrubber technology has been around awhile. I will try find some more of my threads. I once posted several links to some great ones on RC. Of course thats old school and we did it all wrong, according to a certain person . :lol: :lol: .

http://96.31.86.198/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=7739

[Bblinks]

Hey guys. Jeff from Jl Aquatics made one for his 29 gallon biocube. He showed me some pictures and it does look very interesting. The way he did it looked super clean, he used a 5 gallon tank with 2 x 9w coralife mini fixture on either side of the tank. Mesh screen with a 1 inch PVC running across the top. He said it was extremely effective against diatom algae and his fish seems to be a lot happier. If anyone have any questions, he will be the guy to ask. IMO if you are running a smaller system then it might be worth your time to look into it but for larger systems like mine 200-500 gallon tank, I don't think it's worth the realestate and effort to set up some thing significant. I run biopellets on my system, although I still run rowaphos to zero out the left over phosphate I still think it is the easiest system to run on a large reef tank that has problems with phosphate or nitrate, Just my 2 pennies.

[viperfish]

I had one set up on my 110 a while back. It works well but you have to be dilligent about cleaning it or it will grow out of control in a hurry. The two major advantages of the algae scrubber is 1) it's natural, and 2) there's nothing better for growing pods which is great for people who keep Mandarins. I went with Boipellets after a while because I wanted zero maintenance, and I changed my sump so I just don't have the space for a scrubber any more.

[Bill]

Money Pit, I shut down the scrubber because:

1. Maintenance and cloudy / green water.
2. Amount of carbon I had to use to keep water clear. If I used ozone the nitrates would climb.
3. Every time I cleaned the screen, the whole house smelled like cucumbers.
4. Nitrates would not stay down.
5. Takes up some real estate. Need at least 1 sq inch of screen per gallon (both sides lit). I would recommend even more.

On the positive side,

1. Visible decrease in nuisance algae in the tank – I didn’t have to clean glass for 2-3 weeks.
2. Millions of pods everywhere - would be able to keep mandarin fish easy.
3. Zero phosphates and lower nitrates (but not zero)
4. Keeps tank cooler in summer, but more evaporation.
5. Cool to see all the different types of algae growing on the screen. I had red and green turf algae, hair algae, and some kind of fluorescent green feather stuff.

However, I switched to sulfur denitrator because no maintenance, brings nitrate and phosphate to zero, no smell once adjusted properly, can use ozone and less carbon and nitrates remain at zero, crystal clear water, less power consumption, small footprint.