What about just dropping the screen in the litted sump?

Having said that i wonder what would be the best screen material and how often i will need to clean it?
thx

I was just looking some more into this today in terms of designing a high capacity, low profile scrubber. It looks like it would be fairly easy to build a 4" thick, 13" tall, 15" long scrubber that would efficiently dentirify a 150gallon system. Using fluorescent lights, one could do it for around $200 in materials. Using LEDs, it would be more like $300-350 in materials, but it would last longer and use less power.

I still need to spend a bit more time on the nano concept... the nice thing about the larger ones is that you can use off the shelf parts. Miniaturizing requires a lot more custom work. If there's enough market for a mini (10-30gal capable) scrubber though, it might justify doing the setup to build them.

Thoughts?

I thought of building something low profile but wide, and bought the acrylic to build the box, but it was pretty hard to break a clean sheet that wide, with 1/4 acrylic. I'm now considering running a common HOB filter, with a bulkhead in the bottom to drain to a sump/bucket. The problem is then getting the water back up, what if the pump is more powerful than what is draining, can I restrict it's flow without issues? I'm just worried about keeping the draining and the pumping back to the tank even. Don't want any spills!

Jeff

Well, I grabbed a die grinder at work today and it cuts the acrylic efficiently. Will give this box a go and see how things work out. I have limited space above my tank already, not sure what I'm going to do about lighting. I have a 24" T5 HO I could use, but it will be longer than the 18" box I'm building.