turf scrubber, not working (at least nothing growing in 8 weeks)

[KevinK]

below you se some pictures of my turf scrubber I mad

i followed this as guide:
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/...er-basics.html
thy have bin researching how many 3W LEDs you need to use. The general consensus at this point seems to be that you need one 3W LED on each side for every 15-20 square inches of screen. Going with the new feeding-based sizing guidelines, it seems that a simple technique would be to use one 3W LED on each side for every 12 square inches. So a 2-cube/day Algae Scrubber would need 4 3W LEDs, two on each side.


my screen is 3 x 16 inches, and should be for about 3 cubes of food a day

now I know my tank is fairly new (9 or 11 weeks running now) and i don't have much fish (only one Y-tang, 3 cardinals and 3 other little once) but I build it to the 3 cubes, because the amount of fish will change in the future. I do have to mention that all live rock, came out of my frag tank, and when filling the tank, from the 300 gallon, 200 was existing qwater out of the frag tank and sump, this to minimise the NTS

I use 4 red cree LED’s on each side, and thy are about 1 inch from the mesh, running them 18 H a day during the early evening to the early morning.

I used a blowe outlet to spray a nice shower of water onto my mesh, with a maxijet 1200

not my tank I may call has a fair amount of hair algae, first thy where the red once, but now for the last 4 weeks are brown


now what I wonder is, how come there is nothing growing on my mesh

do I maybe have it lit to much, or are the LED’s to strong

interestingly, as you se on the mesh, you se 2 lighter spots, these spots aer dead on , underneath the led’s

any input ?

[Jaws]

Is it just me or is the water falling on the opposite side of the screen that the LEDs are shining on?

Sent from my Lumia 800 using Board Express

[Nano]

Did you rough up the mesh? I hear that's the way to go. I also heard it takes a few weeks to get them going

[KevinK]

regarding the spray bar, that is what I thought as well, but when I remove the LED's on the other side, I can clearly se the water hitting the mesh, and go down, not threw the mesh.

I also did made the mesh call it fluffy by going over it with the beld sander and a scraping belt on it (one that has particles as big as 2 mm) this is however one of the points I keep wondering, if I did it enough, it did seem fluffy and riped appart when I rinsed all the plastick dust off

next week it is running for 8 weeks,

I have in mind to wayt to week 12 to 14, before changing some things on it, unless somone finds something important that is off, than I will correct it derectly

[Jaws]

I'd recommend having the water fall directly down over the mesh. Flow's pretty important for both sides of the screen so the algae can attach and grow. And a sander might not be the best tool for roughing up the screen either. Lots of deep and wiry cuts will help the algae flourish as well. I cleaned my screen once a week for the first couple months too to promote growth.

[Money pit]

There's a couple things you can do to fix it
First you need your reds to be in the 660nm range, Cree are in the 630 range I believe
Second, its hard to tell,but I think Jaws is right about the screen needing to be roughed up some more. The holes in the pic still look square, they should be almost filled in with the little pieces.
Also I didn't see if you mentioned flow, but its 35gph per inch of screen across the top.
I just took another look, and realized your screen is narrow across the top, and long up and down. Typically they are long across the top and shorter or the same size up and down. I don't know why, but I seem to remember back when I was reading up on these before I built one, that this was important. Sorry for being vague one this point, but I can't remember the details.

660nm led
http://shop.stevesleds.com/Philips-L...S-Deep-Red.htm
http://www.ledgroupbuy.com/deep-red-660nm/