Would you/Do you use an Algae Turf Scrubber?

[cvermeulen]

Thanks for chiming in Doug. any and all discussion is welcome and of interest here of course. What my ulterior motive is though is seeking out the market for relatively inexpensive professionally built units. Reef equipment as a rule seems to be mroe expensive than necessary, so if I can be the guy to make the stuff, I can probably make it at a reasonable cost, particularly if I make a lot of them.

I was looking at HD today, at small fluorescent light fixtures, and a ~2000 lumen unit that's about 18x10x6" could be built for about $100 in materials (sans pump). This would be enough to effectively filter a 200gallon reef tank almost by itself. Miniaturizing to the nano folks would be hard, but it's a challenge I want to try if someone wants to give me a list of their requirements.

[Doug]

186scrubber_screen.jpg

scrubber.jpg

The screen in my was fairly stiff. About 240 sq. in. Lit with two 65w power compacts @ 67k. The pic of the scrubber was when it was new. Its the 250 larger model once sold by IA.

Was designed to be a nice looking fixture, to set on your sumpless aquarium, something like a 120 and up, behind something like a Hamilton or PFO duel halide fixture hood. Thus the high price.

I suppose any screen growing algae would work fine. The dump feature of one like mine, provided the tank with a surge but more so the algae with back & forth motion and oxygen when exposed, which is suppose to make the turf a more efficient filter than submersed algaes.

It worked well when I used it, with no measurable phosphate, nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, etc. I never used a phosphate removed until recently.

HOWEVER, I did run a good skimmer with it and despite whats being said on the net, never found that the scrubber could handle that size tank alone with no skimmer. I suppose in many situations with certain types of tanks it would do fine.

And again, despite whats being said, we scrapped our algae from the screen into a sink. I would say the skimmer helped with preventing water discoloration, so as much carbon was not required.

I wish I lived where I could again run a large tank and set it up as a scrubber only aquarium which would maintain species that flourish in that environment.

[argan]

I'm going to try to build one tonight. seems worth the effort now that i've seen Santamonica's designs. Also I'm going to use a SQWD to modulate the flow