SantaMonica

Yes those are good.

Move the lights away to about 4 inches. Make sure the lights are CFL, not incandescent. They should have a spiral. No. CFL or T5HO only.

Yes but there seems to be a problem. You should have changed out that screen for some plastic canvas, roughed up with a hole saw, not sandpaper. What bulbs do you have?

Jameshong, just remember that no DIY LED scrubber has ever worked (they are too hard to DIY), so yours is just for experimenting, not results. I can say now that your setup will almost certainly not filter your tank, so be sure that you are not depending on it. But I do hope it works, so can you post a link to the LED so I can see the specifications? Also, can you post a pic/video of the flow? And what is the screen material? ambystoma82: It's not so simple as more/less. And it's hard to explain. If you want details, read the FAQ here: http://www.algaescrubber.net/forums/viewto...hp?f=9&t=68 Otherwise, just follow the recommendations and it should work fine. Underwater make sure those bulbs are flourescent (CFL) and not incandescent.

yooyoo99 make sure you are cleaning every 7 days reeffish great to hear!

Clean every 7 days no matter what.

No surprise with the LED. Unfortunately, halogens are also not going to work (wrong K). Plus, those are too little, equivalent to about 5 watts of CFL. Save the trouble, and get two 23W CFL 3000K floodlights.

More important is roughness. But for size, the wider the better, since this allows more flow.

New Year Update: Screen Roughness It's becoming more and more clear how important a rough screen is. A year ago it was thought that lighting was most important, but only because you could see new growth easily from stronger light. The effects of a smooth screen are not nearly as obvious, because you start losing small pieces of algae off the screen bit-by-bit, but they are covered up by the other algae. So here is an example of how fast a brand-new screen can grow; it is just 4 days old, but it is two layers of cactus-rough plastic canvas: Which gives us a new goal:

Yes This is common. A horizontal is self-limiting, because if the algae tries to get thicker, it blocks the flow (water can't jump over it). But in a vertical, algae flows right over it. If a scrubber is smaller than recommended, it will fill up in just two or three days. And since nobody will clean it in two or three days, the bottom layers start dying. That is where the current size recommendation came from... it give you 7 days between cleanings. Is fine. No mandarin will starve in a scrubber-only tank. My friend has a 10g nano, with tiny scrubber-only, and about 10 pounds LR, is keeping a medium size mandarin with no direct feeding. You can't see the pods in the screen, but when they go into the water they look like white dust. But any mechanical filter, especially a skimmer, will remove the mandarin's food. Wow that is a genius solution. I'll recommend it to everyone. Green always follows brown. These things will make it happen faster: Rougher screen, higher flow, stronger light, cleaning more often. If after one month you get no green, let me know.

Angled screens don't get any flow on the back side, and thus are one-sided. So you need twice the area. So the 10 X 10 = 100 would be good for 50 gal tank. And you need to put a solid backing behind the plastic canvas, to keep water from falling through it. The bulb and flow should be good.

If you feed coral food, like blended oysters (which is just a green liquid), the water is cloudy with food for only a few minutes. If you feed a gigantic amount that makes the water so cloudy that you can't see your corals, it clears up in an hour. This is with no filters at all in the tank, only a scrubber. The corals are the only thing removing the food from the water. No, because no place in the tank has the rapid flow that a scrubber has over it's screen. That's what algae loves: Strong light, and rapid flow. That is why vertical scrubbers, with a waterfall, work best. If you clean your scrubber screen every 7 days, it will not "over fill". This way it will always be growing, and will be out-growing any algae in the display. Yes if you let the scrubber sit there for a month and never clean it, it would stop filtering and algae would return to the display. There are two cases where a skimmer is a necessity: 1. In case somebody will put a whole can or bag of food into the tank by accident, such as a retail store where open food containers might be setting next to open tanks. If this happens, the skimmer is the only tool which will help. 2. You have a fish-only tank (no corals at all). In this case, you have absolutely no need for small food particles in the water, because nothing will eat the particles and they will just rot into Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate. So, a skimmer is needed here to remove the food particles. If you wait more than 10 days, and it is growing good, some pieces of algae might let go and go in the tank. If a fish does not eat it, it will rot. But the scrubber will still be filtering. If you wait more that 14 days, the bottom layers of algae on the screen will die because of no light or flow, and these layers will let go and go back into the water, adding Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate, and cloudiness. But it is still filtering. If you wait more than 21 days, all the above will happen, but you will lose all filtering, so it this case the scrubber starts being a problem instead of a help.

Ok, let's rebuild. Your current setup will not do anything. Replace that mesh with plastic canvas from a crafts or sewing store. Rough it up. No solid backing is needed. Reduce the size down to about 5 wide X 10 tall = 50 square inches, which is 2X your gal. 2X is needed because it is only lit up on one side. Then, put a 23W CFL 3000K floodlight on it, with a clip-on socket, and point it to the middle of the screen. 5" wide will need about 175 gal/hr, which is not that much, and won't make many bubble. Try this first, and then see how many bubbles there are. They can easily be removed.

Liters... what is that material... looks like steel. Take another pic with your finger on the screen. And a pic of the flow, and of the light. James... 10 X 10 = 100 square inches = 100 gal tank, if the screen is lit on both sides. If lit on one side, is good for 50 gal. 2 layers of rough plastic canvas is best, but needs a bit more flow than one.

You can't feed corals too much. A 100g coral tank can eat 1 pound of food every day. The limitation is not the protein (food), it's the removal of the Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate, which is what your test kits measure. If you are getting problems from feeding too much, then just.......... feed less. No, a scrubber does not remove any food (protein) at all. All the food (protein) is left in the water for corals and small fish to eat. If there is so much food that big pieces fall to the bottom of the display and rot for days, then this is a different problem (feed less; get clean up crew; get flow across the bottom). If you still cannot stop the food pieces from rotting on the bottom, then...... feed less. No, this is not how it works at all. You do not "feed" a scrubber. A scrubber does not want ANY of the food you put in the tank. It doesn't touch ANY of it. It lets ALL the food go to the corals and fish. If the food is small particles that look like dust, the corals will eat it all within an hour. But if it's big pieces that fall to the bottom and sit there and rot for days, then you are feeding too much, and the pieces are too big. If you are getting too much algae on your screen for you to deal with, then..... feed less. No no no... A scrubber will always over-power the lighting in the display. The whole purpose of a scrubber is to put lights VERY NEAR the algae screen, so that the algae on the screen gets MUCH more light than anything in the display. This way, if algae is going to grow anywere, it grows in the scrubber FIRST, so you can remove it, BEFORE it starts growing in the display. No no no... not true at all. Not even similar, and it never ever happens that way. Sponges grow slow, and require more food particles that almost any coral. If you have sponges growing, then your corals will have grown MUCH MUCH more first. It's always the corals that over-grow the sponges, which is why some people create cryptic sumps to grow sponges, so that no corals can cover them. Most people have never grown sponges before, because their skimmers remove all the food particles in the water that sponges need. Again, not true at all. Not even a litte. You cannot "feed" algae by putting food in the tank. If you really want to "feed" algae, you would have to feed Potassium Nitrate, or Potassium Phosphate, or even just pure ammonia. All would probably kill the corals and fish, but yes, you would be feeding the algae. Algae's favorite food is AMMONIA. I don't think you are feeding ammonia to your tank. Completely incorrect. First, if a large fish dies, it creates ammonia, which a scrubber will remove, but a skimmer WILL NOT. Second, WHY would you be feeding your tank too much, if you KNOW you are doing it? Tanks with scrubbers do NOT crash because of "not removing food". Matter of fact, IF you did feed a scrubber tank "too much", the scrubber would grow more, to remove the Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate, which is what causes a tank to "crash". A skimmer, however, does NOT remove Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate (or ammonia, or metals), and thus lets these things BUILD UP in the tank, thus allowing it to crash. Scrubber tanks do not crash from nutrients, because there in NO BUILD UP of Inorganic Nitrate or Inorganic Phosphate or copper, like there is with skimmer tanks. The tanks that crash are SKIMMER tanks, not SCRUBBER tanks. If someone wants to use a skimmer to remove food, then they should be allowed to do it. But they at least need to be told what skimmers and scrubbers actually do, in order to make the correct decisions.

First, skimmers do not remove much DOC; see research below. Second, what do you think DOC is? It's food. Why do you want to remove food? What do you think is feeding all the tubeworms? And tubeworms are just the obvious results; what you are not noticing is how much more your corals will grow with all that food. Some corals (like NPS) will not grow at all without that food. So not only do scrubbers not remove DOC, they actually add a bit of DOC, which is what you want if you are trying to grow corals. Actually, scrubbers provide more oxygen, because (1) more surface area of the water is contacting the air, and (2) photosynthesis of the algae adds oxygen directly. Most scrubber tanks are super-saturated with oxygen; most skimmer-only tanks are not. The only thing skimmers remove a lot of is particles of food. Skimmers do not remove much DOC (see research below). If you think that "cleaner" is less food, then stop feeding your tank. It will be super "clean". If you want warmer water, great. If not, just put a fan on the scrubber, and the tank will cool down. Or use the overflow to feed the scrubber, so your pump is not in the water. The light should not heat the water. Skimmer DOC research, from 2009: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2009/1/aafeature2 "In addition to some dissolved organics, small particulates and microbes (bacterioplankton, phytoplankton) can be removed at the air/water interface of the [skimmer] bubble as well (Suzuki, 2008). The skimming process does not remove atoms/molecules that are strictly polar and readily dissolve in water, such as some organics, salts, inorganic phosphate, carbonate, etc. "The skimmer pulls out all of the TOC that it is going to remove by the 50-minute mark. Beyond that time point, nothing much is happening and the TOC level doesn't change much. "Thus, all skimmers tested remove around 20 - 30% of the TOC in the aquarium water, and that's it; 70 - 80% of the measurable TOC is left behind unperturbed by the skimming process. It may be possible to develop a rationalization for this unexpected behavior by referring back to Fig. 1. Perhaps only 20 - 30% of the organic species in the aquarium water meet the hydrophobic requirements for bubble capture, whereas the remaining 70-80%, for whatever reason, don't." And here are some interesting 2008 technical points: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2008/8/aafeature3 http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2008/9/aafeature2 "Greater than 97% of the organic matter in the oceans is in the form of DOC" "The majority of the DOC in the oceans is consumed over a time span on the order of hours-to-weeks." "The generally accepted value of deep ocean TOC (DOC in this instance) ranges from 0.45 - 0.60 ppm, a number that appears to be insensitive to collection location. On reefs, however, the DOC (and TOC) value is considerably higher. Even with this point noted, the values of DOC on reefs from the South Pacific to Japan to the Caribbean to the Red Sea are remarkably consistent in their range: 0.7 - 1.6 ppm" "Bacteria are a critical component in the food web of the reef, as they occupy the role of 'middle man' in the transfer of energy from the source (sunlight) to the consumers on the reef" "sponges are some of the most prolific repositories of marine bacteria. In fact, some sponges have been studied as effective bioremediation agents in marine aquaculture as a consequence of their exceptional ability to absorb TOC" "Where does the DOC go ... studies suggest that it is rapidly consumed by bacteria that live in and on the coral itself and not by bacteria present in the water column. Shutting down these endogenous bacteria by antibiotic treatment abolished DOC uptake." "In total, these data unequivocally demonstrate that the [skimmer] is not required to deplete the aquarium water of TOC. Apparently, naturally biological processes are sufficient in and of themselves to return the post-feeding TOC levels to their pre-feeding values after about 4 hrs or so ... Clearly the skimmer is doing something, given the copious residue accumulated in the collection cup at the end of the week. Perhaps, however, the residue removed by the skimmer is only a rather small, even inconsequential, portion of the entire TOC load that develops in the aquarium water over the course of a week."

Display lighting does not affect the scrubber. Here is a before and after: http://www.algaescrubber.net/forums/viewto...p?f=7&t=431

Yes but keep in mind that these things are called "food", and they would have fed the corals had they not been removed. Another way of removing food, is to feed less. Yes, same as running a scrubber along with feeding less. Except that feeding less costs less in food, and less in skimmer. Correct, they cannot replace each other any more than a can-opener can replace a submarine. The only similarity between a can-opener and a submarine is that they both touch liquids. A scrubber removes Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate (mainly), and these are the things that cause nuisance algae to grow. A skimmer removes food ("protein", i.e., food). I still think, however, it's cheaper to spend less money on food, then to spend more money on food, and then still more money on a skimmer to remove the food. [Exception: A large fish-only tank that does not need or care about small food particles floating in the water.]

No it's easy. For now just cut the screen in half from top to bottom, and then use tape to go around and around the rest of the pipe to seal it. Or just use some reef epoxy to seal it. Later, you can just make a new shorter pipe.

All the answers are in the faq. That's why I wrote it.

Eniram: Pull the light back to about 4", or you will burn the middle. Your screen should be fine. Cat: See the FAQ for these answers: http://www.algaescrubber.net/forums/viewto...hp?f=9&t=68

91liters: Your screen is too big for your light. The light needs to be within 4 inches of all parts of the screen. Reduce the size of the screen to about 10 X 10. Or better, get more lights. Also, rough up the screen.

The only additives you need for a reef are CA, Alk, MG, and maybe Strontium. Everything else is supplied in the food you feed. What they probably mean is that since they are not doing waterchanges, they are not removing these things, so they have to add less. But scrubbers do not supply CA, Alk and MG, so you still need to watch/add these.

Update: Cleaning algae off of the rocks. If you are running a scrubber to help remove algae from the display, try first running the scrubber without manually removing algae off of the rocks. This is because when you scrub algae off of the rocks (or if you put a lawnmower or similar in) while the rocks are still in the tank, the algae will float around and die, causing a nutrient spike. It's better to let the scrubber slowly remove the algae for you. This will prevent spikes, and is less work too. However, if there are LOTS of algae in the display (so much so that the phosphate and nitrate tests are zero), then your scrubber may not easily compete, even after many weeks. So if after four weeks you don't notice a reduction in algae in the display, then slowly start removing algae manually from the display (or, add a small algae eater). Don't remove TOO much algae at once (or don't get TOO big of an algae eater) because that will generate a spike too. Once the algae in the display has been reduced some, your scrubber should be able to take over from there, and all the rest of the nuisance algae should slowly go away. Note: This does not apply if you remove the rocks from the system before cleaning. Removing rocks can be done at any time, but is much more work.

Flow is constant whether it is low or high. Higher flow filters better, as long as the algae does not let go of the screen. here is the ideal: