Algae Scrubber Basics

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I appreciate your perspective, I can add some info to clarify why I do things the way I do, which might help
A wire brush is not effective to rough up a surface
You're right. Bare plastic canvas is very smooth, even under a microscope. Early on (10 years ago) many people tried to just use unroughed canvas and algae grew, but it didn't stay attached very well when growth got thick and heavy. Roughin up with a hole saw helped tremendously. But, it takes a lot of effort and time.

Using a wire brush as a first stage does several things: it takes off the smooth surface which A) makes roughing up with the saw blade much less laborious and B) gets the inside of the holes rough also, which does help algae stay attached inside the holes (where the saw blade can't rough up). Mainly though, it's A

Construction type concrete products need minimum 30 days dry cure time
Second issue with mortar is there are many Chemiclean that are leeching during this time

I understand that. Also remember that people use mortar to make DIY rock, they've been doing that for a very long time, and with success. They do soak the rock for about a month after making it.

In my process (which was not really spawned by me, but by @Paul B who did it to one of his screens using the same DIY rock philosophy) I spread the mortar on, then tap it off so that only a very thin layer stays on the screen. I sandwich this inbetween wax paper and damp paper towels for 3 days, spritzing with water daily. This is so that it doesn't dry out, but cures enough to stay attached and still be pliable.

Then I hang the screen in a utility sink filled with water and an agitation pump for 3-5 more days, changing the water a couple times. This is vastly different from mortar in construction, so while I see your concern, I do not share it.


The reason for the hand blading is to get the deeper cuts for the mortar to stick.. this isn’t needed.

The roughing up is what has always been done to allow algae to stay attached (i.e. so that it will not detach under weight, in a waterfall scrubber). Because the mortar is sacrificial and comes off when you harvest the algae, the screen still needs to be rough so that algae will attach after the mortar is gone. The mortar allows short-term fast adhesion, as it goes away you get long-term adhesion to the screen.

I would power sand with 40 or 60 grit and be done.

You can do this as well. My personal opinion is that roughing up with a saw blade is better as it provides just a bit more surface area for algae to anchor to. Again, it's not about attaching, it's about staying attached when that algae mat is thick and heavy.

I might do a few things that seem unnecessary up front, but that doesn't mean there is no logical reason for my process. I'm not taking your comments negatively so don't get me wrong. I'm also not trying to argue with you about why you might be right or wrong, etc - just filling in the blanks. I've been building scrubbers for nearly 10 years and helping DIYers troubleshoot during that time as well so I do what I do and make recommendations based on what I've seen working across a broad spectrum of examples. But a fresh perspective never hurts!

All that being said, making screens that maximize all adhesion are a pain in the butt. That's why I'm working on a better way...I've been trying to come up with one for a long time
 

CO2doser

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I found one simple way to replace the rough plastic canvas by using Velcro.

Velcro has velour and crochet sheets. Just use the crochet side that GHA could attached firmly.

Picture of GHA grown on crochet sheet.

P_20160501_101434_1.jpg
 

Darth.Daddy12

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Only problem I see with what your doing with the substrate on the screen and such, How on earth will you clean that? Cleaning the screen is what you do to remove the nutrients your growing, otherwise an ATS is just a favorable place to grow algae besides your DT.

Roughing up the screen is so the algae can attach, has nothing to do with attaching mortar(I started running an ATS long before anyone thought of attaching mortar to the screen). And no I have never seen algae attach to glass, film algae, yes, but GHA, heck no. It needs a porous surface to attach to, and glass certainly is not(Yes GHA can attach to glass, but only after the film alage has and the GHA attach's to the film). I can tell you from personal experience on my waterfall scrubber, where I did not rough up the screen near the top, algae has a hard time attaching, yet where I roughed up the screen, it holds on for dear life and after a couple years of using the same screen, I think I would need a chisel to get it all off the screen, and yet the top where I did not rough it up, is still pristine white.

FWIW, your comment about cement could not be further from the truth. You do realize people make rock walls, and heck even man made live rock out of concrete and use it in their tanks for years with 0 issues? Of course you have to let it cure for a time, but once cured it is completely harmless in our tanks.

How do you clean any screen? I don’t understand your issue here you scrape it off the same as any other screen.

As for the curing I think I made clear the curing process needed for a full cure which is much much longer then what people think which most would think when it’s hard which is not the case. This really isn’t even debatable this is concrete construction 101. The hardening agents used are harsh Chemicals and will leech until fully cured which is by industry standard 90-120 days for any cmu type product whether is grout, mortar or concrete. I wasn’t debating this I was simply trying to inform those maybe not versed in this fact the realities. There are 20 year professionals in construction that don’t even know this. It’s still fact though. And the fact it’s being or has been used doesn’t change this at all. And in some cases such as food procession applications where items like this are used most times standards dictate either an epoxy paint to seal the material and/or acid washing cause even after a full cure the Chemicals are still on the surface of the material to some extent which is why it feels chalky and will leave a slight powered residue on your hands or fingers when touched. That’s not dirt that’s cured Chemical compounds from the hardening agent. At the very least it’s needs thorough rinsing..

I know many are using mortar type screens now and I don’t know if they are made today and shipped next week or made today and properly cured for 120 days then shipped? But it’s not something I would personally buy and grow into one of my tanks tomorrow because I don’t know the answers to this. There is also a scaling to this as anything.. the first 30 days being the most critical and after that possible risk drops off drastically.. even if at say 89 days cure the risk is only 5% I wouldn’t want to be one of those 5.that said.. I have no clue what the possible effects to a tank could be. Tbh the leeching could be 100% harmless and worst case scenario actually help maintain dkh levels. (This is actually likely)

It could even elevate dkh a little for a month or two. (This also is very likely)

The fact is.. I’m well versed in many fields of commercial and residential construction processes and procedures. There are MSDS sheet proceeded by the manufacturer or mortars listing harsh agents and safety guidelines and procedures. You can infact get Chemical burns on your skin from contact under the right situations.

Now here is my issue and why I wouldn’t use this in any tank of mine. There is no facts either way on this especially in a saltwater environment. As any pool company about maintaining a brand new inground pool vs a seasoned one.. stark differences. One of them being hardness levels are highly elevated.. so the new materials are leeching into the pool water.. My issue is what else and what side effect does it have? I don’t know the answer but my issue to this is no one does and no one has even asked the question or tried to find the answer.

As for gha and glass comment you first said this wasn’t possible and you’ve never seen it then next sentence followed saying well it can attach to the film? Which is it? You find an unmaintained tank with elevated levels and I’ll show you where gha attaches to outlets, intakes, wiers and glass.. this takes a 20swcond google search to find picture after picture of this happening.

As for the man made rock.. this I’m going to just touch the surface in as saying there is 1000’s if people having issues with a certain companies “man made” rock over past couple years and it’s many long term reefers op that the rock is the issue in these tanks.. we only testing for a handful of things we feel is important. Even icp etc only test for known elements.. yet back when people were running live rock things like Dino were unheard of. Today it’s an increasing issue. I leave this topic with a simple question.. why and what changed?

Got to take my 7yo to football practice so I’ll end this here.. but here is my final take.. as experienced reefers we never ever are quick to jump on the bandwagon for something when we don’t know the cause/effect relations to that item. So I find it hard to comprehend with my knowledge of cmu products that we do quickly accepted submerged scrubbing doesn’t work as well as using a construction product full of chemicals was the best we could come up with for a poris surface for gha adheasion? Seriously? This is something I’d expect from an elementary school aquaponics class. This is the entire reason I even started this confrontation with what is becoming the norm as I feel we sold our selves short on this. Scrubbers are amazing and work amazing. Issue I have is once we found one way that works we stopped looking for better ways and were dismissive of them far too quick.

As for submerged scrubbing here are some pics that show the submerged outperforms hands down and a crushed coral screen still kicks the **** out of a roughed up bubbles screen.. the issue is we took antidoatal unthought our builds in the earlier days and dismiss them as factual things when they couldn’t be further from the truth. Waterfalls work and are imop best for people with taller stands and smaller sumps. That’s hitting maybe 20% if the saltwater market which is at best %5% of the aquarium market. If an employee came to me with an idea that took 10 years to develop and only increase my sales 5% I’d fire them. Then we dismis this doesn’t work the same in freshwater? Freshwater is 90% of the aquarium market. What kind of business plan is that? You say oh freshwater people just change water and problem solved the water is free? Have these people ever had a large freshwater tank lol! I have 5 freshwater tanks as of typing and I can tell you I hate changing water and water is far from free! I can tell on my monthly bills when I work on the pool or do water changes in my tanks wo a doubt.

My point in challenging this is to get us back to square 2 where we understand what can work for some and let’s get to square 3 properly with something that works for all. If I were building algea scrubbers I’d want to increase my sales reduce costs by finding a one size fits all solution. Submerged is the only way to do that. Most large freshwater systems are running canister filters not sumps. Settling for a system that we say works best for salt and has to sit on top of a sump. This is crazy.. 90% of market is freshwater min. Of that 10% of saltwater 5% maybe are using sumps. If this using sumps maybe 3% at best are growing corals where nutrients are a major concern.. why limit yourself to maybe 1% if the market at best when you add all this up?

Turbo said he’s working on something and I have no doubt he is.. but that said.. I think I’ve proven you can’t take $10 of media grow it into the bottom of a fuge throw light in it and it will outperform industry standards.

Off to football. Look forward to a forward looking non combative response from such a reputable long term r2r member who has more tank knowledge then most of us will ever have with some outside the box thinking on this topic wo just accepting the status que..

28C17FA1-E0BB-4C70-8F32-AB94B4FD3F22.jpeg 7C0A5C58-3087-4C93-A33C-3ACBF00F457B.jpeg 127B0BFC-C5AB-4B1E-B3C4-E185026E4B0A.jpeg
 
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@Darth.Daddy12 are you saying that a thin mortar coating on a small screen, like in these pics, needs 90 days of soaking in a 40 gallon tub/sink with an agitator pump before using?

I don’t think you can directly compare mortar between CMU blocks in air and a 1mm thin coating of mortar submerged in agitated water. I’m not even sure that’s been measured or studied. But just drawing off of logic, leeching out any bad chemicals should happen exponentially faster - which is why I do it the way I do

9ECEDE93-5DD1-4044-B286-D236523EBAEC.jpeg


8D80D706-3A38-446C-A8B1-99EDC9CE7DD4.jpeg


CF790A8E-ED0C-49FE-A83A-BB5366EB67DE.jpeg
 

SantaMonica

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I found one simple way to replace the rough plastic canvas by using Velcro.

Velcro is good to start growth, and catch slime, but it is weak in holding long growth because there are no holes for the growth to wrap around. And, it's not 2-sided; the roots are going to die faster.
 

Darth.Daddy12

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@Darth.Daddy12 are you saying that a thin mortar coating on a small screen, like in these pics, needs 90 days of soaking in a 40 gallon tub/sink with an agitator pump before using?

I don’t think you can directly compare mortar between CMU blocks in air and a 1mm thin coating of mortar submerged in agitated water. I’m not even sure that’s been measured or studied. But just drawing off of logic, leeching out any bad chemicals should happen exponentially faster - which is why I do it the way I do

9ECEDE93-5DD1-4044-B286-D236523EBAEC.jpeg


8D80D706-3A38-446C-A8B1-99EDC9CE7DD4.jpeg


CF790A8E-ED0C-49FE-A83A-BB5366EB67DE.jpeg

I’m not talking submerged curing like as in love rock etc.. I’m referring to 90-120 days air cure which is the standard in construction for every cementing based compound outside of grout. Which can be cured extremely fast.

In a layer that thin I wouldn’t think 120 days is required however I can’t say. About the testing that is exactly my point . We are using something right or wrong that has never actually been tested. Now the amounts used are very small compared to water volume for most tanks so is this perfectly fine or is the amount of water just masking the issue? I think this could be tested for rather easy if you want to try.

All you should have to do.. setup a unit on a mock system running off 0 tds rodi. Let it run and measure the tds 2x a day everyday for 30 days. Imop this would be enough to know without a doubt there is no potential issues long term. If after 30 days the tds is still zero then we know for sure that nothing is being altered. That said I can almost with certainty say there will be tds as it will buffer the ph some for sure. Then we have another issue. Are we able at this time to break down alkalinity increases to tds in order to take say 100 tds water results and say that 80 were from buffering? Then where did the other 20 come from? I’m not aware of how to do this although I’m sure somewhere someone has at some point needed an answer like this and has a calculation that can be done.

You can do this test over and over with different scenarios.. visually dry, cured for 10 days, cured for 30 days and so forth. Thing is even a 120 day full cured item is going to buffer the system. But through these tests and taking multiple samples per day everyday one would reasonably be able to say ok full cure piece was 100tds vs say a 7 day cured piece was at 100tds after 5 days and 500 after 30.. See where I’m going here.. you can’t accuratly measure for everything possible being leeched however you can make sure that whatever it is coming out (likely just some alk buffering maybe little calcium even from a fully cured piece) is in line with what is being made and sold.

Have have to say holly hell the amount of time to coat creeps like that lol. For that alone I’d myself be looking at other options. Something like maybe using a weighted roller to crush a softer rock into sand like pieces (maybe even sand itself) and using a green type non chemicle 3m glue that could be rolled into the screen then simply just sprinkle the product on top of the screen?

I would think surely there is a glue or mastic type compound somewhere that could be used for this. Lot of construction adhesives now have to be environmentally friendly. I’d give 3m a call and speck to someone in tech support and explain vaguely what I need and that it needs to be able to be submerged wo leeeching anything I to the water. We can weld underwater we can pour concrete underwater we can surely glue underwater and 3m makes all kinds of contact cements for all different uses.

Just a thought..

I personally think and as I’m seeing in testing that getting away from a finer screen like used and going larger with some crushed coral or argonite type product is going to yeild better results for growth and rooting. I’ve right now got 8” measurable strands in my testing. The fluval biomax took off fist but right now the crushed coral screen is quickly catching up and is providing a better overall grass covering wo sections that are growing 8” strands. There are a couple areas of 3-4” but most of the crushed coral screen as of looking after work today is a nice 1/2-3/4” grass type covering the entire screen.
 
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Darth.Daddy12

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I’m not talking submerged curing like as in love rock etc.. I’m referring to 90-120 days air cure which is the standard in construction for every cementing based compound outside of grout. Which can be cured extremely fast.

In a layer that thin I wouldn’t think 120 days is required however I can’t say. About the testing that is exactly my point . We are using something right or wrong that has never actually been tested. Now the amounts used are very small compared to water volume for most tanks so is this perfectly fine or is the amount of water just masking the issue? I think this could be tested for rather easy if you want to try.

All you should have to do.. setup a unit on a mock system running off 0 tds rodi. Let it run and measure the tds 2x a day everyday for 30 days. Imop this would be enough to know without a doubt there is no potential issues long term. If after 30 days the tds is still zero then we know for sure that nothing is being altered. That said I can almost with certainty say there will be tds as it will buffer the ph some for sure. Then we have another issue. Are we able at this time to break down alkalinity increases to tds in order to take say 100 tds water results and say that 80 were from buffering? Then where did the other 20 come from? I’m not aware of how to do this although I’m sure somewhere someone has at some point needed an answer like this and has a calculation that can be done.

You can do this test over and over with different scenarios.. visually dry, cured for 10 days, cured for 30 days and so forth. Thing is even a 120 day full cured item is going to buffer the system. But through these tests and taking multiple samples per day everyday one would reasonably be able to say ok full cure piece was 100tds vs say a 7 day cured piece was at 100tds after 5 days and 500 after 30.. See where I’m going here.. you can’t accuratly measure for everything possible being leeched however you can make sure that whatever it is coming out (likely just some alk buffering maybe little calcium even from a fully cured piece) is in line with what is being made and sold.

Have have to say holly hell the amount of time to coat creeps like that lol. For that alone I’d myself be looking at other options. Something like maybe using a weighted roller to crush a softer rock into sand like pieces (maybe even sand itself) and using a green type non chemicle 3m glue that could be rolled into the screen then simply just sprinkle the product on top of the screen?

I would think surely there is a glue or mastic type compound somewhere that could be used for this. Lot of construction adhesives now have to be environmentally friendly. I’d give 3m a call and speck to someone in tech support and explain vaguely what I need and that it needs to be able to be submerged wo leeeching anything I to the water. We can weld underwater we can pour concrete underwater we can surely glue underwater and 3m makes all kinds of contact cements for all different uses.

Just a thought..

I personally think and as I’m seeing in testing that getting away from a finer screen like used and going larger with some crushed coral or argonite type product is going to yeild better results for growth and rooting. I’ve right now got 8” measurable strands in my testing. The fluval biomax took off fist but right now the crushed coral screen is quickly catching up and is providing a better overall grass covering wo sections that are growing 8” strands. There are a couple areas of 3-4” but most of the crushed coral screen as of looking after work today is a nice 1/2-3/4” grass type covering the entire screen.


One last though before football again lol..

Maybe we’ve looked at this wrong with scraping screens 1/2 or one side at a time.. maybe what we want is a thin hair left behind to stop from having that dead zone as it regrows. Would would be more work to say give it a haircut lol.. although I’ve got some old beard trimmers that are water proof I but would work great. Lol.. but by leaving thicker carpeting would we also not prevent that minor nutrient rise while the system is rebuilding? Would it not also prevent diatoms and other things that still occasionally get in there from preventing algea from getting a strong footing and falling off from time to time?
 

CO2doser

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This is my 3' tank using submerged algae scrubber, which located in backside sump.
One week growth of GHA about 150g.
P_20190921_082950_p.jpg
Scrubber cleaned
P_20190921_084245_p.jpg

Pull out of submerged algae scrubber
P_20190921_083449_p.jpg
 

H2Oz

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I have a few questions about methods to help minimize or eliminate water changes with LPS/soft/fish (non-SPS) & live rock in an ATS-filtered system.

I'm aware that once the ATS has matured to become capable of ridding the bad stuff so effectively, it can also rid some nutrients and trace elements that LPS need, and the focus would then be on maintaining nutrients and trace elements. Therefore, I'm led to think that a calcium reactor would be better suited than 2-part dosing, because a calcium reactor also introduces trace elements. Is this theory correct in practice to have any meaningful effect on water change necessity reduction?

I'm also under the impression that utilizing less skimming or even no skimming may preserve nutrients that LPS need in an ATS-filtered system. Therefore, I'm considering starting with a higher-rated protein skimmer and slowly weening down and relying primarily on the natural balance between algae and inhabitants. Is this theory also correct in practice?

Are there any supplementary methods which would assist in the goal of minimizing or eliminating water changes for ATS with LPS/soft/fish?
 

SantaMonica

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I think you are referring to LPS needing some nutrients (N and P) in the water. They don't always, but sometimes do. Trace elements (boron, etc) are not really a concern though. All the traces you need, are in the food you feed, if you are feeding enough of course.

Yes a CA reactor is usually better than dosing, but it's much harder to do of course. For your tank, just dosing should be fine, or just using kalk water topoffs might be enough. It's nice to keep simple tanks like this, simple.

You can start without the skimmer. They just remove food particles such as fish waste, which can go to feed your LPS instead. This step alone will probably give the LPS enough to grow.

To stop water changes and be skimmerless, it's best to have 2 scrubbers (or screens, sections, halves, etc) so that you can easily clean one but leave the other one full so it still filters.

Here is sizing info:


Scrubbers are sized according to feeding. Nutrients "in" (feeding) must equal nutrients "out" (scrubber growth), no matter how many gallons or liters you have. So...

An example VERTICAL upflow or waterfall screen size is 3 X 4 inches = 12 square inches of screen (7.5 X 10 cm = 75 sq cm) with a total of 12 real florescent watts (not equivalent watts) of light, or half that for LEDs, for 18 hours a day. If all 12 watts (6 watts LED) are on one side, it is a 1-sided screen. If the watts are divided on each side of the screen, it is a 2-sided screen. This should be able to handle the following amounts of daily feeding:

1 frozen cube per day (2-sided screen), or
1/2 frozen cube per day (1-sided screen), or
10 pinches of flake food per day (2-sided screen), or
5 pinches of flake food per day (1-sided screen), or
10 square inches (60 sq cm) of nori per day (2-sided screen), or
5 square inches (30 sq cm) of nori per day (1-sided screen), or
0.1 dry ounce (2.8 grams) of pellet food per day (2-sided screen), or
0.05 dry ounce (1.4 grams) of pellet food per day (1-sided screen)

Problem rocks: Each 50 pounds (2.2 kg) of nuisance algae covered rocks you have adds 1 cube a day.

Flow or air bubbles is always 24 hours; water flow is at least 35 gph per inch of width of screen [60 lph per cm], EVEN IF one sided or horizontal.

FLOATING SURFACE SCRUBBERS WITH STRINGS: Screen size is the size of the box (Length X Width), and is 2-sided because the strings grow in 3D.

Clean algae:

Every 7 to 14 days, or
When it's black, or
When it fills up, or
When algae lets go, or
When nutrients start to rise
 

CO2doser

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I have a few questions about methods to help minimize or eliminate water changes with LPS/soft/fish (non-SPS) & live rock in an ATS-filtered system.

I'm aware that once the ATS has matured to become capable of ridding the bad stuff so effectively, it can also rid some nutrients and trace elements that LPS need, and the focus would then be on maintaining nutrients and trace elements. Therefore, I'm led to think that a calcium reactor would be better suited than 2-part dosing, because a calcium reactor also introduces trace elements. Is this theory correct in practice to have any meaningful effect on water change necessity reduction?

I'm also under the impression that utilizing less skimming or even no skimming may preserve nutrients that LPS need in an ATS-filtered system. Therefore, I'm considering starting with a higher-rated protein skimmer and slowly weening down and relying primarily on the natural balance between algae and inhabitants. Is this theory also correct in practice?

Are there any supplementary methods which would assist in the goal of minimizing or eliminating water changes for ATS with LPS/soft/fish?

In my experience, the purpose of water change for a tank with matured algae scrubber is to supply trace elements.
Nutrient, like np, can be controlled from undetectable to high value LPS want by feeding and algae lightening schedule.
If want to eliminate water change, trace element supplement is needed.
Calcium reactor would not supply all the trace elements that algae consumed since it melt rock, not algae.
I use calcium reactor and submerged algae scrubber for sps/lps with 10% water change per week, and supply trace elements including metals, Fe, I, that algae consumed a lot.
No skimmer is needed if you start cycling a new tank and a new algae scrubber with proper size and wattage of lightening. It is very easy for a scrubber to strip all np to undetectable limit, all you can do is feeding and feeding and reduce light schedule.
 

H2Oz

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When water changes had traditionally been required to reduce pollutants, it's hard for me to justify water changes just for trace elements in scrubber systems without pollutants. So I'm considering a scrubber system in conjunction with Triton/ATI testing/dosing for trace elements. Like a hybrid I suppose.
 

CO2doser

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When water changes had traditionally been required to reduce pollutants, it's hard for me to justify water changes just for trace elements in scrubber systems without pollutants. So I'm considering a scrubber system in conjunction with Triton/ATI testing/dosing for trace elements. Like a hybrid I suppose.

Yes, trace elements dosing based on testing result is the best way to go.
If NO3/PO4 can be reduced and controlled by carbon dosing or macro/micro algae, the meaning of water change is just for trace elements sup.
 

OllieNZ

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What are peoples thoughts on an angled trough style scrubber? I'm thinking a relatively shallow 1:10 gradient with a thin but turbulent layer of water. Unconventional and not super efficient compared to a waterfall but as with anything just trying to work with the available space so any tips on maximising efficiency would be appreciated.
 
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When you have a slanted scrubber, that means it's going to be one-sided in most cases because it's difficult to light the side that is on the back of the slant. Not saying that you couldn't. Also you will tend to prevent flow on that side because you have to have something to support the angle while directing the water down the screen instead of through it (which would cut off flow to the lower half of the screen).

You could use something rigid but not solid to let water trickle through the screen and that would eventually fill in and allow flow to the full length of the screen.

Single-sided scrubbers are generally less than half of the efficiency of a 2 sided vertical screen because your base of growth/attachment will get less light and tend to die off quicker than a 2-sided scrubber, meaning you have to (generally) harvest sooner so you cut off the growth cycle as the algae gets thick enough to start growing faster when there is more volume of algae taking in nutrients. But that's not necessarily a hard & fast rule, I suppose it depends on how you build it.

Honestly I haven't messed around much with slanted scrubbers, so take my opinion with a grain of salt and don't let it deter you from trying!
 

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6 days in, this is my "ramp/slant" style

20191208_093358.jpg


Setup like this:
20191201_140409.jpg


I only had the H380 on hand. Just testing its viability. Should know in about 2 weeks.
 

Okinawa_reefer

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Was hoping I might be able to get some help...been trying to get this scrubber going for about 5 months now. I continue to get this orange slime that takes over and my guess is that it’s not allowing GHA to grow. Any suggestions?

48A86A56-D2E1-4613-B963-54EF40242534.jpeg
 

NowGlazeIT

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Are you exposing this algae to fresh water when you scrape? I have had gha die and look like that after a prolonged FW rinse
 

Mixing lighting technologies: Do you use multiple types of lighting for your reef?

  • I currently use multiple types of lighting for my reef.

    Votes: 78 44.6%
  • I have used multiple types of lighting for my reef in the past.

    Votes: 21 12.0%
  • I haven’t used multiple types of lighting for my reef, but I plan to in the future.

    Votes: 25 14.3%
  • I have no plans to use multiple types of lighting for my reef.

    Votes: 49 28.0%
  • Other.

    Votes: 2 1.1%
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