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- Apr 13, 2019
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Hey guys I wanted to get some ideas out there and get some feedback. Lately I've been wanting an algae scrubber, but of course you run into that big fork in the road between making it yourself or paying hundreds of dollars. So far I've done a very lazy DIY scrubber. I literally just put some pieces of knitting mesh under my nice kessil fuge light. It actually works! Probably not to the extent that a real scrubber would work, especially since the mesh is totally submerged, but still not bad. May even be better off doing that rather than chaeto. I found in my system, with its incredibly high nutrients, GHA tends to grow right on top of/inside the chaeto and eventually seems to just outcompete it.
My first question is if anybody thinks that an algae scrubber could be fully submerged. I know scrubbers want flow, which is why they waterfall it down the mesh. That may very well be the best way. I'm still just curious to think of an algae scrubber that is submerged kinda like my half-baked improvised one. It seems to work pretty well. There is kind of low-moderate flow in there. Seems like it only takes a little flow to get the nutrients physically to the algae. I suppose if that was the case, a submerged scrubber could work. The advantages of such a scrubber might be that there's less evaporation, might take up less space (kinda depends on where you have room) also might be easier to apply since plumbing it into your system is kind of daunting to some (such as myself!).
I keep wondering to myself if I should just buy a powerhead and run it on the night cycle with the light so that the algae has a lot of flow. I mean pretty fast flow underwater can be achieved, we all know that. Maybe I'll just continue along this path of simply placing pieces of mesh under the light. Right now they are both vertical, in a small compartment of my sump with the light blasting both of them from fairly close range. So far a surprising amount of growth has occurred though it was a little slow to start. But I didn't even rough them up! (I would appreciate some alternate ways of roughing up the mesh. Dunno if I have that drill bit people keep talking about handy) Almost seems like you can go without it if I'm being honest!
The other question is does anybody have any good diy ideas that I probably haven't heard about? Maybe something so easy even I can do it. Or a way of souping up my current setup.
My first question is if anybody thinks that an algae scrubber could be fully submerged. I know scrubbers want flow, which is why they waterfall it down the mesh. That may very well be the best way. I'm still just curious to think of an algae scrubber that is submerged kinda like my half-baked improvised one. It seems to work pretty well. There is kind of low-moderate flow in there. Seems like it only takes a little flow to get the nutrients physically to the algae. I suppose if that was the case, a submerged scrubber could work. The advantages of such a scrubber might be that there's less evaporation, might take up less space (kinda depends on where you have room) also might be easier to apply since plumbing it into your system is kind of daunting to some (such as myself!).
I keep wondering to myself if I should just buy a powerhead and run it on the night cycle with the light so that the algae has a lot of flow. I mean pretty fast flow underwater can be achieved, we all know that. Maybe I'll just continue along this path of simply placing pieces of mesh under the light. Right now they are both vertical, in a small compartment of my sump with the light blasting both of them from fairly close range. So far a surprising amount of growth has occurred though it was a little slow to start. But I didn't even rough them up! (I would appreciate some alternate ways of roughing up the mesh. Dunno if I have that drill bit people keep talking about handy) Almost seems like you can go without it if I'm being honest!
The other question is does anybody have any good diy ideas that I probably haven't heard about? Maybe something so easy even I can do it. Or a way of souping up my current setup.