Clear Water CW-100 Algae Scrubber , Sicce 2.0 - Flow Questions

FishyDP · Jan 2, 2020

I just received and installed the CW-100 today from BRS. Seems like high quality construction. My system is around 170-180g total, mixed reef mostly softies/lps. Running bubble magus curve 7 skimmer. I ordered the sicce 2.0 as this was the recommended pump, around 550 gph I believe. To me it feels like the flow is really strong, even with the pump dialed all the way down. I used a ball valve on the hose to dial it back a bit further. For those that have experience with this scrubber, how much flow do you recommend?

JoshF7 · Jan 26, 2020

FishyDP said:
For those that have experience with this scrubber, how much flow do you recommend?

It's been a few weeks since your post, but I have this same question as I just installed my CW-300. It seems really easy to have too much flow. How much water should I see in the bottom, or space from the top of the main drain opening? I dialed mine in using a valve, so that it has maybe 1/8th of an inch or so from the top of the main drain opening. This leaves the bottom of the screen submerged in water, but I'm guessing that is expected. Did you ever find a good answer for this? Maybe even just a picture showing how much water we want to be sitting in the bottom?

FishyDP · Jan 27, 2020

Did some further research and watched as many videos as I could find about flow, lighting schedule and water height at the bottom of the unit (as I was wondering the same thing). It seems more flow may be better, as more nutrients are passing over the screen. The majority of the info I found regarding lighting was to run 16 hrs/day reverse display lighting.

As far as the water height at the bottom, the majority of people running the CW scrubbers seem to have the water height about halfway up the larger opening, leaving about 3" of water at bottom. The smaller opening is for back-up overflow.

This is how I am running my CW-100 currently, and algae growth is just starting to take off. I installed the scrubber beginning of January. Time will tell, but for now I see algae growth on screen increasing, especially last day or two. I did pick a few pieces of turf algae out of display and seeded screen by sticking algae through the holes with a toothpick.