WillKatt
Active Member
So I posted this in the JBJ forum but dosnt look like a whole lot of activity over there.
I have been running a JBJ 28g nano cube for a little over a year now. Along the way I have tried just about every kind of nutrient export out there with the exception of bio pellets. I also tired many of the top brands of nano skimmers (The in chamber not HOB). Nothing really seemed to work that well. If I ran chaeto with the JBJ nano glo fuge light in the basket in the back fuge it somehow always seem to block flow and collect detritus. If I ran chaeto without the basket it would get sucked down into the other chambers away from the light and just die. Actually it always seemed to die given enough time.
The most success I really had was with VERY low feeding and running carbon and GFO in a two little fishies media reactor hanging off the side. This worked well for keeping algae out of my tank but also I belive is responcible for pulling the vibrant colors out of the corals leaving them more of a pastel color rather than the electric colors that got me into coral in the first place.
I then saw the thread posted by Santamonica about the up flow Algae Turf Scrubber and thought it seemed like a good idea. I originally thought it would be great to uses the JBJ nano glow light and all id need is the Knitting mesh, air pump, air stone, and some tubing. It worked ok but still not enough to do away with the GFO all together which is now my goal along with being able to feed allot more. A little more reading about ATSs revealed the warm white leds in the nano glow were probably not well suited for algae growth with an ATS.
First this is the original one I came up with:
This is what I was getting after 10-14 days not running GFO and was starting to harvest about every 7-10 days. Unfortunately this was not keeping up with the nutrient export and I was starting to see small signs of algae blooming in my display again after about a week. So I started running half the amount of GFO I was before for only half the amount of time and that seemed to balance things out again but the ATS stopped producing nearly as much algae.
Ultimatelythis is what I should be producing for the amount I would like to be able to feed my corals and fish:
So this brings me to my build of a mini JBJ ATS light and this is what I came up with. Im very excited to see if I get a significant improvement over the nano glow.
This is the new light I built in hopes of getting the right amount of reds and blue. For this I went to ledgroupbuy.com and got a heat sink measuring 4"x4"x1" and 4 660nm 3w red leds and 1 455nm 3w royal blue. since the combined required voltage drop required was exactly 12 volts I was able to just use a 500mw 12v PC fan power adapter to drive all 5 LEDS. I used a 1/4" rubber gasket cut into strip to use as a standoff attached with 3M windshield/molding adhesive tape and a 1/16" 4"x4" piece of acrylic also attached and sealed with the 3M adhesive tape. Let me just take a minute to say this tape is darn near impossible to get of once it has time to cure. I had the misfortune of having to take it off to drill a couple holes and it took me over two hours to cut it off and completely scrape it away. I guess I don't have to worry about it ever coming apart.
I found a "hang on door" hook at Ace that seemed to be perfect for using as a bracket to just hang the light off the back of the fuge chamber. I'm sure I could have gone with a larger heat sink and found a way to incorporate magnets to attach the light like the JBJ nano glo but I didn't do this because from time to time you need to scrap the inside of the glass where the light shines though to get rid of algae film and coralline that build up reduce the lights ability to shine on the knitting mesh of the ATS. The magent on the nano glo was alway in the way and because my tank it pushed pretty tight again the wall it made for remove the magnet and light very difficult.
So now I wait. I will run the ATS for the first 5-7 days along with the GFO to see how well it seems to produce then will remove the GFO completely and run for another 5-7 days to measure the difference.
I have been running a JBJ 28g nano cube for a little over a year now. Along the way I have tried just about every kind of nutrient export out there with the exception of bio pellets. I also tired many of the top brands of nano skimmers (The in chamber not HOB). Nothing really seemed to work that well. If I ran chaeto with the JBJ nano glo fuge light in the basket in the back fuge it somehow always seem to block flow and collect detritus. If I ran chaeto without the basket it would get sucked down into the other chambers away from the light and just die. Actually it always seemed to die given enough time.
The most success I really had was with VERY low feeding and running carbon and GFO in a two little fishies media reactor hanging off the side. This worked well for keeping algae out of my tank but also I belive is responcible for pulling the vibrant colors out of the corals leaving them more of a pastel color rather than the electric colors that got me into coral in the first place.
I then saw the thread posted by Santamonica about the up flow Algae Turf Scrubber and thought it seemed like a good idea. I originally thought it would be great to uses the JBJ nano glow light and all id need is the Knitting mesh, air pump, air stone, and some tubing. It worked ok but still not enough to do away with the GFO all together which is now my goal along with being able to feed allot more. A little more reading about ATSs revealed the warm white leds in the nano glow were probably not well suited for algae growth with an ATS.
First this is the original one I came up with:
This is what I was getting after 10-14 days not running GFO and was starting to harvest about every 7-10 days. Unfortunately this was not keeping up with the nutrient export and I was starting to see small signs of algae blooming in my display again after about a week. So I started running half the amount of GFO I was before for only half the amount of time and that seemed to balance things out again but the ATS stopped producing nearly as much algae.
Ultimatelythis is what I should be producing for the amount I would like to be able to feed my corals and fish:
So this brings me to my build of a mini JBJ ATS light and this is what I came up with. Im very excited to see if I get a significant improvement over the nano glow.
This is the new light I built in hopes of getting the right amount of reds and blue. For this I went to ledgroupbuy.com and got a heat sink measuring 4"x4"x1" and 4 660nm 3w red leds and 1 455nm 3w royal blue. since the combined required voltage drop required was exactly 12 volts I was able to just use a 500mw 12v PC fan power adapter to drive all 5 LEDS. I used a 1/4" rubber gasket cut into strip to use as a standoff attached with 3M windshield/molding adhesive tape and a 1/16" 4"x4" piece of acrylic also attached and sealed with the 3M adhesive tape. Let me just take a minute to say this tape is darn near impossible to get of once it has time to cure. I had the misfortune of having to take it off to drill a couple holes and it took me over two hours to cut it off and completely scrape it away. I guess I don't have to worry about it ever coming apart.
I found a "hang on door" hook at Ace that seemed to be perfect for using as a bracket to just hang the light off the back of the fuge chamber. I'm sure I could have gone with a larger heat sink and found a way to incorporate magnets to attach the light like the JBJ nano glo but I didn't do this because from time to time you need to scrap the inside of the glass where the light shines though to get rid of algae film and coralline that build up reduce the lights ability to shine on the knitting mesh of the ATS. The magent on the nano glo was alway in the way and because my tank it pushed pretty tight again the wall it made for remove the magnet and light very difficult.
So now I wait. I will run the ATS for the first 5-7 days along with the GFO to see how well it seems to produce then will remove the GFO completely and run for another 5-7 days to measure the difference.
