My Attempt at An Algae Scrubber With Pics

Lol.. I thought it was a quite handsome creature.;D

 

I have made my last modification to the scrubber. This mod would not have had to been made if I would pay closer attention to what I am doing half of the time. The front of the bucket is 5.5 inches tall, the back is 5 inches tall and the bottom is 2.5 inches from front to back. All of the pieces are 11 inches wide. I measured the inside of the tank and came up the 11 7/8 inches. I thought if I cut the long pieces 11 inches that would give me enough space for the 1/4 inch "V" material and have room to spare. This room is needed to keep the end of the bucket from contacting the "V" that holds the rod that is glued to the end of the bucket. That rod is what allows the bucket to pivot. Where I went wrong is the end caps that attach to the 11 inch pieces are 1/4 inch thick. If you add two of those guys and two of the 1/4 inch thick "V"s, you now have 12 inches of material you need to stick into a 11 7/8 space. Thank God the acrylic and glass are not a true 1/4 inch thick. That allows the bucket to fit but the clearance is very tight. It is so tight that the bucket will shift from one side to the other and rub on the "V". When that happens it will stick in the up position and stop dumping. Usually this happened in the time frame of 30 minutes. I tried to install a space the hinges so the bucket would not shift but, could not get the spacing right, this thing fits pretty tight.

The fix came up to installing glass stops in the tank. I installed them so the bucket sits a little forward. In the upper left corner you can see the black mark I used to position them. The scrubber has been running since 6:00 AM today and has not got stuck. Needless to say if I just would have cut the material to 10.5 inches, I would not have had to do this.



Here is a close up of the bucket in dump.

 

Have you ever wanted to know how much turf algae you could get for $93.86? I guess I can now validate your guess if you had...a 12X6 inch screen. Dang sometimes I really do miss California, the place I lived in before Kansas, I could swear I could go out on the rocks and scrape off as much as I wanted. Oh well I guess this is the price one must place to be in the middle of the USA. If you should need any, I received mine from Inland Aquatics Homepage.

Here is the stuff in the pic. It is a brown/red color.

 

Wow. $94? That must be some high-grade algae. What's the deal there?

Nice work with the bucket. Glad you figured it out. Looks great.

 

Learning is fun... so I have been reading about algae scrubbers on this thread and several other sites. I am a total newbie, but a few questions.

First, this seems equivalent to chaeto in the fuge for nutrient export. You grow chaeto and tear it off to export nutrients. In this method, you grow algae on a screen and clean it to export nutrients. Is my basic understanding correct?? Both methods are basically doing the same thing??

If so, why is this better, worse or a compliment to chaeto in a fuge? It seems easy enough to add to my existing set up. I am just wondering in my reading in learning about reef aquariums why this method isn't more 'popular'.

Thanks for helping the noob.

Mark

 

Welcome!

 

Thanks ReefSparky, I must be starting to learn.

In continuing to think about this, I had another thought. One thing that ATS does that is different is that it can dramatically increase the surface area of water exposed to the atmosphere. I could easily see an ATS system doubling the surface area exposed.

That got me thinking about what that would impact in the system. I wonder how much the increased evaporative losses are? Second thing is that dissolved O2 and CO2 might be different. What else would the increased surface area impact?

Thoughts here???

Thanks
Mark

 

I'm taking an educated guess here, but I'd suspect the implications would be more CO2 drawn from your water from photosynthesis by algae, more O2 added to your water for the same reason, and finally--more evaporative loss due to greater surface area of water to air.

The net consequence would be two positives, and one potentially negative; the latter most being easily negated by an auto topoff system.

 

I was thinking the same thing. A friend of mine owns an R&D biochem company... producing chemicals in bacteria farms and such. He's got a bunch of PhD's that work on how to grow algaes and bacterias and 'stuff'. I am going to chat with him on these various designs and see what he thinks. I am willing to give it a try and play some....

More later.

Mark

 

Correct, scrubbers that are not enclosed will evaporate a lot, and cool the water a lot, especially if you put a fan on it. If you enclose it, it won't evaporate or cool at all.

Separate from this is photosythesis. A scrubber will generally raise the pH by .1 or .2 from this alone. The water usually remains supersaturated with oxygen.