Santa Monica100 Algae scrubber!!

I just don't see what makes it worth the $650-700 it costs...it's 2 mesh screens, roughed up with sandpaper and they added some T5 lights. What makes this so much better than a DIY?

 

2 2bulb t5ho fixtures. (that slides perfectly into each side of the acrylic casing!!)

The black acrylic container that lets no light escape making it more efficient and better looking. As well as the plug that will back some water into the unit and promote 3d growth far better than the traditional diy.

If you can work with acrylic, they give for free the full schematics and build instructions. I bet you could build this exact unit for $300-400

I'm not a diy'er. It's worth $$ to me to get a perfectly working, tested, warrantied product. And to get customer support if I run into a problem. (though you can go to Santa-Monica's forums algaescrubber.net and get all the same support if you built your own.)

Hell I bet you could call him and he would spend hours talking to you about your diy even though you didn't buy anything from him. Santa-monica seems to be a really cool guy who is more interested in the promotion of algae scrubbers in general than his own design.

 

I have to say, that is VERY cool. Those are T5HO bulbs? I guess that would be about $100 right there. not sure on exact price, but I know acrylic is pretty expensive.

While I wouldn't personally buy one, I guess it's not so bad.

 

LA Fishguys, Episode 102 pt 3, Scrubbing with Algae. - YouTube

This guy didn't even do it right. If he had cleaned the screen properly he would have had even better results!

 

You wouldn't pay $700 to have 0 n03 and 0 p04 with no drawbacks? You can replace your dual media reactors, protein skimmer, fuge, carbon dosing and add more pods to your system and end the diurnal ph swings. All with this unit!

I'm going to take it slow, but I will be skimmer less within the year. And that puts a HUGE amount of food in the system still keeping no waste! That's the real beauty of this system. Leaving food and taking waste.

 

Ohh yeah. Also you "can" cut down your water change schedule a good bit. Saving a lot of money on salt when your weekly water change is mixed to 1.026 and consists of 20 gallons. Drop that to once a month. I like it!

 

Wow.

I am gonna set up an auto-water change (much safer than it may atctually sound). for 0.25 gallon daily water changes of 1.026 in my 29g tank...will also be running ecobak in a diy reactor.

 

Awesome! I'm looking forward to seeing that thread! A daily auto water change is very high on my to do list.

One idea I had for an approach to it was to use the skimmer, but I don't want to remove that much food. I was planning on using my apex with a conductivity probe that would trigger either the ro/di or the saltwater for top off based on the current salinity level. And tune the skimmer to pull about 2 gallons a day.

What's your plan?

 

I have thought about using the skimmer for a very wet skimmate and then take my water change water from that. Or just have that as well as the regular water change. Basically it will be 3 pumps on a timer. ATO, WC out and WC in. ATo turn off and the two WC pumps do their thing. ATO pump turns back on. WC out pump will be routed to basement then out the basement window.

 

Looks awesome to me. Definitely expensive, but, not all, but a lot of the DIY ones I see just look like fire hazards waiting to happen. I think this definitely looks a lot safer.