Mega Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover - DIY!

[troythegreat]

brank new tank

Hello All, Im very very new to this hobby and im still in the research process before i set up my tank. thanks alot guys for the posts, i definately think ill be setting this up as part of my first tank.(70gal) Anyways i would like to know if you suggest i wait until some algae builds up before i use the scrubber, or can i run it while the new tank cycles and settles. otherwise how would i seed the screen. I live in a hot climate and im thinking of using a styrophome cooler to house the screen. Any suggestions??

 

[SantaMonica]

Ah Toast sorry for the problems. You can put the screen in some SW and put outside in the sun to grow. Might help things.

Troy you can set it up right away. Gives you an advantage since you can adjust flow and everything with tap water before actually starting things up. Then your screen will be ready for your livestock right away.

Temp not important to the scrubber... only to the tank. No foam needed. But you should put a fan on the scrubber to keep the tank cool.

Post your design/build before you finish, so we can point out any problems before you start cycling. Most important will be a strong light very near the screen, and, strong even flow across the screen.

 

[troythegreat]

Thanks Santa Monica, i should have everything set up with pictures in about 1 week or so. i went to the hardware and i bought the mesh today. Question. Is aluminium mesh ok for a SW tank, contamination wise that is....

 

[SantaMonica]

No aluminum; plastic or rug canvas only.

 

[SantaMonica]

.

Text Version: Nutrients, part 5

When Food Decomposes

Food ==> Bacteria ==> Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate ==>

==> Algae growth on your rocks and glass eats most of the
Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate.

==> The remaining Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate
stays in your water, which is what you read when you test.




Previous Versions:

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[GlaringToast]

fingers crossed

Well I will be getting home tomorrow night pretty late, here's to hoping all the fish are still alive and my water hasn't somehow become black whilst leaking all over the carpet and being peed on by the cat. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

-Toast

 

[SantaMonica]

LEDs for Scrubbers

Many folks want to try an LED scrubber. We do to, which is why we are trying to figure them out on the scrubber site. However, they are a ways down the road; nothing to report yet. If anyone wants to try themselves, here is a starting point:

Low-Power LED panel, to experiement with:
http://shop.sunshine-systems.com/product.sc?productId=1

Higher-Power LED panel, not sure if enough for good growth:
led grow lights -Sunshine Systems : The GlowPanel 45 LED Grow Light

The deal with LEDs is that you need lots of light power to have good growth. How much is still unknown. But the above panels are cheap enough that some folks should be able to give them a try. It's just for experimenting, though. If you need results you can count on, get a 23W CFL full spectrum or bigger, or a T5HO, or halide

 

[Chris_A]

Two quick things about those LED arrays.
1) they are not rated for outdoor use so provisions should be made to limit the humidity to them.

2) they appear to use a few different types (spectrums) of LED's. There is a minimum distance from the plants that needs to be observed other wise the light gets "spotty". For an ATS of this design that could mean the growth would be patchy. The High power LED array says 6-18 inches (from my own experience with 1 watt LED's, you're probably best in the 10-12" range) so again, provisions should be made in the design to accomidate that.

On another note, good thread! Been a long time since I thought about ATS design. I think the last time was when a buddy and I tried building a surge style one that sat over a sump. It was for a 54 gal wild caught P. leopoldi tank. That was in 2000 or 2001 .

Chris

 

[SantaMonica]

Glad you like the "new style ATS" info.

Good point about humidity, etc. That's one of the reasons, of course, that these panels are for testing only. I just did a quick calculation on another thread:

My current acrylic unit is 8000 lumens. I found this LED:

05W580ERC 625 13000 80° US$ 0.774

...which is 13 lumens. So would need 615 LEDs, total $476. Not bad, but of course the kicker is the assembly.

 

[Chris_A]

And the power supply to run that many lol .

There is these: PowerBrite | Current What's Next
I have one of the 10,000K units on a 10 gal mantis tank and WOW are the reflectors good. They are a bit pricey but the electricity savings over the life of the unit is well worth it IMO. Plus it has two other advantages...
1) it's made for aquariums so humidity shouldn't be a problem. (Still not supposed to get wet... fancy that eh? )
2) there is seperate (cheaper) linking units so you can get up to 12 1watt (50-60 Lumens/watt) LED's with really good reflectors.

I have been told they get a bit flakey with 3 total units but even at 2 units it should be more than sufficient for the size mats I've seen here so far. LOL, I just re-read the site... I guess the company's solution to the 3 unit problem was to stop selling them as that and say 2 units .

Chris

 

[SantaMonica]

Yes those are good for display (visual) lighting, but chlorophyll-based algae growth demand red and blue (these are called "plant grow" lights). What would be nice is a plant-grow version of the Current lights.

 

[GlaringToast]

Well, scrubber is doing very well, the side facing the wall has considerably higher amount of growth, maybe the actual lamp (not bulb) is higher quality, may have something to do with it. Still nice growth on bottom where old light is I would say that the bottom light is definately worthwhile although once I decide to clean will become a much more meticulous chore compared to cleaning the screen. And I would have to say that the small amount of screen that spends most of it's time underwater is FAR from useless. It has a very nice strong coat of algae on it. my tank has almost completely kicked cyano, I don't think that it was due to the scrubber but I'm sure now it is finally helping with it and hopefully will continue to keep it out of my tank. I have a small patch of it left which trapped itself in between rock and acrylic where my man-made live rock was attached to my tank so it will be a little difficult to get rid of. I will post pics of the scrubber and tank soon.

 

[Chris_A]

And I would have to say that the small amount of screen that spends most of it's time underwater is FAR from useless. It has a very nice strong coat of algae on it.

This, IMO, is where the "old" surge style ATS really shines. You get the best of both worlds . The down side is they are messy (salt creep/splashing), noisy and shoot a lot of bubbles into either the sump or tank (depending on how it's set up).

Chris

 

[GlaringToast]

I have no bubbles at all, but I wouldn't say my scrubber is an old style either. The only reason my scrubber is loud is for some reason when I changed out my sump the scrubber will fill up then drain a lot in a second then and continue in that cycle. It's very odd to me because nothing changed for the scrubber other than like 8" max that I moved it. Maybe I just had an unbeleivably sweet spot when I first set it up. But, I still have yet to tweak it since I re-set it up. Emergencies make life hectic and hectic doesn't usually go well with this hobby.

 

[Chris_A]

In what orientation did you move it the 8"? Sounds like the drain is working against some kind of pressure (water or air locking).

Yeah, I was just refering to the surge style ATS. This design deals with most of those issues at the cost of slightly less growth... from what I can tell anyway Don't really have the need to test it. The surge style ATS (normally) was based off a Carlson Surge Devise, or CSD, with provisions made so it can be lite. The advantage being you normally have longer contact time with the water for nutrient uptake while the algae also gets exposure to atmospheric CO2 when the tank empties. At one point I had worked on a design where 20 watt T8's were "water proofed" and ran through the bucket vertically with an open ended box for the screen. I seem to recall there were space issues for all the plumbing and lighting I wanted. Never did build it though, maybe I should do it just for the sake of "completeness".

All things considered though, when you weigh all the pro's and cons of both systems you're probaby ahead with this one ("new" style).

Chris

 

[GlaringToast]

Yeah, I would agree, My scrubber is seeming to be a beast as far as efficiency goes, it's not the most sightly thing, but I took absolutely no measures to make it pretty. As far as how I moved it I'm really not sure, that night was a complete disaster, which resulted in a broken skimmer, multiple floods, and a broken.....18 gallon biocube/nano (something like it)
So the movement of my scrubber, while would have been important had none of the other things happened was the least of my concern. I don't know though, because when it was working "perfectly" it was on a slant in a direction I would figure would DECREASE efficiency. It's always a fish tank DIY project that shows me that it's not ALL in design and what it SHOULD do because nothing ever works how it SHOULD.

 

[SantaMonica]

Successes of the Day:

brianhellno on the MFK site: "Just wanted to share my success with a turf scrubber with my freshwater tank. Currently I have a 125 with (5) 6-inch piranha, (6) 4-inch giant danios, about (20) 1-inch baby black cons, (2) 2-inch green terrors, (2) 2-inch jack dempseys, and (1) 2.5 inch blue malawi cichlid. The smaller fish were all supposed to be feeders, but the piranha ignore them. Anyways I've had the scrubber up and running for almost three weeks now and I finally tested the water parameters: Ammonia 0 ppm, Nitrite 0 ppm, Nitrate 5 ppm. Not too bad! Usually the Nitrate sits around 40 to 80 ppm right before a water change, so this is definitely an improvement. All I can say is thanks for the great idea!

worley on the scrubber site: "Well just got my phosphate test kit and did a test... *drumroll* .... 0ppm. It's the API phosphate test kit, and it was the very lightest green on the salt water card (0ppm). That's a great result, especially as I'm now feeding tonnes into the tank, 1 block of brine shrimp and 1 of mysis, plus some live brine (fed with live phyto a an hour before feeding to the fish) and some pellet foods. [...] I still can't get over the phosphate test, and how low the nitrates are considering there's not been a water change in 2 months and so much food has gone in.

jan on the RPhil site: "Today is my 24th day of cycling, I measured my water my parameters and here are the result: Nitrate 0ppm. Turf algae is almost all over my screen Razz !!!! thanks for this great Idea!

 

[GlaringToast]

Day 16 (time flies!)

Okay, I'm not going to get too much into it with this post. I'm at day 16, I just realized my timers were in the wrong position and were on 24 hours 4 days straight, so my scrubbers doing well but I've had some burn off. I had some algae clog while I was out of town which aided die off as well. All in all I'm happy with what it is now even given those factors, I really thought it would just get messed up with me leaving for 4 days just because that's my luck. Anyway, here's some pics!

(As for you Santa Monica, you don't even have to say it! I know! I need to dremel my slot wider, I just haven't had time!)

 

[GlaringToast]

Anyone out there?

 

[Chris_A]

Yup .

I'm not really sure... What is the second pic of?

One thing you could *try* is instead of tearing it down to dremel out the slot just zip tie a second sheet (perhaps a third on the opposite side too) of the "grating" to the first. It *should* help with distributing flow better. But like I said before, I've never tried this system so no promises . Either way, it might be easier to try that than tear it down.

Chris