Algae scrubber

[Bill]

Money Pit, I shut down the scrubber because:

1. Maintenance and cloudy / green water.
2. Amount of carbon I had to use to keep water clear. If I used ozone the nitrates would climb.
3. Every time I cleaned the screen, the whole house smelled like cucumbers.
4. Nitrates would not stay down.
5. Takes up some real estate. Need at least 1 sq inch of screen per gallon (both sides lit). I would recommend even more.

On the positive side,

1. Visible decrease in nuisance algae in the tank – I didn’t have to clean glass for 2-3 weeks.
2. Millions of pods everywhere - would be able to keep mandarin fish easy.
3. Zero phosphates and lower nitrates (but not zero)
4. Keeps tank cooler in summer, but more evaporation.
5. Cool to see all the different types of algae growing on the screen. I had red and green turf algae, hair algae, and some kind of fluorescent green feather stuff.

However, I switched to sulfur denitrator because no maintenance, brings nitrate and phosphate to zero, no smell once adjusted properly, can use ozone and less carbon and nitrates remain at zero, crystal clear water, less power consumption, small footprint.