Algae scrubber

[Bblinks]

Hey guys. Jeff from Jl Aquatics made one for his 29 gallon biocube. He showed me some pictures and it does look very interesting. The way he did it looked super clean, he used a 5 gallon tank with 2 x 9w coralife mini fixture on either side of the tank. Mesh screen with a 1 inch PVC running across the top. He said it was extremely effective against diatom algae and his fish seems to be a lot happier. If anyone have any questions, he will be the guy to ask. IMO if you are running a smaller system then it might be worth your time to look into it but for larger systems like mine 200-500 gallon tank, I don't think it's worth the realestate and effort to set up some thing significant. I run biopellets on my system, although I still run rowaphos to zero out the left over phosphate I still think it is the easiest system to run on a large reef tank that has problems with phosphate or nitrate, Just my 2 pennies.

[viperfish]

I had one set up on my 110 a while back. It works well but you have to be dilligent about cleaning it or it will grow out of control in a hurry. The two major advantages of the algae scrubber is 1) it's natural, and 2) there's nothing better for growing pods which is great for people who keep Mandarins. I went with Boipellets after a while because I wanted zero maintenance, and I changed my sump so I just don't have the space for a scrubber any more.

[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.