New to scrubbers diy

Good day.

I’ve recently set up anew tank, its a 350g. I live in China and bought this scrubber.





I don’t have any fish in yet but theres a fair amount of GHA in the tank. The scrubber I’ve got has red LEDs, but I don’t have any idea what lumens or wattage. The screen size is 35x16cm. The feed pump is a 1000Litre pump. I’m getting slight hair growth but it’s more of a slime algae.

So I’m planning to build a waterfall scrubber. I like to feed heavy so I’m planning a 12x8 inch screen build. I will also build a diy LED unit, one for each side. I’ve sort of have a plan to build it but I’m stuck at the lights. I’ve read most of the guidelines and posts by @Turbo, but I still don’t understand it.

So for this screen size I’ll need about 9x3W leds per side? Is it possible to run both 660nm and 420nm lights from the same driver? I read that to start off I need half the usual power, so can this be managed by the driver?

I’m clueless here and completely out if my depth. Please guide me in how and what to do.

 

Hello Turbo.

I used to have a 125 g tank. Always struggled with turf algae, found out the rocks I bought was filled with crap and I ended up getting a bigger return pump. The turf started to die off and I pulled the ones I could out, 3 minutes later everything was dead.... All my fish, corals, inverts.... Nothing survived as it caused a massive nh3 spike.

So yes, this is a new setup. So it’s a 350g total water volume. About 40lb of live rock. Flow in tank is 2x maxspect gyres 350. Return pump is a jebao 20000 dcp. Then sump: 1 chamber is protein skimmer( due to the previous tank and trying every method to clean tank known to mankind I ended up upgrading my skimmer) skimmer is a super reef octopus 6000 ext. 2 chamber is 2 boxes of marinepure cubes and this algae scrubber. And last chamber is rive rock rubble, return and heaters and carx reactor.

I have some fish in qt at the moment. I’ll be adding 2 blue chromis on Tuesday as their qt is finished.

I don’t have any idea what lumes the lights is but there’s 28 red and 7 white leds.

The original post was 2 days ago. This is the growth today. It almost looks like a green diatom algae, I say diatom because it makes a bubble type algae on the surface.




I’m really scared shitless for this tank going the same way as the previous one....

Do you think this is what you want and is there anything I can do to improve it, or should I try and build a waterfall scrubber?

 

In China there’s a site similar to amazon called taobao. Bought it there. Not able to visit their sites from the web though. So don’t have a link.

 

Sorry it was a typo, I meant 400lb.

I found a place that can cnc all the plastic parts, planning on doing it with pp plastic. Also found the heatsink and leds I want to use. So I’ve got a design in my head and if I do decide to build it I want to make a step by step progress with bunch of pictures, because who doesn’t like pictures.

So for the leds fixture I want to build like a small housing made of black pp plastic and then obviously clear front. How do I get the plastic glued to the aluminum heatsink to make it waterproof? Is there a specific type of material(plastic, abs, pvc, acrylic) I should use to make the housing that I can weld or glue to the aluminum heatsink? And if so, what is the best product to do this? It will not be submerged in the water, but for the odd drops or splashes I want to make sure the light will stay safe.

 

I need your help @Turbo.

I decided to make it a 10” x7” screen. That’s a total of 70sq inch. By doing the feeding calculations it’s 70/12= 5,8 cubes of frozen food.

For the led its 10x7=70. 70/4= 17.5 leds per side.

I decided to use 13 red leds and 2 violet leds. So that give a coverage of 70/13=5sq inch per led. I’ll be placing them on a 10x7” heatsink to make sure I get even coverage.

I’m really stuck at the leds and the drivers. I’ve drawn a picture of the layout I want to use. I want to use a dimmable driver, but I always want the violets to run at 50% of the reds power. So if the reds runs at 100%, the violets should run at 50%. If the reds run at 70%, the violets should run at 35%. But I’m not sure how to wire them and what drivers to get.




What is the best way to achieve this, but also the safest?

Please, I know it’s easy for most of you and I don’t understand why I’m not getting this( probably the most frustrating part is knowing it’s simple, and it ticks me off not getting it). Please help.

 

I spoke to a guy that sells everything that I would need, I just don’t know what I need. Being a foreigner not speaking Chinese causes some miscommunication but maybe you can help me.
This is what I’m planning.



So the guy told me he has a dimmable driver that can control 2 channels. The driver rated for 10-20 3W leds. Here’s a couple of photos. I know its in chinese but maybe you can look at the numbers and know if it’s the correct one.







You can see on my drawing that the “B” and the “W” is the channels. If I do it like this, will it work and is this driver the correct one?

 

Ok. For this I use a direct current driver, right? Which means 3W x 15 leds= 45 total wattage. So I can get a direct current driver of 50W?

 

@Turbo. Ok. I’m pretty sure I’ve got the light figured out. Now to the next question. My screen will be 10” long. According to your post you suggest to use minimum 35gph per inch. So thats 350gph.

Just 3 questions- 1. What is the best flow per hour? 2. What is the best diameter for the slot pipe? 3. And how big should the slot be where the screen will fit into? (Say I have a screen that is 1,5mm thick, what gap should I make to get the best water movement over the screen?)

 

I found a Meanwell supplier, but with the language barrier and me not knowing what ask for makes it impossible.

@Turbo this is how I want to wire the lights. I want to make 2 of them. Is there a Meanwell driver that is dimmable but can run both these fixtures. I want to run both the light fixtures of one driver, but it has to be dimmable. So it has to be a dimmable driver that can run 28 chips in series. Is there a Meanwell driver that can do this? If so, what model number, or something? So that I can ask the guy I want this one.

 

Ok. I’ll get 2 of those drivers. I found a dimmer that can dim both units simultaneously. It says that the dimmer is 12-24V and 30A. Will this dimmer work?

 

Is there a meanwell driver that is dimmable and will work for this exact setup?