Hi, I was wondering which scrubber you would suggest for my 140gal w 75 gal sump. It is sps/acro dominated. I would like to eventually like to be able to shut the skimmer down. I am currently running a waterfall style but its not nearly effective enough. I am very interested in getting one that I can depend on.
Well, tell me a little more about your current system and why you feel it is not performing. Detail about size, flow, lighting, and feeding etc - as much as you can provide. Pics too, if you can.
Screen is 14x12. Lights are cfl 27k. Flow is provided by an eheim 1260. There is very little algae if any on rock, mainly on overflow boxes. Tank lights are 2 400w 20k xm bulbs, about 6 weeks old. I change refuge lights every 3 months. It does grow hair algae , but the is always slimy type stuff on screen. flow in tank is pretty good. 1262 return, closed loop with dart pump and 4 hydor 1400's. soon to be.replace by vortech mp40es. Parameters are Ca 420, alk 9.1, my 1300, no3 <.02, po4 .04. Hanna meter. All other test are by Red Sea. If you have any other questions I will be happy to answer if I can
Questions about the Turbo Algae Scrubber? Post them here. I meant about the scrubber - how many lights per side, what wattage, how many hours/day are they on, what is the flow rate over the screen, which dimension is the width...that kind of ingo
Questions about the Turbo Algae Scrubber? Post them here. Also you say it's not as effective as you want it to be, but your water parameters aren't horrible - what are you shooting for?
Oh sorry bout that. It had 2 23w cfls per side approx. 4" from screen. Screen is 14w x 10 if working screen. They are running 16 on 8 off. Flow rate I'm not real sure about. I'd say 300 to 350 gph. I feed 2-3 times a day, formula 1&2 flakes, Thera plus A pellets and frozen a couple times a week. Far as parameters I'd like to get no3 below 1 and po4 down to .01-.02
Good, that's the info I was looking for. So it looks like your screen is sized per the old guidelines, the new guidelines are ~12 sq in of screen per cube of food per day. So according to that, you've got about a 12 cube/day system, if it also had 140W of light on it. Right now I would say, based on the info you provided, that your current system is oversized/under-fed and under-lit, and probably doesn't have enough flow. For a 14" wide screen you would want in the range of 500 GPH. 300-350 is probably OK but it cuts down on capacity and turnover rate of the system water. Light cycle is good. As far as your feeding, I would have to know more detail about exactly how much you feed in terms of "equivalent cubes". Look in this article about 1/3 of the way down for this verbage: On the average, I would guess that you are probably feeding somewhere between 3 and 4 cubes/day? If you're running a lot of SPS I would probably suggest an L4. If you are really trying to maintain low nutrients, the L4 has the option of dividing the screen into 2 sections so you can alternate cleaning and always have algae in the mid-growth stage of the week. Of course you can do this with the L3 and L2 as well. The L4 would allow for a higher turnover rate across the screen though. 13" x 35 GPH = 455 GPH flow over the screen, which means that you are turning over your total system volume about 2x per hour. In contrast, the L2 would run more like 200-250GPH which is only 1 turn/hour, and the L3 would be between the two. So the only thing to know for sure is how much you feed now. The L series are rigged up with "high light" levels, so they only need to have the lights on 9 hours/day, if you end up with a higher filtration requirement, you can extend the photoperiod. Theoretically, you should be able to get more capacity out of the system by light photoperiod. I don't know of anyone who has actually tested/measured this though.
I would say I feed between 3 and 4 cubes a day. I have 4 tangs and a few smaller fish and they're all fat and happy. My biggest thing I think for wanting a system like you build is because it is a cleaner set up and with LEDs I wouldn't have to be changing bulbs every few months. I believe it would be more effecient. If you could give a price for everything you think I need that would be great. I really don't have the room on my scrubber to add more lighting. I can get more flow with the turn of a handle. I'm only using maybe have if my pumps capacity, eheim 1260
Hi Bud, I was wondering if you needed any more information from me so as to help me make a decision on which scrubber would best fit my needs on my 140. I would say I feed at least 3-4 cubes a day. The only place I have alge in my tank is on the overflows. There is little to none on any of the rock.
Sorry reefrascal...I should probably break this thread into it's own forum so someone can post details about their particular tank instead of questions getting intertwined...you'll see that happen soon I bet!! Anyways, I think the L2 is good for tanks up to about 100g, maybe 120. The flow rate is about 250 GPH which gives you a turnover rate of about 2x per hour. I think that is a good number to shoot for. So with that being said, the L3 has a 10" wide screen so at 35 GPH/in that's 350 GPH, or a little over 2x/hr for your 140. Keep in mind that when figuring tank size, the manufacturer takes LxWxH of the outside dims and divides by 231 and gets gallons. That doesn't account for the volume of glass or acrylic, or air space at the top. My 120 (standard AGA) actually holds about 105 gallons. The Doc's tank made by Miracles in Glass is a 144 but actually holds 125, minus rock and sand the volume is about 110, then 15 in the sump for 125 total water volume. So this is just a fudge factor figure that makes sense to me as a good rule of thumb. The short answer here is your 140 could probably 'get by' with an L2 if you have some sort of supplemental filtration, which isn't necessarily a bad idea. You would be less dependent on other forms of filtration with a larger scrubber. The L3 is about right, and would allow for additional growth/feeding very well. The L4 would probably do better as stand-alone filtration and would allow for the most versatility (dual screen, half-and-half lighting, etc) but the L3 can also be rigged to do this, it just takes a little more doing on your part if you wanted to rig it up with those functions. The L3 and L4 do both come with 2 LED drivers, so you can re-wire the L3 such that one half of each light is on one driver, so you can alternate lighting each section of the screen. I hope I didn't just confuse the bejessus out of you!
No not really, I don't think. My ultimate goal, just so you know where I'm heading would be to shut down the skimmer and such and just be able to run on the scrubber. I've seen it be done. I met a guy recently whose tank was run on a scrubber only and his tank, mainly sps was doing great. Very good growth and very nice color. He said he took his skimmer offline over a year ago and his tank got better as time went on. Right now I believe my skimmer is preventing my scrubber from doing as well as it could but I know the scrubber isn't really up to par. So my thinking is the L4 would be the best choice for me. I would like to be able to go to a much smaller sump also
Well there you go, I was going to mention that if you are shooting for a heavy SPS tank, that would prompt me to lean L4 for you as well. After I ship out the ones I am currently making, the wait list is about 3 or 4 long currently, and my CNC shop lost their programmer & machine runner so I am not 100% sure when I can get another batch of parts cut, if anything I can hand make them, so I can put you on that list. It will likely be after the first of the year before I get started on any more units.
