The HOG 0.5 Scrubber

Before you guys start throwing tomatoes just hear me out. I bought this sucker recently and I am so far not impressed and since I am now $100 in the hole I would like to try to make this thing work before I try other options (i.e. true DIY or the infamous L2). I will keep you all updated with any changes I make to improve this thing but I would first like to hear from anyone else that has had successes with this device.

Today I got fed up with the fact that nothing has grown on the special "green grabber" screen after almost a week of start up. So I started examining how much flow actually went into and out of it. Not to my surprise this thing really just recirculates water inside of itself because the inlet and outlet are extremely tiny. So what did I do? I completely gutted out the top and bottom of the enclosure to try to allow more flow on and out. I'll keep you all updated on this improvement but again I am more interested with anyone else's successes with this thing

The main reason why I liked the concept was that the light is outside of the tank and behind glass. Other than that.....well....it could use improvement IMHO. Since I can't seem to find solid results on this device I post it in the experimental section of this forum.

 

Well since you most definitely have more experience then me I will continue to wait patiently. The main reason why I made the modification that I did was because it seems like almost every other algae scrubber has a decent "turn over". Watching my HOG struggle to suck in and blow out water told me that if any algae does grow, it will suck up the nutrients that are trapped inside the chamber and the algae growth will be limited by the rate of "fresh" water that is flowing in. Intuitively, I would imagine that the more "fresh" water flowing through the filter the better algae growth.

This also comes from the fact that any air lift type system only works on the fact that there is plenty of inlet area for the bubbles to "grab" the water (and not a lot of flow resistance for water to freely flow into the inlet) and pull the water through the outlet area. I have created an air lift type of power head in the past that worked quite well but the one thing I found is that you really cannot restrict your inlet and outlet. Furthermore, if you have a large height difference the bubbles can really induce a lot of flow (as long as you have the water flow bounded by a PVC pipe)! The key is more time for the drag of the bubbles to induce water flow. Anyways enough babbling! I will update in a few days or so, (perhaps a picture if there is anything to take a picture of )

For future reference, my current main display has a lot of hair algae but my system has very low nitrates and phosphates (API kit can't detect them at the moment). My goal is to keep my nitrates and phosphates this low and gradually remove the algae in the main display in sections and let the UAS take over the demand.

 

Has anyone noticed better growth in environments with lower nutrients?

 

So just to keep yall updated, I've completely re-engineered the crap out of this thing.

The top and bottom are 100% open which has allowed a lot more water to flow through (i.e. high turn over in my sump).

I've also redone the tube which makes the bubbles. The damn thing originally had the air tube sliced and diced into a million peices and as you can see in some of SM's videos, the air only comes out at 2 or 3 places. I cut out the sliced part of the tube and then tried to just poke holes in the tube using a bobby pin. This made bubbles but they seemed too small and the air flow was too restricted. So I heated up the bobby pin with a lighter repeatedly and melted slightly larger holes. Now the bubbles are of decent size (hard to see in picture but they are about 1/4 of an inch and consistently this size. I now get excellent flow through this thing. Before I did any of this stuff, when I took off the LED side, the algae side would fall off, but now there is enough flow going through the grow chamber that it actually sticks to the glass on its own without magnets! (high fluid velocity causes low pressure)

Now I can actually wait patiently because I kept looking at this thing thinking the flow isn't good enough.

I've also confirmed the flow in my empty 15 gallon tank by kicking up the sand and detritus and watching it get sucked up into the filter at the bottom. I didn't record a video but once I start getting some growth perhaps I will record the flow on a video.

 

So quick update on how things are going:

I actually have the slightest hint of growth (the top of the screen is tinted green now). I took SM's advice on rubbing algae on the screen one step farther by pinching some green hair algae between the screen side and the glass (the magnet holds the algae in place). I think this should accelerate things and thus far I think my hypothesis is correct. The picture I am attaching unfortunately does not show the green tint at the top of the screen very well. You can sort of make out some greenish tint on the top two corners of the white screen. I didn't want to disturb the delicate pinch I have on the hair algae at the bottom otherwise I would have pulled the unit out for a better picture.

I'll probably have another impatient post on Friday to keep you all updated.

Also, there is definitely a boundary effect with the flow through this system. Once I actually get some hair algae on the screen (I hope) I'll be able to visualize the flow a little bit better BUT it appears to get best flow when the top of the outlet is about half an inch from the water line (given you tore apart the bottom and top of the screen compartment like I did).

 

Finally pulled out my GoPro so that I could get a video of the enhanced flow in the unit. I also attached another picture to give you all an update on the screen. It's greening up more and more so I think soon enough I can scrub off some algae.

 

Well it has been 3 days since the last update. Things are kicking into gear! Can definately see some nice green hair algae growing in.

New issue, the light is either too bright or too close to the glass (I think a combination of both). You can see in the picture I have attached some screen material over the center. Not sure if this will work. I may even just buy a cheap pair of sun glasses and stick the lens over the middle...who knows. With that said, there is a reason I have screen material now .........but that will show up in another thread hopefully.

You can also see in the other picture that I have super glued aluminum foil to the inside of the light chamber. I figured its a waste to have a black back ground only soaking up light that will not do anything. It seems brighter in there now. Anyways, this thing is finally working!

 

I've been offshore for a month now. I'll give you all an update when I get back on shore

 

New update! I've attached the before and after scrubbing pictures. Not much algae to scrub off but my display is getting more and more clear. I usually feed one cube on Saturday and one on Sunday so I have a feeling it doesn't grow very fast because I probably feed a lot less than a lot of people on this forum. I'm probably going to ramp up the amount I am feeding to see if my corals like more food.

One note: I did scrub the screen exactly two weeks ago when I got back from being offshore. It dawned on me after I put the scrubber back in the tank that I should have taken before and after pictures which is why I have waited another two weeks before an update.

Also (maybe not that important), I ordered some better testing equipment (salifert instead of API) to test my water parameters. I still need to get a K test because from what I read that can become a limiting nutrien in scrubber tanks. Anyways, you will probably be getting another update in two weeks!

 

I have a 40 gallon tank with a 20 gallon sump below. In the sump photo you can see a skimmer but I don't use it. Once I'm sure the algae scrubber is working (or if I finally scrap this scrubber and make one that works better) I am probably going to seel the skimmer. You can see the little HOG 0.5 in the middle of it.

Tank and sump have both had dramatic face lifts since I started. This is my first fish tank and so I tried a lot of things in the beginning...a lot of which didn't work well which caused me to stop caring about it last year...but near the end of the year I decided to give it another chance after reading quite a bit of stuff on saltwater fish tanks in general.

As you can see the tank still has quite a bit of cyano...but it has definately been going away slowly. The frag I have in the front is my first frag...never really had coral before so I am taking baby steps. I added an extra picture of the frag when I first got it (about a month and a half ago). I lost all the polyps on the front of the frag because my conch snail takes laps around the tank and wasn't happy that these things were in his way. Also my clown fish hosted the really tall polyps which is strange but luckly the corals don't mind. The toadstool just recently started slouching...I've heard that do that sometimes so I'm not doing anything about it.

 

Herewith a new update on the HOG 0.5. To be honest I am starting to get to the tipping point on whether to continue with this device or built up my own water fall ATS. As you can see in the photos of the HOG....well it's not growing anything that is desired besides a little bit a fuzzy green algae on the outter rim on the chamber. The patch of hair algae at the bottom is another supplement I tried adding to give it another boost. It almost appears as if that patch of hair algae I added is slowly dying off.

My last and final conclusion before I give up on this thing: The red led is in fact just red and not a 660 nm deep red. Here is why I think this:

I have set up my own version of a upflow bubble driven algae scrubber in a separate tank and it appears to be slowly building up nice light and dark green algae as desired. On this tank I am using a simple 60 watt conventional light bulb. To be exact its a philips light bulb meant titled "garage door opener". If you google "60A/CL/GDO A19" you will find the bulb. I've read that the most likely reason why good old fashion incadecent bulbs work well is because they actually have quite a bit of long wave spectral energy (i.e. a decent amount of deep red....along with IR....along with green and a little bit a blue).

To confirm that the red led is just a crummy non 660 nm I put a paper towel over the light. The idea behind this is that I want to cancel out the the notion that the light is just too intense (I doubt it but I have no experience with ATS)

Thoughts and experience would be much appreciated!