The HOG 0.5 Scrubber

The white spot is my fault. I scrubbed it out a week ago because it was all orangish red and not green at all. I barely touch anything on the screen with a brush and it comes right off. The lights run 14 hours. On at 5pm off at 7 am.

Good to know on the plastic canvas. I roughed it up but if sections start slipping off I'll re-rough it up.

Luckily I have purchased 5 660nm philips luxeson ES leds. I may swap out the led in the HOG unit....or I may just forget it and move on to a more tried and true waterfall concept. Philips also seems to have a nice royal blue led with just the right wave length as well...maybe ill throw a blue in the mix.

 

New update:

I've been offshore quite a bit lately. In that time, I have left the scrubber alone and managed to let it really grow in! I gave it a good scrape a little over a week ago. I will update you all with a photo of the current growth inside of it right now but I wanted to upload my progress from last week first!

I scrapped off a good hand full of junk from the scrubber. I thought I might have cleaned the filter a little too much but it appears to be growing back okay.

 

On my API kits nitrate and phosphate are below detectable. So technically that means <5ppm nitrates and <0.25ppm phosphates. That has been the case for my tank even before I started up this algae scrubber because I have always had quite a bit of algae growth in my main display. The main reason why I started scrubbing was to try to get rid of all of the algae in my main and thus far it seems to be going away slowly by surely!

 

New update. I've moved the scrubber to a more advantageous location:

My back yard...

This is because this thing never really cut the mustard. Sure, it grew some stuff and I could collect it but it never really amounted to a large handfull of algae. With that said I will list my pros and cons about the upflow algae scrubber:
Pros:
1) Water is 100% separated from the electrical components (the leds). This was by far the most attractive part about this concept. This also turns into the least attractive part about this concept.
2) It uses air bubbles. I like air bubbles because that aggetates the water.
3) Easy to peek into. This kind of goes in line with number 1 but it was very cool to simply peel away the light chamber and peek at the screen (when the glass was not 100% covered in algae)

Cons:
1) Algae grows faster and better on the glass.
2) "Green grabber" technology grabs nothing... #7 plastic canvas from Hobby Lobby for less than 50 cents works plenty well. On top of that, the "green grabber" technology is not easy to clean off. This is because you have to use a brush rather than a card which means you are more likely to remove more algae then you should have.
3) Current UAS designs like the HOG 0.5 have teeny tiny pin holes for the water inlet and outlet. This is madness. You have to have close to no hydrodynamic resistance which equals wide open inlet and outlet.
4) Because you have to have a wide outlet. Bubbles are now popping at the surface like crazy which causes a large amount of salt creep which over time is an issue.
5) Although not much light leaks through the contraption, it leaks in the worst way (besides the giant inlet and outlet you need). Inside the glass. The glass wall of your sump or aquarium in a sense acts like a flat fiber optic cable. When light enters the glass at a very low angle, it reflects between the two edges of glass. This makes light travel through the panel of glass and out the edges of that wall. This makes your sump look like a barcode scanner. This can be solved by covering up these areas but again, it is a con.
6) It cost me $100 and for the amount of time and effort I had to put in to even get it online, I could have had a nice DIY waterfall scrubber.

I have since build a waterfall scrubber which I will put in another post. It will likely get revised and completely face lifted but the important thing for me right now is to have a grow screen that is nice and ripe.