ATS Sump Design. Need thoughts/opinions.

[snakeblitz33]

From reading and reading all ninety something of those pages there were several discoveries that I guess I should note in this thread:
1. An ATS should be cleaned every 5 to 7 days, regardless if you think it needs it or not. If you leave it any longer, the bottom layers of algae on the screen start to decay and slough off, putting nitrate and phosphate back into the water.
2. The flow rate should be no less than 35gph per inch of screen. More is better, however, since more water means more nutrients being delivered to the algae.
3. The Screen should be completely roughed up if it is smooth. Plastic canvas works better. If you can, the best screens are two and three layers of roughed up plastic canvas that is about 1/4" thick. The rougher the screen, the easier it is for algae to attach to it.
4. "warm" CFL bulbs no greater than 46 watts should be used per 12x12 inches of screen. 23watt "warm" bulbs work just fine too. Lights should always have a reflector and CFL bulbs should be changed once every three to four months because their color spectrums shift. The best light to use is "pink" freshwater aquarium T5 lights placed within 2" of the screen.
5. The screen should never be rinsed off in the sump as this causes a "green tint" in the display tank because of the excess chloriphill
6. The screen should always be washed with tap water in the sink more more then 1/2 of the screen at a time. Tap water kills the copepods underneath the algae layers to prevent them from eating the algae underneath. Copepod populations are re-established the moment you put the screen back into the tank. copepods that you breed from the screen will be no more than 7 days old at a time.
Keep in mind that an ATS unit is nothing more then a highly efficiant verticle refugium, and has to have maintenance to work. Just like you would harvest the macroalgae in a refugium, you need to harvest your algae off of your screen 1/2 at a time, no longer than 7 days at a time.
I hope this helps.

 

[snakeblitz33]

Rough up the plastic canvas screen that you can buy at any craft store in the sewing section with a hole saw blade. Just go back and fourth and in mini circles on both sides until sufficiantly rough. Sand paper doesn't do anything. Up to 3 layers of plastic canvas at a time, no more than 1/4" thick at a time.
By the way, something I forgot to mention was that the pipe at the top should have 1/2" mini slots cut into the one horizontal slot. This will give plenty of flow across your ATS. Sometimes algae will grow up into the slots... you can prevent this by using some metal/marine duct tape across the top pipe to block light from reaching the cross slits. No light = no algae = no blockage.

 

[snakeblitz33]

So, I was rained out of the job this afternoon, so now I am home and on here. No life, I guess.
I am going to go to the hardware store to pick up some stuff to make this ATS sump. I am probably not going to get around to building it today because I have something else I have to do this evening Below is a materials list:
1. 5 pieces of glass that will fit into my sump.
2. Plastic Canvas sheet from hobby/craft store
3. Glass Cutter/oil
4. Tube of silicone
5. Additional PVC that's required for the job.
When I start my build, I'm going to have to get my tools:
1. Hole saw (for roughing up the screens)
2. PVC cement/cleaner
3. Dremel tool for cutting the slot. (I guess I could use a drill bit?)
4. calk gun
5. Razor blade(s)
I'm pretty excited to go ahead and do the build
I am considering going ahead and perhaps buying a new 10g tank and sell or store the old sump. I don't like having to scrape all of the silicone out of it etc. etc. A new tank is only $10, so what the heck... lol

 

[snakeblitz33]

YAY! As promised, I bought my stuff to do my ATS Sump. I just did a lot of the build and took a few pics as I went along.
Here's one of em'

 

[snakeblitz33]

Here's another pic of it with the light box installed. Don't make fun of my small stove! lol

 

[2quills]

So what's the plan to get the water to flow evenly across the screen? Are you going to build a horizontal spray bar Tee'd off the return?

 

[snakeblitz33]

There are actually several options. One, which is probably not the best but the most doable, is to use the water coming from the overflow to splash across the screen. I will be using a kind of "spray bar" made from cut PVC pipe. The second way is to let the water from the overflow dump into the screen in an indescriminate way, but also use a powerhead in the return pump area that pumps water over the screen using a spray bar made from PVC. The third way I could do it is to let the water overflow into the bottom area of the screen, bypassing it, and using a powerhead in the return pump area on a spray bar to push water onto the screen. Either way, water has to be moved over the screen. lol. I think the most efficient way to do this would be to pass at least some of the overflows water over the screen and then maybe use additional spray bar from the powerhead in the return pump chamber. Opinions?
Remember, this system is not going to have any other type of filtration other than an algae scrubber. So, I'm aiming for efficiency.

 

[2quills]

Hmmm...well according to the recommendations a scrubbers efficiency depends a lot on having a lot of flow. 35gph per 1" width of screen as the general rule. You have a 9" wide screen so that's 315 gph. Personally, I'd probably go with a separate pump to feed the screen. Or go with an over sized pump and Tee off of that. I think it's more about velocity though than actual volume. And you can probably get more velocity feeding it with a pump. JMO But there are folks running it off of their overflows so we pick our poison I guess.

 

[snakeblitz33]

The output from my overflow is right at 168gph. I know this is not enough. I am going to follow the proper guidelines when setting up this screen. One thing that I would like to do is pass some of the water from the overflow directly across the screen. My thinking is that there will not be ANY water in the entire system that has not passed through the screen. If I don't use the overflow and use a separate pump, there is a small chance that not all of the water will pass through the screen on every turn. I'll just have to see how the system runs for a few days and judge if its working or not.

 

[2quills]

Quote:
Originally Posted by SnakeBlitz33 http:///t/387496/ats-sump-design-need-thoughts-opinions/20#post_3411454
The output from my overflow is right at 168gph. I know this is not enough. I am going to follow the proper guidelines when setting up this screen. One thing that I would like to do is pass some of the water from the overflow directly across the screen. My thinking is that there will not be ANY water in the entire system that has not passed through the screen. If I don't use the overflow and use a separate pump, there is a small chance that not all of the water will pass through the screen on every turn. I'll just have to see how the system runs for a few days and judge if its working or not.
I'm of the mindset that it should work regardless. The system will cycle enough times through out the day that all of the water will eventually flow over the screen at some point in time. Especially with the flow requirements of the screen on that size system. Is the glass piece that the screen sits on siliconed down or is it just laying on there? Because I could see a point in time where you would develop a lot of detritus build up in the tank down there. Thoughts on a shallow sand bed and pods? You should end up with tons of pods anyway. Perhaps it won't be a big issue.

 

[snakeblitz33]

The glass just sits on top of it and can easily be removed. I'm just going to put live rock down there, and maybe clean it out once every six months to a year. Shouldn't have too many problems with it.
I just set it up on my system a few minutes ago - and I don't think that it's going to work for me horizontally. The water from the overflow splashes on the screen and salt spray goes everywhere! The light box on top of the sump is wayy to big for my application, and doesn't allow the overflow to be positioned correctly. The piece of horizontal glass went too far down into the water - when the sump is running, the screen floats on one end. It's just little tweaks here and there, but at least I tried it horizontally before I scrapped the idea. I'm sure with a little more fine tuning and everything I could get it to work, but it would require me to modify my stand. I don't see myself cutting into the POS stand that I have right now, comprimising it's integrity.

 

[snakeblitz33]

My next design will definitely be verticle. The way I re-built my sump and took that little piece of glass out, I have a lot of extra room in my system to add a verticle algae scrubber. Maybe my previous design was a little flawed, but experimentation is a big part of this hobby, and that's what I like.

 

[acrylic51]

Corey did you see Floyds build on the other site??? Looks like a really nice setup.

 

[2quills]

Quote:
Originally Posted by acrylic51 http:///t/387496/ats-sump-design-need-thoughts-opinions/20#post_3411544
Corey did you see Floyds build on the other site??? Looks like a really nice setup.
Yeah I think he put the build on both sites. It's essentially the same thing that S.Monica sells. It's a nice design. Floyd has a pretty big pressens over on the scrubber site. He was supposed to be preparing to do an experiment with setting up three different scrubbers plumbed to the same tank and playing with different led color configurations. But I don't think he's started building the tanks yet. Still waiting for that to happen. Maybe he will now that he's done building his new router table. There is a good thread over there called Modern LED Scrubber Light that's good to thumb through and check out. Still wanting to see more led scrubber builds though. Guys are trying to pin down the specific areas of the spectrum to target specific types of algae growth.

 

[acrylic51]

His lighting setup is what actually caught my attention.....Along with the acrylic work!!!!!

Still need to get some time to do a lot of reading/research on the idea.....Not 100% sold....I'm straddling the fence, because just like all things in this hobby, everything gets touted as the cure all, but skeptical still........

 

[2quills]

Quote:
Originally Posted by acrylic51 http:///t/387496/ats-sump-design-need-thoughts-opinions/20#post_3411565
His lighting setup is what actually caught my attention.....Along with the acrylic work!!!!!

Still need to get some time to do a lot of reading/research on the idea.....Not 100% sold....I'm straddling the fence, because just like all things in this hobby, everything gets touted as the cure all, but skeptical still........
I don't think there is any actual cure all. There are many ways to filter a system and they all have their pros and cons. And a scrubber isn't any different in the idea that you still need to have some knowledge of how it it all works in order to keep it running effectively and maintain it. Knowing which types of growth your seeing means different things. And those things can make a difference on how effective it is at filtering either for a fish only system vs a full blown reef.

 

[al&burke]

LED light would be nice for an algae scrubber - get rid of those bulky lights. Following along guys.

 

[snakeblitz33]

Well, I think by going verticle, I will increase the amount of filtration space available. I'm going to using a 8x8" screen, which is more than enough for a 20g tank if cleaned regularly. I'm also building a 12x12 for a client of mine, but I would like to test mine out first.
I hate that I bought all of that stuff for my horizontal algae scrubber and then it didn't work out like I thought it should. The mechanics and DIY of the way I designed it was completely off. If I did it all again, I would change the constant water level in the sump and make it more shallow. I would make it where the water rolled off the edge of the water and slightly spilled into the sump water. I would have also made it to where the overflow was able to be directly dumped into the water at the bottom of the scrubber. But, the way it is now with the glass taken out - I have plenty of room for a verticle scrubber to be mounted and operational.

 

[2quills]

Quote:
Originally Posted by SnakeBlitz33 http:///t/387496/ats-sump-design-need-thoughts-opinions/20#post_3411591
Well, I think by going verticle, I will increase the amount of filtration space available. I'm going to using a 8x8" screen, which is more than enough for a 20g tank if cleaned regularly. I'm also building a 12x12 for a client of mine, but I would like to test mine out first.
I hate that I bought all of that stuff for my horizontal algae scrubber and then it didn't work out like I thought it should. The mechanics and DIY of the way I designed it was completely off. If I did it all again, I would change the constant water level in the sump and make it more shallow. I would make it where the water rolled off the edge of the water and slightly spilled into the sump water. I would have also made it to where the overflow was able to be directly dumped into the water at the bottom of the scrubber. But, the way it is now with the glass taken out - I have plenty of room for a verticle scrubber to be mounted and operational.
Well just think about how many failures Edison had before he invented the light bulb. You only have to get it right once to make a real name for yourself.

I like the vertical idea better personally. I looked at your tank and then the lightbox on top and wondered why you wouldn't have had the room to do just that.

 

[snakeblitz33]

I'm still not sold on LED lights even for growing hair algae yet. There are some very interesting proposals out there for the use of red and blue LED lights to grow hair algae - like what marijuana growers do with hydroponics - but still, I don't think that's the most efficient and cost effective way of doing it. Heck, my little horizontal screen MIGHT could have worked with a little bitty T5 light, by allowing more space in the sump for the overflow to fit correctly. But, then again, I would have had to re-build the baffles to lower the water level in the sump more. I just know now what needs to be done in-case I want to go with this design again.
For those of you who are still interested in doing a DIY horizontal ATS Sump - here is what I would RE DESIGN and redo if I were to do it again this way: