Mega-Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover Replaces Skimmer, Refugium, Everything

santamonica

Member
Stevenkoh08 on the SG site: "i've my system running for quite awhile now... So far i nvr test no3, no2, po4 and amonia as i trust Algea scrubber alot. The algea did bloom but most of it is brown w/ abit of green. What's best of all is that my sand bed is clean, glass panel clean and the rocks u can't see any hair algea nor red/brown."
Geminianspark on the MOFIB site: "I currently have two tanks running with scrubbers. My 20g biocube is a mixed reef. The ONLY filtration on that tank is a 3.5" x 9" piece of acrylic with a piece of canvas glued on top that slants across the middle chamber with a fluroscent cabinet light over it. Granted, the size is smaller than SantaMonica's recommendations and i'm not technical so i have no clue how many gph run over it but that tank has been operational with ONLY the scrubber on it since october of '09. I have macro algaes popping up ... some red grac, and some grape calepura and a couple other things i've never seen before (I'm assuming due to the regular addition of calcium, mag and alk that i dose) but VERY Very small amounts of hair algae... less than a quarter inch spots in about three places that my snails keep mowed down for me. But again, mine is undersized for the size tank it's on so that, on top of the fact that i feed pretty heavily because of my sun coral has me hooked on these as filters. I only do water changes on this tank once a month or so and i only have to clean my glass about once every two weeks. Since putting that filter on the cube, it's been the best i've ever had my cube looking.. it's stocked full. I haven't had much fun building them as i'm not very handy with things but the difference in the way my corals looked with a skimmer and how they look with the scrubber is like someone added a super vitamin to the tank. From color to polyp extension to growth... i've seen improvements in all of them with no other changes in routine other than going an extra week without doing a water change. They have my vote."
Gigaah on the LR and MOFIB sites: "I personally vouch for the scrubber cycling. It dramaticly reduces the time from when you add water and rock to when you add fish. Generally a tank needs to have the beneficial bacteria multiply to the point where it can absorb the die off from the rocks and sustain livestock. The scrubber develops faster and starts removing the ammonia/nitrite/nitrate in a capacity to support livestock faster than having to just wait for the bacteria to grow to that point. After the bacteria of course does grow to do this the scrubber keeps doing what it does and creates what I've been calling "bullet proof chemistry" in your tank. Obviously as with any system the scrubber does have to be built properly in order to fill this role but that is a pretty beaten path by now and pretty specific instructions can be found as well. If it wasn't for the wealth of information I'd probably be doing things..what I'll from now on refer to as "The old way". I hope eventually to see massive fuges (not all fuges..just massive ones) and skimmers in a junk pile along with under-gravel filters and T12 lights. I will personally certify that an algaescrubber, if built properly, will withstand the most intense bioload and feeding! These devices are just unbelievably fantastic, its almost surreal. Highly oxygenated water, eats ammonia, nitrate, nitrite like crazy. Case and point, I stirred up some crap in my tank on two occasions. My ammonia spiked to 1.5 and 10 hrs later it was .25, 12hrs later it was zero. The scrubber on my main tank is about twice the reccomended size. A scrubber 3x the size would bear a heavy heavy bioload without skipping a beat, as long as its built properly (my biggest issue at first was making sure algae cannot grow into the water supply slit and choke the flow). I can feed my 55g 6+ cubes of food in a day and it won't even flinch. They eat phosphate and control algae with ease. To be honest, with all the bennefits from this more natural method of filtering its is obvious to me this is the best filtration system.. and especially for breeding as it adds great deal of oxygen to the water and keeps the parameters stable on a high bioload. If you have any questions at all about the system please ask. I can easily spew out build parameters as I've built two for myself and a two for friends. They are extreamly cheap too. I use no other method of filtering my tanks, mechanical, chemical, biological or otherwise on any of my tanks. I refuse to in fact."
 

santamonica

Member
Mrbncal on the scrubber site: "Well the horizontal version was a success, it grew algae, it lowered the "Big Three" numbers like it was supposed to... but... Theres always a but, it created a lot of salt creep and spray. In short, it was a maintenance headache. I was spending more time cleaning the inside of the stand and outside the sump walls than anything else. So I have switched to an in-sump vertical model. It does everything the other one did and is quieter and there is virtually no splash. Bulbs have been clean for three weeks now. Water is supplied with an independent powerhead to an old ehiem spraybar with 1/8" slot and 3/16" holes drilled every inch (am going to increase this to every half inch) and one plastic screen. Thats it. Works great, coral and fish are healthy like never before and I am even growing some gorgonians and doing great with dendros. Still dealing with the dreaded bubble algae and I get a "five o'clock shadow" of green algae on the display glass after a week or so but that is down from "heavy growth" every couple days, a year ago. After fourteen years in this hobby, its too simple to believe it works, but but it does and I am a believer."
Vanpytt on the scrubber site: "I've read all the Norwegian and Swedish forums about this [scrubber] subject, and none have posted results and pictures before me. I can conclude that this was a great success. My water values are perfect, more or less, im not running skimmer, don't change water, and feed alot. I'm going to be upgrading my current 130l into a 1k liter system (300l of wich is a sump) with 6*39w t5ho and acrylic diy box and fixtures. I'm not going to run anything except getting an UV filter for killing paracites and the well sized scrubber as standalone filtration in the sump. Will be posting pictures once the building starts."
Wak on the scrubber site: "Well i have a ten gallon nano reef. The nitrates in this tank were always around 20ppm, the filtering was a skimmer + small cannister filter and 10 pounds of live rock in the tank. Four weeks ago i found this info and decided to build a scrubber, I went for a one sided 30 degree sloping design the screen is 10 inch long by 2 inches wide and lit by 2 8watt linear t5 3500k tubes, flow about 200 litres per hour. Two weeks ago i took out the skimmer, Today my nitrates in the tank hit 0 for the first time ever thanks to this info"
Fholguera on the scrubber site: "I'm very happy with the results, my corals look very happy and the algea in my rocks is disappearing, the glass last longer without cleaning and the sand looks whitier. The kind of algea that grows in my scrubber it's starting to change, first it was a lot of filamentus and brown algea and now it's almost all filamentus and a little bit of ciano I think."
Bridgeport on the scrubber site: "Since I started this 55gal. close to two years ago, I had nothing but trouble from the start. Most of it was due to my lack of experience. The last time I had saltwater tanks was back in the 70's and as you know a lot has changed since then. Was plagued with green hair algae. After that cleared, then the red hair algae started, and lots of it. I started a scrubber about a year ago but didn't have it really going properly until about 5 months ago. Since then i am getting lots of growth. Most of the red hair algae [in the dispay] has disappeared. Just disconnected my hang on refugium about 2 weeks ago. The Cheato was dead and fouling the water. I did take the rocks out several months ago and cleaned them. Its a lot of work but it really helped to clean up the tank. My Algae Scrubber has gotten the Nitrates to 0 and the Phosphates to 0 and has disintegrated most of the red hair algae [in the display]."
Ihfarmboy75 on the scrubber site: "Ok, I'm sold. I have this scrubber on my 125 gallon African Cichlid tank and when I set it up on march 12th, my nitrate levels were 120 ppm. I was doing weekly 25-35% water changes and still couldn't get them under control. In a little over two months my nitrate levels have dropped to 5ppm and I would imagine they'll be zero in a few weeks."
 

santamonica

Member
Well I thought it couldn't grow any more in two weeks, but this time it reached the top of the window and was getting ready to spill out the end. My other scrubber was not very grown yet, so I did not want to clean this one today, but I thought I better before it spills. Tests today were N02=0, NO3=2, P=.015? (very faint blue). Feeding is one silverside per week to the eel, 4.8 ml/day continuous feeding of Oysterfeast for the corals (very low amount, currently), and misc nori/daphnia for the fish. Pics:





Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJxzeAgOS_M
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santamonica

Member
Finally getting the 25 nano scrubber to have consistant results. Am testing one side of it here, on a FW 10 gal with some tetras, catfish, suckerfish, and a discus. 0, 0, 0, when feeding one frozen cube blood worms a day. No water changes, and top off with tap water (no chlorine remover added)...


 

santamonica

Member
Great Barrier Reef Aquarium
Many people who have not built a scrubber properly (after August 1988) often say how the Great Barrier Reef aquarium was a scrubber "failure" because the corals did poorly. Apparently these people have not done much reading. In the early days of that aquarium, the scrubber was doing it's job great:
1988:
Nutrient Cycling In The Great Barrier Reef Aquarium
http://www.reefbase.org/download/download.aspx?type=10&docid=10506
"The Reef Tank represents the first application of algal scrubber technology to large volume aquarium systems. Aquaria using conventional water purification methods (e.g. bacterial filters) generally have nutrient levels in parts per million, while algal scrubbers have maintained parts per billion concentrations [much lower], despite heavy biological loading in the Reef Tank. The success of the algal scrubbers in maintaining suitable water quality for a coral reef was demonstrated in the observed spawning of scleractinian corals and many other tank inhabitants."
But did you know that they did not add calcium? That's right, in 1988 they did not know that calcium needed to be added to a reef tank. Even five years after that, the Pittsburgh Zoo was just starting to test a "mesocosm" scrubber reef tank to see if calcium levels would drop:
1993:
An Introduction to the Biogeochemical Cycling of Calcium and Substitutive Strontium in Living Coral Reef Mesocosms
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/zoo.1430120505/abstract
"It was hypothesized that Ca2+ and the substitutive elements Sr2+ and Mg2+ might [!] have reduced concentrations in a coral reef microcosm due to continuous reuse of the same seawater as a consequence of the recycling process inherent in the coral reef mesocosm."
"The scleractinians (Montastrea, Madracis, Porites, Diploria, and Acropora) and calcareous alga (Halimeda and others) present in the coral reef mesocosm are the most likely organisms responsible for the significant reduction in concentration of the Ca2+ and Sr2+ cations."
"Ca is not normally a biolimiting element, and strontium is never a biolimiting element; HCO3 [alk] can be. It appears that, because of a minor [!] limitation in the design parameters of the mesocosm, these elements and compounds may have become limiting factors. [...] It is surprising that the organisms could deplete the thousands of gallons of seawater (three to six thousand) of these elements even within two or more years [!!].
"The calcification processes are little understood."
So then in the late 90's, the Barrier Reef aquarium start using up it's supply of calcium, and the folks there said "the corals grew poorly". Really. No calcium, and the corals grew poorly. So they "removed the scrubbers" and "experimented with the addition of calcium" sometime after 1998. Then in 2004 it "definitely improved a lot". Really.
 
 

santamonica

Member
Low-light Scrubbers
Here is something new, different, and untested. I have not built one yet, but it should work for either SW or FW if the size and flow are correct. It is a vertical scrubber that you hang on the wall, and it requires NO electricity. It is a "low-light" scrubber:

I got the idea when reading a study about algae growth in freshwater streams:
"Algal Response to Nutrient Enrichment In Forested Oligotrophic Streams". Journal of Phycology, June 2008. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120083425/abstract
"Algae inhabiting forested streams have the capacity to acclimate to low light intensity. These light conditions affect their photosynthetic efficiency, but do not impair growth rates, in particular, in the case of thin diatom-dominated communities."
In other words, they don't filter as much per square inch (or per square cm) of area, but they do operate on very low light. Apparently it is mostly diatoms that grow in these low-light conditions.
The advantage of a scrubber like this should be obvious: It requires no electricity to power the screen. It still requires a pump, however, since the top of the scrubber would (probably) be high above the top of the tank. The scrubber is designed to operate on the light already available in the room, which would vary greatly depending on how strong the light bulbs are in the room, and how much sunlight comes in through the windows. The more average light the room has, the smaller the scrubber can be. The less light, the bigger it needs to be. Basically, the scrubber uses more area to make up for less light. And since the light is so low, the type of algae that is able to survive is (apparently) mostly diatoms.
Just as with regular scrubbers, the wider the unit it, the more flow is required. So in the spirit of keeping it from consuming too much electricty, a smaller pump could be used if the unit were narrow and tall. But the bottom of the unit will need to drain into either the tank or the sump, so there will be a limit to how low the bottom can be. And the limit to the top will be the ceiling. A tradeoff will need to be made, maybe so that it looks like a vertical picture on the wall. Fortunately the flow does not need to be as much as a regular scrubber, since it is one-sided only.
It will have to be experimented with to see if a clear cover is needed to stop any water dropletts from splashing out. Many people have decorative waterfalls of the same size as these, and they have no cover on them, so maybe water dropletts getting on the floor will not happen. Evaporation would be high though, and this might be reason enough to consider a clear cover.
Cleaning could (apparently) be done by having a removeable screen or porous sheet, just like a regular scrubber has. It would be big though, and would drip as you took it out. Also it probably would not fit into a sink, and so would need a bathtub or shower (or outside) for cleaning. A possible fix for this might be a very flexibe woven plastic mesh, which you could fold up like a towell and easily clean in a sink. A material like this might not lay down flat when it's in the scrubber, however.
This type of scrubber would be easiest to try for somebody with a cement floor, lots of wall space, open widows or skylights, a low sump, high ceilings, and a big sink or patio for cleaning. I have no idea of the size required for the unit.
 

santamonica

Member
New Feeding Guideline:
Each cube of frozen food you feed per day needs 12 square inches of screen, with a light on both sides totalling 12 watts. Thus a nano that is fed one cube a day would need a screen 3 X 4 inches with a 6 watt bulb on each side. A larger tank that is fed 10 cubes a day would need a screen 10 X 12 inches with 60 watts of light on each side.
 

santamonica

Member
Although almost no aquarist knows this (athough every marine biologist does), algae produces all the vitamins and amino acids in the ocean that corals need to grow. Yes these are the same vitamins and amino acids that reefers buy and dose to their tanks. How do you think the vitamins and amino acids got in the ocean in the first place? Algae also produces a carbon source to feed the nitrate-and-phosphate-reducing bacteria (in addition to the algae consuming nitrate and phosphate itself). Yes this is the same carbon that many aquarists buy and add to their tanks. In particular, algae produce:
Vitamins:
Vitamin A
Vitamin E
Vitamin B6
Beta Carotene
Riboflavin
Thiamine
Biotin
Ascorbate (breaks chloramines into chlorine+ammonia)
N5-Methyltetrahydrofolate
Other tetrahydrofolate polyglutamates
Oxidized folate monoglutamates
Nicotinate
Pantothenate
Amino Acids:
Alanine
Aspartic acid
Leucine
Valine
Tyrosine
Phenylalanine
Methionine
Aspartate
Glutamate
Serine
Proline
Carbohydrates (sugars):
Galactose
Glucose
Maltose
Xylose
Misc:
Glycolic Acid
Citric Acid (breaks chloramines into chlorine+ammonia)
Nucleic Acid derivatives
Polypeptides
Proteins
Enzymes
Lipids
Studies:
Production of Vitamin B-12, Thiamin, and Biotin by Phytoplankton. Journal of Phycology, Dec 1970:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1529-8817.1970.tb02406.x/abstract
Secretion Of Vitamins and Amino Acids Into The Environment By Ochromanas Danica. Journal of Phycology, Sept 1971 (Phycology is the study of algae):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1529-8817.1971.tb01505.x/abstract
Qualitative Assay of Dissolved Amino Acids and Sugars Excreted by Chlamydomanas Reinhardtii (chlorophyceae) and Euglena Gracilis (Euglenophyceae), Jounrnal of Phycology, Dec 1978:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1529-8817.1978.tb02459.x/abstract
 

santamonica

Member
Although almost no aquarist knows this (athough every marine biologist does), algae produces all the vitamins and amino acids in the ocean that corals need to grow. Yes these are the same vitamins and amino acids that reefers buy and dose to their tanks. How do you think the vitamins and amino acids got in the ocean in the first place? Algae also produces a carbon source to feed the nitrate-and-phosphate-reducing bacteria (in addition to the algae consuming nitrate and phosphate itself). Yes this is the same carbon that many aquarists buy and add to their tanks. In particular, algae produce:
Vitamins:
Vitamin A
Vitamin E
Vitamin B6
Beta Carotene
Riboflavin
Thiamine
Biotin
Ascorbate (breaks chloramines into chlorine+ammonia)
N5-Methyltetrahydrofolate
Other tetrahydrofolate polyglutamates
Oxidized folate monoglutamates
Nicotinate
Pantothenate
Amino Acids:
Alanine
Aspartic acid
Leucine
Valine
Tyrosine
Phenylalanine
Methionine
Aspartate
Glutamate
Serine
Proline
Carbohydrates (sugars):
Galactose
Glucose
Maltose
Xylose
Misc:
Glycolic Acid
Citric Acid (breaks chloramines into chlorine+ammonia)
Nucleic Acid derivatives
Polypeptides
Proteins
Enzymes
Lipids
Studies:
Production of Vitamin B-12, Thiamin, and Biotin by Phytoplankton. Journal of Phycology, Dec 1970:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1529-8817.1970.tb02406.x/abstract
Secretion Of Vitamins and Amino Acids Into The Environment By Ochromanas Danica. Journal of Phycology, Sept 1971 (Phycology is the study of algae):
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1529-8817.1971.tb01505.x/abstract
Qualitative Assay of Dissolved Amino Acids and Sugars Excreted by Chlamydomanas Reinhardtii (chlorophyceae) and Euglena Gracilis (Euglenophyceae), Jounrnal of Phycology, Dec 1978:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1529-8817.1978.tb02459.x/abstract
 

santamonica

Member
If you are a U.S. patent attorney versed in foreign utility applications, please contact me about possibly working together on both published and unpublished utility designs...
http://www.algaescrubber.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=833
 

santamonica

Member
Well it took a while to get time to take more pics, but here are the updated ones of my 100 gallon tank. The main thing to mention is that this tank is not for showing... it is for experimenting. Details are at the end of this post. There have been no waterchanges since August 2008. The only dosings are Mrs. Wages Pickling Lime in the top-off (for Cal and Alk), Seachem Reef Advantage mag, and Seachem Reef Advantage strontium. Feeding is 48 ml of skimmate... I mean... blended oysters, per day, 20 square inches of nori per day, and one silverside per week (for the eel). There are no mechanical filters, no chemical filters, and no sand. The only filters are the live rock (now 5 years old), and the algae in the scrubbers. The lighting is 2 X 150 watt halides, and one 96 watt actinic. The tank is 30 inches tall. Tests are Nitrate and Phosphate = 0 (Salifert), pH = 8.3 to 8.6, and the water is contantly filled with food particles:
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High-Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/Oct2010Tank.jpg

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Videos:
Whole Tank:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUl8FIQAxr0
Tank Right to Left:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58pOisX2vSs
Eel Eating:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDZtHf-xXCc
Flower Pot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMdllQSKU2c
Frag Tray:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtvF0ZbVX7w
Liquid Feeder:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOIx09XWYCo
Tube Anemone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7TnVm19td4
Here were the main experiments:
Iron Overdosing: I tried adding an iron supplement for many years, but never saw any affect. I always followed the instructions, such as Kent's Iron+Manganese "Add two teaspoons per 100 gal, per week". It had no visible effect. But after I started to read the literature about algae and iron, and after I realized that I now have much more algae in my system that the average tank does, I went out on a limb and poured in 8 ounces of Kent's. This is 24 times the recommended dosage for 100 gallons. But I reasoned that it's not the gallons that matter, it's the amount of algae. And it worked. The algae in the scrubber, that previously was yellow and hard (due to lack of iron), turned solid green and fluffy. Growth was much faster that week too.
So if more was better, much more should be much better. So I poured in a HALF GALLON of the Kent's. This is 225 times the recommended dosage, and over 9 times more than what I put in before. This was the biggest mistake I've made yet on this tank (coral-wise). Within a few hours, both of the bubble corals shrank up to nothing, and started letting pieces go. The next day, my 3 year old 5" litho was half gone. And by the end of the week about 30 of my 60 corals were completely wiped out. Iron was even beginning to deposit on the inside of the tubing that feeds the scrubbers. Well, I never did a waterchange, and things have gone back to normal, but now I know the power and the problems of adding iron. The more algae you have in a system, the more iron it can use; but don't add too much. How much is too much? The green soft corals (like a green bubble) seem to be affected first, so watch those.
Over Feeding: When my scrubber (only one unit at the time) was basically not filtering at all (before I knew about pumps clogging, and lights getting weaker), I increased feeding to 128 ml of skimmate... I mean blended oysters... per day, along with 5 frozen cubes per day, and one silverside per day. No waterchanges of course. So with this high level of import, and with almost no export, nuisance algae began to explode in the tank. I must say, the few SPS I had really grew at that time. The over feeding made up for the small 150 watt halides in a 30 inch tall tank.
Non Feeding: After realizing the non-flow in the scrubber (due to the clogged pump), and the worn out lights in the scrubber (should have been replaced 9 months earlier), I got the export back into operation. But to speed up the removal of the nuisance algae in the display, I stopped all feeding for 2 months. No blended oysters, no nori, no cubes, nothing. Only one silverside for the eel, but only every 2 weeks. Well, another big lesson learned: If corals have been growing based on high amounts of food in the water, they cannot survive on less. In other words, if the food in the water was always low, the corals would not have developed a need for food. But since they were fed large amounts of food for a while, they grew and needed those large amounts at all times. When the feeding was stopped, I lost about 4 corals in the first 4 weeks, and another 10 corals in the next 4 weeks.
 
J

jstdv8

Guest
SM,
Ok, so I'd like to change my screen out due to the poor fasteneing system i used on my initial design causing minor spray issues.
What's the best way to do this? I don't want to start all voer with no filtration of course, how do I seed that new screen in?
 
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