SantaMonica

Looks good! An easy way to clean is just to spray water through it.

pauline: Only one compartment is needed at back of tank. If you want out-of-tank, try this: snapper: 3 inch is good. Wattage just depends on screen size. If the screen is only a few inches wide, then a 9 or 11 watt bulb might work. But, anytime you use less watts, you get less filtering. ray: You have a lot of NPS corals now How are they doing?

This is the best nano build I've seen yet. Nitschke65 on the SWF site built this for his Aquapod-type tank. Should work on the back of any similar nano:

Never heard of Orange before. 2700K is best. Is slightly pinkish. All types of algae is reduced.

Results of the week: Broder on the SARK site: "I have been running my tank with an algal filter for about 3 months now. I removed the skimmer on the 10th last month. My display has never looked better. The [nuisance] algae has almost totally dissapeared. My SPS colonies are thriving. Not only are they growing well, but the colouration has become vibrant due to 0 PO4 (Salifert test) and 0 nitrate. I've seen better colouration in systems that were using Zeovit, but I'm more than happy with the results the algal filter achieves." Sly on the SWF site: "The back glass used to be absolutely covered in green algae, but now it's staying clean on its own. I have never cleaned it. The rocks weren't that bad, but there were some patches of cyano in places that are now gone. It now seems to be staying cleaner on its own. My ORP has started rising again and is a 270mv without ozone. I don't know if it's related but as my tank levels have improved lately, my Mandarin is coming out more in the day time. This is the first picture I have ever been able to get of him in the open... and I've had him for over 2 years. The live rock and the substrate both have zero algae on them" TODJ2002 on the SWF site: "i added a scrubber several months ago after reading this thread. my nitrates and P slowly lowered and went to zero for the first time. they have both been at zero since. everytime i check levels i am expecting to see a rise, but always zero. i also added cheato to my system and i believe boths items are a must for any system." Adee on the SARK site: "Ok so its been about 6 weeks since i fired this scrubber up. Did the 1st "harvest" on just the one side; i'll do the other side next weekend. My phosphate reading is a zero according the Elos color chart... and for the very first time the complete back glass pane has broken out with coraline algae. Its never done that before due to the back always being covered with the normal glass algae/diatoms. Since the latter no longer appears, the coraline is now growing. I'm sure in a few weeks I'll have a complete pink wallpaper at the back. The fact that the scrubber makes the ideal platform for all this gunk to grow OUTSIDE my display tank, was well worth the investment." Bob the (reef) Builder on the SARK site: "Both my filters are going great guns. Probably the best is the sun [powered] one, it's big and now that its settled, grows algea like crazy. My phospates down to 0.00 - 0.01ppm on a Hanna meter. Never seen it this low before. My corals are starting to grow and colour up really well now." RentalDeceptionist on the UR site: "Ooh the [nuisance] algae. Well, it has certainly receeded massively. It's not 100% gone but I feel I'm on top of it. The hair algae which virtually smothered every flat surface is now down to about 20% of its mass, and there is more rock than algae. I do believe decreasing the lighting has helped."

Scrubber FAQ 3.0 is now up, with about 50 percent new info: http://www.algaescrubber.net/forums/viewto...&p=386#p386

2700, as long as the wattage, and the distance, are the same.

Both will work, but a CFL floodlight would be better that a PLC (is more focused).

Yes that's the right screen size. Although, for such a small screen, it might be easier to just double the area, and make it one-sided (thus using one bulb instead of two). Yes you should start the scrubber now; it will help to have all the nutrients from the cycle, and it will then be ready for livestock when the cycle is done.

Bob the (reef) Builder on the SARK site made this PDF for a club presentation three months ago, and I just found it; maybe it could be used by others: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/AlgaeFilters.pdf

Creetin that is much better. Now give it a week and clean it. Simon if you increase area, you have to increase lighting to cover that area. But 1.7 square cm per liter of water is good for most people.

Compact Fluorescent Light. No additives, except for Kalk in the top-off. I'm currently designing a 2-screen version of my scrubber.

Well as a test, in order to stimulate a dark purple gorg that was not opening, I increased the daily dose to 21.6 ml, and reduced the interval to 20 minutes (0.3 ml per 20 minutes). It worked; the gorg started opening all night, and about half the daytime. The dendronephtha was already always inflated, so no change there. However I don't know if it was the increase in food, or the decrease in interval, that caused the change. Figuring the increase in food would overload the scrubber, I added a small bag of Rowaphos. All is well so far; N is clear, and P is just a very slight blue that almost looks clear. But I'm going to remove the Rowaphos soon and see what happens. I'll also be looking for my next round of NPS to add, after I make some tank videos.

Wilson you can see that it only grows near the light, so yes you'll need more light in there. You could also just clip-on a bright CFL and point it down there. Creetin you'll see in the next 7 days that there will be a lot more growth.

Got a pic of the lighting setup?

Part 3 of 7: Taken from "The Food of Reefs, Part 3: Phytoplankton" by Eric Borneman http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-10/eb/index.php "Phytoplankton are the major source of primary [food] production in the ocean, and one of the most important driving forces of global ecology. In fact, phytoplankton production influences all life, by being at the lowest rings of the food chain. "The reason [phytoplankton] are so important on a regional or global scale is simply by virtue of the fact that the upper 200 [meters] of oceanic waters is filled with phytoplankton and covers over 70% of the earth's surface. "What eats phytoplankton? In the water column, zooplankton [food] are without question the primary consumers of phytoplankton. Zooplankton grazers vary according the area and the time of year, but include primarily ciliates, copepods, amphipods, and tintinnids. "Stony corals are generally not well adapted to the sieve or filter type feeding that characterizes the soft corals (Fabricius et al. 1995, 1998). They are, however, well suited to the capture of zooplankton prey. "It is of paramount importance to recognize that the biomass of potential grazers [which need food] in an aquarium is many times what it would be in the same volume of water or surface area as the bottom of oceans or on reefs, and also, that the availability of water column borne food is many times greater in the ocean than in an aquarium. "Perhaps most importantly, is the almost ubiquitous interaction between bacteria and phytoplankton. Phytoplankton release dissolved organic substances, and bacteria utilize them as nutrient sources. Most phytoplankton cells, especially large ones, are coupled nearly continuously with coatings of bacteria [which are consuming the dissolved organic substances]. "The amounts of phytoplankton present in reef aquariums are not known but are probably considerable. However, they are also probably rapidly removed by grazing and export devices [skimmers].

Yep gotta get more flow...

Update of the Day: Freshwater Cleanings You absolutely must use freshwater, in your sink, when cleaning your screen once a week. If your weekly cleaning gets delayed, at the very least turn the pump off and pour RODI over the screen to kill the pods. Otherwise the pods start growing underneath, eating the algae, then falling off into your water. You will not see the holes they make unless the algae is very thin. It becomes an issue of the scrubber not removing as much nitrate and phosphate, because the pods eat the algae you've grown, and then re-introduce the nutrients back into the water. FW of course, kills the pods. SW does not. So use FW weekly. And don't worry about getting rid of all the pods; you won't. The next day there will be millions more.

Results of the Week: jtremblay on the MD site: "the last few strands of HA have disappeared from my 40's display, and the build-up of detritus is continuing to go down, despite there being no skimmer on this tank." nitschke65 on the SWF site: "My biocube is currently being filtered by my custom [nano] turf scrubber in chamber two; there is also a ball of chaeto in the bottom af chamber two, and a bag of Chemi-pure Elite in chamber three. My protein skimmer stopped working two or three weeks ago. (My mushrooms and zoas have never looked better!) I also have some polyps, hammers, and galaxia. There's a few nassarius, and a few hermits, an emerald crab, and possibly a pepermint shrimp. There's a lawnmower blennie, two green chromis, a scarlet hawk, and a Potter's angel. I haven't cleaned my screen or done a water change in 2 weeks [bad!]. This mornings readings: Ammonia - 0 Nitrites - 0 Nitrates - 0 Skunkbudfour20 on RC: "Yes i built one, Yes i am running it, and YES my nitrates, nitrites, ammonia and phosphates all dropped to almost 0 within the first 3 weeks, and yes algae growth in my display has come to a stop, and slowly recedes... I am still running my skimmer, even though it doesnt seem to be doing AS much, its still doing something for now." Worley on the AS site: "As for lights, I have seen an improvement in the type of algae growing and in the overall amount of growth since changing bulbs to the lower 3500K colour temp. I've been getting more hair [on the screen], macro algaes, some interesting dark green very very long hair-like algae (6"+ long). The cyanobacteria [in the display] is nearly completely gone, along with less brown slime algae, both in the tank and on the screen. And best of all, still no water changes, nearly 5 months on, with good calcium, dKH and PH. I've easily saved the price of the equipment used to make the scrubber from not having used an entire bucket of salt, and everything in the tank looks more healthy than I've ever seen in a marine tank I've kept before, I'm loving it, and so is my girlfriend!"

Would be nice, but there are no pumps with similar specs. The problem with a cheaper enteral pump (like a "Ross Patrol"; minimum dose = 1 ml/hr), or a regular peristaltic pump (like the Reefdoser; minimum dose = 0.4 ml/hr) is the large dose. They can't go down to 0.1 ml/hr. So only large tanks would be able to use them as is, for things like Reeds Phytofeast (which is very concentrated.) For things like Rotifers or Mysis, 0.4 ml/hr would be 3 cubes/day, and 1 ml/hr would be 8 cubes per day. And that's the minimum. The only way around this is to dilute the food with water (which Reed's says not to do), but then a month's supply would not fit into the wine cooler, which means it would not fit on top of the tank, which means it would have to be kept in a refrigerator far away. And that was the original problem with continuous feeding.

Pic in signature link. Main effect has been the Sun corals and Flower Pots staying open. Also the Digitada has grown quite a bit.

The chiller is 65 watts.

In my related research of reducing Inorganic Nitrate and Inorganic Phosphate, overfeeding was always an issue. Scrubbers help, by introducing live (instead of dead) copepods to the tank, but the rest of the feeding always causes excess food to get stuck in the rock and sand, and rot. The solution to this could be an Automatic Continuous Feeder. The writeup is here: http://www.sgreefclub.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=76477

Part 5 of 5 Insert the bag into the chiller/towel, but be very careful to not bind the tubing where it connects to the bag at the bottom, and also keep the tubing in the middle as it leaves the chiller; you don't want it getting near the heat outlets on the sides of the chiller: Now fold down the cap of the bag into the chiller: Fold the remaining towel (if used) over the top, or if you used a filtersock, cover it. You'll have to experiment with how much towel to use, and how tight, so that it does not freeze: Instead of a towel, you may try inserting a small filtersock: Covering the filtersock loosely will keep the food less cold: Covering the filtersock tightly will keep the food more cold: Lastly, use the "prime" button again to bring the food all the way to the end of the tubing, and then push "run". It will begin by pumping one dose, and then the timer will wait for the next one. At anytime, you can push the "vol/total" button and it will display how many ml has been fed since you pressed "run": To make any pump adjustments, push the "run/pause" button first (which pauses it), and then make your changes. You can reset the "total amount fed" to zero by pushing the "clear" button when it is displaying. You can turn the unit off while it's running or paused; when you turn it back on, it will be in the same state (run or paused) that is was in when turned off. And it remembers all settings, including total amount fed, even it you unplug the AC adapter. Things to watch out for: Bag positioning if noise is a concern: The chiller has a thermostat, but the annoying thing about it is that it clicks every 30 seconds or so as it adjusts temperature. If it's in your basement, then it's no problem. But if it sits on the tank like mine does, or if it's in your bedroom, then you don't want this clicking. The way to eliminate it is to put the temperature selector on the coldest setting. This causes the thermostat to always stay "cooling". This fixes the clicking. However the temperature can get very cold after a day or so, and if you seal the top of the chiller with a towel, then the food will eventually freeze. To prevent this, leave the top of the chiller loosely open, and don't push the bag in down to the bottom. Use a towel, loosely wrapped around the bag, to keep the bag from touching the metal walls or bottom of the chiller. This works; it won't freeze. But if you wrap it too much, then the food will not stay cold enough. So this is certainly one area where experimenting will help. Of course if you don't mind the clicking, the thermostat will keep the food perfectly at just above freezing for you. Frozen spots: If you are using the "quiet" option where the chiller stays running constantly (no thermostat clicking), keep a close eye on the parts of the bag that touch the metal walls. If it's going to freeze, it will probably take 24 hours, or maybe even 48. So check it the next few days by pulling the bag out and squeezing/mixing it all around, especially the bottom where it connect to the tubing. If any part is frozen, then use paper or a towel to keep the bag away from the wall. Also, you could pull the bag up a little, so it gets more air. A good idea is to wrap the bag around the tubing, before you slide the bag in. You might also put a thermometer in with the bag, which sticks out the top, so you can see it while it's running. Tube near heat: Watch where the tubing goes when it leaves the chiller and heads to the pump. Hot air exits the chiller on both sides, so you want to route the tubing along the back part. Avoid strong lights too. Charger for pump: You don't need the AC charger to operate the pump, but you do need to plug it in once a month or so, for six hours, to charge it back up. So make sure you can get the charger cable to the pump, without having to move the pump. Of course, you could also just run the pump with the adapter connected, but that's one more cable going to the top of the tank. Power failures: If the power goes off, nothing happens to the pump; it keeps working on its batteries. The chiller however will stop. But the important point is that this model chiller, when the power comes back on, will switch to full-cooling (no thermostat). This is fine if you were previously running full-cooling, but if you had a temperature set (because you did not mind the clicking), the food will freeze when the power comes back on. For this reason I really recommend the full-cooling setting to be used all the time. Tube in display water: You want the tube to go into the tank water, so that it does not dry out. If kept above the water, food slowly starts drying out at the tip, slowly clogging it, and causing it to start spraying sideways. First attempts: I recommend trying it first in your sink, using just water in the bag. Do everything including putting it into the chiller, and letting it run for a few hours. If ok, then fill with food and start it. This first time, and anytime you make changes to the bag, try not to do it right before you go to bed, because if you folded the bag too tight, or if it freezes, the "No Flow In" alarm will sound and wake you up. Better to do it in the morning. Settings: When first trying to set the settings, it may sometimes not want to accept the numbers you try to set. This is because you have selected a dosing combination that is not possible. For example, if you accidentally set the rate to 0.1 ml per hr (instead of 600), and set the dose to 0.2 ml, and then set the interval to 1 hour, it won't accept it because if you dose 0.2 ml every hour, that is more food than the 0.1 that you set the rate for. Keep the rate at 600 and you should not get stuck as much. Tubing replacement: The tubing "sets", according to the operating manual, are designed for 24 hours of use at 125 ml/hr. This is a total of 3 liters that the tubing would flow, before it starts to "wear out". Since I'm only pumping 0.4 ml/hr (.0004 L/hr), it would take 7500 hours, or 312 days, before the "wearing out" started to occur. And I'm sure the manufacturer is being conservative since someone's life is on the line. So 6 months (180 days) would seem to be a good replacement time at 0.4 ml/hr. If you were pumping 0.8 ml/hr, you would replace every 90 days, etc. Proper pump model: Make SURE you get the Zevex EnteraLite Infinity blue pump. There are other EnteraLite pumps which are not Infinity, and they WON'T work. And there is another Infinity which is orange and not blue; it WON'T work. Improvements: Several things could be improved with more tinkering or more money: Separate units: Reeds Foods recommends not mixing food unless just before feeding. This would be accomplished with the (expensive) addition of a chiller/pump unit for each type of food you feed (I use three). Temperature alarm: Would tell you if the bag gets too warm, or if it starts to freeze. I imagine a freezer alarm would work. Shorter tubing: The length of tubing from the chiller to the pump could be reduced by 6" or so, if you cut it and spliced it with a connector. You'd need to test it though, to make sure the food you are using can get through the connector. Mysis might be a problem. Mixing: Although the crinkled and rolled bag will keep much of the food from sinking to the bottom, somebody should find a small, cheap paddle or servo that will shake or vibrate the bag every so often. Fan quietening: The chiller uses a computer fan that runs all the time. On larger tanks the sound is not noticeable, but on smaller or quieter tanks, or tanks in your bedroom, the fan could be made slower/quieter by inserting a resister into the power lead of the fan. The chiller is powerful and freezes as is; less chilling won't hurt anything. You'll have to experiment with the resistor size. Food types: With some experimentation, you could mix some solid foods (crushed flakes, tiny pellets, etc) into liquid foods, and maybe even add some type of thickener to it, to keep the solids suspended. Krill is too big for the tubing, but large mysis or small ghost shrimp should fit. Always test it first. Related Information: If you are have nitrate, phosphate, or nuisance algae problems, especially when dosing concentrated foods, you may find my other thread on Algae Scrubbers useful: http://www.sgreefclub.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=73162 Article recommending continuous feeding: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-02/rs/feature/index.php Zevex Pump Manufacturer: http://www.zevex.com/enteral/pumps/infinity Ebay for medical devices (search for "zevex"): http://www.dotmed.com Zevex operating manual: http://www.zevex.com/download/manual_infinity.pdf http://www.radio-media.com/fish/PumpManual.pdf One of the U.S. distributors of the chiller: http://www.vinotemp.com/View.aspx/3003/Sin...-Chiller-Warmer Chiller operating manual: http://www.vinotemp.com/Resources/Document...ttleChiller.pdf http://www.radio-media.com/fish/ChillerManual.pdf

Part 4 of 5 Now for the settings. Think of this pump as putting sugar into coffee, using a spoon. The size of the spoon is the "dose"; the time between spoons is the "interval"; and how fast you pour the spoon in is the "rate". We only care about adjusting the size of the spoon (dose), and how much time between spoons (interval). We do not care how fast we pour the spoon in, so it might at well be as fast as possible so the fish don't hang out at the pipe and eat it all. Set how much you want dosed each time; I started by setting it to 0.4 ml: Set how often (interval) you want it to dose; I started with once per hour: Set the rate; Max is 600 ml/hr: Now mix your food ahead of time; I started by using 1 part phyto, 1 part rotifers, and 4 parts pods: Mix together and pour it into the bag: Get as much air out of the bag as you can before you put the cap on. Then, turn it over and use the "prime" button to pull the remaining air out (might take a while.) The less air in the bag, the less bacteria will cause nitrate and phosphate to develop: Now you are ready to fold the bag and put it into the chiller. This is 120 ml of food in the 500 ml bag (it could hold a lot more): Fold the side with the tubing first, so that it stays on the inside (which helps keep it from freezing.) Don't fold it "tight" or you will cut off the flow. Just curve it around. If you get a "No Flow In" warning after running it, it's either because you folded this too tight, or something has started to freeze: Next fold the other side; the idea here is to surround the tubing to keep it from touching the metal wall of the chiller: A very thin towel (or a small filtersock), lining the metal chiller wall, will keep the bag from touching it and will help keep it from freezing (this is only needed if you keep the thermostat set to full cooling):