Mega Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover - DIY!

What to dose when you don't do waterchanges

Many folks ask if anything needs to be dosed, if they stop doing water changes. If a reef tank, you'll certainly need to dose Calcium and Alkalinity. Then some Magnesium when needed. And maybe Strontium. The easiest way to dose Cal and Alk is by mixing some powdered lime with your topoff water. For details, search for "kalkwasser dripping". The powder is cheap from here: Mrs. Wages® Pickling Lime 16 oz. (454g)

Everything else is supplied by the food you feed, and by the organics from the scrubber. This includes all the trace elements that you always hear about. Remember that in the ocean, 90% of all life (besides bacteria) is algae. Algae provides all the food for everything that lives in the ocean, by coverting the sun into organics. And included in these organics are the trace elements that your tank needs too. Cal and Alk, however, are inorganic, and are used up quickly by corals and coralline, so you need to dose them often or continuously. Mag is dosed when your test says to. And the same with Strontium.
 
"Kcress" on the algae scrubber site has just finished his version of a G2 LED scrubber, for testing. A G2 is a self-contained scrubber, but the LEDs themselves are not the screen, like they are with a G3. Anyways, for testing purposes, he only has LED's on one side of the screen, and he only used low-power LEDs to avoid heat issues:

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Is this available or something he can make for others? I'm not a big DIY'er but wouldn't mind paying someone to do it - assuming this worked and the LEDs were effective?
 
Now LED's and such I've recently become rather familiar with.
The output of those LED's has to be enough to do the job.
The wattage total wouldn't really tell me much due to high varation of lumens to watts in LED's. I'm not particularly familiar the with the low power LED's..more so with the 1-30w variety. Are some of those LED's RED? I would go with all cool white(aka Daylight (6500k) and possibly some blue. I'm not exactly sure about algea but the majority of marine coral and such don't particularly like the red end of the cloraphill absorbtion spectrum.

I personally would love to build an LED scrubber for its compactness and the fact that you wouldn't have to replace bulbs every couple months. The one I've been tossing around in my head would proably be made from 1w Star mounted LED's

I'm curious to know if that scrubber works.
 
Is this available or something he can make for others? I'm not a big DIY'er but wouldn't mind paying someone to do it - assuming this worked and the LEDs were effective?

Santa Monica builds and sells the units....I know you said you're not a DIY'er but you can make the very easy simple solution that is posted throughout this thread. It works very well. I'm using one, no skimmer, I have a light bio load in my tank. The ATS has lowered my nitrates from above 25 (intial cycle) to less than 5 ppm in a matter of a month. I'm starting to see dramatic algae growth on my screen now, and would expect in the next 2 weeks for my nitrates to be at 0.

But as I said, Santa Monica makes them as well. And it's a sweet unit.
 
The screen is used for knitting and sewing designs, you will want to look in the area of the craft store that has those kind of items in it.
 
SM,

Today is my 3rd cleaning for my scrubber. I've increased the flow on my screen and am starting to get a decent amount of green algae on the screen now.

I know you're only supposed to clean 1 side at a time, but I think the amount of brown algea on both sides will prevent green algae from growing fully.

The question is: Can I clean both sides of the screen in this circumstance as long as I leave 20% algae growth on both sides rather than 10% on one side? Or do you think that this may cause a nitrate spike? Thanks again.

Also, my nitrates are down to to less than 5 ppm. This is within approx. 4 weeks time. I have a light bio-load. 2 small clowns and a foxface in 90g tank with 50 g sump.

Here are some pics..

That's a quote from me about 4 weeks ago. I tested my nitrates tonight. they are officially at ZERO. Here's a pic. Couple of small details. I installed this DIY unit on a tank that was cycling. I started out with 20ppm Nitrates. i'm not running anything on my 90g tank except the algae scrubber. So within a 1 1/2 months I have a nice stable system. It may have taken a little less time, if I would have initially had the flow where I needed it.
 

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Awesome! Thats good News. I think I'm going to make one of these. My thoughts are to try and replace my Canister Filter and cheapo skimmer(which I think is just a bubble maker) with an algae scrubber going into a fuge. I'm hoping if I have a light on both sides and some chateo underneath it should be enough light for the scrubber and will keep the chateo growing. Perhaps I will have to buy some hydroponics lamps iruno.

U guys think this is a sound plan?
 
When you run a scrubber, I don't think you'll need the cheato. From what I understand, cheato struggles to grow when you run a scrubber since all the nutrients are taken out through the scrubber.
 
Ulta, don't make it more complicated than it has to be. You don't need the chaeto. Make a very simple design. Use the recommeded screen, and follow the directions that SM has put on this thread. and it will work...I've tried to detail the algae scrubber updates on my buildthread so people who're itnerested in trying it have something to refer to as far as timeframe for good growth, etc.

I couldn't be more happy with mine...Again, I started mine from cycle...I'll let SM answer this, but you may want to keep your skimmer going for awhile until the growth on the screen really gets going. I'll leave those specifics to SM..

The entire thing took me less than 1 hr to make and install in my sump. And it works great. I use 4 lights (2 on each side). I'm using the lights recommended at the beginning of this thread. All I can say is the thing works... My nephew is running a skimmer, a filter, and has 100lbs. of rock and can't get his nitrates under 15ppm.. I spent .39 on a screen and have 0 nitrates.
 
When you run a scrubber, I don't think you'll need the cheato. From what I understand, cheato struggles to grow when you run a scrubber since all the nutrients are taken out through the scrubber.

Ah, ic.

I know I don't need the cheato but I was thinking more on the lines of growing critters in the fuge, pods and such.
 
Success Updates:

Donny Mac on the MFT site: "i have built mine 1 year ago and it has made the maintenance of my tank so easy, the appearance of the glass and water is crystal clear. i keep coral and fish"

waucedah_joe on the RS site: "This thing works. When my [CFL] scrubber-prototype crashed [due to broken pump] my nitrates got up to 25 ppm before I was able to get this [LED scrubber] online, and then in 3 weeks they were near non detect level with the Salifert test kit. Rather than just say it's working for me, here's the datum:

Tank specs: 75g display w/ 40g sump. Heavily stocked. 1-3" blue tang, 1-3-1/2" powder brown tang, 2-Oscy clowns, 1-lawnmower blenny, 1-purple firefish, 1-manderin goby, 1-radiant wrass, 1-high fin goby, 3 BTA's, shrimp, crabs, 1-sand sifting star, 1-brittle star.

1/7 Return pump failed while out of town. Small CFL scrubber pretty much dead from drying up. Cleaned both sides and continued to use while working on new scrubber.
1/10 Nitrates 20 ppm. 20 gal water change
1/21 New scrubber on-line
1/24 Nitrates 25 ppm, old scrubber off-line. 20 gal water change. Last big water change. From here on out the only water change is 3-4 gallons every other week to replace water removed from vacumming detrius from return chamber of sump.
1/30 Nitrates 10 ppm
2/14 Nitrates 5 ppm
2/20 Nitrates 2.5 ppm
2/27 Nitrates <.2 ppm, Increased feeding 17% (from 5 cubes in two days to 6 cubes in two days. Mini icecube sized homemade frozen food. + small piece of nori every other day)
3/7 Nitrates 2.5ppm
3/14 Nitrates 2.5ppm
3/21 Nitrates 2.5ppm

No sugar, no skimmer, no macro algae. This is my only filter."

Rosenaa on the algae scrubber site: "Well its been a good while since I put up my ATS and I am very pleased! I had problems with red bubble algae and they are all gone now! Also coraline algae have sprung up everywhere and covering stone, glass and powerheads".

Inkidu on the algae scrubber site: "As far as this working, after several weeks with only a power head running, which feeds the scrubber, and some air pumps, there is absolutely nothing that is filtering besides the ats, my tank of 5 (say 5") discus and some cardinal tetra. My fish seem content (in fact I brought them back from the brink of death), I feed pretty heavily, the pea green water disappeared, and I have no algae in my tank. Thanks for all the help guys, I am going to call this a success."

Aeros on the algae scrubber site: "As a RO/DI is not within my budget at this time, I have been using tap water to top off and in my salt mix. [...] all my corals have doubled or tripled in size since December, and since adding my ATS all the hair algae has dissipated from the display (thanks mostly to the yellow tang) as well as the red cyano, and nitrates dropped from ~80 to ~10ppm. And pods galore!" All that being said, I will be investing in an RO/DI as soon as possible. For peace of mind mostly, and as part of an ATO set-up; manual topping off sucks."

Pepetj on the FL site: "As I reached the 2 months mark [with the scrubber], this is what I have to share. I've been measuring for Nitrates and Phosphates (Nitrates with Seachem's Nitrite/Nitrate test kit as well as calibrated PinPoint Nitrate Monitor; Phosphates with API's Phosphate test as well as Hagen's). I can tell that in my setting, which is a Nano Reef, I have been obtaining almost negligible readings (meaning as close to steady zero as I've ever seen) for both phosphates and nitrates."

Sillygoose on the RC site: "It's been two weeks since we scraped algae off of our new turf scrubber. As you can see in the pictures, growth has really taken off. Today, cleaning maybe 2/3 of the outer surfaces, we got 1 1/2 cups of algae off. The mat was 3/4-inch thick in places. The best part is that our NO3 is down from around 10 to below detect in 2 weeks without a water change. I can't tell if PO4 went down because I have a hard time with interpreting the test, but we are starting to see new coraline growth. It's very cool."

Gowingsgo on the RC site: I have been running a ATS for about 8 months now but set mine up with a skimmer. I built my sump with 5 separate chambers. (1 intake from main tank) (2 ATS) (3 skimmer) (4 fuge with live rock and sand so if I need to I can also put stuff in my sump) (5 return to main tank) I set mine up to remove algae from my display tank (and that is exactly what it is doing). But I have noticed that my skim-mate is much darker [note: scrubbers should not affect skimmate] and that I do not have to clean it as much (about once every week not every other day). also my nitrates have never been undetectable (more like 5+ ppm) but they have been 0 for the last 6 months now. [...] With turf scrubber [I have to clean the glass] once every 4 days, sometimes longer, without the scrubber I have had to clean the glass every day. [...] I love my ATS and don't think I would run a tank without one."

Lewk on the RC site: "I'm running a very simple scrubber on my 65 gallon. I've been using it since day one on the tank and my nitrates and phosphates have been at zero for several months now. I set everything up according to the algae scrubber site, and it's working great so far. I'm in the planning stages for a 135, and plan on using a scrubber there as well."
 
Finally got a finished acrylic box to work with:

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Did a flow test:

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4HJilDbX10]YouTube - SantaMonica 25 flow test[/ame]

Then did a melt test; put the bulb in, and let it set with no water flow for a half hour. No acrylic softening. Then, poured boiling water into the compartments; still ok...

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar82ZM8W_y8]YouTube - SantaMonica 25 boiling water test[/ame]
 
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