I had gotten tired of spending money on GFO to combat high phosphate and GHA in my 150 gallon display tank. I am pretty sure that it's the rocks leaching it (started as dry inland reef rock) and the only GFO I had good results with was the expensive Fauna Marin Ultra Phos a load of which was good for about 4 weeks. Rather than fight the enemy (GHA), I decided to use it as an ally and I have been a green hair algae farmer for the last 2.5 weeks.
Below are the pictures of my new algae scrubber. The design is based on the Turbo Aquatic algae scrubber, but due to space issues I have turned into a HOB (actually, hang-on-front) design and used only one side of the screen for growing GHA. The total screen area available for growth is just shy of 90 square inches. I am using Jebao DC 3000 to supply the scrubber (and carbon reactor) with water. It runs at 90%, giving me about 550 gal/hr of flow through the scrubber. Nineteen 3W 660nm LEDs (no names from China) supply the energy for photosynthesis. They are mounted on 4.8" wide aluminum heatsink with a 6cm fan takes care of the cooling. Passive cooling was not an option due to the small enclosed space in which the heatsink resides. Lights have been on 16hrs/day (6pm-10am). The growth is starting more slowly than I had expected, so I may have to play with the photoperiod and flow rate. The whole scrubber (excluding pump) was just under $150. Not too bad considering Turbo Aquatics' L4 sells for $550. I still run activated carbon and a skimmer. I will keep updating this post to show progress.
Acrylic (Delvie's Plastics in SLC, cutting included): $55
LEDs: $12
Heatsink (www.heatsinkusa.com): $34 including S&H
Power supply Mean Well LPC 35-700 (www.reefledlights.com): $23
Various plumbing parts and nylon thumb screws: $20
growth after the first 7 days
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Week 5
Edited by Carlsson - March 15 2015 at 5:58pm
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