Gyr
Member
Re: Mega-Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover Replaces Skimmer, Refugium, Everythin
I’ve been reading this thread with interest and decided to try an experiment with my 55 gallon tank. This is a tank we’ve had for about 9 years, originally purchased for non-reef saltwater set up. It is acrylic and the middle of the back wall has a 3 chamber wet-dry trickle filter set up built in. I can’t recall the manufacturer name. One of the upgrades I made when I wanted to convert to reef tank (about 3 years ago) was to hang a little Prizm skimmer off the back and that started growing stiff brown algae (which I assume is turf algae) on the return flume about a month after I upgraded my lights to MH. That made me wonder if I could convert the space where the wet dry filter stuff used to be (bio-balls, etc) into a Turf Scrubber screen, similar to the set up for the sump that is described early in this thread. I used egg crate to serve as a support for the tank divider screen, angling it down from the spillover to one of the ledges that had been built in to support the lower tray for the wet-dry filter material. The light for my display tank shines down into this chamber and I added a little fan to blow down onto the screen (helps keep my water temp down, too). My return water goes through a SQWD, and by throttling down one side of the return tubing, there’s a little bit of a ‘wave action’ to the flow coming back into the wet-dry chamber over the turf scrubber. It was VERY simple to set up (took less than 30 minutes) and I am interested to see how well it works. The limitations I foresee are that the light cycle is not optimal (since I am just letting the display tank’s light do the job and they only run 10 hours/day), and the screen is just one-sided (approx 26 square inches). Fortunately, I have a lot of well-established live rock in the tank and only 2 fish, so nitrates/phosphates have not been a problem. I am hoping if this mini-scrubber works, I can remove the skimmer and add a few more fish…we’ll see.
The first photo is just a top down shot into the built in trickle filter. On the left is the ‘sump’ where water skims in from the top of the display tank (heater and intake for the Prizm skimmer sit in there). The middle chamber is where the wet-dry medium/filter was, now the Prizm return flows into it (see the brown (Turf?) algae) and the turf screen has been set up. The chamber on the right is just where the return pump sits with the SQWD blocking the view.
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The second shot is just a close up of the newly installed turf scrubber screen. It was taken 3 days after set up, showing some brown algae growth.
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I’ll keep updating on the progress of this experiment, in case others have a tank with a built in wet-dry filter system and want to do a simple conversion to a turf scrubber—I hope it works.
I’ve been reading this thread with interest and decided to try an experiment with my 55 gallon tank. This is a tank we’ve had for about 9 years, originally purchased for non-reef saltwater set up. It is acrylic and the middle of the back wall has a 3 chamber wet-dry trickle filter set up built in. I can’t recall the manufacturer name. One of the upgrades I made when I wanted to convert to reef tank (about 3 years ago) was to hang a little Prizm skimmer off the back and that started growing stiff brown algae (which I assume is turf algae) on the return flume about a month after I upgraded my lights to MH. That made me wonder if I could convert the space where the wet dry filter stuff used to be (bio-balls, etc) into a Turf Scrubber screen, similar to the set up for the sump that is described early in this thread. I used egg crate to serve as a support for the tank divider screen, angling it down from the spillover to one of the ledges that had been built in to support the lower tray for the wet-dry filter material. The light for my display tank shines down into this chamber and I added a little fan to blow down onto the screen (helps keep my water temp down, too). My return water goes through a SQWD, and by throttling down one side of the return tubing, there’s a little bit of a ‘wave action’ to the flow coming back into the wet-dry chamber over the turf scrubber. It was VERY simple to set up (took less than 30 minutes) and I am interested to see how well it works. The limitations I foresee are that the light cycle is not optimal (since I am just letting the display tank’s light do the job and they only run 10 hours/day), and the screen is just one-sided (approx 26 square inches). Fortunately, I have a lot of well-established live rock in the tank and only 2 fish, so nitrates/phosphates have not been a problem. I am hoping if this mini-scrubber works, I can remove the skimmer and add a few more fish…we’ll see.
The first photo is just a top down shot into the built in trickle filter. On the left is the ‘sump’ where water skims in from the top of the display tank (heater and intake for the Prizm skimmer sit in there). The middle chamber is where the wet-dry medium/filter was, now the Prizm return flows into it (see the brown (Turf?) algae) and the turf screen has been set up. The chamber on the right is just where the return pump sits with the SQWD blocking the view.
The second shot is just a close up of the newly installed turf scrubber screen. It was taken 3 days after set up, showing some brown algae growth.
I’ll keep updating on the progress of this experiment, in case others have a tank with a built in wet-dry filter system and want to do a simple conversion to a turf scrubber—I hope it works.
