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

[Jukas]

Originally Posted by SantaMonica

You can T-off from the overflow, with a valve to control the flow through the waterfall pipe. You don't want to run all your overflow through the waterfall, of course. And you only need a 10 X 10 inch screen, lit on both sides.

Is that because running the entire overflow through it would be too much flow?

[jski711]

ya it would be too much flow. make sure you use a ball valve that way you can adjust the flow as needed. hth.

Jake

[everwater]

Looks good Jski...could you take weekly pics of the screen to see the progress?

[jski711]

yes i plan on doing so. i have notied my ph raise up about .15 in a few hours since this has been on. not sure if its a coincidence or if its from the turf system. just thought i'd post my observations.

Jake

[lcstorc]

Could be the additional light. Ph lowers at night when the lights are off.

[Disciple882542]

increased ph could be because the extra oxygenation that occurs with the waterfall effect as well.

[SantaMonica]

That got hooked up fast. Wow. I see some green in the pics... did you wash it with your fingernails under tap water?. You don't want the green covering your turf. Can you increase flow any more? That pic looks like we are looking at the back side of the screen. Did you get bigger lights?

Yes, pH is a side-benefit of turf, mostly because of the turf using CO2, and giving off oxygen.

How are you going do your first cleaning/scrubbing?... will the pipe detach, or will you need to cut the tie-wraps?

Also, when taking pics of the turf, do it with the flow off.

Good job!

[jski711]

Yes i did rinse it off but the guys at IA said don't do much in the way of cleaning just yet, its not grown over a lot yet.

Flow IMO is pretty steady and not squirting all over the place. What makes you ask me if i can increase the flow?

The piece i got i cut in half and is 2 sided now, thanks to some tie wraps. i also bought 2 100w cf lights to replace the ones i had. They also don't use Halides on their scrubbers at IA, fwiw.

as far as the first cleaning goes i think im just gonna cut the tie wraps and reattach them afterwards. its only 2 tie wraps and they are pretty cheap, especially when i take em from work. lol, im an electrician so they are usually around somewhere on the job.

I'll take some pics with the water off a little later, gotta spend some time with the pregnant wife or else shes gonna kill me.

Jake

[SantaMonica]

The flow runoff looked like it could handle a bit more. That's a good idea... making your own 2-sided. And that's the first I heard of no-halides. Now we know.

[jski711]

ya they use either pc's or vho's to light their scrubbers.

Jake

[Varga]

Originally Posted by jski711

Turf scrubber in action. there is one light on each side and i can't believe how well this diy thing worked. now i have to get my parameters tested. enjoy and LMK what ya think.

jake

thats a great DIY. that pic was taken how many days after you plugged it in?

[jski711]

that was snapped minutes after i put the screen up. the screen came "pre seeded" from inland aquatics. i'm happy how it turned out now lets see how it works. i also added a piece of pvc cut in half the long ways bc i was getting too much water splash from the run off. now it falls into the half cut pvc and drains slowly without any splashing. i'm also thinking about cleaning it without taking it off the pvc. all i need to do is put a tray or something underneath it and scrape off the bad algae. then i can rinse with ro/di right over my sump. i'll let you know how that goes when the time comes.

Jake

thanks for the kind words varga!

[SantaMonica]

One thing to be mindfull of, is the recent discovery of the possibility of harvesting "in-system" being the cause of yellowing the water. In other words, if you pull/scrape algae off while it's over the sump, the broken strands of algae will release their contents into the sump. It looks like this may be a big part of the reason for the public aquariums of the '70's and '80's having yellow water... they always scraped in-system. So, although it's easy to correct if yellowing happens (just run carbon for a day), you might want to watch out for it. Best bet is to be able to take the screen to the sink. I've cleaned my screen many times, and I really filled up the sink with algae. I would not have been able to really scrub the screen if it were still hanging.

[jski711]

good to know.

Jake

[Varga]

pre-seeded....no kidding.

mine has very little growth on it, its been 4 days......more light?