Introducing the new Turbo Algae Scrubber! (Rev 4)
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OP
OP
I have plenty of the older units, but I haven't had time to put new ones together. I plan on doing that ASAP as that is probably the most common question I get, and the new unit does allow for some different installation configurations.
OP
OP
Roger, PM'd
OP
OP
Forgot to answer this - I've found that the Rio 1100 or one with an equivalent output curve seems to work well. Or the 1400 and valve it back a bit (especially at first)
OP
OP
You're actually more like number 40 right now on the L2 list, but I did get all the parts in 
I've been verifying everyone on the list and will be shipping the first 25 units out next week. Life keeps getting in the way, that's the problem. The original plan to have them in and have half of them shipped by now would have been much better because I have an out of town commitment at the end of the month that's going to stall the next 25+ units until the first week of March. That's how it goes though...
I've been verifying everyone on the list and will be shipping the first 25 units out next week. Life keeps getting in the way, that's the problem. The original plan to have them in and have half of them shipped by now would have been much better because I have an out of town commitment at the end of the month that's going to stall the next 25+ units until the first week of March. That's how it goes though...
Powderbluetang
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anything in live form yet? Any demos?
fab
Active Member
What is the relationship between scrubber size and aquarium/system size for optimal benefit? And how is the right flow rate determined?
What is the effect of having not enough flow rate and the effect of too much flow rate.
Do you have a website?.
What is the effect of having not enough flow rate and the effect of too much flow rate.
Do you have a website?.
OP
OP
Working on that, it's amazing how my schedule for say, a weekend, is clear 2-3 weeks out and I make a plan for Saturday to work in the garage and also run a reef club event, then by the Monday prior to that weekend all of the sudden there is an archery tournament out of town, 4 basketball games, 2 soccer games, and my wife's work shifts. This next 10 days is going to be a lot of late nights!
This is hard to nail down into stone, there are many factors.
1) feeding amount per day is primary. Calculate cubes/day or the equivalent thereof, and use that as a baseline
2) size of tank: this used to be primary but now I consider it secondary. My jump point is around 150-200 gallons to go from a 6" wide screen (L2) to a 12" wide screen (L4), I use that because you probably should have a wider screen for a higher overall turnover rate (across the scrubber screen) so that you are turning the tank water over at a high enough rate per unit of time. Once you get over 250-300g, you are probably not entertaining the idea of running the entire system using only a scrubber, so IMO going much past 12" wide doesn't gain you a by advantage, going taller gets you more contact time per pass and this is effective also.
3) bioload: if you have a packed tank, lots of corals, lots of fish, jump up a size even if you feed them on the light side. Bioload and food don't 100% correlate, i.e. rotting food is not the same as urea and solid fish waste. Also corals are bioload so a tank with a huge load of corals but very few fish will still have a decent load
4) Existing issues: this is usually the result of husbandry and IMO a scrubber isn't the solution to that problem on the short term. My advice is to try and fix the problem, at least partially, and then set yourself up with the proper long term scrubber to keep it that way. So when I see a tank with high N and P or tons of algae, my gut recommendation is to look at long term factors and tell you what you will need long term, then make recommendations to "reset" things so that the scrubber isn't taxed with being the end-all be-all solution to every short-term problem, because it's not IMO. It is effective over the long term, so I treat it that way. No need to buy a super huge scrubber that is way bigger than you will need 6 months from now. If anything, buy the right size and build a cheap supplemental DIY that you can take down after your problems are under control. But that's me, I don't like to sell things you don't need or want
35 GPH per inch of screen width, actual flow measured coming off the bottom of the screen. For estimating purposes, if you have a 6" slot pipe and 12" level difference (sump water level to slot pipe centerline) a Rio 1100 on a new screen will push about 240 GPH, which is 240/6 = 40 GPH/in, which will slow a bit over time as the pump gunks up. You can go on flow curves, in the example above I use 24" head for the slot pipe and plumbing (there is usually an elbow) and then add the vertical, so 36" on the Rio 1100 =~240 GPH
Too little flow doesn't always hurt. I've ran scrubbers with 20 GPH/in before and they grew well, but it depends on the tank load factors, screen size, and lighting. Too much light and not enough flow will get you a burned screen (bright yellow gooey growth, or zero growth) and this is especially the case with LED quite often.
Too much flow can just get you past the point of diminishing returns. Flow goes right over the top of the algae mat and gets no contact time. But if you have a ton of growth, sometimes super high flow works. 50 GPH/in seems to be the point where it stops helping a lot. Just to toot my own horn here, the light/spray blockers I make actually force water flow through the algae mat when the growth gets thick, and so it prevents high flow from bypassing the screen. I totally did not see that coming when I designed them, I was just trying to block light and spray, but in retrospect it makes total sense.
One of these days. I think once I get to the point where I don't have an active wait list, I'll get my product/shopping site on line. Until then I do direct invoicing via PayPal. I do run an Algae Scrubbing forum but as a sponsor I don't want to direct traffic off here to another forum. Once my product site is up and running, with at least detailed product info, I'll post it. It's actually www.turbosaquatics.com but it it just a placeholder right now (don't go there, it sucks)
fab
Active Member
Pardon my ignorance but what is a 'cube' and what would its equivalent be?
When do you anticipate having the largest model available?
What will its price be approximately?
Does it have a taller screen to extend exposure time?
OP
OP
If you have ever purchased a tray of frozen food, say an Ocean Nutrition pack or something from Brine Shrimp Direct, it's that size. Roughly, 1.5cm per side, give or take. Food density is all relative though, as is quality
This is what most people go by to get them in the ballpark for the cube-equivalent
If you feed something like LRS Reef Frenzy, I usually ballpark that a 1" x 1" square is right around 2 cubes worth of food
This is what most people go by to get them in the ballpark for the cube-equivalent
If you feed something like LRS Reef Frenzy, I usually ballpark that a 1" x 1" square is right around 2 cubes worth of food
fab
Active Member
Does this refer to the display tank turnover rate or the scrubber turnover rate?
What range of turnover rates are appropriate for the Scrubbers?
In addition to the reefscape in my mixed reef and fish display tank, in my sump I am using filter socks, a remote refugium, 2 remote deep sand beds, UV sterilization, protein skimmer, GAC and GFO for water purification. I prefer to use natural processes as much as possible as the basis for normal operation, supplementing them with reactors, not the other way around. I am trying to understand how well your algae scrubber would fit into my system, what benefit I should expect to realize, how to size the scrubber(s) and the flow rates through them. My sump is 66"x30"x24"H. I can mount one or more scrubbers on the wall directly above the sump.
I fully agree with your recommendation:
Are you still tweaking the design of the larger scrubbers? When will your 'newer and even more improved' version debut?
So, when would I be likely to reach the head of the queue for what I suspect might end up being your largest model scrubber and at what price?
With regard to plumbing a scrubber, my understanding is that there are a single 1.5 " inlet and two 1.5" outlets. Is that correct? If not, can you provide plumbing diagrams, please?
If I need more scrubbing capacity than a single scrubber unit provides, should multiple scrubbers be used in series or in parallel? Should the water pass from one scrubber into the next or should they operate independently of each other?
With regard to Apex control of the scrubber, what is actually being controlled?
Is it just the light and the feed pump?
What light controls can the Apex control?
What is the interface?
Is the light controlled via an existing Apex module?
Is there any value in increasing or in decreasing flow rate during operation?
What would the basis be for varying the flow rate during normal operation?
Would it be based on anything that Apex can sense, monitor and make control decisions on?
Thank you, fab
OP
OP
flow rate across the scrubber divided by total tank volume = system turnover rate across the scrubber. The DT turnover rate (tank to sump + power heads) is not figured in, that's a different animal. I know that it's not a full pass and that water is mixed but it's just a factor used to judge, that's all. So if you have a scrubber that runs at 200 GPH but a tank that is 400g, you have 200 / 400 = 0.5. Similarly if you have a 100g and 200 GPH scrubber, that's 200/100 = 2.
If I had to pick a factor that you want to avoid dropping below, that would be 1.0.
Only with respect to how the parts go together. Size of screen, light fixtures, etc - those are all pretty much locked in
I'm assuming you are referring to the Rev 4 shown on the original post? L2s will start shipping on Monday.
The L8 list is pretty short. The even larger units list is even shorter. I think I have one request for an L24. I haven't decided if I'm going to include an L12 or jump straight to the L16.
I will have more information on this as soon as I feasibly can, but it might be kind thrown together diagrams. The drains are standard 2" slip on the base and there will be a reducer down to 1.5" with an internal drain control valve in the 1.5" pipe (which I'm still hammering out). The inlet on the slot pipe is standard 3/4" slip.
In parallel/independent, it would be difficult to plumb in series I would think.
Each custom LED driver board has 3 PWM channel inputs. One driver controls 2 LED boards, and an L2 has one driver and 2 LED boards. L4 has 2 drivers and 4 LED boards (6 channels). The drivers are made to interface with a Arduino based controller or anything that outputs a PWM dimming signal. You can get a converter board so that you can use the 0-10V output from an Apex to control the lights but I'm not sure how useful that would be (haven't really gone down that road yet).
Possibly, you could use a DC pump and vary the flow so that you have a vertical surge unit. I don't know that anyone has really tried that though.
The rationale of the surge scrubber is based on a horizontal dump bucket unit where the sudden surge is what causes the microscopic boundary layer to break down so that nutrient exchange can happen. The vertical scrubber uses a thin laminar sheet of water to break the boundary layer constantly. So this is probably why no one has bothered to do a vertical surge unit, because filtration doesn't happen when water is not flowing.
The only thing I can think of is a sensor that tells you when your scrubber box is filling up with algae and the water level is getting very high. Pulsing the flow would keep filtration occurring and cause the growth to compact a bit (in my units) and this might allow you to run longer without overflowing the growth chamber. But the way I designed this unit, that's going to take some serious LARS to make that happen. That being said on one unit I run which is not in an ideal setup, I have to valve the flow back about 1/2 way through the growth cycle because the box fills up with water (and algae) so when I do that, it compacts the growth and then fills up again a few days later. This tends to result in a large amount of growth every cycle, but I'm not sure that I would draw any conclusions based on that example.
Whew!
MikeyB
Valuable Member
Wow..that's impressive I do have two more questions for you to answer though.
Can the leds/heatsinks get wet and or be submerged?
For the first group of them going out Monday when will be paying for them?
I do have two more questions for you to answer though. Can the leds/heatsinks get wet and or be submerged?
For the first group of them going out Monday when will be paying for them?
OP
OP
Worst case, the heat sinks could get wet as long as the water didn't hit the LED boards...I think. But I wouldn't recommend it!! I'll dig up pics of what happens (happened to someone recently)
Payment just needs to be made prior to shipping. I'm sending out invoices directly via my PayPal business account.
Payment just needs to be made prior to shipping. I'm sending out invoices directly via my PayPal business account.
MikeyB
Valuable Member
Got it thanks, i just need to make sure when i mount it that it wont get wet when i turn off my return pump as the water level in the sump will go up.
I got an email from you earlier about payment! Already replied to it
fab
Active Member
Would there be benefit from injecting CO2? I provide redundantly controlled CO2 to my calcium reactor and can envision a separate feed to pass CO2 to one or more scrubbers. I know that CO2 injection is very beneficial to freshwater planted aquaria; how about for saltwater algae scrubbers?
fab
Active Member
I look forward to seeing the plumbing inlets and outlets clarified, hopefully with sketches or diagrams. For now, though, do I understand correctly that the plumbing interface to an L1 or an L2 scrubber is 1 inlet at 3/4" slip and two 2" outlets at 2" slip. Are they both male fittings to which we attach?
The discussion of a 1-1/2" pipe and valve threw me. I am surmising that they are internal to the scrubber and I will not have to deal with them except for maintenance, if at all. Is that correct?
Is the external plumbing interface for the L8 and larger scrubbers the same as I understand it to be for the smaller L1 and L2 scrubbers?
The discussion of a 1-1/2" pipe and valve threw me. I am surmising that they are internal to the scrubber and I will not have to deal with them except for maintenance, if at all. Is that correct?
Is the external plumbing interface for the L8 and larger scrubbers the same as I understand it to be for the smaller L1 and L2 scrubbers?
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