Still in the planning stages, but this is for a 35 gallon build with minimal sump space underneath. Tank is a 20”x20” cube and I’ll only have space for a 15”x15” cube sump under the stand. Will be running a Reef Octo 110S to do the heavy lifting, and will rely on the chaeto reactor to fine tune.
Never mind I skimmed your build thread. Assuming its for the same 75 gallon setup... I did a lot of research and went through several iterations of trying to grow chaeto. It's so picky and it doesn't do anything for phosphate. If you enjoy DIY i would highly recommend a turf scrubber. There are some calculations if you want to be successful with it but it can be tuned to remove the amount of nutrients that you want, whereas using chaeto especially in a reactor with fixed volume is kind of a get-what-you-get system in my opinion. I could be wrong though as obviously i went a different route and didn't do the reactor. But i can say from lots of mistakes and learning the hard way, that with a custom turf scrubber you can tune it to maintain the nutrients at very stable levels. Screen size and flow are essential and there are resources to help you calculate, and once that is close enough to correct for your nutrient load then you can fine tune with photoperiod. I went through a long period of neglect and got a big hair algae outbreak, stripped nutrients etc. from not having the scrubber tuned correctly... So it's something you have to pay attention to but frankly, so is a reef tank. The algae scrubber is a massive producer of copepods too, i was VERY surprised. seems counterintuitive with the amount of flow and surface area as compared to chaeto. I think hair algae has a better chance of outcompeting undesirables because it's so aggressive, and it takes advantage of more light and more flow than you can get in your display, in order to grow very aggressively and bind up nutrients. Just something to consider.I have a 3” diameter carbon/GFO reactor I want to turn into an algae reactor. I’ve seen LED strips wrapped around plastic or acrylic reactors, and am worried about damaging or cracking the reactor if the LED’s run too hot. Is this a legit concern or have people had luck doing this? Would like to hear from people who have done this and how long their setups have been running for… this is the reactor I have, and this is what I’m thinking about doing. Thanks !!
Yea I appreciate the feedback, but I’m sticking with this style reactor since I already have it, just wanted to find out if the LED’s will destroy the plastic or not.
In that case you may prefer the reactor. If you have room under the stand for a sump you could likely make a scrubber as well. However to directly answer your question i'm pretty sure the water moving through the reactor would be enough to keep the plastic from getting hot enough to cause damage. The acrylic may however eventually become opaque where the lights are depending on if there's UV in the led spectrum.
I will have literally 4” of space from in front of my sump to the doors. It’s not that I don’t want to do a scrubber or can’t, I just don’t have the room to fit one. Looks good though!
I would rate my DIY skills as “poor,” but I was able to fiddle this thing together and it worked; water-flow came off a valved-manifold from the pump’s return line.
I've made one of these but tbh I dont think its working that great, I have cheato in it and get the growth but still seems like I need to change it up some more. Im thinking of adding mesh to make it like a algaescrubber but the problem is that the hoses get clogged pretty fast so you have to keep up on maintaining with anything with hoses . Hmm. Maybe ill try to make a hob algaescrubber instead.Here's my build
Going to water test tomorrow. the leds don't seem to get too warm
I have a hob refugium on my other tank that works pretty well. It grew chaeto like crazy until I stopped regularly removing it. Now it just grows hair algae, but still works to remove nutrients. Wanted to try something different with this build, hopefully it works out
I personally haven’t set it up yet, I went a different way with that tank. My larger tank I am going to be buying a Bashsea 6-12 reactor and will be fastening a Tunze Fuge LED to the side and making a submersible reactor. I don’t have room externally for the reactor and needed a waterproof light solution… the reactor size may be a touch overkill but I’m pulling my fuge offline.
