labas39
Active Member
I doubled my water volume and my acros lost a lot of color. I even lost a few colonies. I started to read up on Algae Turf Scrubbers, ATS, and decided to pull the plug and build one yesterday.
From my research, I've found three designs: horizontal, vertical/waterfall and upflow. For me, the waterfall design made the most sense.
Then comes the sizing. I have approximately 100 gallons but the new way of sizing an ATS is by how many cubes of frozen food you feed per day. I feed one cube per day. They say to use 12 square inches per cube per day when lighting the screen on both sides. I'm lighting on one side because I want to hang the ATS on the wall so I need 24 square inches.
Next comes the lighting. They say 1 watt CFL per square inch so I need 24 watts. LED's supposedly can be 1/5 that amount and for me that's about 5 watts. Red LED's in the 660 nm range is supposed to be the best.
I read that you DON'T want to go less than the required amount but I haven't seen much about going larger.
With that in mind, I decided to build a 36 square inch ATS. Mine is 6" x 6". I ordered 3 3 watt red LED's from ledlight.com. They're 6 inches in length an will fit perfectly. I have no clue if they'll work but I'm willing to try. Since they'll only arrive on Thursday, I'm using an old shop light and a new soft white 23 watt CFL from Home Depot in the interim.
From the Container Store, I bought the container yesterday. It's approximately 7.5 x 7.5 by 3 inches. It's totally clear so I shouldn't have any loss of PAR.
You're supposed to get 35 gph per inch of screen length. My screen is 6 inches long so I need 210 gph. I'm feeding the ATS with an old RIO 2100; it's rated at 692 gph. The ATS is 4 feet off the ground so I don't know how much I'm losing. I put a 1/2 bulkhead in the side of that Container Store container. I made sure I made the hold VERY SLOWLY. This thing isn't acrylic so it's fragile. I used clear vinyl tubing from the pump to the 90 degree barbed male end.
The drain is 1". Again, I drilled that hole very slowly and put a 1 inch bulkhead in there. I used PVC to dump back into the sump.
I bought the screen yesterday from Hobby Lobby. It's 7 count. I scratched it up using a hole drill so that the algae can root. I used my table saw to make a cut down the 1/2 PVC pipe, shoved the screen up there and used zip ties to keep it secure. That was my second option after my first one, which I thought would be easier to clean the screen, was a bust because of how the water flowed.
After driving back and forth to Home Depot a few times after changing my mind, the final result is up and running.]
The light schedule is 18 on and 6 off. They'll be on during when the display lights are off to theoretically keep the pH more stable.
I ended up hacking some wood pieces to keep light out of my display tank but if this works, it's really only a prototype. I plan on making this all out of black and clear acrylic.
From my research, I've found three designs: horizontal, vertical/waterfall and upflow. For me, the waterfall design made the most sense.
Then comes the sizing. I have approximately 100 gallons but the new way of sizing an ATS is by how many cubes of frozen food you feed per day. I feed one cube per day. They say to use 12 square inches per cube per day when lighting the screen on both sides. I'm lighting on one side because I want to hang the ATS on the wall so I need 24 square inches.
Next comes the lighting. They say 1 watt CFL per square inch so I need 24 watts. LED's supposedly can be 1/5 that amount and for me that's about 5 watts. Red LED's in the 660 nm range is supposed to be the best.
I read that you DON'T want to go less than the required amount but I haven't seen much about going larger.
With that in mind, I decided to build a 36 square inch ATS. Mine is 6" x 6". I ordered 3 3 watt red LED's from ledlight.com. They're 6 inches in length an will fit perfectly. I have no clue if they'll work but I'm willing to try. Since they'll only arrive on Thursday, I'm using an old shop light and a new soft white 23 watt CFL from Home Depot in the interim.
From the Container Store, I bought the container yesterday. It's approximately 7.5 x 7.5 by 3 inches. It's totally clear so I shouldn't have any loss of PAR.
You're supposed to get 35 gph per inch of screen length. My screen is 6 inches long so I need 210 gph. I'm feeding the ATS with an old RIO 2100; it's rated at 692 gph. The ATS is 4 feet off the ground so I don't know how much I'm losing. I put a 1/2 bulkhead in the side of that Container Store container. I made sure I made the hold VERY SLOWLY. This thing isn't acrylic so it's fragile. I used clear vinyl tubing from the pump to the 90 degree barbed male end.
The drain is 1". Again, I drilled that hole very slowly and put a 1 inch bulkhead in there. I used PVC to dump back into the sump.
I bought the screen yesterday from Hobby Lobby. It's 7 count. I scratched it up using a hole drill so that the algae can root. I used my table saw to make a cut down the 1/2 PVC pipe, shoved the screen up there and used zip ties to keep it secure. That was my second option after my first one, which I thought would be easier to clean the screen, was a bust because of how the water flowed.
After driving back and forth to Home Depot a few times after changing my mind, the final result is up and running.]
The light schedule is 18 on and 6 off. They'll be on during when the display lights are off to theoretically keep the pH more stable.
I ended up hacking some wood pieces to keep light out of my display tank but if this works, it's really only a prototype. I plan on making this all out of black and clear acrylic.
