RAIN 2 Installation and Start Up

[Waboss]

I know I skipped last week, but here's the update from this week.

Growth seems to be taking off better, but not quite what I would expect since I stopped dosing No-Pox. I only opened the slot for the mesh a tiny little bit last time. You can barely tell. I think I'm going to open it up just a little bit more and see if more even flow helps.

You can definitely tell which side is had the LED turned on too. I'm thinking I'll experiment with turning on the other side as well now.

 

[SantaMonica]

Ok you can clean now. Your high nutrients are growing slime which is detaching and falling off; thus the slow fill-in. Next period should fill all the way in.

And yes your slot need a good 1/16" increase in width. There will be no side-spraying then.

Looks like lots of coralline on the tray

 

[Waboss]

Ok you can clean now. Your high nutrients are growing slime which is detaching and falling off; thus the slow fill-in. Next period should fill all the way in.

And yes your slot need a good 1/16" increase in width. There will be no side-spraying then.

Looks like lots of coralline on the tray

Cool. Just cleaned it and opened up the slot a bit more. Water flow across the screen looks much better. I actually opened up the valve on pump output a little more to make sure the flow covered the whole screen. With widening the slot, the old setting i had on the valve wouldn't push water all the way to the end of the screen. It looks much better now though.

 

[atoll]

Cool. Just cleaned it and opened up the slot a bit more. Water flow across the screen looks much better. I actually opened up the valve on pump output a little more to make sure the flow covered the whole screen. With widening the slot, the old setting i had on the valve wouldn't push water all the way to the end of the screen. It looks much better now though.

"Opened up the slot" Do you mean you took something like a dremel and physically widened the slot? If so how wide is the slot now? I would have thought there should be no need to widen the slot beyond the manufacturers. Perhaps SM would like to comment on that.

 

[Waboss]

"Opened up the slot" Do you mean you took something like a dremel and physically widened the slot? If so how wide is the slot now? I would have thought there should be no need to widen the slot beyond the manufacturers. Perhaps SM would like to comment on that.

He did comment. Look at post 32 and 42.

 

[atoll]

He did comment. Look at post 32 and 42.

Thanks missed that, thanks. Seems a little strange with all the testing you would expect to have been done the slot would have been well worked out for the flow required. I wouldn't expect to have to take a dremel to such an expensive product to get it to work well. Maybe SM now provides them with the wider slot or is t really a flow issue to slot ratio thing with the output from the pump needing to be reduced accordingly?

 

[Waboss]

Thanks missed that, thanks. Seems a little strange with all the testing you would expect to have been done the slot would have been well worked out for the flow required. I wouldn't expect to have to take a dremel to such an expensive product to get it to work well. Maybe SM now provides them with the wider slot or is t really a flow issue to slot ratio thing with the output from the pump needing to be reduced accordingly?

Eh, widening the slot isn't a big deal. It only took me about 5 minutes including de-burring and washing it out. You don't have to do it if you don't want to. It works without the modification.

I did have to choke down my pump a bit (before widening it), but I don't know that it was a bad thing. My main reason for widening it was that it was getting some algae build up on the screen right at the slot and the water would spray out a little instead of keeping all the water on the screen. That's really it.

 

[atoll]

Eh, widening the slot isn't a big deal. It only took me about 5 minutes including de-burring and washing it out. You don't have to do it if you don't want to. It works without the modification.

I did have to choke down my pump a bit (before widening it), but I don't know that it was a bad thing. My main reason for widening it was that it was getting some algae build up on the screen right at the slot and the water would spray out a little instead of keeping all the water on the screen. That's really it.

Well you did for a good reason right? IMO taking a dremel to new equipment seems a bit odd to do to get the flow you want, it's a tried and tested product after all or should be.Still you have sorted it now. Algae always grows around the slot and the way to reduce/ eliminate it is to have a good shade stopping light getting to that area. Some also have a splash deflector with the shade so some of the water is bounced back to the screen when algae builds up on the slot but am not sure how well the bounce back actual works I guess it depends on the water pressure hitting the screening.

 

[pelphrey]

Thanks for creating this thread! I was able to find the RAIN2 used, made an offer and it is now mine! I haven't got it on my system just yet, I need to order a few parts and figure out exactly how I want to put it in my sump. I will be running it off my return pump with soft tubing for now.

 

[pelphrey]

I searched around today trying to find a pvc sheet, apparently those don't exist locally. May have to come up with an alternative way to mount this box.

 

[Waboss]

I searched around today trying to find a pvc sheet, apparently those don't exist locally. May have to come up with an alternative way to mount this box.

Yeah, I ordered mine from Amazon

 

[Daniel Strickland]

I searched around today trying to find a pvc sheet, apparently those don't exist locally. May have to come up with an alternative way to mount this box.

I had the same issues. I ended up getting 2 1/4 in pieces of plexiglass from the local hardware store (they even cut them to size for me) I then used Gorilla Super glue and glued them together. Was able to mount my 2" PVC pole to that and is very solid.

 

[Waboss]

I had the same issues. I ended up getting 2 1/4 in pieces of plexiglass from the local hardware store (they even cut them to size for me) I then used Gorilla Super glue and glued them together. Was able to mount my 2" PVC pole to that and is very solid.

That's cool. I like it!

 

[Waboss]

Well, here' s a new update. The screen is filling in now and there's enough build up to not allow light through the screen (as noticed by the difference in growth on the 2 sides), so I'm going to try firing up both lights and see how that goes.

 

[Water Dog]

How's the scrubber been as of late?

 

[Waboss]

How's the scrubber been as of late?

I checked it last week (2 weeks since last cleaning), and it's doing about the same thing. I'm getting a little frustrated with it as I would think that if the flow is good, nutrient level is high (which is seems to be with the slim cover it builds over the algae in the scrubber), and lighting is good, I should be seeing much more growth.

I'm starting to think my tank may not be a good candidate for a scrubber at all.

I'll pull it tonight/tomorrow though and post a new video update. Maybe in the last week there's been an explosion of growth!

 

[pelphrey]

I've got green hair algae in my display, still haven't installed the RAIN. Hoping to have it in within two weeks, want to see how it does against my current algae battle!

 

[Waboss]

Ok, so I went ahead and opened it up and wow.......that's all I have to say. The longer algae growth I was expecting wasn't there, but now there's 'lumps' of algae growing in the tray and what looks like bubble algae on it too.

Soooo, the only change I did recently was turn on the second LED, so I think I'm going back to 1 for now (and since it had that big open spot in the middle of the screen.....I'm guessing too much light).

Also, I'm wondering if I need to clean it weekly to keep that "slime" from building up on it.

@SantaMonica , what do you think?

 

[SantaMonica]

Ah, that is slime growth that fell off the screen. So it's time for all 4 lights.

 

[pelphrey]

After a few months I finally got around to getting the ATS in the tank. Thanks to this thread I used idea's from both @Waboss & @Daniel Strickland

April 30th 2017 RAIN2 Algae Turf Scrubber Startup. Running 1 GEM5 light 24/7. Tested water with Hannas Phosphorus tester, test came back at 4, phosphates really low. I did test nitrate with my Red Sea kit (which was expired) but it was zero. I threw it away, all future tests will be phosphate tests only. I'll pickup another nitrate test kit eventually.

Added a piece of 1" PVC with a 90 to push the flow away from the output of the scrubber