Ok we'll put you down as a possible supporter, depending on the situation. Of course the main situations I'm looking for now are newbies who need to get algae off their rocks and glass so that they can grow some LPS and softies. And they need to do it cheap and fast
Ok here are the results of the 5 gal nano test. First, here is the tank, which has 3 pounds LR, a SSB, along with a purple lobster, a starfish, and a clown:
The tank has been on an office worker's desk (his first tank), with no water changes for about four months. The last change was done only to get nitrate down (a result of overfeeding of course), in order to keep the animals happy. Phosphate was not a concern since there were no corals, and thus there was no phosphate removal system in place.
As you can see, the light and most of the hood were removed, as was the little sponge filter. The remaining part of the hood has a compartment for the sponge filter, which is 2 X 3 inches, and it has a little built in pump to move water across this compartment. I started out by taking some tank-divider material and cutting it to a tight fit into the compartment:
Then I sanded it very rough on the top, and I "seeded" it by taking some green hair algea and rubbing the algae HARD into the sanded side. Then I pushed the screen into the sponge filter compartment:
The screen is only 6 square inches, single sided, and thus not enough for this tank according to the rule of thumb of one square inch per gallon (double sided), or two square inches per gallon (single sided). Thus for this 5 gal tank single-sided I should have 10 square inches instead of 6, but of course for simplicity I just used the compartment size.
Since we had already removed the original tank light, we were going to just use the light for the screen as the new tank light too. So I just took one of the same bulbs that I used in the bucket, a 23 Watt, 5100K compact fluorescents "full-spectrum" (125W output equivalent):
...and set it directly on the plastic hood, which put it only a half inch from the flowing water:
Thankfully these CFL's run very cool, and you can put your hand right on them without burning. Of course if you try this light placement yourself, you'd want to test it carefully so that you don't melt anything, and won't knock the bulb over. I thought that the light might heat up the water, but it does not seem to. The light is on an 18-hour-on timer, and provides the tank itself with much more light than the original hood light did.
Results: Here are the measurements (Salifert) and pics taken over a period of days:
....................N...........P
.
day 0..........*............*...............not measured
day 1........(50)........( .5 )
day 2..........*............*...............not measured
day 3..........*............*...............not measured
day 4..........*............*...............not measured
day 5........(50)........( .5 )
day 6........(25)........( .25 )
day 7........(15)........( .13 ).........screen full
day 8........(15)........(1.0)...........screen full
day 9........(10)........(1.0)...........whole screen cleaned (mistake)
day 10......(10)........(1.0)...........growing back
day 11......(8.0).......(1.0)...........growing back more
day 12......(8.0).......(1.0)...........half cleaned
day 13......(8.0).......( .5 )
day 14......(5.0).......( .25 ).........other half cleaned
day 15......(8.0).......( .13 )
day 16......(3.0).......( .13 ).........other half cleaned; housing cleaned
day 17......( 2.5 ).....( .05 )
day 18......( .5 ).......( .05 )
day 19......( .2 ).......( .05 ).........other half cleaned (not much there)
day 20......(0)..........( .015 ).......green growing back over brown
You'll see on day 7 that the screen filled up. However I had never seen it full before, so I did not know what "full" looked like. So I left it to see how full it would get. Day 8 the screen looked the same, but there was a big increase in P, and I surmised that the screen had filled up and some strands of algae were shadowing others, causing the others to detach and flow into the tank and die (not enough light in the tank to survive). So I waited one more day to be sure (day 9), and sure enough the P was still very high.
So on Day 9 I cleaned (mistakenly) the whole screen, whereas I should have only cleaned half. Thus, I had no filtering, and it took a few day to fill in again. By day 14, nitrate and phosphate were at reasonable levels, and I was doing half-screen cleanings properly. By day 18 the nitrate and phosphate were bottoming out and staying constant, and nitrate eventually got to zero at day 20.
So the things learned:
1) A small screen size, even one sided, can do a tremendous job of filtering. (Phosphate from .5 to .015, and Nitrate from 50 to 0, in three weeks).
2) It can do this filtering with a constant flow of water (no pulsing), although a timer on the little pump would be easy to add and try out.
3) It can do this filtering with regular green algae; it has not had time to form true red/brown turf, although it was starting to feel like some was growing.
4) It all can be done in the nano's hood, with a standard light, for free.
Ok, now it's seriously time for you nano folks to try this!
Here's another cool screen just built by someone, designed to be over the sump and drain down into it. He says after he adjusted adjusted the flow, there was no spraying or splattering, just a quiet flow down the screen:
Here's some results for the turf bucket that was built for the main (not nano) build thread. Below are the pics of the screen, day by day, for the first seven days. I had sanded both sides of the screen, and then "seeded" the screen by rubbing green algae HARD into it. After water flowed over it, only a couple visible specs remained (the rest are invisible spores) that grew a little by the Day 2 pic. It should be noted that this new bucket is working side-by-side on the same tank that my original test bucket is on:
This means that the new screen is sharing nutrients and competing directly against my established screen that I got pre-grown from IA over a month ago. Also, N and P were already zero, so nutrients were hard to come by. So this new screen had little to grow on, unlike the nano. Nevertheless, these pics show the growth progress you MIGHT expect if you decide to grow your own screen from scratch:
Day 7 Closeup; Some brown spots are lengthening, and some green hair is flowing past the bottom; And although it's hard to see, most of the holes are still open:
Hi Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/Scre...ay7closeup.jpg
Day 9; Some brown spots are getting thick, and some green areas are starting to cover up other areas. Almost all holes are grown over; time to clean!
Hi Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/ScreenBuildDay9.jpg
Day 9 Screen Removed; Note the light colored spots on the bottom half. These are probably copepods eating the algae, since I did not clean and freshwater-rinse in over a week:
Hi Res: http://www.radio-media.com/fish/ScreenBuildDay9out.jpg
So that takes us through the first cleaning cycle of a new screen. Was surprised to see the light spots on the screen since I never saw any on my established screen, but then this new screen is so thin right now that any spots become easily visible. You should not go more than a week between cleaning and a freshwater rinse (freshwater will kill the pods) like I just did; I just wanted to get a decent amount of algae to harvest so you would be able to see it.
Interesting that all the spots are on the lower half of the screen, which in my bucket is the part that stays underwater more often, since the bucket fills partially as the pump runs. (It shouldn't do this, but I have not connected a ball valve to the pump yet, so I can't slow it down). So apparently, the copepods can't survive well when the water flows away, leaving just air. This is a good reason to not submerge your screen, and also to consider having a timer on the pump to let the screen dry out for 30 or 60 seconds between "waves".
On the cleaning, note that I took off all the green, but left the brown. You always want to do this, in order to prepare the screen for developing real red/brown turf later.
Note on "Day 9 Screen Removed", that there is a bit more coverage on the right than on the left. That's because most of the flow has been going on the right side. But as you can see it does not change the coverage that much.
Very cool thread here! I am reading it with great interest.
__________________
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them. -Thomas Jefferson
What amazes me is the clarity and thought put into Dave and SMonica's posts. It would take me all night to type and load the posts that you guys do. However, It will be a very hard pressed case to get me to eliminate my skimmer. I do water changes and have a quallity skimmer and my N and P very negligible. I clean my skimmer, do water changes and replace DI resin and I can enjoy the display even more.
I do like the vertical apparatus as opposed to the horizonal ones in the past.
As far as obsolete goes, I know people who still use an air stone skimmer.
Salty and Primereef... glad you like the info, yes it takes time to put it together which is why I save it up and post it at one time. And Prime if your setup is working good, then congrats. But if you ever need to knock that P all the way down, or you decide to keep some filter feeders, you know what to do
Here's a neat screen that someone just built. Since there was no vertical room in his sump area, he asked about horizontal options and I showed him the commercial floating turf screens. He made one out of floating material:
Here the first pre-grown installation I've seen (except for mine)... jski711 on another board said: "I can't believe how well this DIY thing worked. It literally took all of 45 minutes once I had the materials. And I have noticed my pH raise up about .15 in a few hours since installing it."
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