Mega Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover - DIY!
- Thread starter SantaMonica
- Start date
worth a try right. Need one ?
Looks way too ghetto and unorganized for me, with buckets and lights and crap everywhere. The concept is cool but it just seems entirely unneccesary for my needs. I'll just stick to my aquaclears and fluvals. 
My acrylic scrubber uses mirror acrylic. But you could also line a bucket with mylar.
Update: Grow Bulbs
The best bulbs to grow algae are "grow bulbs", which are pink in color. Sometimes these bulbs are called "plant grow" bulbs. But don't confuse these bulbs with "plant bulbs" which are blue or green. Blue bulbs have a different purpose, and green bulbs are just to make plants look nice. It's the pink bulbs that give the algae the type of light that it grows best with. The light won't seem as bright as a white bulb, however, but it works much better. You can find grow bulbs at any garden store, home improvement store, hydroponics store, or online. Each bulb should be at least 23 watts.
The best bulbs to grow algae are "grow bulbs", which are pink in color. Sometimes these bulbs are called "plant grow" bulbs. But don't confuse these bulbs with "plant bulbs" which are blue or green. Blue bulbs have a different purpose, and green bulbs are just to make plants look nice. It's the pink bulbs that give the algae the type of light that it grows best with. The light won't seem as bright as a white bulb, however, but it works much better. You can find grow bulbs at any garden store, home improvement store, hydroponics store, or online. Each bulb should be at least 23 watts.
Yes but they are a bit difficult to deal with in small sizes in sumps, and low power. For 1000g tanks with big screens, they are great.
Well brown is growing. That's what you get at day 3. Wait till day 7 and post some pics.
SantaMonica;2805583; said:
Well, again SantaMonica, not to take away from your experience here, but I wish you could back this up with something other than your Say-so. I've done quite a bit of reading concerning Lumens vs Watts vs Photosynthetic Usable Radiation and whatnot, and while none of it was specific to algae, hydroponic growers of all kinds of crops seem to contradict your statements; They agree that HPS is more efficient than fluorescnet, but among fluorescents they say the ADV850 (phillips 5000k bulb) is in fact better than the Gro-Lux bulbs in terms of PAR/Watt, not to mention much cheaper.
Here is one article: http://www.aquabotanic.com/lightcompare.htm