Mega Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover - DIY!
- Thread starter SantaMonica
- Start date
It appears it's pretty much a saltwater thing. Not to say it wouldn't work for freshwater, but not many freshwater installs.
The reason there are more SW is because the first forums I posted on were just SW. It was not until 6 months later that I started posting on FW, and even then it was only a few.
I have been running a scrubber on my 125 fresh tank for about a month now.
While it is growing algae at a pretty good pace, (scraped it twice already) I cannot attribute any nitrate reduction to it just yet. This was a new setup and my well water is very high in nitrates, and I needed to immediately reduce them with ion exchange resins.
I'll be removing the resins in about a week to see how the scrubber fairs.
About 1 week of growth after cleaning in this pic.
While it is growing algae at a pretty good pace, (scraped it twice already) I cannot attribute any nitrate reduction to it just yet. This was a new setup and my well water is very high in nitrates, and I needed to immediately reduce them with ion exchange resins.
I'll be removing the resins in about a week to see how the scrubber fairs.
About 1 week of growth after cleaning in this pic.
This is a great project. I want to try it on my 90 gal in a bucket in my stand. Only problem is space, I have a eheim canister filter and dont think I can use it. So Im thinking I will have to have 2 pumps 1 in tank & 1 in bucket. What do u think do you have a better idea SantaMonica? thanks
You cannot use a two-pump design. Put it above the tank. or, if it must be below, make the scrubber your sump: One pump in the scrubber returns water to the display; the display overflows (or siphons) back down to the scrubber.
I will chime in again in response to the FW questions. I ran a ghetto scrubber on my monster tank for several months, and I was removing nearly a pound of wet algae every few days. I actually removed the scrubber because the way I designed it, it would clog everything else with algae if I didn't clean it frequently. The long and short of it is that it works, but design it carefully for your application, and make sure that cleaning your scrubber once a week is easier than just doing a waterchange, otherwise it's all for naught.
