Algae growth
 

I am looking at setting up a system for growing algae out of my display. I have a refugium, but I don’t feel it is big enough. I don’t have much more room under my tank to set up something different. I saw a thread on here a while ago that I can’t find now where the individual had set up a flow of water along the back top rim in a self made container, along the whole rim. The displays lights supplied the light and I think they set up a pump to supply the water at one end and there was a hole at the opposite end that drained back into the tank. It was only about 3-4 inches wide. I have an enclosed top so it wouldn’t be seen. What I was hoping to find out is how much water flow I should have. Has anyone else done a similar setup?

This is a Paul B idea. He used plastic guttering.
He has sinced removed this set up & went with a standard ats.

Maybe I’ll have to try to build one.

I had a similar system (acrylic trough across the back of a 10G with a red LED bar on top) that was a river scrubber and it worked, was easy to service and produced a lot of algae. The small pump was attached directly to the bottom of the trough to mitigate head loss and the whole thing lifted off for service. Ran for a year or so with zero problems. I’ve used several types of ATS systems on various tanks without mechanical filtration (most of the time) with success.

Trough, that's the word I was looking for. I think I might actually have more of the equipment for an ATS, so will give that a try first.

An ATS can be really simple and fit into your sump or overflow box. You just need the plastic mesh and a grow light. An overflow box is great place to incorporate one. Hang some mesh so the water flows over it and light it.

Could do an upflow ats as well.. that's what I run and it works great

Sent from my SM-G930VL using Tapatalk