I am not 100% sure about ATS removing all of dissolved protein, I have heard arguments that is does not and that DON's can build up in a scrubbed tank. But I would immagine that it would take out some of the dissolved protiens, I cannot be more convincing b/c the fact is I really don't know, there is no way of testing them without going to a laboratory.
ATS (algal turf scrubber) project smaller tanks 75 and 29gal
- Thread starter greenmaji
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greenmaji
Aquarium Advice Addict
JProx said:
From the looks of that design the idea was to only have to light a very small surface area at a time and I would assume it would be 24/7 lighting.. there doesnt seem to be one square foot of surface area that needs to be lit.. the 1000watt figure ashdavid is talking about is for one square meter wich is 10.8 times larger then the surface area in that design.. I would assume by the way that filter is designed it would need around 95 watts of light.. maybe 4-12" ODNO bulbs could manage that. LOL.. Building the rotating scrubber would be an issue of creativity.. LOL
greenmaji
Aquarium Advice Addict
RCFrick-n-Frags on Reef Central said:
If you read the tread he had been running the ATS for several months only.. and the PS was on the system prior to the addition of the ATS.. Im completely uncertain of how he designed the ATS and how efficient the design is but he is not the only user in the thread that says they are having the same result with ATS..
I dont know about all of the dissolved protein being removed but shutting down a PS on a reef system is good enough removal for me..
Well with my tank, like I said before I did not do a water change for almost a year, only topping water up, I did not have any issues with sick fish. I would assume that proteins would have been taken out considerably. Have though about the design yet?
greenmaji
Aquarium Advice Addict
ashdavid said:
I was hoping you could help me narrow down design details on top of giving the tons of other details about lighting, surface area needed, water flow needed.. I really owe you on this!
I have seen the rotating algal wheel design.. it looks very difficult to clean ( the scraping of the algae) and to build compared to a tray design..
In the tray design what would be the best layout? What do you think would make a great design?
The tray is straight forward , all you have to do is design it to best utilize the type of lights you are using so no light is wasted ,eg for MH lamps if you are using one light, make the ATS square and put the light in the middle of the tray, if you use ordinary fluorescent lighting make the ATS long and narrow ect. Then make it about 8 to 12" deep to stop splashing or use a lid, keep the water level at about 2 to 4" , the main thing I found is that you only need 1/2" from the screen to water level. It is the dump bucket that is difficult, I designed my own b/c there are no pics on how to build one. You have to figure out how much flow you are going to have and then you have make the volume of the bucket so that it will tip from 8 to 20 sec, but you also have to make it so that it will tip when it is full of water, btw I had to figure all this out by myself,lol. I will try to get some design pics for you. Just give me a few days to look for them.
greenmaji
Aquarium Advice Addict
ashdavid said:
Ill try to be patient.. Im still reading on the ATS subject right now.. I need to find out the amount of food the system will ultimately be using and then do some calculations on how big I need to make this thing.. wich of course will determine all the other factors such as light and water flow..
greenmaji
Aquarium Advice Addict
How much distance is needed for the dump bucket splash? Could it be just enough to cause some turbulence or does it need to be enough to make a big splash? If you could explain your answer that would be great as well.. Id really like to understand the reasons for the design..
JProx
Aquarium Advice Freak
greenmagi said:JProx said:
From the looks of that design the idea was to only have to light a very small surface area at a time and I would assume it would be 24/7 lighting.. there doesnt seem to be one square foot of surface area that needs to be lit.. the 1000watt figure ashdavid is talking about is for one square meter wich is 10.8 times larger then the surface area in that design.. I would assume by the way that filter is designed it would need around 95 watts of light.. maybe 4-12" ODNO bulbs could manage that. LOL.. Building the rotating scrubber would be an issue of creativity.. LOL
sorry for my broad generalization, however i dug that pic up just to throw another idea out there, a 1000watts of lighting is a monsterous amount of light, sure its over a 1 sq meter box, but that has to take some serious amounts of money to power and build. that design though is rated for a 500 gallon tank, i believe. it does use 2 -> 96watt pc bulbs. orginally i thought it was meant to run only when the lights on the main tank were off, but there is another pic showing the reverse. which makes me wonder how they control the co2, or any of the ph spikes. it has a surge box built in, not sure how it works in the system, or where its actually located though. here's the specs (no idea why i didn't post this before) http://www.aquaticengineers.com/ecowheel unit.htm
i really don't think building a rotating design would be much more difficult than the traditional tray maybe a little more expensive, but not harder. the biggest hurdle is finding a premade round cyclinder in the right size, and if thats impossible (which it probably is) you can always cut out the peices from an acrylic sheet. that actual unit is used in city aquariums, so it must work pretty darn well, it might be worth emulating.
JProx said:
It is not the fact that a rotating drum would be hard or easy to build, the fact is that it is not as efficient as the dump bucket or wave types. Dr Adey has stated that when running water and no wave action was implemented, the algae production rate droped by 50%.Wave action is deffinately a must when designing your ATS. Also about the light thing, the fact is more light means more algae production. Those figure that I stated before,
This value of 4g per day is acheived with about 12h a day lighting or so I am led to believe. Dr Adey recomends lighting periods of 12 to 18hrs a day. I run my ATS for 18hrs a day, which incidentlly has 2200w of light. I think someone said before that they have never heard of the 1000w per sq/m rule before, this is true there is no rule on this but in Dr Adeys book all the most efficient ATS's were the ones that ran 800w to 1200w, so I just picked the middle number. Also Dr Adeys home aquarium has a light per sq/m of 1650w, and he states this is his most effective ATS( Dr Adeys ATS surface area is 0.18sq/m).JProx said:
Btw I read the other thread on ATS in this forum and I would just like to clarify something, I believe that the Townsvile 600,000g public aquarium is not using ATS's at the moment, due to experiments being carried out.
JProx
Aquarium Advice Freak
ashdavid said:
greenmaji
Aquarium Advice Addict
ashdavid.....You said dump bucket or wave emulating design.. Im not sure if Ive seen a wave emulating (besides the dump bucket) design.. how would that look/work out?
greenmaji
Aquarium Advice Addict
ashdavid.....btw..how much are you feeding a day and how many square meters are in your system (1850gallons) to get a general idea of what all that light is working on..
And a side note could you list the fish you have in your tank?
I think the lighting figures would be less "scary" if how much work your ATS is having to do was more clear to the readers here.. Ive read some of your posts over at aquaria central so I have a better idea already..ie Im not scared at all..ROFL! that and ODNO is cheap to build (expecialy 2X)! LOL
And a side note could you list the fish you have in your tank?
I think the lighting figures would be less "scary" if how much work your ATS is having to do was more clear to the readers here.. Ive read some of your posts over at aquaria central so I have a better idea already..ie Im not scared at all..ROFL! that and ODNO is cheap to build (expecialy 2X)! LOL
greenmaji
Aquarium Advice Addict
JProx... I dont really think you should give up on the wheel design just yet.. Im sure you were not going to go through the trouble of adding bio-media under it anyway. I thought of several ways of building it, it doesnt seem to me to be a extremely tough design to emulate, I would just think it would be a little more difficult to harvest/clean out the algae then a tray design.. I have looked at a couple of different tray designs.. ones with angled baffles of some sort.. maybe thats the wave emulation design.. and ones with dump buckets.. Im wondering if the angled baffle design would do as well as the dump bucket design? ashdavid.. I think I just managed to ask another question in an answer 
your input on the baffles vs. dumpbuckets would be apprecieated though..
Im sure you were not going to go through the trouble of adding bio-media under it anyway. I thought of several ways of building it, it doesnt seem to me to be a extremely tough design to emulate, I would just think it would be a little more difficult to harvest/clean out the algae then a tray design.. I have looked at a couple of different tray designs.. ones with angled baffles of some sort.. maybe thats the wave emulation design.. and ones with dump buckets.. Im wondering if the angled baffle design would do as well as the dump bucket design? ashdavid.. I think I just managed to ask another question in an answer your input on the baffles vs. dumpbuckets would be apprecieated though.. greenmaji
Aquarium Advice Addict
ashdavid.... another question, what kind of algae exactly is it your growing on your scrubber in FW? is it actually turf algae? or is it some kind of hair algae?
JProx said:
If the water motion is too strong you can have problems with efficiency, what you are aiming for is both sides of the algae stand exposed to the light, It almost has to be a back and forth swaying motion.
And I have to say again , the light issue is a fact of life, no matter what you do and you want a scrubber to filter your tank ,light is absolutely essential. You could compare it to a normal bio filter and ask the question can I get away with only using 5g of media for a 500g tank, you know it is going to filter some of the ammonia ect, but it is not going to do a complete job. I a sorry to say there are no short cuts and that is a fact. But you also have to put things in perspective, Dr Adey used an ATS on a 130g with 300w of light, this scrubber had a surface area of 0.18m sq and if you do the math it works out to be 1650w or there abouts of watts per sq/m(this was an experimental tank, hence the great amout of light). That is a lot of light and I am only suggesting what he used on his his other tanks which is about 1000w per/sq/m. Eg an ATS with a surface area of 1 sq ft(12"*12") would only need 100w of light for it to be effective.
As for your question about, would you be able to get 4g of N out a day, I will say yes if you follow Dr Adeys advise, not only that if you have the lights on the ATS on for 18hrs a day, as recomended you will be able to much more than that. Like I said before these are consevative figures.
I have about 2.4 sq/m of ATS, this about 916w per/sq/m, but my tank has a lot of water volume and is stable. My advise is that you go a minimun of 150w for the scrubber and make the surface area accordingly, but an ideal ATS would a little bigger b/c of the small water volume, I would say about 200w to 250w which would give an ATS surface area of 2ft or 2. 1/2 ft for the 250w ATS. I is up to you but you could up the light if that would make you feel better. As for the fish in my tank I have about 30 10" to 15" cichlids, and about 40 5" to 10" fish( balas, tinfoil barbs, clown loaches ect) mostly around the 10" mark. I don't know what you mean by the angled baffles , please explain.greenmagi said:
This is the dump bucket from a side veiw the top of the bucket is much longer than the bottom so when it fills with water it tips over because it gets top heavy. also you have to put some thing behind the top back part of the bucket so that when it fills with water it does not go backwards. I will try to get some pics of this.
top lenght 160mm
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----------+---------- height 140mm
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bottom lenght 85mm
This is the dump bucket that I use, it has a width of 1m and I use two buckets. Each bucket holds close to 5 g of water tiping about 6 times a min. The cross in the midle has to be exactly in the middle, equal distances from top to bottom and side to side, so what you could do is scale yours down to fit your tank. As for other wave devises there plenty out there, eg "carlson surg devise", but i believe that the dump bucket best emulates the wave motion of the sea.
JProx
Aquarium Advice Freak
thank you ashdavid, i starting to feel better now about a DIY Ats unit. thanks again for coddling me for the past few days. angled baffles though - same idea in a sump where baffles are added to slow down water movement {with the idea of giving the water more time to mix with mechanical / chemical filtration) or help remove oxygen bubbles, expect these ones are at an angle (about 30-10 degrees)
and have something that would allow the algea to adhere too easily with the idea of maximizing contact time with the water, and to slow the water's movement through scrubber unit.
green - i don't think harvesting would be really that difficult. the entire wheel assembly should come out of the unit, where its scraped of thick growth and replaced back in the unit.
and have something that would allow the algea to adhere too easily with the idea of maximizing contact time with the water, and to slow the water's movement through scrubber unit.
green - i don't think harvesting would be really that difficult. the entire wheel assembly should come out of the unit, where its scraped of thick growth and replaced back in the unit.
greenmaji
Aquarium Advice Addict
ashdavid...
With the angled baffle design the water would come in one side of the ATS then it would travel over multiple angled pieces of acrylic ---> / / / / / / / ---> then out the other side causing the water to make a wave pattern.. it sounds like it might be turbulent by comparison to the dumpbucket design... and I think screens could be added to the sides of the angled baffles that would be facing water flow... but that wouldnt be contusive to the wave pattern you explained unless there were little screens floated between the the baffles after the first one.. ----> /f/f/f/f/f/f --->
while Im at it what materials did you use for your ATS.. what kind of screen did you use? and how did you make it (what is the frame of your screens made out of) or is the screen material only attached to a frame on the sides? And what materia did you use to make the frame?
TY for your dumpbucket design
now all I have to do is resize it.. would you think it would need to be smaller in all dimensions or just resize it to fit the length of the screens in my application of the design?
Im still curious as to the species of algae your growing considering your running FW and I wish to run FW ATS as well.. I would guess the type of algae would depend on bio-load and cycle of the ATS/system... but I was wondering what the end result would be..
JProx...
Point taken with the cleaning of the wheel design.. but it seems like you would have to shut the pump down for a few to do that.. I dont think that would be needed for the tray design but it seems like a minor issue...
As I said before I wouldnt give up on it it just seems like the try design with dumpbucket just might be alot more efficient as far as growth of the turf is considered..
With the angled baffle design the water would come in one side of the ATS then it would travel over multiple angled pieces of acrylic ---> / / / / / / / ---> then out the other side causing the water to make a wave pattern.. it sounds like it might be turbulent by comparison to the dumpbucket design... and I think screens could be added to the sides of the angled baffles that would be facing water flow... but that wouldnt be contusive to the wave pattern you explained unless there were little screens floated between the the baffles after the first one.. ----> /f/f/f/f/f/f --->
while Im at it what materials did you use for your ATS.. what kind of screen did you use? and how did you make it (what is the frame of your screens made out of) or is the screen material only attached to a frame on the sides? And what materia did you use to make the frame?
TY for your dumpbucket design
now all I have to do is resize it.. would you think it would need to be smaller in all dimensions or just resize it to fit the length of the screens in my application of the design?
Im still curious as to the species of algae your growing considering your running FW and I wish to run FW ATS as well.. I would guess the type of algae would depend on bio-load and cycle of the ATS/system... but I was wondering what the end result would be..
JProx...
Point taken with the cleaning of the wheel design.. but it seems like you would have to shut the pump down for a few to do that.. I dont think that would be needed for the tray design but it seems like a minor issue...
As I said before I wouldnt give up on it it just seems like the try design with dumpbucket just might be alot more efficient as far as growth of the turf is considered..
I am not a fan of the baffle design, I have seen it but after studying the dump bucket and why it should be used, I tend to want to recomend the D bucket.
Greenmagi, here is an example of Dr Adeys african tank, This was designed to see how it would handle bio load. It is a 70g tank and has an ATS with asuface area of 0.085m sq, ATS lights are 148w VHO lamps. This system had at the time of printing about 40" of cichlids and 8" of catfish. It also had plants to take up some of the nutrients. This system was run at about 0.5 no3 . So I would recomend after having a scrubber myself, using an ATS with about 200w to 250w of light to compensate for the plants, but I think that will bring nutrients right down , probably below 0.1 No3.
As for what types of algae, I can tell you the exact types ( I would need a micro scope) But blue greens seem to be most prevelant, sometimes some macro algae comes on to the screens, but is quickly taken off and the micro algae takes over, I have seens reds in there, as well as diatoms. I use a 2mm by 2mm mesh screen with a PVC pipe structure filled with sand to weight it down as the frame. I would say scale down the bucket a little b/c that bucket is quite big. Also with a SW ATS the screen would be better to use 1mm by 1mm, I tried this screen but the FW dose not seem to anchor itself well to it and keeps pealing off.
Greenmagi, here is an example of Dr Adeys african tank, This was designed to see how it would handle bio load. It is a 70g tank and has an ATS with asuface area of 0.085m sq, ATS lights are 148w VHO lamps. This system had at the time of printing about 40" of cichlids and 8" of catfish. It also had plants to take up some of the nutrients. This system was run at about 0.5 no3 . So I would recomend after having a scrubber myself, using an ATS with about 200w to 250w of light to compensate for the plants, but I think that will bring nutrients right down , probably below 0.1 No3.
As for what types of algae, I can tell you the exact types ( I would need a micro scope) But blue greens seem to be most prevelant, sometimes some macro algae comes on to the screens, but is quickly taken off and the micro algae takes over, I have seens reds in there, as well as diatoms. I use a 2mm by 2mm mesh screen with a PVC pipe structure filled with sand to weight it down as the frame. I would say scale down the bucket a little b/c that bucket is quite big. Also with a SW ATS the screen would be better to use 1mm by 1mm, I tried this screen but the FW dose not seem to anchor itself well to it and keeps pealing off.
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