Mobile Bay Reef Keepers

This is kinda new stuff to me. I never really looked much into it and it seems to have potential. I may have to do some digging on this. I started to read up on this when I saw Amphiprion had it in their sig. I have seen Anthony Calfo talk of it in his books also. Anyway this is a link to a forum that appears to be solely for algae scrubbing and methods. I just found it but it seems to be an active forum.
http://www.algaescrubber.net/forums/index.php

I'm a member of that site

FWIW, I really like my scrubber. It even starves out Bryopsis and eventually low nutrient algal species. I've been nothing but impressed so far.

I was hoping you would see this and comment. Do you happen to have any pictures of you setup? Any details about it? I am really thinking about setting up something but I am still kinda iffy about it.

Mine's actually a very simple, crude design. I suppose it is more experimental than anything, but it definitely gets the job done. Here are a few pics when I first set up this particular build (I've been through about 6 different designs prior, which is the main downside to doing one of these--basically perfecting it for your use):





I'll get some updated ones before I'm ready to scrape again. One word is that these aren't for everyone. They require regular, religious scraping and rinsing in tap water or they start to not do too well. It may not always translate into overall savings for everyone, either. It just happened to be a more cost effective and natural alternative for me. Oh, and if you are concerned about the proximity to electricity, everything has been siliconed. It will withstand practically anything but complete submersion.

Edit: Specifics:

Approximately 100 sq. inches double sided, or 200 total, with approx. 700 gph running over it. It uses 2 40w screw in compact lamps (soon to be 55w). It gets scraped weekly and rinsed.

Amphiprion wrote: One word is that these aren't for everyone. They require regular, religious scraping and rinsing in tap water or they start to not do too well. It may not always translate into overall savings for everyone, either.

This is one of the big reasons I was thinking I probably shouldn't fool with it. Last time I had a tank up I was constantly having to do something, constantly putting my hands in the water for some reason. I was hoping for time around I will simplify as much as possible so there is more time watching than doing. Let the tank grow. It still seems interesting though.

It just depends on what you are used to doing. If you normally change your filter sock regularly, replace carbon and GFO, etc., then once you switch those out for the scrubber (except the carbon--it's good to keep that), it isn't much of a difference in maintenance and will probably be less. Compared to what I normally do, it is a slight step up in terms of maintenance, but certainly not intolerably so. I did practically nothing to it before, so this isn't bad at all. All I do is give it a scrape (1-2 min), clean the skimmer cup, and occasionally replace the carbon (which I run passively now, since the reactors started to become a PITA to deal with).