Mega-Powerful Nitrate and Phosphate Remover Replaces Skimmer, Refugium, part 1-4

While I see the benefits of the scrubber, I am having a hard time myself saying it would be any better than a ball of cheato. I read your pros and cons of both, and again, I really like your design you made for the scrubber, it looks uber sleek. It is the negatives you have outlined outweigh the negatives of cheato in my opinion. Less power, less evaporation, less maintenance with cheato compared to the scrubber, just takes a lot more room to accomplish the same goal, which for many, would mean a scrubber may be a better option if space is the primary concern. Does that sound like a fair assessment?
 
I'll add that the rate of uptake rate for Chaetomorpha is going to be a lot lower than a scrubber. It will take it substantially longer (or have a substantial amount more) for it to do a similar job. These algae grow faster and sequester more in the process. That's why I picked it over just Chaetomorpha.
 
Yes, I agree, I was thinking a 20-30G container filled with cheato vs his scrubber, so it would be more like a factor of 20x the amount of space and cheato required to do the same job. But if you have the room to do that, wouldn't it take less power and maintenance to do the same job? I know, that is a rare circumstance I am speaking of with cheato, most people wouldn't have the space to do something like that, but I do.. so I am just trying to argue both sides of the coin for my circumstance. :)
 
Good assement overall. But it takes the same total amount of light to remove a certain total amount of N and P. So chaeto could do in 10 days with 10 watts, what a 100 watt scrubber would take one day. So there really is no total power savings. You coul run a 10 watt scrubber too, which would be very small and low power.

2nd: Chaeto acts like a sponge filter, and traps waste, thus generating even more N and P to remove. A vertical scrubber traps no waste.

3rd: You prune chaeto in-system, which lets the green contents tint the water.

Drawback: You won't be getting amphipods (or larger) in a scrubber.
 
I disagree with you on #2 and #3 there, which sure it may do that, cheato forms in a ball if tumbled correctly and can trap a lot of stuff, but for me, it is as simple as pulling out the ball, rinsing it in the trashcan of water I just took out from a water change, and putting it back in. 10 seconds of work and not even 1 step taken to accomplish weekly maintenance on cheato, and for pruning, same thing, trim in the trashcan with scissors then shake in the old water and put back in the refugium, 20 seconds total to trim and rinse.

I agree with you on the lighting aspect. I have good luck with 2x 9w CFL bulbs on my refugium growing Cheato, but I know if I put more light I would get much more growth. I don't think your scrubber would work well on 2x 9w CFL bulbs though, so cheato has a bigger range of what lighting will be enough to do a positive job in the tank. I am just looking at a scrubber as a ultra condensed version of a big ball of cheato but requires more work to maintain.

Again, I am just speaking out loud what I am thinking for my tank. I am not trying to say the scrubber is bad and no one should use them, the opposite actually, I am trying to justify in my case if it would be a better route to go on my tank. I just like to play devils advocate when I contemplate adding/changing things to my tank, like I did a few weeks ago with Phosguard vs GFO.
 
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