Plant filter vs. Algae Scrubber

[sashimimaster]

After reading through all 16 pages of the plant filtration post I was wondering about my algae scrubber. I would say my scrubber is finicky and difficult to maintain. Every week I have to dismantle it, take out the screen, scrub it clean and reassemble it. It's not that much of a pain but week after week it gets a little tedious. I'm probably using twice as much light as a plant filter system would need. If I could cut down on energy consumption even better. So now plant filtering has got the gears turning again. If I can cut down on the maintenance it means more time to work on my tan......

I'm about to tear down my algae scrubber and rebuild it soon but after learning about plant filtration I may want to shift gears and maybe work in a plant filtration section next to my algae scrubber or just forget the scrubber all together and put in a filter stream. I do have a pretty large volume tank (650g) so that needs to be considered as well.

I just want to know from peoples experiences who've had algae scrubbers vs plant filtration. Which is better?

 

[doivuithe]

i think that heavy plant outside tank is the best
Plant such as pothos, heart arrow will take out nitrate if light is enough
DIY pothos canister is good for maintainance, for developing of plant and the display of tank
View attachment 882691

 

[sashimimaster]

After the plants have grown in and filtering. How much maintenance do you have to do?

 

[MakuCentauri]

There's virtually no maintenance other than occasionally trimming the plants or removing the odd dead leaf. I use a long skinny trough made out of a 5 foot plastic drainage piece I picked up rather than the barrel shaped ones Doivuithe posted but it doesn't really make much difference. I filled mine with Hydroton (expanded clay balls) as a substrate for the roots and then just pipe water in one end and let the other end drain straight into the tank. I've got a bit of filter mat over the exit drain to catch any little bits of debris and I just rinse that out every month or so.

 

[sashimimaster]

This is starting to sound a ton better than an algae scrubber. I'm using a ton of light to run this thing and it has to have just the right flow, lumens, hours, screen size according to the amount you feed, size of the tank, etc. If one little parameter is off it doesn't work right........

 

[MakuCentauri]

Yeah, I looked into Algae scrubbers while setting my system up. For me it was the light = power = cost issue that really put me off. I get that scrubbers can be useful for marine tanks since easy plant filtering isn't really much of an option.....& if you're running a decent sized marine tank you've got too much money anyway so why not add more high cost lighting

For me I think it's way too much bother and expense on a fresh water system - especially compared to the low cost/low maintenance plant option. Plus I like having some greenery around the house so why not have them serve a practical purpose too.

 

[sashimimaster]

I think I'm convinced that I'm going to rebuild my algae scrubber into a plant filter. I'll probably save a lot of money in electric bills and have better filtering. Best of all no maintenance!

 

[Miguel]

Don' t forget that dead leaves and rotten leaves, which always happen, give all the nitrates back to the wtare. I have had it dor years and sawno awesome results...

But will try it again...

 

[sashimimaster]

I can deal with picking out dead leaves once in awhile. With the algae scrubber you need to religiously clean it every week.