Mirror Box For ATS

Well another tedious question for everyone at 3reef!

Ive recently built an ATS and just did the basic over sump design. My wife started worrying if water from it would splash on the bulbs, and I noticed once the cut in the PVC begins to gather algae, it does start to spray at my lights. So I've decided to build a box to put it in...

My screen now is a single screen, and the one in box will be a double screen lit from one side. All the sides except for the one viewing side will be made with mirror glass, as to reflect all the light to any other sides of the screen the lights don't directly hit. It will be sitting across the top of my sump, and drain into the return section of my sump.

Are there any problems with using mirror instead of regular glass? The only water that will touch it will be the mirror side of it all, so will I be OK? Or is there something on the mirrors that could flake off into the sump or anything? I wanted to double check here before I go head and start siliconing the box together to be permanent.

I'll post pics tomorrow of the progress! Any info is appreciated much on this situation!

 

Well the box is all set up, and I'm going to be installing on the tank this weekend. All sides are made of mirror, except the one side the lights will be on. It's wide enough for 2 screens since I will only be lighting on one side. Has two 1" holes drilled opposite of each other on the side pieces and one 1" hole on the bottom for a drain back into the sump. I forgot to take pics of the different pieces before setting them all up, but here's some of the finished box.

 

Sorry for the multiple posts, it's only letting me upload one pic at a time..

 

Never built one, and with my huge mass of chaeto in my sump, I probab ly won't.

But I think it looks awesome. I'm certainly no expert on these, but that does look good.

This will give you a bumper up.

 

That looks huge, How much are you feeding? I don't see a problem with the mirror, however bulbs on both sides would work better.

as for leaving one side open, I wouldn't do it. get some clear acrylic. take it from me that the water will end up squirting out of the unprotected side. I flooded my floor twice with my ats. the second time was because I didn't close the top of the box I made for the ats.

 

Chealy, I didn't mean one side is open wide. It's got a piece of clear glass on the side of the lights. The only open side is the top of it for now. That was the reason I built this box, because my scrubber now will start to squirt water out of the pipe that the screen fits in once algae starts to build up, and I didn't want it squirting into my lights, or onto the floor. It's completely sealed and water tight, except for the drain holes and the top section, but I do have an extra piece of mirror I can lay across the top if I decide to fully enclose it

My sump doesn't sit in my stand, it's actually on a short custom made stand to the side of my DT, so it gives me a little more room side to side and top to bottom. The box itself is 21" wide, 16" high, and 4.5" front to back. The reason I couldn't do lights on both sides, is because where its sitting in my sump, my skimmer is right behind it, and my skimmer is quite a beast lol.

Right now, I feed about a cube and a half a day or so, but still am quite under stocked, and will be adding more fish in the future, so I wanted to make sure I had room to grow with it, and not have to rebuild it later to fit the expanding bio load.

I currently have just the basic CFL bulbs, but do have an extra 2-bulb t5 light set, and was thinking about using and one more of the same for the lighting instead so that I'll have the lighting more evenly spread across the screen. Any thoughts on this? I don't know much about how many, or what type of t5 bulbs I would need to get the job done

 

Why do you have a 'beast' of a skimmer? Will that be offline when the ATS begins growing?

Just curious, no axe to grind here, don't worry

 

Lol, no worries. Ima leave the skimmer running cuz I've already got one screen with great growth on it ima move to this one when I move it onto the tank. On my next cleaning ima take the dirty screen, and rub it on my one new screen to help seed it. So im going to have one brand new screen, and one already full of growth when I set it up.

The reason for adding the scrubber, is because I've always had trouble growing macro algae in my fuge, except for a little bit of sea lettuce that came with some LR rubble from premium aquatics, and I need a little something extra to help with nitrates and phosphates. And I got real sick of changing out GFO and the dust from it gettin in the sump and all that good stuff...

 

Ive thought about this before.

Skimmer's remove uneaten food and poop. They don't remove phosphates or nitrates, they just prevent the waste proteins from breaking down into them.

ATS uses hair and turf algae to remove nutrients.... the two most need macro nutrients are phosphorus and nitrogen, in the form of phosphates and nitrates.

In tandem I think its a great combination.

 

My hunch is that you will be fine with the mirror. I've used them for various lights that get condensation and spray. Nice job.