DaveS

I love the scribbled rabbitfish. Do you know if he's eating bubble algae?

Great job Cliff!

Cliff in all likelihood a 30G would work BETTER for me than a 35 so I'm up for that if you can find one. If 55 is the only thing available, go ahead and grab one for me. It's only $5 and maybe I can figure something out with my small space. Otherwise someone else will probably want it at some point. Thanks so much for making the run!

Cliff, I'm not sure I understand this. Was there a typo on the 30/35 numbers?

I have my acrylic tank and it's fully established. I'm a little unhappy with the plumbing and I'm considering making some changes. Things I'd like to do include adding a closed loop and maybe moving my returns. I'd like to avoid breaking the tank down and draining it to drill the holes as it seems like such a hassle and mess. As crazy as it sounds, has anyone come up with ways to drill holes in tanks while they still have water? Maybe some kind of airlock type container over gets put inside the tank where the hole will be drilled. You'd leak some water but not a ton. I dunno, just wondering out loud...

I fraged off some of my plating Highlighter Green Monti that I got from Copps a while back. Here's a picture of the colony: Copps takes MUCH better pictures than me so here's his picture from his colony that shows the colors more accurately: I have frags of varying sizes. $15 gets you a frag mounted and encrusting a plug. $20 gets you a larger, possibly unmounted, frag you can place as you like. I won't be bringing any extras so please let me know in advance if you would like one. Thanks.

You're right!!

Please put me down for a 35G drum. Thanks!

How big is the 35G drum? Are they just as available as the 55? I suspect the 55 might be a little too big for my limited space.

Based on some past research, I'd say the prices at ntotank.com are pretty good. $70 for a 40G while all the other online places are $90 at best. If we have enough interest, maybe we can do a GB to save on the shipping?

Hi Guys, I think I'm going to cave and put together a frag tank... I think a 20L is about the right size for the space I have available. I thought about doing some plastic trays but the cost isn't too different and this way I would have the ability to look at the frags from the front. I may only keep it 1/2 full to maximize light penetration and flow. The main thing that I have yet to resolve is what kind of lighting I should use. I plan to keep SPS frags so lighting is probably the most critical part. My initial thoughts are to use some T5 bulbs to reduce power and heat. I can hang a fixture above the tank so maybe the 39W bulbs that are 36" would work. I think I might want more than 1 bulb too. Does anyone have suggestions on what I should do? How many bulbs should I have, what temperature? What is the story on the Ice Cap stuff? They seem pretty popular. The frag tank will be in a closet and I'm pretty comfortable with wires and soldering if needed. In other words, this lighting fixture doesn't need to be pretty. Just effective and maybe cheap. Your help is greatly appreciated. BTW, if someone has something used to sell that will fit my needs I'd love to hear about it!

So I don't get it. It thought the idea behind a closed loop system was that it is closed. Therefore water pressure would be equal on both sides of the pump (intake/output). As opposed to an open loop like most sumps and returns where there is not water pressure on the intake (other than gravity) and the pump must overcome head pressure on it own. I thought with a closed loop the intake water pressure would compensate for the head pressure on the output. In other words, if you stopped the pump, all water would stop flowing immediately in a closed loop where as in an open, some water would continue to flow down to the sump. What am I missing? EDIT: Just saw Dan's posting after I posed. His comments about the check valve jive with my understanding. If this were open loop, I could see the desire for a check valve.

Can you share how you caught him?

I got the new SCWD today so I figured I'd start this thread since a few people seemed interested in it. First of all, I haven't installed it yet so my "review" can only go so far right now. Basically I took it out of the box, played with it some, took it apart etc. I should preface this by saying that I'm not a SCWD modder so the innards of it are new to me. The old ones were $45 and sealed so if they broke, I just bought a new one. Wasn't worth trying to put it back together and praying it didn't blow up and leak 20 gallons of water on my floor. Please keep this in mind if some of my comments are obvious or ideas are old. I haven't followed any of the SCWD modding threads around. Anyways, here's my initial comments: 1) it's BIG! This thing is huge compared to the old ones. It's more than 7" tall. Basically, it's about the size of a bottle of ol' .45. Or, slightly smaller than a 1/2 gallon milk carton. 2) It's easy to open and should be easy to clean/repair. The inside mechanical gears are removable. There's actually just to small swing tabs that hold the gear/gate assembly in the body. Once you move them aside the assembly comes right now. You can also take the assembly apart down to the individual little gears. In theory, this means that if some tiny gear breaks, you won't need to spend $90 for a new unit but you can just replace the bad part. 3) Reading the manual it mentions being able to get additional drive assemblies to change the switching speed. That should be an interesting option for these units. Given the size of these units I think that it changes how they are likely to be used. Whereas the older units were sometimes put inside the tank or dedicated to a few outputs like a Wavy Seas or Sea Swirl are, this size unit is likely to be located elsewhere. I think it is more likely to become hard plumbed into the core of the system like an Ocean Motions would be. I'm not making comparisons in performance to these products, just expressing that I think the size and design of the unit would lend itself to being more "core" to the system plumbing. This actually causes problems for my setup given how my plumbing is set up. I'd like it to be right after my return pump and before all the existing T's but that could put it before my UV and chiller. I'm not sure those devices are good to have on a switched flow path. If you are interested or have ideas, please check out my other thread about plumbing ideas: http://www.wamas.org/forums/index.php?s=&a...st&p=181886 I'll post more after I figure out how I'm going to put this monster in.

The pump is a pan world 200PS which I believe is a pressure pump. I'd love to run it through all the 1" devices first and then split off to the 3/4" devices but the 1" device is a SCWD and the 3/4" devices are UV and chiller. Plumbing wise it would be very easy to have one of the 2 outputs of the SCWD go to the UV-Chiller line but I don't think that's smart. I'm worried that if my SCWD sticks or stops switching, flow might stop on the UV-Chiller line. That might cause my UV to burn out and Chiller to freeze all at the same time. Yuck. Suggestions?

Ok, I sold my old thermodynamics book so I'll ask here: I have a pump that pushes water out through a 1" pipe. I take that 1" output and plumb in some 3/4" devices and then have it go back to 1". What happens to the pressure, flow, volume etc at each of the devices? My guess is that pressure (load) on the pump with higher than normal. Will flow rate be impacted (probably)? In the 3/4" devices I am assuming flow rate will be increased more than normal. What about when it goes back to 1"? If someone said something like- "adding that 3/4" restriction will be the equivalent to adding X feet of head for everything after that" that would be a convenient and useful way to picture things. One of the 3/4" devices I am talking about is my UV light. Therefore flow rate is obviously a concern as that would affect kill rate. Thanks all!

Thanks Scott, I'll give this a try. I'm assuming I can get this stuff at HD?

I got a used Ca reactor and it has some leaks. They appear to be coming from the bulkheads that are mounted on the acrylic cylinder. I tried some silicone around it but that didn't seem to work. Any suggestions? Anyone willing to help? Thanks.

Given what I'm seeing in the last picture, I'd those white tips off ASAP.

Yea. Right now I got a Pan-World 200PS that pumps about 1750GPH. The output gets T-ed to two SCWDs. The SCWDs rattle as they go through their rotation. I talked with the 3iQ guy and he stood by the "max rating is 1400GPH" line even though I said it was T'ed and so in theory each SCWD is getting 875GPH. Maybe he's right, maybe not I'm no SCWD-master. One thing I can say is that when I use the ball valve after the T to turn down the flow to one side, the SCWD on that side does stop rattling. This observation corroborates flow rate being the issue and not the actual SCWD mechanism. Going theory- even though it's T'ed, when one side is mid-way through it's rotation and essentially partially blocking both ports, it drives up the pressure to the other side which then rattles. I love the SCWDs! Wave making without another motorized electric device to plug in! I almost got a Ocean Motions 4-way but hesitated because of price. Heck I love the SCWDs and hate the rattling so much I almost downgraded my PS-200 to two PS-150s. Each pump would have been plumbed into one of the two SCWDs giving each 1100GPH. It would have also given me pump redundancy which is another goal at some point. This weekend as a temporary measure I was going to take one SCWD out, replace it with a T and reduce flow to the other. Now I don't have to do that! Heck if this thing works, I can even throw in another 200PS and go with my plan for pump redundancy. 3500GPH flow for my 180... I'll let everyone know how they are when I get them.