Origami

Just preserving a bit of history.... Congrats on the milestone, Chip.

While at the DMV in Leesburg back in late January or early February, I noticed that they ( the Tractor Supply Company, TSC, next door) had some pretty large (100+ gallon) storage tanks in back. They were very similar, if not identical, to the kind that Dave Lin has for mixing and keeping his saltwater. The container looks to be a heavy duty polyethylene container and it does have a screw on lid. Dave modified his with a bulkhead and some plumbing so he could attach a pump and pump the water out into his tank(s).

Are you sure that you're not pulling water from the DI bypass valve?

Jamal, I bought my Typhoon III last fall and it came with a pressure gauge. I don't recall if the website showed it or now. It might be worth a call to clarify if they still have it on their product. I have good pressure in my house so I can fill a 30-gal brute trash can in probably about a half-day which is more than enough since I typically won't use that much in a week.

Interesting. The calculations I'd used were for a total change out to 1-1/2 inch (on both sides) which could obviously get more complicated and expensive. Any idea what kind of flow you're getting now? Nice shot, by the way, of your stand.

Aw, just leave 'em in and see how far they shoot Flow is what you want though. That's why you're installing a closed loop. It's good that you have that ball valve available though to throttle it back some if needed.... Heck, having the headroom at your disposal to increase the flow is probably something desirable on occasion so you can create "storms" when needed to shake things up some.

Great news and on a small budget, too!

Just some thoughts. I'm no expert on these matters but maybe something here will prove useful. Rough calculation using Reef Central's head loss calculator on the plumbing both in front of and behind your pump say you're losing on the order of 12.7 (3.9 meters) of head from the plumbing. Now, looking at the pump's performance graph, you see that the manufacturer says you should see about 5 liters/minute of discharge (1.3 gallons per minute). At 231 cubic inches per gallon, that's about 300 cubic inches per minute, or 5 cubic inches per second. Divide that by the total square inches of outflow (4 x 1-inch pipe = 3.14 square inches) and you get a linear flow of 1.6 inches per second out of your outlets (theoretically). Compare that to a Maxijet 1200 (295 gph out of a 1/2" exit at 0' head loss) that moves water linearly at about 96 in/sec and now you have a comparative reference with your 1270 gph pump. Of course, you probably don't want maxijet velocities out of your returns but it's just a convenient reference. Upsizing your plumbing to 1.5 inches, according to RC's head loss calculator drops your head loss to about 2.7 feet (a 10-foot improvement!); with 2 inch plumbing, the drop is less than 1-foot of head pressure. I think Dave's right on the mark with the suggestion to upsize your plumbing. Hope this helps.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, Erik, but the point of failure of the 2x4 is not the same as the point where the system fails. The threshold of system failure would be when the 2x4's deflect enough to cause the tank to fail (break). The tank would fail due to small deflections far earlier than the 2x4's themselves (in which case the 2x4 would never really break, would it?). Here's the link to the curve for your pump: http://www.panworldamericas.com/PX/60Hz/A3400468.pdf. It looks like with 10' of loss (due mostly to twists & turns, with no allowance for vertical lift since this is closed loop), you're looking at about 507 gph out. That's about 125 gph from each outlet if equally divided.

You can find aquamend in the adhesives area, typically near the paint department at HD. I sandwich a disk of it between two dollops of super glue (CA) gel before placing it on a frag plug or rock. The epoxy putty forms nicely to the rock shape but doesn't stick very well unless you use the gel or shove it into a hole. You might try using the CA gel trick on that stuff you threw out last night.... It might save you $14.

Definitely it was snorkeling and diving over the reefs in Okinawa back in the mid-70's. The colors, shapes, and diversity of life was incredible. Since then, I've always longed to to have my own little corner of the reef. I put off satisfying that dream until my other financial priorities were taken care of (such as paying for the house, paying for the kids' college expenses, etc.). Now that I'm finally there, I'm a bit older (so I guess I'm qualified to play now, eh?). On a side note, I had a chance to scuba off those same reefs about a year and a half ago. Definitely impressive, but not anywhere near the same as 30 years ago. Reefs are in decline worldwide.

Steve, give us some pics when you've got this set up. I'd like to see how you made out.

BRK carries uniseals.

Newfish, take traveller7's advice to heart. Feed meaty foods about the size of the anemone's mouth (probably about a cm cubed). Shrimp, fish, squid... whatever. You said you were using a turkey baster - that tells me that you may be feeding little stuff and the anemone may be starving. Place a cube of this larger food on the oral disk of the anemone about every other day and watch for a feeding response (the mouth will start to invert and the oral disk or tentacles will draw the food in toward the mouth). If you get a feeding response, continue feeding and look for an improvement in the health of the creature over a couple of weeks. Look for new tentacles growing and flowing. Don't be too concerned if you see the anemone cycle through inflation and deflation as much as a couple of times a day - that can be normal behavior. Good luck and let us know here if you observe a feeding response when you try those meaty chunks.

Bob, I'm ROFL now with the image of your fish admiring and preening themselves in front of the mirror. Thanks for a good start to the day!

Forrest, I'm not sure I'm in sync with your question here, but I use an aqualifter on my overflow box (which is similar to yours, but a CPR clone) to pull the air that gathers at the top of the box (which, as you found can slow flow considerably). I set mine up so that the aqualifter pulls the air out of the fitting at the top of the box and dumps it into the drain-side of the box, just inside the wall there so there's no net water loss in the "tube" and no real risk of the tube draining when the tank water level drops (such as during water changes). It seems to work pretty well.

I have both a short and long handled scraper. Actually, for some of the hard to clean and hard to reach places, I prefer the short handle- long arms approach because of the advantage you'll have with leverage and better positioning of the scraper. Just my two cents.

Oh, talk about a sharp wit....

Hey Josh. Sorry to hear of the loss of your livestock. I've been following your posts for a while now but haven't really had anything to add. I'm kind of new to this myself, you see. I did a lot of reading on the subject about six years ago when I first considered getting into this hobby, but put it off when I felt that I didn't have the time or resources to put into the hobby. Josh, I can see that this incident is weighing on you a bit, and that's good. You seem to have a high level of enthusiasm which has propelled you into rushing things. It's probably good now that you've got something to hold you back and reinforce that things sometimes need to slow down to make things right. Please remember, as you go forward, you own the responsibility of doing your best for the life in your tank. Good luck.

I had a problem with Caulerpa mexicana that came in on my Gulf rock spreading across unabated across my display. At first, like you, I thought it added a nice look. Then it started to spread across everything. In the end, however, I won out. Every few days for over a month, I was in the tank picking at the runners and harvesting handfuls of the stuff using a bamboo skewer to help dislodge the plants. I also had a yellow tang and a coral beauty that picked at the stuff. After about a month, it seemed I had passed a critical point where the Caulerpa regeneration could not stand up to the predation, and finally it died out. Yeah, it did look nice and, yeah, it was useful for nutrient export, but it was just taking over. Overall, though, I'm glad it's gone.

Great stuff, James. Thanks! I like Dan's comment about this being a drag race... let r rip. Zoom zoom,