Integral9

I wanted to get some pics up last night, but ended up going to bed early. Sorry. I have shown this to other people and keeping the water level even between the sump and fuge is almost always their first comment. So I guess the diagram isn't all that clear. Sorry about that. My 3D drawing skills aren't that good. The Iwaki pump will be behind the canal linking the two tanks and the mag7 will not be conencted to it either. I plan on keeping the valve fully open between the sump and fuge. The only reason it's there is so I can run the system w/out the fuge until I can take it off my 55g and in case of disaster and I have to remove one of the tanks. The ATO sensors will be in the sump as I suspect the lowest water level will be there due to it having the stronger pump. The drain lines have some extra valves so I can run the tank w/out the fuge until I get my 55 gallon down. After that they will allow me to control how much water drains into the fuge or sump should that become a problem. I placed my plumbing order yesterday. I was hoping to get the plumbing done this weekend, but it won't be here until next week. I guess I will get the sump ready instead. Sterling Glass still hasn't gotten back to me so I guess I will measure the sump and go up to lowes to see if they can cut the glass for me. Question for you all though. I have an ASM Mini-G skimmer on my 55g and there will be room for it. Would it be worth keeping it running? I don't really have anything to occupy it's current location.

Back from the DEAD! Hard to believe I started this almost 2 years ago... wow. Well with budget cuts and a new family member and more budget cuts this project got sidelined for a while, but now it's back and I'm in full "gett'er dun" mode. A lot has happened since I posted last. I will get some pics and post them up here later. I got a new light for the tank, Aquacintics Constellation and a new skimmer, SWC Xtreme Cone Mini S. Not sure why it's called a "Mini S" as it's minimum rating is 150gallons. Last winter I drilled the tank and the soon to be sump tank successfully. This was easier than I thought, just took some patience. Over the summer, I got the stand and canopy sanded, restained and glazed. It's now a dark cherry stain with a satin gloss finish and sea-horse handles made from aged bronze. It looks beautiful. The tank has been cleaned out completely and washed. It almost looks new. But it got left out in the rain and has some lime stains on it now. Shouldn't be any problem for some white vinegar and a sponge. Last weekend I moved my 55 gallon tank across the room to it's new temporary home. I'm in the process of breaking that down. Some of the inhabitants will make it to the new tank, but that's has to be ready first. The move took a whole day, and I think I was able to finally conquer my algea issue in there, eventhough it took quite a bit of elbow grease. I had a quart sized bowl about 2/3 full of bubble algea.. Looked like a really nasty bowl of sour grapes. I tossed them into the woods for the animals to check out. Frozen green algae balls anyone? I also took up the carpet where the new tank will be sitting and set the tank down on the cement floor and leveled it with some shims. Shims weren't my first choice, but they seem to be doing ok. Now for my plumbing plan. I am going to use flexPVC between the two tanks and from the pumps to the hardline PVC which will run to the returns. The hardline PVC will be mounted to the stand so it will not move around. The 33 gallon tank still needs it's baffles and I've contacted Sterling Glass about it yesterday, but I have not received any response. The fuge is currently the sump / fuge on my 55 gallon and will be plumbed in once I am ready to take down the 55gallon. Until then I will run fuge-less. I am fuzzy on what to do with all my returns so I took my best guess.

This tank:

iirc: Isn't the pH of RO/DI water 7? Not that I have checked my rodi water... I left the top off my bucket of salt once and it hardened right up... like a rock. I was so mad. I also had the same mixing problem happyfeet mentioned along with TDS swings that drove me up the wall. I resorted to breaking it apart by tripple bagging it and dropping or slamming the bag onto my cement floor. That broke it up so I could put chunks into my mixing bucket and mix it up, but I couldn't measure well and still had to deal with the TDS swings from the calcium carbonate going into solution about 24 hours after I put it in the mixing bucket. I was able to pull some of the moisture out of the salt by putting a couple of desiccant packs in the bucket. It worked so-so, but did a good enough job to make the salt usable again. The salt turned into what I could call "corn snow" (if you know what that means), it was somewhere between hardened and loose. Like corn-off-the-cob. It probably would have worked better if I had more desiccant packs as the couple I used, looked saturated after a couple days. However, the salt loosened up and was easier to measure and mix after that and there was less of a problem with buildup on the bottom of my mixing bucket. You could also try baking it in the oven, but don't put the salt directly onto the metal cookie sheet or aluminum foil. You need a barrier, parchment paper might work, to prevent the salt from oxidizing with the metal pan. Given that TM salt is the most expensive, I'd definitely let your vendor know about your problem. He/she probably has other buckets and or customers with the same problem. Maybe they will swap a bucket for you.

oh, I thought your tank was this design. http://www.marinedepot.com/JBJ_28_Gallon_Nano_Cube_HQI_Aquarium_with_FREE_Stand_%28MTS_60%29_Tank_with_Stand-JBJ_Lighting-JB7235-FIAQNCTS-vi.html Any luck w/ cleaning the power heads [1]? they can be tricky to remove. In my nano tank, I have to remove the plumbing that runs through the back wall on the DT before I can get the pump out. [1] I actually don't see any power heads in your pic. I assume you are referring to the return pumps, which are probably just power heads, but some people give them a different name because of their location.

wow, that is a lot of bubbles. If it's not a power head cleaning problem, i bet your skimmer is the culprit.

many of the options are very complex, but the double action piston pumps might be what you need. low speed and you can move a large volume of water fairly quickly. A low speed electric motor driving a wheel attached to the piston would work; like a steam engine. the rest is just check valves and plumbing.

you might want to explore the agricultural methods for lifting water and scale them down. Here is a link to the UN's html version of the "Water Lifting Devices for Irrigation". i think you might be able to use one these devices to fill a volume for a surge. There are some interesting options in there that I hadn't thought of. http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/ah810e/ah810e00.htm

I'll have to look up those air-to-air heat exchangers. I'm not familiar with them, but sounds interesting. Yeah, i suppose pool pumps aren't designed for salt water environments. I'm not that familiar with planktonic setups and wasn't aware of the low rpm need either. Makes sense though. As for the swimjet, the low rpm need is also going to be a problem there. But they are basically pumps installed at one of a swim-spa or pool. When someone turns them on, they create a jet of water strong enough to swim against, like a treadmill. I was thinking you might with an auto-cover setup on a timer to open and close. outdoors this would not be reliable as sticks a leaves will jam up the tracks, but indoors I think it could work. also, when it's open it's not going to do anything to hold the heat in.

how about a picture? any bubbles from the aquafuge return?

I had some skunk cleaner shrimp spawning about every 3months in my tank before my angel ate them both. I never raised them, but everyone ate very well that night. Usually happened around midnight.

A wire nut or mounting block should work just fine. Also, unless it's just a personal preference for you (I do find solid core wire to be easier to work with), at the voltage and current LEDs use and draw, I don't think it matters between strand and solid core wires. The voltage and current shouldn't be high enough to generate magnetic fields around the strands strong enough to induce an impedious amount of voltage on the neighboring strands. If you need to harden the tips of a stranded wire, for example to insert it into a connector then one option is to fill or coat the strand with solder. tip: heat the strands, then touch the solder to the strand and it will wick into the strands like a sponge.

Wow, that's swim-spa sized! I definately want to see the build pictures of that one. You could use a SwimJet as a wave maker... and spa pumps for your skimmer(s)... btw. How are you going to handle the humidity?

+1 on the controllable power heads. I'm building up a 135 and I am going to go with either the koralia or the Vortec (if I can afford it) controllable power heads. I like grav's idea, but instead of alternating with a valve, put each pump on an alternating timer and cycle back and forth between each pump 5 mins apart or so.

I don't know too many people with water jets available; they tend to cost around a million or so.... When the guys who installed my Silestone counters (quartz) drilled the hole for my faucet, they used a diamond drill bit and a lubricating oil. Based on my understanding, I think I would build the stand out of wood and set the tank on top of a foam pad cut to size. Buy granite tile or have some pieces cut from scrap to surround the tank on the stand. Then I would use the granite bonding cement (not grout) and tile the top of the stand around the tank to give it an inset look. With the bonding cement, the gaps between the tiles will be very small (~1/16") and depending on the color of the tile and cement, it may be unnoticeable unless you look right at it. Also, I would caulk the seem between the tank and the tile to prevent water from getting under the tank and warping the wood.

I've never heard of too much aeration. I suspect cavitation is the cause of the bubbles. Basically, if the pressure inside the power head drops below the vaporization level, then the dissolved gasses in the water will precipitate out as bubbles. This can happen briefly when a object gets sucked into the power head or can be steady if the impeller is sufficiently blocked or spinning incorrectly by either oscillating along it's axis of rotation or wobbling around it. A good cleaning should do the trick. If not, then either a new impeller or new power heads are in order. If it's wobbling or oscillating it will usually make some kind of a noise as the impeller strikes the side walls around it. Sometimes rotating or shaking the power head around a bit will fix it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavitation btw. When you are cleaning the impeller, check the blades for damage. A chipped or cracked blade will unbalance the impeller and cause it to wobble.

+1. At $65 per sqft (minimum i've seen but I haven't been looking in a while) that's $260 in granite you'll never see because it's under the tank. Better to spend that on other equipment I think. There used to be a granite supplier on Walney Rd before it becomes Westfields that might be able to help you. I haven't been out that way in a few years though.

I don't have one, but could be a bad firmware load or a buggy bit of flash memory. Try re-flashing the firmware onto it. Save your settings first... I assume you can.

lol, yeah my column names were fairly off-the-cuff, although I did not mean to put an 'r' instead of a 'd'. hehe. The column names don't matter in the calculations though. I also didn't include taxes... I figure if we can get to 95% accuracy, that's close enough. If you are like me and your whole house is electric and like me you hit that overage charge every month, then just using the overage rate is enough as your household appliances will take up the rest. Also, the distribution fees don't go up in the summer time or after the first 'X' kWh (at least for a Dominion residential consumer), so I didn't include that either.

If you got your power heads used, it might be a good idea to take them apart and clean them up really good. It could also be stuff getting sucked into the power head, but that shouldn't cause a steady flow of bubbles. If the power heads are spankin-new, then they may just need some time to break in. A week should be more than enough, imo.

Since you are not concerned with photosynthesis; lumens, luminous intensity and PAR are out of the equation. I would only concern myself with producing a 14k halide look, but that's just my personal preference, someone may argue a 20k or 12k or 10k. It's just whatever you like. Not sure if you saw a link to my 9 gallon reef with the LEDs running, but here it is. http://picasaweb.goo...lonLEDReefTank# the white light is with a 50/50 mix of 6500k white and 470nm blue the blue light is just the 470nm blue leds. The coral is a blue leptastrea.

I actually did a similar project with LEDs from the same people about 2 years ago. It turned out that what I was told wan't entirely accurate and I was only using 4W of LEDs instead of what I thought was going to be 48W. Still, the corals did well while the LEDs were running and the tank looked spectacular. Problems surfaced a few months after the project was completed when moisture and salt build up started to short circuit the LED circuit boards and knock them out 3 at a time. Eventually, I was forced to remove the coral due to inadequate lighting. So I'd say, make sure your LEDs are protected from the environment they are in or they will burn out quickly. While all the LEDs were running I took PAR reading of that tank and my two other tanks for comparison. While the PAR readings I got were low comparitively, I did not notice any degradation in the corals until I started to loose banks of LEDs. See my thread here: http://www.wamas.org/forums/topic/22312-diy-led-nano-lighting/page__p__196049__fromsearch__1entry196049

1) Peppermint shrimp are in my experience the best way to deal with aiptasia. If you are diligent about it, I have use Tropic Marin's Eliminaiptasia and Joes Juice with some success. Some of the critters will require several dosing over several days though which can be problematic. IME, when aiptasia are under attack, they tend to spawn so it's best to eliminate them the first time and fast. 2) I've seen water changes cause some stress on corals initially due to chemistry changes, but they should reopen within a day. As for a Kenya tree going limp, when I had one it seems to do it everytime it was going to drop a branch. I suppose the act of severing a limb is a bit stressful on the coral. If you look closely at it, you might see a branch that has a pinched stalk. It will probably be that one that drops off.

I made a spreadsheet for you all: PowerBill_v1.xls

Umm... Ya'll are forgetting that electricity is not sold at a completely flat rate and the rate varies depending on the time of year. http://www.dom.com/d...riffs/index.jsp for example: If you are a Dominion Power customer the "Basic Residential Rate" is: http://www.dom.com/d...fs/pdf/vab1.pdf (a basic customer charge) $7.00 + a distribution charge which amounts to: 2.233 cents per kWh for the first 800kWh and 1.260 cents per kWh for anything over 800kWh + an Electricity Supply charge which amounts to: (from June - September) 3.795 cents per kWh for the first 800kWh and 5.773 cents per KWh for anything over 800kWh (or from October - May) 3.795 cents per kWh for the first 800kWh and 2.927 cents per kWh for anything over 800kWh = your Bill