Integral9

Did the screen crumble or did it unzip? Crumbling would be indicative of decay, where as unzipping is just bad quality. While working with it, I noticed I could unzip the screen if I pulled on it just right. The threads are melted together instead of tie wrapped, which makes it easy to unzip if you hit it just right. fwiw: After a whlie of being above my tank, my screens have a "crispy" feel to them. I'm assuming it's salt. The screens don't seem to be loosing any strength though. After a quick search it looks like there is nylon and polypropalene varieties available. BRS does not specify which theirs is.

That is really odd then. Yes, the DE fixtures need the UV glass, the SE ones shouldn't and at 17" above the netting, temperature shouldn't be an issue. hmmm... I found this reseach paper from VPI (VA Tech) indicating that saltwater and more so salt residue residue degrades nylon quite redily. If you have an issue with splashing or bubbles in the tank, that could your problem. http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-110899-095334/unrestricted/etd2.pdf

Is there a formula telling you how high above your intake the water level will rise?

I got the clear netting from BRS and did up 3 covers for my 135. Almost a year later they work great under my 500W+ of T5s . No successful jumpers. One did try. I heard him bounce off the screen and splash back into the tank. The sound made me smile. My only complaint about the DIY screen kits, is they only seem to have outside corner pieces. No inside corner pieces. If you have over the top plumbing or a HOT appliance, you have to either cut a hole in the screen (which makes it hard to remove) or you have to frame around the pluming / appliance. And that requires an inside corner piece. That's odd. You might be getting too much UV from your MHs. Do you have UV filter glass between them and your tank? Could also be thermal stress, but given the short amount of time, I am leaning more towards the UV. Nylon is very flexible which makes it great for temperature variation, but UV rays make it brittle. Just like the dashboards on old cars. They were made of Vinyl though, not Nylon, but the concept is the same.

i havnt read the forum you are talking about, but there is a difference in how much water can be pumped through a pipe and how much water will fall (gravity fed) through a pipe at full siphon. Basically, pump > gravity. Somewhere on the interwebs is a chart indicating max flow rates and max drain rates. Here it is: http://flexpvc.com/WaterFlowBasedOnPipeSize.shtml

Being one of the first etailers I used when I got into the hobby years ago, I have maintained their bookmark in my browser. However, I tend to buy my livestock locally and when I do go online, I have a few other places I look at first. My wife ordered a cleaner pack, a coral, and a couple of fish from this site. Upon arrival, the inverts showed up no problem. Smaller than I like though. Aside from the turbo's it was like everything came in sized for a 10g aquarium (blue & red hermits, nass. and cerith snails). But no fish. When my wife called about the fish, they told her that the they had oversold their stock and the fish had shipped seperately. In addition the shipment had some bad luck and was held up in Indianopolis overnight. So much for overnight shipping, but not the etailers fault... It showed up a day later and to my surprise the fish was still alive (not doing well though). The fish that arrived is a "medium yellow belly hippo" size 2.5 - 3.5 inches. To me that means, 2.5" w/out the tail fin. This guy is barely 2.5" with the tail fin. Also, I'm not sure when these fish start to show their yellow bellys, but this little guy is very blue on the bottom, so I'm not totally convinced it is a yellow belly. Only time will tell though. Fish is doing well in QT now. So my wife then called them about the other fish, and again they told her that they had oversold their stock and that she was on the waiting list this time, and hopefully they would get more stock in over the weekend as they weren't going to ship anything else that week due to the holiday. This overselling of stock is quite a problem for them... I just hope the other fish (not sure what it is as it's a gift to me) won't be so tiny (it's moving in with a 4" powder brown, 3" yellow, & 4" exquisite wrasse + smaller company). The Hippo arrived on Wednesday, still waiting on the other fish. Hopefully it will ship today. The packing job SWF did was good, tripple bagged with a black shrowd bag and in a generous amount of water, styro peanuts and heat packs in a styro box in cardboard box. IMHO: They really shot themselves in the foot with the multiple shipments. My wife got free shipping, and SWF will have paid for it in triplicate (assuming they ship the next fish). That doesn't seem like a sustainable business model. I'd also prefer it if the etailers would hold my orders until they could ship everything at once. I am not happy with the new model I am seeing where the etailers must ship as much as they can ASAP. I understand other people feel differently, but I would like it if they could give me that option.

My juv. yellow belly hippo is loving it, even after spending an extra night in transit sitting in a bag at the Indianapolis airport. fwiw: The YBH won't touch any nori I put in the tank. I'm starting to think my cat pee'd on it...

Thats the type of bulkhead that came with my biy sump. It has a flat gasket though instead of a round one. It has worked fine for years, but I dont like the amount of plumbing sticking out into the tank. Makes it hard to shove my pipe cleaner into it to clean.

I got the check valves the mail. That was fast. Apparently sustainable supply is the retail shop for grainger as the package came from grainger. Nice since there is a grainger in sterling and i imagine thats how it got here so fast. Anyways, I installed the new check valve and problem solved. Only time will tell if its a good solution. Ill try and post a follow up in a few months.

That's what I have done while I wait until my new check valves come in. This isn't ideal as less concentrated or variable concentrations of kalkwasser will be dosed into the sump. Which is fine for me for a little while, but eventually it will cause me to continually adjust the dosing times and I don't want to keep meddling w/ the timer. It took me months to dial it in and I am so done with that.

I was going to suggest a swift kick in the pants, but that works too. That happens to me from time to time. Not sure what causes it. Even when I clean the heck of out of pumps, they can still be a little "grabby" when they first start up. I think the biofilm that develops on them over time keeps them loose until the calcium builds up.

ok, you've twisted my arm and I did a doodle. The pump just pulls the water up and into the Kalk stirrer which then overflows into my sump. It's very simple. I have a seperate MJ600 setup to do the top off. Not shown in the image.

Cten. has it right. You'd put the check valve at the top of the line. But orient it so that it would stop the flow of water up, and open to allow air to fill the tube when the pump shuts off. So the flow arrow on the valve would be pointing down the tube. I think with a non-spring check valve, the cracking pressure (which I am taking to mean the pressure needed to open the valve) is essentially zero as the only thing holding the valve closed is the reverse flow of the water. Once that is gone, the valve would fall into the open position via gravity or if oriented sideways, a slight pressure differential would be all that's required to overcome the friction to open the valve.

A guy on RC said the Outside Diameter is 7/16. So ID is probably 5/16. At least that's the standard ID size that matches the 7/16 OD I'm seeing around the internet.

I'm not sure what the size is. I'm still looking around the interwebs for it though. Must be one of those industrial sekrets because buying that stuff @ $2/ft wouldn't fair, so instead you pay $36 for 6"... This is the product though. http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_viewitem.aspx?idproduct=AQ4611&child=AQ4611&utm_source=adwordsfroogle&utm_medium=cse&utm_campaign=adwordsfroogle&utm_content=AQ4611&gclid=CMj41OGNz7MCFU-d4Aodpw8AsA

It's a AquaMedic SP3000. Also, I don't think it's self priming. When i first set it up, it started to suck the water up the line to the pump, but after 5-10m of me sitting there watching the water level bounce up and down in the tube, I decided it wasn't going to self prime and primed it myself. I just read the manual and it says it's self priming. I disagree.

You could put a check valve on the top of the line to stop the outflow over the top. The valve would then open to break the siphon. Kind of putting it in reverse, so to speak.

Unfortunately, I don't think my peristaltic pump can self prime, so if the siphon breaks past the pump it will not work at all. Yup, I have 2 of them actually; one right before and one right after. I'm not sure where I read this, but I thought you needed to have them to make sure you don't loose prime on the pump. But you are right in that the rollers will keep it closed, but my pump only has 2 rollers and if it stops at the wrong spot, it will leave the line open, slightly. The pump is a SP3000. The "squidy" (tube the rollers go over) is about as old as the check valves and it looks like it's still in good shape. Thank you, but those are too large. I need something for 1/4" line. Thanks for the info guys. It appears I need to look outside the hobby for something better. So it seems that all the check valves I can find from the aquarium stores are all some kind of passive design. Either a wedge that moves w/ the water or a diaphragm. So I am going to look for a spring loaded design. IIRC, When I built my K1 at the build party, the guy from Avast (sorry, forgot his name) mentioned that he had to use nylon inside the Kalk stirrer because PVC didn't react well to the high alkaline environment. With that in mind a nylon check valve would ideal just in case the valve fails again and kalkwasser back flows into it. Also, there is something better / more heavy duty than the typical rubber (Buna) stops / seals in typical check valves and it's called Viton. I found this and ordered a pair: http://www.sustainablesupply.com/SMC-WNCHK695-4B4B-F-Spring-Check-Valve-1-4-In-Ba-p/w169009.htm $4.91 Spring Check Valve, Ball Cone Design, Material of Construction White Nylon, Size 1/4 In., Barb Connection, Length 2.02 In., Width (In.) 0.50, Overall Height (In.) 0.50, Rated For 125 PSI, Cracking Pressure (PSI) 1, Max. Temp. (F) 140, Seat Material White Nylon, Spring Material Stainless Steel, Seal Viton I guess I'll see how they do. fwiw: That website has a plethora of check valves if anyone is interested in other designs.

So last night I checked my kalk stirrer and the over 1/2 the kalkwasser was empty. After some hmm'n and ha'n, I figured out that my check valves on my peristaltic pump had failed and it was back siphoning back into my resevoir. do'h! So I've removed the straw on the kalk stirrer to break the siphon, but it's a less than optimal solution as some less concentrated kalk will be dripping into my tank now. So I need new check valves. Now I remember buying those check valves not even a year ago, so I am a little miffed about this. I got them at Petsmart and since the selection of check valves there was not all that great, I went with the top fin brand they carry. The type with a clear bottle and a little rubber wedge shaped stopper. Apparently a bad choice. What kind of check valves do you guys use for your dosing? Do you like em? How long have you had them? Where'd you get them? Thank you.

+1 to what Coral Hind said. The last time I got some gray stuff in my skimmer (also a SWC) was right after I added the sand to my tank. So it sounds like you may have overdosed on kalk or alk. The bio-bloom is also a possibility. There is a clarifier that typically comes with bags of sand that acts as a binding agent to group together the smaller particles so that they can filtered out w/ a mechanical filter like a sock or sponge. The skimmer will also pick them up. fwiw: The new "low tide" smell is probably something else dying off. Sorry. (could be the bacteria though...) My adivice, go slowly. Good things come to those who are careful and methodical and don't just "throw things on the wall (tank) to see what sticks". Do water changes, maybe dial back your dosing (since that's a potential cause), and have your tank tested by someone else. Take some water to LFS and ask them to test.

I had a Coral Beauty that ate sponges very well and didn't seem to bother my zoas too much. Occaisionally it would nip at them when I forgot to feed the fish, but that's all it seemed to do. I never saw it devour a colony or outright attack a colony. It was more of a passing nip-n-go. IIRC, it was a south pacific Coral Beauty. The markings were only yellow and red stripes on it's body with a blue border, which I don't see too often. The blue was only on the edges. Most CBs I see have red, yellow, and blue stripes. I had seen the fish in the LFS for months before I bought it. At first I thought it was sick because it didn't have the pronounced blue I had typically seen in CBs, but after several months and no change I decided what the H-E-double hockey sticks and bought it figuring it would blue under my lights or with different foods. Nope.

I tried to post the table, but it got reformatted into crud, so here is a link to it that I found that answers your question. http://www.americana....html#flowtable That's not an easy question to answer as it depends on the wattage of the UV, the size of your tank and how much disinfecting you want to do.

IME, spring and fall are the worst times to get orders shipped in because the wholesalers don't always know if they should pack cold packs or heat packs or no packs. I can't really fault them though as around this region our weather can fluctuate rapidly from day to day during those months. Making the wrong call results in a very stressful shipment and if the livestock doesn't perish, then the survivors are often diseased or just really unhealthy and need a long time to recuperate.

I thought you were going to feed lion fish to groupers in carribean. my mistake.

Wow. The aquarium director said he was offered $30,000 for the fish in this video