ScooterTDI

I've used improvised fishbowl kreisels in the past for blue stripe pipefish and they worked well. I know most marine fish breeders have moved to round tubs and shrimp breeders mostly use upwelling cylinder designs, but I like how easy it is to control flow in a kreisel. I never even thought about 3d printing one!

That sounds like an interesting design! I haven't had any issues with larvae at the surface. Rather, they tend to settle on the bottom when I turn the pump off to clean the screen. I used baby brine shrimp early on and then added frozen calanus and frozen mysis for late stage larvae. Here is a link to a video of it with late stage larvae: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7MayzXsur4CYfEEx9 The main modification is a 100 micron mesh covering the outflow to keep food and larvae inside. I used double sided tape (3m 300lse) to attach magnet sheet around the outflow and made a matching magnet sheet to which I attached the mesh with double-sided tape. So, the mesh was attached magnetically and it was easy to remove and replace for cleaning. Sexy shrimp are next on my list of shrimp for the kreisel unless I can get something else to mate sooner. Let me know if you have any sexy shrimp to sell!

I picked up a kreisel tank from liveaquaria late last year because they went on sale for $99 (and I think they are still listed at that price.) I decided to try raising some peppermints just as a trial to see if it was well-suited as a larval tank. With only some minor modifications, it seems to be pretty great at gently keeping the shrimp larvae suspended. Settlement started at 22 days and nearly all settled by 25 days which is significantly shorter than reported elsewhere. I think physical damage can cause mark-time molts in which they regenerate appendages (particularly the really long 5th pereiopods) rather than develop further. The current in the kreisel was pretty gentle so I think there was minimal physical damage which allowed them to develop more quickly. I'm looking forward to working with some different species in this tank!

I picked up this gorgonian colony (maybe an Antillogorgia species?). My pale colored gulf pipefish has adopted it as it's new home which is pretty cool because it is presumably using it as camouflage. The darker gulf pipefish has no interest in it. I donated some peppermint shrimp that I've been raising as well, so hopefully they are devouring aiptasia for some club members now!

Looks amazing! I love the shelves in the left!

With no nutrient management other than a skimmer and weekly 30% water changes, I am getting a daily coating on green film algae on the glass. While green film is not much of a problem and may be beneficial for the inhabitants (feeding copepods on surfaces and coral/sponges when I scrape it off the glass), I am getting tired of scraping the tank every day. In a past aquarium, I have used a diy trough-style algae scrubber that worked very well, but it took up space I just don't have in this small sump. This time, I am repurposing the filter sock space to be an algae scrubber. I simply mounted a night fishing light in the middle of a filter cup and lined the filter cup with a plastic canvas screen. It seems like the perfect solution because I wasn't planning on using filter socks anyway and the water already makes a waterfall as it passes into the filter cup. I'll update if/when algae starts to grow!

The family went down to Fort Lauderdale over the 4th of July holiday weekend, so I seized the opportunity to collect some gorgonians and other critters for the aquarium. We came back with apparently Eunicea flexuosa, Muricea pinnata, and some other thicker Muricea species that did not survive the trip. One of the Eunicea Also suffered during the trip, but seems to have stabilized and might still bounce back. Also, I collected some sort of small conch (I think), a sponge decorator crab, and a tiny Molly Miller blenny. I was able to collect the blenny using an improvised slurp gun made from a dollar store water gun. Definitely fun to collect your own specimens for your aquarium!!!

Congratulations on the little one!!! Although aquariums demand some of your time, it's not a bad hobby to have when you have small kids. Hopefully, you can find a little time here and there for maintenance while the baby is napping!

I believe it interpolates between specified points, but in a stepwise fashion using some native temporal resolution. When I previously used the builtin easy setup function (that just has linear ramps), I occasionally would catch it change in intensity/color slightly when it jumps during the ramp periods. I haven't noticed those jumps as much with the smoother schedule. I think it does have a limit on the number of time points. When I used too high of a resolution, part of the sunset period seemed to be clipped. Probably not much advantage gained by more than 30 minutes resolution anyway.

I saw that Aquaillumination had included the ability to set schedules using downloaded preset files in the myAI app. I looked into it a little bit and others had already figured out most of the details (like checksum values and intensity values). I wasn't fond of any of the schedules that you can download from the AI site and the app itself is a little clumsy to set up a schedule with more than a few points, so I wrote a quick Python script to generate .aip files with schedules that follow cosine intensity functions and allow the color temperature to vary over the course of the day as a function of the intensity. I wanted a bluer spectrum at sunrise/sunset to smoothly transition to daylight spectrum at noon. It's not perfect because I've found that the AI color temperature visibly changes as the intensity is varied despite the same nominal color temperature. I need to play with it some more to get it just right, but I can make .aip files with custom color/intensity transitions or provide the script if anyone is interested in something similar.

Thanks! A tiny bit of residue was accumulating after scraping algae from the glass when I had the flow aimed at the side of the glass. I removed the 45 on the output, so the output points straight up now and it disturbs the surface enough that nothing can accumulate.

Thanks! Essentially, yes. The plumbing goes out through the back under the same. The overflow is houses in the structure behind the tank that supports the light. The lid is just a piece of glass exactly the dimensions of the tank. I silicones little glass beads to the inside corners of the lid so it can slide off easily.

I've been out of the hobby for a couple years, but I always knew I'd be back eventually. I always try to do something different when I build out a new system and generally try to improve upon the things that bugged me about my prior systems. My last system was a 12g long, so I thought I might go tall this time. Last year, I started building a custom system with some very specific objectives. First, I wanted to have no equipment visible in the display. None. Not even an overflow box. I wanted it to just look like a cube of water. This required designing something I haven't seen around before: a remote overflow system. Second, I wanted to maintain a deep sand bed for jawfish, but I hate seeing sand from the side of an aquarium. Consequently, the tank needed to be recessed such that the top of the stand is level with the sand. Third, I wanted to keep things tidy in the stand, but still accessible and functionally designed. In my last build, I found raceways for wiring to be a real pain when any maintenance needed to be done. This time I wrapped any wiring in Velcro cable ties and put Velcro strips along the inside of the stand. It keeps the wiring tidy, but very easy to remove, replace, reorganize whenever needed. Due to life getting in the way, it took longer than I expected, but it is finally operational. It has only been running a few weeks, but I think I've mostly achieved the intended effect. I'll start add some gorgonians soon!

I shut down my aquarium a while ago. I stopped breeding them after a couple of batches. Once I had a working protocol, it seemed fairly easy and the broodstock are quite prolific, but it just required a lot of time and attention. The biggest challenge is that the males start fighting once the get to be a little over an inch and require some kind of system to separate them until they grow out to a salable size. Unfortunately, they are small enough to get through most divider materials (except sponges) in a conventional small cube divided setup that you see at most petstores.

Epoxy paints were my first thought as well. Might even be more durable than powder coat if the surface is well-prepared.