AlanM

You should change your signature pic from the old smaller aquarium with the Mame to the bigger one. I'd like to see it on more of your posts.

Scott, Thanks for the advice. I went home at lunch and tested it out by doing how it sounds like you have yours. I plugged the UPS into the GFCI outlet and plugged the EB8 into the UPS and then put in my circuit wiring tester and hit the GFCI test button. It tripped the GFCI plugged in directly, tripped it when plugged in to the "power protected" side of the UPS and also tripped it when plugged in to any of the outlets of the EB8 (when the Apex had them switched on that is). I hadn't expected it to work on the battery side of the UPS, but it does. I'm also going to use an individual GFCI cord to power those devices I want to stay on if something trips the wall GFCI or if I have a power outage. So I'll have the Tunze on outlet 1, for instance, and I'll put a GFCI cord on that one, and will program the Apex to keep power to that one if I lose house power. This will shut that one off too if I do have an outage rather than leaving it as a risk. It should prevent the UPS from continuing to dump current into the tank when the GFCI has tripped.

Here's the driver box I've made. This picture was from a couple of weeks ago, so I've done a bit more wiring since then. I'm doing this one during quiet times at work because I can pop on a few connectors and strip wires here and there.

I'm prepared to switch it out if I get nuisance trips. I'd read about those, so I am ready for it. The wiring for the AFCI is a bit weird where both the neutral and hot go to the breaker and then a pigtail goes to the neutral bus, so it's annoying to replace because it would be more work to clean up the inside of the panel, but it's not that big of a deal. OK, they're $20 each, so I was hoping to avoid a bunch of them, but 6-7 of them isn't so bad, I guess, compared to how much everything costs. As I understand how the Apex works, you put the entire EB8 on the UPS, and it supplies power through the USB cable to the Apex main unit. The 12V power on the main unit is supposed to go on wall power, and you set the Apex to detect when the 12V drops, which then puts the EB8 into failsafe mode and turns off all of the outlets except for the one Tunze and the power it supplies to the main unit. Maybe I've got it all wrong, so please correct me if I understand it wrong. Thanks for the reminder about the router. The FIOS box has a battery backup, but the router does not, so I'll have to get one for that too. OK. I think Coral Hind got me sorted on this. It sounds like I'd need to have individual GFCI cords to do what I want, and if I'm doing that I probably want to put the UPS and EB8 on a regular outlet. Doing it this way, however, means that I won't get an emailed notice about the trip because it will be happening downstream from the Apex unless I can set an alarm that sends an email when power usage on an outlet drops below an expected level of continuous draw. Also, I'm not sure a ground fault would travel through the EB8 and then through the UPS and trip the GFCI plug it was plugged into, but if it did it would take down the UPS input, but the UPS would happily keep supplying power to the faulty device and frying whatever was in the tank. I could always plug the EB8 into a UPS into a GFCI and plug the 12V Apex power into the same GFCI. Then the trip would trigger a power monitor event and kick off an email and switch things off except for a Tunze running on UPS, which is low voltage DC and less of a risk. But that would depend on the ground fault travelling back through the EB8 and UPS to be sensed by the outlet. I have one of those testers. I'll check that to see if it does. Maybe Neptune Systems needs to start building individually switching GFCI circuits into each outlet of the EB8. 8) I have only one EB8. I'm not sure I understand the 2 EB8 diagrams that I've seen.

First goal is not burning the house down or electrocuting the fish. So Safety is first goal. (AFCI and GFCI and ground probe) Second goal is livestock preservation and notification in event of power outage. (UPS and outage detection emails from Apex and failback outlets on EB8) Third goal is ease of operation and maintenance on a daily basis. (EB8 programability and Apex web interface)

I'm trying to figure out how to connect my devices in a safe way while keeping a failsafe on the EB8 for power outages. I installed an AFCI breaker, pulled 12G wire to the sump location, and installed a GFCI outlet at that location. I plugged a 1000VA UPS into it and had the EB8 plugged in to the output of the UPS. Then I plugged a 12V adapter into the other outlet on the GFCI to send power to the Apex main unit. I figured if the GFCI trips or if the house loses power, the UPS will keep the EB8 up and running a couple of Tunze powerheads and will send me an email because it senses the loss of 12V power on the main unit. This seemed like a great idea, but if some device goes bad, the UPS will happily supply lots of power to the bad device even after the GFCI tripped, and the AC-DC-AC conversion process might even prevent the GFCI from tripping at all if I'm running everything through the UPS. I have a couple of GFCI extension cords that I could use to provide protection to individual devices beyond the EB8. Is that what I should be using? Putting those protected extension cords on each outlet? I just can't picture how else to combine the pieces to keep protection from shocks while keeping some power outage failsafe.

That big powerhead above the nem is just calling to it. "Wouldn't it be fun to take a ride in me?" haha

Im looking forward to seeing what goes in this tank. So many tanks are so coral focused that the same 10 or 20 fish types go in.

Maybe you already knew this but here you go. Such "whites" have been available for a while for your tank: http://www.ledgroupbuy.com/ocean-coral-white/ LEDGroupBuy calls them Ocean Coral White, that all of the full spectrum LED lighting nerds are going on about. White can be made by Blue-Yellow, like in the standard white LEDs but also by Red-Cyan or by Green-Magenta, apparently. Or by RGB.

So it sounds like they're making LED arrays that fit into a T5 fixture? Like they can be run off the HV ballasts that drive most T5's? That would be interesting.

Seems like it would work fine if you built a box that transferred the load bearing points of the existing stand down to the floor. So wherever the current stand is touching the floor you'd have to have wood under there that also went to the floor.

Maybe some of us could pitch in for an updated version of the tempered glass popping video. I'll put in $10 towards buying you a new tank if you let us risk popping it. 8) Tom did say that we should try to not make a mess, though...

Not that I can see. Not sure if mling is going to risk his 55 gallon. I'll bring the bits and drill regardless and if anyone ends up showing up with a tank, we'll drill it.

OK. So you put the pipe thread on there. Good to know that it's holding.

You said the stuff on the bottom was doing ok. Could you leave them on the plugs, set them on bottom, and move them up over time? Will give you time to decide where they will grow out best too.

Nice. Good luck with him and the clowns. The tank looks great with a big dark cave for him to lurk in.

Monkiboy, the drill guide would be great. Tracy G, I have bits for 3/4 and 1" for ABs bulkheads, but the sched 80 ones are bigger, so if yours do that it would help round out the selection. Not sure if we have any confirmed takers for drilling or not, but we can have the stuff there if someone wants it.

Ok then. I will bring the bits I have and a cordless and corded drill, some putty, a squirt bottle, and some lenses to check for tempered. If anyone else has bits that I dont and you feel like bringing them, feel free. Whoever wants a tank drilled, we can try to do them at the meeting. I will check in with Origami to identify myself and see if anyone wants drilling.

sorry, no. That's not one that BRS carries. What would that be for?

Nice. There you go. Lets do it at the meeting if the club leadership doesn't care.

I'm coming to the meeting on Sunday. I have some polarizing lenses and an iPad that can be kind of used to check if glass is tempered. We could test it out at least. I also have 35mm, 45mm, and 60mm diamond hole saws for drilling holes 3/4", 1", and 1-1/2" ABS bulkheads from BRS respectively. I have a template from glass-holes for drilling a 45mm hole, but not the others. If someone can bring one of those clamp-on templates that they sell at BRS or some other kind of holding device I can bring my battery powered drill and a squirt bottle for dropping water on it and we can do a drill-fest. Don't actually need a template if you just start grinding sideways to get a groove and then rotate it upright. I have plumbers putty too to make a dam to hold water. I don't warranty the results, but the sale is still going on if your $40 or $55 aquarium cracks. It sounds like the meeting has kind of a full agenda with two speakers, but I'm fine with bringing the stuff if the club leadership is fine with a spot for hole drilling. There will be lots of people there who have done it before to help drive the drill.

Actually, according to the latest spec sheet linked on the Aqueon website, the 40B bottom isn't tempered, but the 55G bottom is. The specsheet doesn't mention anything about the sides or back, but conventional wisdom is that 55G tanks tend to be tempered all around. sheet here: http://www.aqueonpro...s/011/19107.pdf A diamond hole saw is a circular shaped saw that fits in a drill. It's basically cup shaped with no centering drill that would be on a wood version. For little holes you can use those spade-shaped ones from Lowes.

ohaverd, I'm not understanding how you ended up doing what Richard said above if you didn't use the 1" female thread that came with the pump. You mean that the black union type fitting with the 1" NPT female thread that came with the Blowhole snapped? I emailed them to ask if I could just thread a 1-1/2" NPT onto the thread on the pump body and get rid of the 1" female NPT part since the thread is very close to 1-1/2" NPT. They said "please don't" because the seal is intended to be made using a gasket with that union fitting and the thread is a parallel one, not NPT, so I'd just wreck the pump body if I did that. Is that what you did?

His Tesla comic is genius too.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand now you're dinner. This picture is my favorite. New prototype body armor for the combat modeled on the Mantis: