AlanM

I also want to check out what Ross has going on over at Roscoe's Reefs since he's local to me. I have an Apex in the box downstairs ready to be used, but I'm interested in at least seeing what the Arduino-based Reef Angel does.

Mike, I wasn't going to do an internal box from top to bottom, was going to go out the back. Planning to go straight down and into the sump, though. I've never seen that picture of yours looking down into the box, just the ones you posted before of it already going with water in it. Why are there 4 pipes in there with one of them being gray? I'm not discounting Rob's experience, even if what he says disagrees with other's. It's clear that he knows how to run big and small tanks effectively or he would have lost that job doing it long ago. I'm planning to go over to his place this weekend to get some learning and listen to his tank and see the overflows and lights and see the mods he makes to the CS1 to get them to work a bit better before mine gets all glued up in the stock config. Then I'll decide if I want to do the BeanAnimal or a glass-holes box or two. It's likely nothing he says will convince me now that I have my mind set on a BeanAnimal, but it's possible. At this point with my undrilled tank sitting on the floor where it's going to go for a month or so my wife would vote for the simplest solution. 8)

I want to put 750 gph through the sump. At 36 inches of toothless weir and at that flow rate I should have .25 inches of water above the edge. I used the equations on http://www.aquatext.com/calcs/weir%20flow.htm to come up with that number.

Yep, that's what I was picture doing with the 90 in the back of the coast to coast and out the bottom of it. I was going to put some tube to avoid water going right back into the coast to coast, but you're right that there wouldn't be much of it. I'm not wedded to the BeanAnimal or anything. And if it's really possible to get a dead silent overflow with 750 gph or so out of something much simpler with less footprint in the tank and include some backup plan for snail clogs and safety, I'd be fine doing that too.

I thought I remembered folks even on this forum with no end of trouble with check valves. Like ones that start slamming shut if the flow isn't enough to hold them all the way open and make lots of vibratory noise and fail to seal allowing the tank to slowly leak out to the return level anyway. Was it Mbvette on his new tank that had check valve problems? Because I buy the arguments about why CTC (lots of surface exchange and most of the water removed coming from the top) and BeanAnimal (dead silent siphon-based flow in a totally flooded pipe, wide range of return flow without adjustment, and redundant emergency protection) are better than a glass-holes box, even though they're cool. It's not experience on my part, for sure, it's just a year or so of reading.

I'm installing a 3 foot wide internal overflow box in my 4 foot tank and am going to have three bulkheads in it with elbows downwards and upwards for a BeanAnimal 3-drain setup. I'm considering putting a fourth bulkhead and connecting the elbow to the bottom of the overflow box through a hole in the bottom and putting a really wide flare or a loc-line Y with two flares on it facing straight down in the center of the back and attempting to blow out towards the walls. The idea would be to make sure that the area behind the rocks along the back of the tank gets good water movement and maybe the food and stuff that fell in this shadowed area under the internal overflow box wouldn't accumulate, instead it would blow out toward the sides where I'll have some Tunze internal powerheads to move it out to the front and keep it in the water column. Another benefit would be that I could hide the return flare behind the rockscape. I'd drill an anti-siphon hole on the side of the elbow and put some RO/DI tubing in it coming out the side of the box so that it won't drain 8 inches of water out of my tank when the pump shuts off. Is this a dumb idea? I know I would likely blow a hole in the sand back there.

I like Rob's suggestion. Maybe get a different fixture for the lights instead of the goosenecks. Track lighting could be really low profile. You could also diy one out of individual light sockets from HD or Lowes and mount them through holes in a board or something.

Could you put some of that diamond pattern clear diffuser material over the end of the lamps? The stuff they encase office fluorescent lights in. Looks like the picture here: http://www.fluorolite.com/

Seems unlikely to be the cause, but do you have GFCI together with your grounding probe? According to BeanAnimal both are necessary if you have one or the other. Check out his Example 2 in the Ground Probes section: http://www.beananima...the-reefer.aspx

You guys are killing me with these posts coming from out in VA to get this stuff. He's right up the road from me. I gotta get my tank up!

I'd say look into the Meanwell LDD-H drivers if you're using a Reef Angel which already has PWM output. I soldered up a few of the attached boards which I ordered made in China and have some extra if you want some, the board, terminal blocks and IC sockets add up to about 5 bucks. They take 3 channels of PWM input plus a 48V power supply and give 3 channels of LED output. You can put around 16 LEDs on each driver depending on the specific LED used (3V each * 16 = 48V). Most places online (Powergate, Mouser, Jameco were the ones I checked) are out of the LDD-1000H which maxes out at 1000mA, but they're all supposed to be getting them in during the next couple of weeks.

Don't drop it. It's heck to recalibrate.

FTS is boring. I want live streaming video of your mandarins eating at their foodbar. Those pics were fun. Ooh, also video of you pulling in a popeye with a needle. Shudder.

I got my boards yesterday for building the LED arrays. I think I've settled on an arrangement of the tank and stand and overflow and sump, and blah blah. I'm a bit of an Ikea hacker, so what I have in mind should end up looking really nice!! I'm not going to build the stand out of Ikea, but other stuff. I'm ready to drill the tank, but had a style question that I could use some advice on. I'm going to ask Adam to make me a coast to coast overflow out of white acrylic. Basically an L-shaped box with a slot cut across the entire front as a weir and a nice white lid. Doing it in white because I like the Innovative Marine Nuvo's so much. So that handles the drains, but I need to put in the returns. I got some 3/4" locline, but you all know what it looks like. Basically like a big black knobby turd. If I was going with a black background and overflow box it would kind of blend in, but I feel like it will really stick out with a white background and overflow box. I'm considering just bringing the overflow up and over the top of the back and using standard PVC painted shiny white or the glossy furniture grade stuff. I'd put a 90 in to get the water moving forward and then a 45 to put it down into the tank and extend a piece of pipe down under the surface of the water. It would be right along the wall. I'd actually like to use the return to blow behind the rocks along the back to keep the doo doo from settling out there, but I think if I did that then I'd have a back-siphon possibility of water all the way to below the overflow box when the pump is turned off. Does anyone have other ideas for what would make the return look nice?

Was on hold waiting for boards from Itead Studio in Hong Kong, but they arrived today! Took almost 4 weeks to get here since I submitted the Gerber files. They sent 10 of the board I ordered, the one on the right in the attached picture where I'm showing front and back and also 2 free boards, an Arduino Uno and an XBee Pro. Don't think I'll use those, but it's fun to get them. From mainland China I got a big bag of terminal blocks, some IC sockets and some tiny SMT resistors to solder up to the board above which will hold the LED drivers. I got a Meanwell SP-320-48 power supply, 48v and 320W, three Meanwell LDD-1000H for 2 Royal Blue and 1 Neutral White strings, and 4 Meanwell LDD-700H for Cyan, Cool Blue, Deep Red, and Violet. I'll need PWM inputs to dim these LDD drivers, so I'm getting a Steve's Aquarium Controller Interface to go between my Apex, which gives 0-10v and the drivers. It translates 0-10v analog into PWM digital. I still don't have LED's or heatsink, but now that I have the parts to power them I'll start buying that stuff. I have my wife on board with the stand arrangement I've settled on, so my build should start moving now.

Congrats on the new human and fish babies. 8)

Double post.

Read back on his procedure for getting these challenging (and expensive) fish healthy before putting them in the display. It's more amazing than the tank, I think, to have that kind of perseverance and level of detail.

I really like these: http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=25328&catid=958 and it's what I'll buy when I'm up and running to get rid of trash cans. They have a port already installed at the bottom on the end and a nice big lid for cleaning and adding salt, and they have a side sump on each side so you can pull off the side if you want. They also have the 4 liter "space-savers" that BRS and other places sell for much more for 2-part dosing chemicals: http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=25129&catid=611

Sounds like you might try BRK first, but if they don't have it McMaster-Carr carries the stuff that the DIY aquarium folks at Reef Central like. RTV108 is the product. http://www.mcmaster.com/#7545A472 should get you there for a 10 oz cartridge of the translucent stuff. RTV103 is the black stuff if you want that. McMaster ships overnight by default. I often order in the afternoon and it shows up the next day.

I see a dual TDS meter. Turn it on. For my BRS RODI moving the switch to the left shows the TDS coming from the RO and to the right shows the TDS coming out of the DI. On mine the RO puts it out at 4 and the DI puts it out at 0. The BRS one has color coded tubing. This one is all white, so make sure you know which one is waste from the RO and which is the good stuff, hehe.

Bladder tank and a Tee off the RO line just before it reaches the DI stage is a great idea. It's what I did and the water is really tasty. Still pretty low TDS at only 4. If it's really far from your sink you could do something like a generic 10" filter housing with a high quality carbon filter cartridge in it and use a couple of Tee's to make a bypass loop through the filter to your 3/8" compression fittings for the cold supply line so you can do two valves to run filtered water out the cold when you need it and turn them back to be back to regular water.

Ok. Duh. Didn't think of an extension cord from the eb8 upstairs. Thanks. Stuff like this is why I ask questions even if I think I might know the right way to do it, because I'm usually not seeing something obvious.

Ok. I'd use ro/di tubing, so I think it wouldn't collapse, but it would be about 10 feet. It makes a difference on if I have to get another eb8 for the apex and a longish usb cable to the basement from the tank upstairs to control it.

Here it is from BRS http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/catalog/product/view/id/2024/