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I saw this at Home Depot, 10 bucks plus a double AA. Records min/max temp and humidity as well as current. Decided to toss it in the stand to get an idea of how hot it gets down there. Thinking of maybe getting a second to compare with outside of tank.

So, my wife and I have decided to upgrade our QT tank also, plus there are still considerably more things to do with the display. We are moving from a 24g cube tank with external overflow to a 40g breeder that I'm drilling. Here is the drain/return/overflow pre-drill (yeh the really low one what is that?!?! that is for water changes) After drilled, my chief engineer is inspecting my work. My wife was authorized to 'decorate' this tank so i'm thinking there will be a purple theme of some kind. Herbie overflow. The lower covered 1" hole will be for a quick drain for super easy water changes. I'll be re-using the sump/and some of the equipment from the original 93g from the start of this build. I'm going to build the same type of woodwork around the tanks similar to the main tank (minus canopy)

So I decided one light was not enough in the canopy,.. so I added a second light :P It is now way easier to see what i'm doing on both sides of the tank. Of course its all hooked into apex. Feed Mode lights turn on. Plus break out box switch in stand causes both stand lights and canopy lights to turn on.

When I got home today I snapped some fresh pics of my tank. Going to work on plumbing for automatic water changes this weekend. Happy 3day weekend. I actually have some small corals hiding in back but they are really hard to get pictures of.

http://www.ultimatereef.net/forums/showthread.php?765363-Filter-Sock-Silencers-do-they-work http://www.aquariumspecialty.com/royal-exclusiv-dreambox-filter-sock-silencer http://reefbuilders.com/2014/12/23/filter-sock-silencer-royal-exclusiv/ Here are a few links if you want to see without searching. There is only 1 product on the market, it's one size, and specific to dream box. I'm suggesting standard us sizes for socks you can buy anywhere like brs.

Good Afternoon Avast, So I have a product idea, (hopefully not to selfish). Anyways a lot of sumps have built in filter sock holders. They take either 7" filter socks or 4" filter socks (the plastic ring. Anyways a lot of the sumps are actually really quite noisy, Mine for instance has the return pipes submerged so they don't make noise but the water overflows into a sock holder, which itself is really noisy. Not to "steal ideas" but royal exclusive came up with an idea of a sock silencer but its only available in a single English metric size which is like 3.8 inches, and I have 7" filter socks. They would be super easy to make (or atleast look like they would be) and made out of acrylic so seems like right up your ally. You can just google "filter sock silencer" and you will find the royal exclusive one and even some DYI stuff others have done, but there is no commercially available ones for 7". Essentially its an acrylic disk that fits in the plastic ring of filter socks. It has a bunch of holes in it that have basically been drilled and then a small piece of pipe in the center of it to let air escape. ( I believe its raised us so only air escapes and the water goes down the smaller holes). The general idea is to not imped the water movement volume wise significantly, but force the water to become small drips instead of one giant noisy stream. I have a sponge filter I've put in the plastic ring a few times to reduce noise, but obviously a sponge gets dirty, if its acrylic then the junk goes in the sock where its supposed to go. A lot of the sump makers now make covers for the socks to try to reduce the noise (mine has a cover) but it seems like this is a much more direct way to fix the problem, and seems like a small product you can easily make and sell. Anyways all I ask for my idea is the ability to buy one Thanks! -Nathan

The tank is really awesome and makes saltwater look so easy with so much in such a small tank

Tonight I fine tuned my recirculating Biopellet reactor. My phosphates have been hovering around .05 and nitrates around 4. I think the Biopellet reactor just needs to build up for double the water volume. Anyways after running it to a bucket enough times it's now tuned to 90 gph with around 7"/12" inches of the 2 liter reactor filled with pellets. Pretty close to 1 liter. Should be pretty close to avast marine spreadsheet. Also reworked part of the mixing station for the new tank. The small 1/2 inch PVC area is much cleaner and now allows me to feed water directly into sump very fast for large water changes or simply fill a bucket in garage. Before it was kinda ghetto and would only do one or the other. Lifereef skimmer is still going balls to the wall. About 1 qt a day is coming out of tank. I keep having to hit the switch on my ato to have it top off with saltwater instead of rodi. I'm really considering adding salinity monitor to apex to automate if it's saltwater or rodi being topped off. Who doesn't like fishies

Wow I have been paranoid about floods. I have a tub liner in my send and another behind the tank. I folded the corners so they can both hold two inches of water. Hopefully tonight I will get my leak detectors back in. My general strategy is find / fix before its a big problem.

Marine pure balls look like good choice for room you have. I was thinking of using those for bottom of my empty fugue

Today I got to use the breakout box and it was really quite handy. Open canopy reach up and push button. Instant feed mode, plus led above canopy and stand light turned on. I had no idea it was so dim without the led to light canopy. Did my feeding and ran to work. No hassle of iPad to apex or even messing with apex controller. Hard to believe a little button can make life so much simpler. I put the button inside the canopy out of reach of most kids, wife can reach it though

Today I got the last door done on the canopy. Since it's near a wall it comes off like stand doors instead of being hinged. I also wired up two switches, ( door bells ). One triggers feed mode the other starts the stand lights on a timer. I also installed a bunch of hooks in the canopy.

This morning the apex told me the skimmer was full. That makes 15 quarts skimmed in 7 days since adding lifereef. I normally and checking phosphates and nitrates. Anyways second week in a row, nitrates 4 and phosphates 0. ( ammonia nitrite also 0 ). I don't check calcium I don't have to many corals and normally do 3 gallon water changes daily ( haven't been doing on new tank but will get it started again today ). With the regular water changes I've not had to dos calcium or anything else but I've got the bottles in case. Anyways two tests week apart zero phosphates and 4 nitrates. So Thursday when I did the test pulled my gfo reactor offline to let my phosphates increase. As stupid as that sounds I have a bio pellet reactor that appears to be constrained by my zero phosphates. It appears to be working because skimmer is going nuts now.

I snapped so pics of the inside since most of the recent pictures are of hardwood plumbing or the skimmer. Since I took the shots the long tentitcle has moved back to the left side of the tank.

Tonight I trimmed three of the four doors. ( all the visible doors have trim ). The last door I'm going to have to install without hinges since it's near the wall like the way I did the stand. Pretty happy with final result.

So last night I cleaned the neck, here is neck and skimmate 24 hours later.. The neck was 100% clean yesterday night about same time. Comparing the pictures it looks like almost 1 quart per day. ( difference in container plus amount accumulated in cup since I emptied cup also ) Hopefully that helps, Nathan

I cleaned the skimmer's neck last night at 10pm. Tonight if I remember i'll snap a picture of it so we can see what it looks like after 24 hours with neck cleaned. -Nathan

I've got: 1 diamond goby 1 yellow tang 1 Kobe tang 1 matted filefish 3 blue green chromis 4 lyratail anthias 2 oscillious midnight clownfish 2 maroon clown fish ( they host their own anemones and don't fight ) 1 purple dotty back 3 blue eye cardinals 1 lawnmower blenny 2 green bta 1 rose bta 1 monster 15 or 20 inch across Ritter anemone 1 long tentacle anemone Large cleanup crew That's the load on the 210g right now plus some corals

So this is my third skimmer. I also own aquamaxx hang on back blue model running on quarintine and an aquamaxx cones cs2. The lifereef has awesome build quality. Feels solid and like something that will be in my sump for years. The only mods that I have done is. 1st it came with a schedule 40 threaded gate. I ordered ahead of time a spears schedule 80 1 inch gate. All the pics at lifereef show a schedule 80 but all the skimmers ship with schedule 40. Maybe me just being picky. I also put a tee on the pump input so I could hard plumb the bio pellet reactor to input of skimmer. The skimmate hose goes to avast marine container with apex integrated overflow prevention. Everything else is out of box setup.

The skimmer's activity is strongly based on bio-load but I will do my best to explain. So I have 30 inch lifereef flanged model. I'm running it with Mazzei Venturi option which is a little additional. The performance is strongly based on the pump, I'm running Mag 18 dedicated into this skimmer. (all of which recommended by Jeff @ Lifereef). Initially I was running it about half way between the flange and the top of the rim, and left the stand door open while we were watching tv. Every 30 minutes it would start to overflow a little and I would turn the knob to lower it. After a couple hours I lowered the skimmer down to the flange (where the black thumb screws are) to goto bed. I sat and watched it for 2-3 minutes after I lowered it and magic happened. I noticed the bigger bubbles forming and building to the top of the cup. The next morning I think there was about 1/2 quart of yellow orange stuff collected. I don't have my log book with me, but I think I emptied the skimmer (5 qts) on Friday. Today is Tuesday and there are 2 1/2 more quarts. (so around 7 1/2 quarts have been skimmed since I installed it). So how wet/dry/etc? So its my understanding (and people at reefcentral also recommended) that the "idle" for this skimmer be at the flange/black thumb screws which is where mine is set, so I think its set correctly. So how dark? You tell me this is my skimmer form this morning right after feedmode (My apex still turns off skimmer/reactors when it goes in feed mode): image image Like I was saying, it was 5 qt on friday, i empted it, and you can see where it is now. I plan on adding more fish to the tank so I think I could put more load on it. It's also connected to the output of Avast Biopellet reactor which might cause it to be a little wet. Noise wise it is the loudest thing on my system. The Venturi sucking in air is where noise is from and it's tied to cup which doesn't really dim the noise. I can't hear mag drive over Venturi. The sump has filter sock where water drips into sock. The sock is louder than Venturi but I keep a small spunge to mute the Noise making Venturi louder. When stand door is shut however it's very quite. At night you can barely hear skimmer when there is no noise in entire house. Compared to vortech that was on old tank, skimmer is way quieter. There is no head in this picture because skimmer was just turned on like 5 seconds prior.

this is what the room looks like when tank is going into night mode. The black mesh back and top is doing a good job diffusing some light but still letting tank breath.

Today we stained the back of the stand doors and the canopy doors. We actually had them cut more than we needed to pick the best ones. Here is the doors without the leaf crown molding installed. When I get done the doors on top will match bottom. a little closer peak. This is what's going on in my tank. The clowns we're hosting on opposite sides. Now they are hosting a few inches from each other. My new powder blue tang and marine beta in quarintine. The new skimmer started pulling yellow gunk out of water in 2 hours and is still working like a champ. I'm also way happy I moved from vortech to Neptune wav pumps. I can't believe how silent living room is and I have 4 wav pumps running, that monster skimmer and a bigger return pump. Way happy with results.

My new lifereef 30 inch skimmer arrived today. Decided to go old school. Jeff at lifereef did a good job packing Here it is in front of my tank that I'm setting up. ( I'm still making canopy from scratch) A little closer Mod to input to tie to my bio pellet reactor YouTube video of it in my sump not broken in yet

Last night I got the 93 g cube moved to the other room, most of the equipment has been moved to the sump. I plan to get the cords and everything tied back. The cube will go up for sale shortly. The old skimmer is now in the sump, bio pellet reactor, carbon/Gfo reactor, marine pure blocks moved, dosing pumps, ATO is now online, I installed a light in the stand, I'm one hose that I need to install away from automatic water changes again.

This is what I did to get my feeder secured with eurobraced tank, it's about 2 inches above the screen.