fab

flowerseller, Please amplify on: What do you mean by this and why is it likely to be so?fab

So do I, fab

From the SpectraPure Website: SpectraPure

Davelin is right about the horizontal DI design, being inferior and problem prone. In fact the only component you should accept in a horizontally installed format is the RO membrane, itself. SpectraPure is high-end, has clear chambers, and is the way to go with RO/DI units to protect the expensive contents of a marine aquarium. If you research water quality technologies you will find that good water quality control doesn't combine well with 'on-the-cheap' equipment, particularly as you move up in how much water you will need to process. An RO/DI product that achieves low recurring cost through the use of high quality filtration coupled with top notch RO membranes is what produces the sweet spot in the total cost of ownership of RO/DI units. A higher up front cost is a necessary hurdle to get to the lower recurring cost systems. Regardless of which brand you choose, the recurring cost of operation is tied directly to how much junk you pass through the filters, the membrane and the DI chambers. That equates in the end to how much water, in gallons, you can process before you have to replace items. For folks with sizeable tanks, not nano tanks, the recurring operation is a sizeable factor in the total cost of ownership of an RO/DI system and needs to be carefully considered when selecting your equipment. Low initial cost units will prove, in the end, to be of lesser quality in terms of performance and recurring cost. BTW, a nice feature is to have a second DI stage with silicone buster capability. fab

Gatortailale, Excellent post. Two great messages: redundant, independent flow and labeling. Thanks, fab

dhoch, Thanks for the clarification. Do you think you dosed the Phosban incorrectly or any thing else that made it happen? ... or do you think Phosban is inherently risky? I'm considering a Phosphate reactor on my system. Any observations or recommendations? Thanks, fab

To T5 from what? Also, what leads you to link the problem in the old tank to the use of Phosban, say versus lighting? fab

Once again, the Devil is in the details: BUT NOT FOR controlling high conductivity liquids such as salt water, or very low conductivity water such as deionized water. Do not use the SpectraPure Electronic Tank Level Controller for any saltwater or DI water applications. I must assume that Gatortailale used a SpectaPure Liquid Level Controller, not their Electronic Tank Level Controller. The SpectraPure Electronic Tank Level Controller has metal components that are immersed in the liquid whose level it is controlling. The metal parts are an electrical hazard in salt water. Also, the DI water will corrode the metal parts and bring about a failure. The Electronic Tank Level Controller is the only SpectraPure level controller that is not appropriate for saltwater level control. All of the SpectraPure Liquid Level controllers are fine for saltwater aquarium or storage tank use and for use with DI water. fab

Water on demand for drinking definitely wants to be via a presurized tank so when you use the lever on the drinking water attachment you get water. Water on demand for aquarium usage in my system is available with the flick of a switch that turns on the pump to move the water from storage to wherever. A lidded storage tank ... no dust. A sign on the lid... no garbage! fab

Alan, A pressure tank is strictly for storing water under pressure so it will deliver itself to a faucet on demand. The normal use is for drinking water. The pressure serves no purpose, whatsoever, beyond that. The backpressure story holds no water, pun intended. An aquarist uses an RO/DI system to produce freshwater for makeup and replacement. Since you will pump water from storage into your display tank, or schlep buckets of water [i hope not], there is no added value for a pressurize storage tank. Further, pressure tanks are very expensive and are usually very small, 5-20 gallons. They do not do much for an aquarist's storage requirements. You need storage because RO/DI units produce water slowly, so you have to produce for a long time then use the freshwater for whatever purpose you have. Beware of 'el cheapo' RO/DI units. They tend to be very expensive to operate. Operating costs are for replacement cartridges and wasted water. Filtration Inadequate sediment and charcoal filtration upstream of the RO membrane will reduce the life of the membrane substantially. Good membranes are not cheap. Low end RO/DI systems cut corners on the upstream filtration and on the quality of the cartridges. That results in high operating costs. Membrane efficacy - efficiency By their very nature RO units waste a lot of water. RO membrane manufacturers generally regard a 10:1 waste water to product water ratio as acceptable. That means it takes 11 gallons to produce 1 gallon of RO product water. The other 10 gallons are waste water. High end units reduce this to around 4:1. One manufacturer, SpectraPure, has a new membrane product coming out that is going to be close to 1:1 ratio of waste water to product water. That is a ten-fold improvement in efficiency. And the membrane will last a lot longer. They also have come out with new DI cartridges that last almost 10 times as long as normal ones. These factors do wonders in reducing operating costs. My performance - 10 years I have had an RO/DI setup with a drinking water kit in my home for 10 years. By the way, you do not drink water coming out of the DI stage. If you want drinking water, you take the drinking water out of the RO stage before it goes to the DI stage, using a 'Tee' fitting. My RO water quality is incredibly good, as measured in total dissolved solids (TDS) and in actual taste. I have less than 1 ppm TDS at the output of my RO stage, prior to DI processing. My meter is indicated in 1's of ppm, so I can't get a measure of what the fractional value of my TDS is; i.e. no readings between 0 and 1 ppm. In other words, my meter reads 0 ppm after 10 seconds or so of running. Note, after water has been sitting still in the system for a while, i.e., not passing through the RO membrane, you want to let it flow for several seconds to flush through the system, discarding the product water before collecting it for storage or for topping-off. This requires a bit of control in an auto-topoff system. fab

If the skimmer was damaged in shipment, contact the shipper to file a damage claim. If they process it as a damage claim, you will not have to pay shipping to return the item and again to receive the replacement. fab Also, check my PM to you.

If you like the EuroReef, why not consider the ASM series. ASM is virtually identical to the EuroReef and is a lot less expensive. Any negatives? fab

Dandy7200, I am interested in your concern to have at least 10x in the overflow-sump-return portion of the overall flow system. Would you please elaborate on your rationale for that? I am facing a decision point in my setup that is concerned with this very issue. Here are my presumptive thoughts on this. My own thoughts raise questions. Perhaps you have the answers. It seems to me that the water that goes through the sump both provides for water motion and is made available for processing; e.g., mechanical filtration, biological filtration, protein skimming, chemical reactors, UV sterilization, heating and cooling, and for injection from refugia, freshwater water top-off and oxygenation. There are probably more things that could be done via the sump. On the other hand, the water flowing through a closed loop only provides water motion. The water that goes into the sump is processed at various different rates by the various devices that draw water from the sump, process it and return the processed effluent to the sump for eventual return to the display tank. Not all the water in the sump will necessarily be processed during each pass through the sump. This is because some of the processes are just sampling the water in the sump, not being in-line where they process all of it. Thus any water that makes its way into the sump that doesn't get processed on a given pass is essentially acting as though it is just in a closed loop, except that it is getting a shot at oxygenation in the sump that it would not get in a closed loop. Therefore, it seems to me that once you exceed the flow rate capacity of the sump-based processing then you are just getting the same effect on the excess flow above that capacity that you would get with a closed loop? If that is the case then why provide much more overflow-sump-return capacity than you have in processing capacity? Now, on the other hand, if the added oxygenation is sufficient reason to increase overflow-sump-return flow rate then why not use a very large sump and pass all the flow through a sump including that flow you would otherwise provide with a closed loop? That way the entire flow would benefit from the added oxygenation value of the sump path over a closed loop path. My personal experience tells me that a simple common sense analysis is usually either right or it is wrong because other important factors are at play that the "simple" analysis left out. So why is it important to exceed the sump processing rates by any significant margin? And, if it is valuable to do so then what is the rationale for providing separate closed loop flow over providing the full flow rate through an open overflow-sump-return loop? fab

I stand corrected, Rascal. I did some looking around and found some references to folks with 40+ turnovers and even higher. I have no way of vetting these anecdotal instances of nternet reference, though. The people using these very high turnover rates do claim success. The 10x-20x range I referred to came from published [book] literature. I will take issue with your last remark: "More flow, less velocity, as they say." That is absolutely incorrect! What you may have meant to have said is more cross-sectional area [that constrains the flow], the less velocity. That would have been correct. If you work with a given cross-sectional area and pass a flow of water through it, the velocity of the water through that area will increase linearly with increases in the volumetric flow rate. If you increase the cross-sectional area and hold the volumetric flow rate constant, the velocity will reduce linearly with the reduction in volumetric flow rate. fab

WRT Jamesbuf's question: "Isn't the back and forth more natural?" Gross answer is YES. But the devil is in the details. So the more accurate answer is YES, but not anywhere near that rapid a switching from back to forth, and not without a respite during reversal . The Details Here is some first hand experience and what these experiences represent in terms that an aquarist would be interested in, specifically, corresponding volumetric flow rates ~ gallons per hour. The experience cited here represents what I would call very heavy, but still normal conditions. This is as opposed to storm conditions. Very heavy only means the strongest I have personally encountered in hundreds of dives in surf surge conditions around the world where coral reefs grow, including Pacific ocean, Indian Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Red Sea, Gulf of Aqaba, Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea. I've dived on reefs in heavy surf zones off the east coast of Africa and south of India. There is a definite back and forth flow (oscillatory surge) that is pretty strong, strong enough to pick up sand from the bottom and move it a lot. And strong enough that any bottom critter that was not hunkered down would get rolled along the seafloor. I've made observations that put the oscillatory surge currents I have personally experienced over coral reefs at about 3-4 knots, max. In other words, faster than a strong swimmer with fins can kick. During the surge, if I don't kick at all, I get pushed back about 7-8 metres and then am still for a few seconds as the current reverses. Then off I would go again for another 7-8 metres in the opposite direction. This goes on and on and on during surf conditions. When I am being pushed I am moving at about 3/4 the speed of the water around me, because my coefficient of drag is less than 1.0. BUT, nature's tank is a bit bigger than our tanks. The oscillatory surges in nature are not the very rapid cycles you see in these video clips. In nature you get a current in one direction for at least 5-7 seconds. The reversal takes about 2-3 seconds of stillness, then a 5-7 steady current in the opposite direction. This kind of water behaviour is not chaotic. In fact it is not even very turbulent. In the main it is most certainly laminar during the inrush and the outrush, except right behind any obstructions such as a coral head. If you run the computations to determine what these flow rates would mean to an aquarist... From above, in surf zone my body moves 8 metres in 5 seconds = 5.25 feet per second. The water speed is about 4/3 that which is about 7 feet per second. That is 4 knots. That is a strong current! A diver can hold onto an anchor line at that fast a current, but not much more than that. I've been ripped off an anchor line at 7 knots. If you could develop that speed of current, 4 knots, in about a 12"x12" cross-section within your tank it have a volumetric flow rate of about 1300 gallons per hour. And here are some other values: 12"x12" cross-section volumetric flow rate = 1309 gallons per hour 18"x18" = 2945 gph 24"x24" = 5236 gph I hope you find this interesting and useful, fab

Unless I am missing something, your current flow is 14 turnovers per hour. That is a lot. It is halfway between the two ends of the range I've seen published in reference to desired flow rates for corals: 10x - 20x. Going up to 6000+ gph puts you at 34 turnovers which is 50% higher than the highest number (20x) I've ever seen recommended. Regardless how you divide the flow down, 4 way or 8 way, you will be producing some pretty disturbing currents, pardon the pun. I think you will be battering your livestock with very high speed water flow, including the sps corals, even if you can keep it from developing laminar flow anywhere in the tank. Plus you will add a sizeable slug to your electric bill, probably for no real benefit. I'd consider first, don't add anything. Your current 14x is probably about right. If you decide you must add more flow, then consider capping it at about 20 turnovers per hour (3600 gph) and seeing if even that is too much flow for a 180 gallon tank. You are almost there with your current setup at 2500 gallons per hour. good luck, fab

Lanman, I'm a bit shocked at the retort: "I've forgotten more about photography than you've ever learned! Okay..." I can only hope that this just didn't come across the way you actually meant it. Since we don't know each other in the first place, neither of us have any basis to judge the other in terms of knowledge on anything, much less photography. That said, I will certainly accept valid criticism on the correctness of what I say on these forums, regardless of the experience level of the person criticizing. Did I mistake the meaning of your post??? I sure hope so. Given what you said toward the end of your post, I am led to conclude that you actually do agree with the definition of macro photography I offered. Your post said: "With careful lighting and focusing, I could photograph the eye of a spider in a size that almost filled a 35mm negative. At a guess, I'd say my depth of field was probably about the thickness of a film negative." So, do I take it correctly that you agree with me that "Macro photograhpy means producing full-scale and larger than full-scale images on film" ??? fab I would like to clarify something about macro photography. You will often see the phrase "close-up" used in discussions of macro-photography, as in "close-up photography." Here close-up refers to the appearance of the final image, in that the image makes the subject appear to be viewed from close-up. An excellent example is the one Lanman offers: "I could photograph the eye of a spider in a size that almost filled a 35mm negative." Now, whether or not he had actually to get the camera lens close to the spider's eye to achieve this effect is a totally separate issue. The effect is his image of the spider's eye registers on a human's perception as being a close-up view, very close-up. Thnt is macro photography. fab

Good for you. A methodically maintained notebook will outstrip a lifetime of undocumented anecdotal experiences any day. I hope you succeed! There is a possiblilty you may have to use film to capture that look accurately and vividly. I recommend you go to a professional photographers' store and discuss with them what it takes to capture irridescence. You might need a film that is especially faithful in the deep blues. Ask them whether your ccd camera should be able to pick up these colors accurately. Another thought is to call Canon customer support and discuss it with them. I've had good luck with the camera companies' tech support for questions like yours. You are trying to do something that is off the beaten track in photography. BTW, if you do use film then use positive (slide) film, not negative film for prints. You will get your best color saturation. Get professional advice on which brand and specific model of film. The brands are substantially different from each other in how they render colors. My guess is that Fuji will end up being the better choice for what you are trying to capture. Kodachrome is usually toned down. Fujichrome is usually toned up, yielding very vivid colors with excellent color saturation. It is popular with underwater photographers for this reason. If you finally get a couple of really good pictures, you can get them scanned into digital format. Keep us posted on your progress. What you are trying to do is not easy. good luck, fab

If you are trying to take pictures with your actinic lights only, then you don't want white balance, as such. White balance is an adjustment to the color value of the image to 'bring it back" to what it should look like under true white illumination. So what you are doing is you are providing illumination that is far away from white then you are trying to get the camera to "bring it back" to white. The camera expects the spectrum of illumination to be somewhat close to a so-called white spectrum, in the first palce, perhaps shifted a bit. The spectrum you are providing is largely devoid of many color wavelengths that are in a white-ish spectrum. You are using the camera to do something beyond its design capabilities and something, quite frankly, that doesn't make a lot of sense in the first place. What you are trying to achieve is a picture that 'looks good.' That means it is pleasing to the eye and may even reproduce something close to what your eye is seeing under the actinic illumination. That is specturm matching, not white balance. Your illumination spectrum isn't white. The way you must operate to capture the effect you want is simply trial and error and a lot of note taking. Some people call that experimental physics. You just have to 'find' what works under the different non-white spectrum illumination schemes you want to photograph. When I dive, the world I am in is not white-balanced. Above about 30 feet of depth, between 10 am and 2pm, within about 25 degrees of the equator, on a sunny day it is nearly white balanced and I can use the sand bottom to white balance my images. When I am deeper, the spectrum doesn't shift to the bluer end, it attenuates the redder end. So now the spectrum doesn't even have a similar shape to a white spectrum; rather it is lopsided. If I want to reproduce what I see, I use the white balance from the real world, maybe from above the surface or from white sand at a shallow depth, if there is any. The images will come out very bluish, including the sand, just as I see it with my naked eye (through a mask). If I want color based on white-spectrum light, then I provide white-spectrum light and illuminate the subject. Now I can take a white object and white balance against it at depth to make the illuminated subject look 'right.' But as soon as I film without the illumination, my white balance is off to the degree my illumination is not really white-spectrum. So you need to figure out what you want your pictures to look like, color-wise, and experiment to get as close to that as possible. Your illumination source determines the spectrum you are photographing within. If you are taking still shots and you want some kind of real white balance, use a flash or use two flashes. If you want to capture the irridescence (zoos under blue lights), don't expect your camera to do that automatically. You have to develop the knowledge ( or lookup table ) to set the shot up to achieve that effect. fab

Actually, macro photography is not about getting closer to a subject. Macro photograhpy means producing full-scale and larger than full-scale images on film. That means that if you take a picture of a dime, then the image of the dime on the film, either positive film or negative film, will be as large as or larger than the actual dime. If you lay a dime on the film image it would not be bigger than the image of the dime on the film. It turns out that for a given focal length lense the distance to the macro photography subject is short relative to a non-macro subject, whether the lense is a wide angle, normal angle or narrow angle lense. In other words you have to get closer for macro photography than for non-macro photography. The normal angle lense for 35 mm film cameras is about 50-60 mm focal length, depending on the design of the lense and camera body taken together. Normal angle refers to an angle that is normal vision for a human. The angle is formed at the intersection of two rays with the eye being the vertex of the angle. Consider the apparent angle subtended by an object in the field of view. For example, if you have a car in the picture, the apparent angle would be the angle formed at the intersection of a line from your eye to the front of the car with another line from your eye to the rear of the car. If the lense does not enlarge or reduce that apparent angle, then the car and other objects in the field of view will appear normal to the human eye. That lense would be called a "normal" or "normal angle" lense. If the apparent angle is enlarged by the lense then distortion in the picture will appear to stretch things, but not uniformly, and the objects will not appear "normal" to the human eye. Such a lense is called a wide angle lense. With extreme wide angle lenses the distortion is very obvious such as causing a person's nose to appear way out of proportion to the head or causing a building to look like it is tilted back from the camera. On the other hand if a lense reduces the apparent angle below the normal angle, the lense is called a narrow angle lense or telephoto lense. This allows the lense only to see a narrow segment of the scene relative to what an eye "normally" see. The effect is the picture looks like you zoomed in on it to capture only a narrow segment of your naked field of vision. For 35 mm film cameras the normal lense is nominally a 50 mm focal lenth lense. Lenses with shorter focal lengths are wide angle lenses because they capture a wider angle than the human eye does. Lenses with longer focal lengths are narrow angle or telephoto lenses. So a 24 mm lense is a wide angle lense on a 35 mm film camera. A 15 mm lense is an extremely wide angle lense that can actually capture almost a full 180 degree angle. Lenses such as 90mm, 105mm, 300 mm are all narrow angle telephoto lenses of increasing telephoto power. Macro lenses can be of any focal length from wide angle through normal angle to telephoto. I've never personally seen a wide angle macro lense. They don't have much practical value for a number of [unmentioned] reasons. I have both normal and narrow angle [telephoto] macro lenses. They satisfy different requirements the photograher has. The wider the angle of the lense, the closer the photographer can, and must, get to the subject for macro photography. Conversely, the wider the angle of the lense, the farther away the macro photographer must be from the subject. If you are taking macro photographic shots of something you can get close to without interfering with the shot you are trying to set up then you can use a wider macro lense, which might be a "normal" lense set to macro operation. This is common when photographing insects or flowers where the photographer can get up close. On the other hand if you can't get close to the macro subject, then you can use a narrow angle, or telephoto, lense set to its macro operation to get that large-scale, life size or bigger image on film by setting up at a distance from the subject. An example: consider trying to photograph the eye and mouth of a little critter that is too far from the front glass of your display tank for your 50 mm macro lense to focus on. Switch to a 105 mm macro capable lense and you can 'reach' farther into the tank for great macro shots. In my underwater photography work, in the wild, I often need to use a 105mm macro lense so I can get far enough away from a jittery critter so I don't scare it away whilst I'm trying to capture a facial detail on film. One other important point about macro photography is that the depth of focus is tiny for any aperture. A 50 mm lense may only have a few to several millimeters depth of focus. You probably won't be able to get an eye and a gill both in focus at the same time for many varieties of fish with that small a depth of focus. Also, if your subject is waving in the current, it is likely to be moving in and out of focus, making it difficult (aka frustrating) to capture a crisp macro image of it. As you move to longer focal length lenses, the depth of field also increases in macro operation, but it still remains quite small. And a last point, all these points apply to both still macro photography and and moving (including video) macro photography; except that the focal length for a so-called "normal" lense changes from one film format to another. I hope this helps organize your understanding of focal length and macro operation in your photography, fab

Thanks Gatortailale, Excellent article. fab

Do you have any pictures of or references to spray bar setups?

Is the nuisance algae growing inside the tubing? It will grow the same in the rigid tubing, won't it? Also, by 'sliding off' do you mean it becomes disconnected? Do you have it secured with hose clamps? fab

Just curious ... Why do you want to replace flexible tubing with rigid??? fab

Recommendation: Fix the stray voltage problem, don't ground it out. If you want to ground something then ground the skimmer motor, not the tank. If you ground the tank and leave the stray voltage problem in place then you will merely be passing current through your tank water, and your critters. fab