Bill's 100G Reef Savvy

[YHSublime]

I'm thrilled you decided to share with us! This is an awesome system, I love your methodology behind everything, it makes it more of a hobby and less of a burden. Coupled with patience, which you seem to have, you have the trademark of an expert reef keeper!

 

 

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[Origami]

You had me at reef savvy

+1. Felix is known for his beautiful craftsmanship. 

[Bbwebb]

Lol i was thinking the same thing.. Hes only a couple miles from me as im in the process of settimg up a auto water change system

 

 

Hmmm maybe I should have you and your family over for BBQ this spring and tap into your engineering genius. 

 

I don't know about the engineering genius part, but happy to help out.

[Bbwebb]

I'm thrilled you decided to share with us! This is an awesome system, I love your methodology behind everything, it makes it more of a hobby and less of a burden. Coupled with patience, which you seem to have, you have the trademark of an expert reef keeper!

 

 

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Thanks YHSublime.  Still learning new things about the hobby every day.

[matt]

Very awesome build. I could ask you a ton of questions, but if I'm picking one right now...how did you set up your auto-water changer? Looks like litermeter...

[Bbwebb]

Very awesome build. I could ask you a ton of questions, but if I'm picking one right now...how did you set up your auto-water changer? Looks like litermeter...

 

Yep, It's a Litermeter with an additional pump head attached.  Running the RO lines 25-30' was the real challenge, everything else is pretty straight-forward.  The first pump head is set to pull ~2 gallons of from my sump and it goes straight to a drain.  The second pump head pushes 2 gallons of fresh saltwater from my mixing station into my sump.  The litermeter divides the total amount of liquid you want to move by 150 (I think) and then moves that amount of water every 3 minutes or so.

 

I do pay close attention to my salinity to ensure things don't get out of whack.  I monitor conductivity with my Apex and have it alarm if it creeps up or down too much.  I also check it manually with my refractometer once a week since I still don't trust conductivity to be an accurate measurement of salinity.  I recently ran into an issue where salinity was starting to drop and it turned out that I had calcium buildup and also some of residue from the Instant Ocean salt stuck in my RO line and I was no longer putting as much salt water back into the tank as I was removing.  So the ATO was making up the difference.  Cleaning the line out was a pain, but now everything is back to normal.

[s2nhle]

wow, very awesome tank. Thank you for sharing.

[matt]

Bill, what are you using the master flex pump for? Can you explain how that and your calcium reactor are set up...is that some level of diy? I've heard some use similar pumps with double heads for auto water changes, but those pumps are loud. Is that your experience with their sound? Did you consider that versus the liter meter setup? Thanks for letting us learn from your design

[Bbwebb]

Bill, what are you using the master flex pump for? Can you explain how that and your calcium reactor are set up...is that some level of diy? I've heard some use similar pumps with double heads for auto water changes, but those pumps are loud. Is that your experience with their sound? Did you consider that versus the liter meter setup? Thanks for letting us learn from your design

The masterflex pump is just used to move water from my sump, through the reactor, and then back up to the sump. I wanted to use a peristaltic pump so that I could accomplish this from the basement fish room. The masterflex is duty rated for continuous operation and allows me to adjust the flow rate very easily. Instead of constantly messing with the pH in my reactor I normally adjust the flow rate up or down to fine tune my alk and calcium levels.

 

As far as noise, I would say it's not silent. There is a high pitched sound that comes from the pump while it's running. It would probably be bothersome if it was in my family room, but it's not a problem at all in the fish room. My fish room is in our finished basement and with the door shut to the room you can't hear it at all.

 

One other note, the masterflex pumps are ridiculously expensive if purchased new. If you're interested in one just keep an eye on eBay. I picked this one up for about 15% of what a new one costs.

Edited March 5, 2016 by Bbwebb

[DCReefer1964]

Hello !!!!!!!!!!! Update

[elwallacejr]

Bill - really beautiful tank and admire the automation.  I'm setting up a mixing station and was wondering if you've seen precipitation of carbonate building up in your SW tank over time with Instant Ocean.  I'm using Red Sea Coral Pro and saw a nice dusting in a 5g bucket after 2 days - [grrr].

[Bbwebb]

Bill - really beautiful tank and admire the automation. I'm setting up a mixing station and was wondering if you've seen precipitation of carbonate building up in your SW tank over time with Instant Ocean. I'm using Red Sea Coral Pro and saw a nice dusting in a 5g bucket after 2 days - [grrr].

Thanks, appreciate the compliment. Alas, I've moved and the tank is no more :(

 

I had quite a bit of buildup in my SW mixing container. It never seemed to hurt anything though. Once a year or so I would empty out the entire mixing station and take the power washer to it to get it all cleaned up again.