Dave’s 90g learning-curve glass room experiment

[fatoldsun]

I took the plunge and went from this:

to this:

With the Kalk I had great coralline growth and my very low demand young reef was doing nicely but Ca was always around 390 and Alk around 3.4-3.5. Kalk was great at maintaining but I still had to dose some Ca and Alk (used reef builder) from time to time. I also had to dose carbon (vinegar) to lower the pH to offset the Kalk. Now I get to try vodka to see if I can finally get rid of the cyano (all that's left from my HA problem) I'd also like to add some more SPS in the future - my plan was to do my light build first but this opportunity popped up and I looking at ordering 2-part in this latest BRS GB so the timing was hard to resist. I'm going to give it 2 months and I'll be looking to sell off which ever one I like less.

 

[fatoldsun]

Like letterman's "will it float?". This game will be called "will it fit?".

.

I'm guessing I'm at 50/50 at best

 

[redfishbluefish]

That looks like an easy fit!


If not, use a big hammer.

 

[downbeach]

Great skimmer. I would have bought one myself, but with a 5" to 6" operating depth, I just didn't have enough head space in the cabinet.

 

[fatoldsun]

That's a concern as is the placement of my baffles (i.e., width of that section vs footprint of the skimmer) hence my fun little game

 

[fatoldsun]

Well it looks like it won't fit in my sump without removing a baffle. With the bubble trap baffle in I have 9.5" clearance. I need a little more than 10". Since I have to build a platform to get to 5.75" depth my question is, can I orient the pump on a bias? I asked over on the sponsor page on RC - but I'm wondering if anyone else has modified the pumps position. I'm not sure why it would matter since the pump rotates on an axis.... But I'm not a physicist or an engineer.

Very hard to tell from these pics but this is what I'm trying to do

 

[downbeach]

It's a little had to tell from the picture, but is the water intake against the glass? I think if it's against/too close it may impede the flow of water into the pump.

 

[fatoldsun]

This is what I came up with – Hopefully these pictures do a better job of illustrating what I was suggesting in the previous post. Maybe once it’s fully in the water it will photograph ok but the efforts I made the other night to show what I was talking about were a failure. Anyway I’m hoping there’s no reason why this would affect the pump’s performance. I will need to come up with something to dampen the vibration or I’m guessing my little contraption will be rather noisy. I think I will start by gluing some airline tubing around the perimeter of the pump’s cutout window so all points of contact are cushioned…

In case anyone’s curious, the stand is made from 4” PVC pieces, split - I thought that would give maximum stability without creating detritus traps. On top are two pieces of egg crate and everything is held together with Zip-Ties. Fingers crossed – I still think this may be way too much skimmer for my system

I also bought a Tee and a Fernco fitting to make an output silencer - I want to make sure it fits and works first though

 

[Jcurry@wesketch]

Will the pump suck in air and create cavitation pointed towards the water surface like that?

 

[fatoldsun]

Will the pump suck in air and create cavitation pointed towards the water surface like that?

At this point that's my biggest concern - I may need to do something on the surface to break up a vortex like a piece of plastic or maybe eggcrate over top of it. I could also recreate the same idea with the pump facing down. I would just need a longer hose for the venturi and flip the orientation of the volute around (again - needed to do that for the replacement bubble blaster to sit flush - the replacement is a little larger and the offset had it sitting below the base of the skimmer body - I changed that before I tried to size it or fit it)

edit: actually looking at the pictures it looks like jcurry is right and the intake is at or above the surface based on the ideal height being at the mid-point of the output so - back to the drawing board for plan B.... yay me

 

[fatoldsun]

Like a glove ... Complete with the majestic halo

Pump is in, intake facing down

...and enough clearance up top for, ...well, ...maybe a sheet of paper

Have you ever tried to fit 10 lbs of #%*€ in a 5 lb bag? (can kind of see the DIY silencer.)

 

[fatoldsun]

It’s been a while since my last confession so here goes….

I had my first whew moment over the weekend. I was doing the weekend maintenance on Saturday night (the rare occasion where the wife had plans and I could put the kids to bed and have some uninterrupted time) so I did a water change, cleaned the skimmer and well, things were moving smoothly. A buddy stopped over for some beers and I was all set to sit in front of the TV and relax - just needed to carry the buckets back to the basement and fire up the trusty Mag 9.5. Well, when I did that, for the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] time in almost 2 years, nothing happened. I soaked the pump in vinegar and got the impeller out – well half of it – doh!! The ceramic shaft was not the ceramic shafts. Fortunately I had a spare Mag so things were up and running shortly. Moral – keep an extra impeller on hand (if not an extra pump)

Other adventures:
I got a battery backup for my vortech pumps – it was VERY cheap because the battery was bad - well after I got it, turned out the battery could not hold a charge so the guy refunded enough for me to rebuild it with a new battery. – It was easy to do. Ecotech sells a new – fused cable due to a recall on the older style IceCap backups for like $2-3 shipped. After taking the case apart I realized that all it is, is a sealed 12V 18 A lead acid battery. There’s a write-up on Rc that you can search for if you want all the pics, ect. Point is, that any 12 volt will work. Car battery, etc… I was also surprised that there was nothing in the case in terms of a float or trickle charger – just the wall-wart which was listed as a "switching adapter" and output is 12a---0.5A so I guess that suffices in lieu of a fancy-shamcy trickle charger… They can be found online for a few bucks and maybe $2 for what you need from radio shack to hook that up to the battery of your choosing. Then use the fused connectors from ecotech to go to the pump – tat’s really all there is to the backup – the $160 is about $70 in parts ($50 for the battery) and $90 for the name and fancy plain white case.

I’m working out some kinks with the MTC Calcium Reactor I picked up from a fellow reefer. I had it running for several weeks and ran into a problem with my CO2 – I didn’t know what I was doing with the hook up and did something to the regulator. Well after replacing the regulator I contacted MTC because I thought I broke the hook-up from the CO2 to the bubble counter. Turned out that was a “check valve” and there was a small o-ring that fell out. Once I knew what to look for I got the trusty flashlight found it and got it back together. In the process though I spoke with Jeff at MTC and WOW was he helpful. Awesome guy and very knowledgeable (not that I was surprised). The conversation inspired me to fix a few things on the reactor. For starters, the lines going to the reactor and back to the tank were opaque (same stuff used for RO/Di) and the fuge light caused algae growth in the lines so I swapped them out for some extra blue I had from setting up the RO/Di. Doing that though I screwed up a repair I inherited with the reactor from the Eheim pump, so as always, one thing lead to another and I went from empty CO2 tank to waiting for a part from, well, maybe, Germany?... who knows… anyway, hope to have that soon.

Ok, last adventure – for now. I think I have EVERYTHING I need to build my LED light – and I’m just about stocked up for my hood to house it. I have some planning things to work out – I want to keep the hood weight down – my stand was WAY too heavy and overbuilt. I also want to be able to get into the tank without having to take the hood off so I think I have a plan that should work – removable panels that look like doors on the front and a pretty much ‘open” top with the lights split on 2 separate heatsinks. The frames will be hinged so they can be raised up independently and out of the way when the panels come off. I’ll add more about the light build itself as I get underway.

Final new piece – I have two fish in the QT - about 2-3 weeks left before I add them. One is a ORA purple pseudo and the other is a yellow watchman goby. So I guess I’ll be looking to add a pistol shrimp once I confirm that it would be compatible with what’s in my tank… that’s the update

 

[fatoldsun]

Ok, the last post was a little dry so here are some updates with pictures because everyone loves a post with pics (be forewarned though. my camera on my phone SUCKS and this tank does not leave any cash for a better camera...)
First, here are the CO2 reactor lines that I replaced showing the algae growth

Here is a shot of the cyanobacteria issue before I used the red slime remover

I had good success with that product. Everything came out OK except a few frags of blue tipped staghorn.
Here’s before the red slime dose

And this is after the RTN finally stopped after massive PWCs

I had 2 other small frags and all 3 partially bleached. All three have started to recover and new tissue growth is starting to fill in the bleached areas

I mentioned the “rebuild” of the Ecotech battery backup – here’s the original battery that came with it

…and the replacement. This is literally all that it was. I ordered the other style hookup (replacement had bolts so I had to mock up jumpers so I didn’t have to change the hookups in the case – never know when I will need to replace the battery again. Moral of this story, if you have vortechs ANY regular old car battery will work in an emergency to run your vortechs and a battery that size will run 1 MP40 for 3-4 days - all you need is one of Ecotech’s fused connectors that they sell for $3 due to the recall – just look in their parts store and keep one on hand. If there’s a power outage – go to pick up a car battery and hook it up to your pump. A LOT cheaper than buying a generator in an emergency.

Here’s my plan for my LED build – this is the array I’m aiming for. Just have some kinks to work out with parallel wiring.

Here are some frags that were generously given to me by DanK

Favorite among them was this monti undata

It didn’t make it – my RBTA was bothering it so I relocated it and something in the CUC knocked it off the plug while I was at work – by the time I found it, it had been under my sand bed for 2 days and was completely gone

I did get a blue mushroom but I couldn’t get it to attach to anything. It had been floating lose in his tank so maybe it liked its roaming bachelor lifestyle…
I finally gave up and rather than loose it I propagated it (cut in thirds) and made this little cage with some rubble

All 3 pieces attached after about 2 weeks and have been doing well for about a month now…

Final pics – I have 2 new fish in QT
First is an ORA Fridmani purple pseudo

Second shot

Second is a Yelolow Watchman Goby

Another shot - he’s really shy so far….

 

[fatoldsun]

I think I finally narrowed down my skimmer problem. If you've followed this you might remember that I picked up a SRO 2000 XP (thank you Craigslist) and it seemed superior to my bubble magus 6 which was undersized for my system. The RO was a good size in terms of gallon capacity but a bit too large physically for my sump. I played with it and got it to fit but only with the pump intake pointing down. I guess that effectively "lowers" the skimmer depth by tricking it into thinking its deeper. So now the skimmer is as high as I can get it and if I bump the pump even 1/8" I'll find my collection cup overflowing or the skimmer runs SO wet that after a week my salinity is way outta whack (1/2 gallon of skimate saltwater comes out daily replaced with RO/Di by the ATO daily. If I can't work a fix I may have to rethink the skimmer choice...

 

[fatoldsun]

LED project is well under way
I have a full build thread here

For sake of saving some back and forth and to keep the tale complete, here is the light and hood frame

and the trial firing

I have to finish the canopy doors, right now all that’s there is cardboard to keep the lights from blinding us.

 

[fatoldsun]

Thanks to some fellow club member’s generosity I was able to reintroduce some “reef” to my reef tank.

Compliments of Jim (Downbeach)
Birds-nest

Tri color valida

Green Slimer
A

And a HUGE thanks to Matt (MatteZ) - most of these are unidentified – he brought so much I completely lost track of what was what

I'm entertaining IDs

 

[MatteZ]

Purple digi, purple nana, purple bonsai, purple milli, hydnophora, monti spoghota, yellow birds nest?, & pink lemonade.

In that order

 

[fatoldsun]

Thanks Matt!!

as long as I'm updating things here is a current FTS - this is with the new lights as follows:
whites @ 80%
Blues @ 90%
Mixed Colors @ 75%
percentages are on the Rapid (not so special) controller and the driver pots are turned down pretty far. I figured at this point I had no need to overdrive anything

I thought this was interesting too -
This is a red monti cap frag I got from Dan a ways back. It’s sadly one of the only pieces he gave me that survived until I got the LEDs up (a blue mushroom I think is the only other – they didn’t need much light or they got enough from natural light because the one survived propagating and the 4 that resulted healed and have since multiplied both before the LEDs and since) I digress, here’s the caps story in pictures

Here’s a shot when I first got it

It grew under the old lights but as those bulbs got old it started looking bad – I thought I had more pictures as it went but this is the best I can find – you can see dead spots and the edges looked pretty rough

And here is a recent shot – it is recovering nicely – hope this means my LEDs are working. I still haven’t come up with a PAR meter so this type of growth is all I have to go on that my color mix, etc is close to the spectrum that will grow coral….

 

[fatoldsun]

Update on newly added coral. It all has done well acclimating to the tank and lights. the purple milli isn't as colorful as when Matt brought it but seems healthy and the pink lemonade is not easy to read. It may just be that light in color but I can't tell if its doing anything. Also the purple digi is kind of brownish. Just mot as bright as I would have thought. Unrelated, (or maybe not) my one monti cap that was growing better than anything else has started bleaching or STNing.

This is from 2 days ago. I'm not sure why. Everything else seems to be fine except a small frag of the same I have a on the rack - opposite side which started bleaching first. Both pieces of that species are pissed about something and given they're on opposite sides it must be my water. Light and flow are very different in those two spots. Weird.
Salinity is pretty stable at 1.026 pH is 8.2. Alk is down at 6.55 dkH (Hanna)- maybe that's why. Phosphate is at 0.08 (Hanna). Nitrate was 0.0.
I did a 20g WC last night. Hopefully that halts it

 

[fatoldsun]

Here’s a month of progress (well in most cases anyway) under the new LEDs - Lots of pics so I’m splitting this up

Purple birdsnest and Green Montipora Spongodes 4/4

Purple birdsnest and Spongodes 5/10

Solo shot - birdsnest

Solo shot - Monti Spongodes from 4/4

Solo shot - Spongodes from 5/10

Tri color validia 4/4

Tri color 5/10

Green Slimer 4/4

Green slimmer 5/10 (seems the “skeleton” has lost color but the polyps seem ok – My guess is this is related to my Alk issue I’m still working on)

-------------------------------------------
Some for good measure from 5/10. I don’t have specific before shots
green hammer left, Pulsing Xenia right

Superman monti

Blue tip staghorn (recovering from pre LED)

Red cap (also recovering (I think) from an alk issue) - it looks like it's starting to cover back over some of the STN'd areas

Some metallic green palys – these are prolific. One fell off the rock and started growing in a crevice below.