NateDawg

Hmmm, I'm out of the house multiple days sometimes so I think I'd need something that would last a bit longer, but that does seem to be the cheapest option so far.

Mine is in random medium flow, enough to push the polyps all around. And I have mine at about the same level as some of my sps, so probably around 300ish par

I've got similar water chemistry but my nitrates are actually lower than yours (about .1 - .15) and my Duncan fluffs up just fine during the day. When I initially bought the duncan, it would do the same thing, open at night and mostly close during the day. I found out that it would get fed during the night before i got it and started adding coral foods, that center on polyp extension, during the day and basically switched its feeding hours. And now it just opens during the day time period without the addition of food.

Oh dang, I'm glad it wasn't more serious, anything I can help with? Shoot me a message if there's anything I can help with.

Thanks, I'll definitely keep that in mind when I make a decision.

How long does the bottle of ice last? And do you have a correct amount of ice to where you dont have to have the heaters keep it from too cold?

Good info here, thanks, I'll be doing a bunch more research for sure.

Looks pretty close to cyno to me

That was the other thing we were looking at, I've got a centralized system with tanks in multiple rooms, so we'd essentially have to have at least 2 units running, and were trying to keep electricity cost down. Still an option over a chiller specifically for the aquarium but might be quite a bit more expensive to run over the unit I was debating on building.

I will probably be doing kind of the same thing using thermoelectric cooling plates but I'm trying to figure out what tubing to use for the part that's in contact with the cooling unit. For max efficiency, I'd say it needs to be some sort of metal but I'm not sure what to use. Obviously not copper due to toxicity, stainless steel could be an option but I've read and seen that there really isn't a truly saltwater safe stainless. Maybe titanium tubing but I'm not sure if you can buy 1/4 inch titanium tubing. And it would probably be a nightmare to work with.

With summer coming up, I will be needing to figure out a way to cool the tanks. The house doesn't have air conditioning so i will need to find a way to cool the tanks. I've tried using fans but with fans, this means over twice the amount of evaporation and twice the amount of filling a reservoir by hand so I've looked into two different options, first being an A.C. chiller and second being a thermoelectric cooler (not very common) but I would be building it if I went this rout. Biggest question is on average, for those of you who have chillers and monitored the power consumption, how much energy in kWatts does an A.C. chiller cost per month?

Looks like some sort of macro algae

Had a buddy who started a tank and ended up with a cloudy system like that. It stayed for a long time and wouldn't go away even after doing heavy water changes. He put a small UV sterilizer in his sump, and the cloudiness went away and hasn't been back since.

For sure! I'll be getting prices and stuff figured out and I will be just selling these for the cost of parts since it's a hobby for me and I enjoy building this kind of thing. And thanks for the links, I didn't know about them till you mentioned them and I will for sure take a look.

Update: got 15 of the circuit boards milled today and am getting some quotes on bulk component orders.

For sure! Tomorrow I will be getting about 20 of the circuit boards etched and will be putting an order in for more components so these will hopefully be available soon.

Yep, it will work with a single port. I'm deciding if I want to design a single outlet style of this design just for things like mixing stations that are generally in a different area than the main Apex unit.

Agreed, makes it nice to not have to spend alot of money on another energy bar.

Aw, thanks for that info, I tried researching about the outputs but turned up with almost no information whatsoever as to whether or not the 1link and 24V pins were connected.

So this unit runs on the two pin 24V DC terminals that are on the energy bar and other Apex modules but can also be run using the DC voltage portion of the four pin 1Link ports. I could be wrong but I think the default "LINKA_2_9" tile controls both the 1link and the 24v dc output. But maybe the default name is just confusing me and the 1link is actually a separate tile than the default "LINKA_2_9" tile.

Greetings everyone, I wanted to share a prototype device that uses the Apex DC24 2 pin ports to control more outlets without having to buy another energy bar. This one has two outlets that can either be connected together to have two outlets controlled by one 24V port or two outlets that are controlled separately by two 24V ports. The outlet box also has a display that will show the voltage, current, wattage, and kilowatt hours being used from the devices. These units are great for if you need just one or two more outlets or want to control one or two outlets in a different area from where the main Apex controller is. I finally was able to build and test this one out and will be doing tests on it to see how well it does through a calcium reactor setup. Outlet A will control the CO2 regulator solenoid and outlet B will control the pump that supplies the the calcium reactor. The photo above shows the unit turned on with both outlets turned off. The photo above shows the unit with outlet A on and outlet B off. And this photo shows both a solenoid and a pump plugged in and running. The photo above shows the connectors that this unit plugs into. I've still got a few things to work out with the circuitry inside and the design of the unit but so far, it seems to be working really well. If anyone is interested, I will probably start selling these units for basically just parts cost. And if anyone has any questions or input on the device, feel free to post them or message me them as I always enjoy feedback. Thank for reading!!

Trade/ for sale: hallucination paly, a few monti setosa frags. Open to pretty much anything trade wise that's the same or close to the value. Shoot me a pm with what you've got! The hallucination paly: $80 1polyp + baby. Monti setosa frags 1" plus: $15 Older photo, currently larger in size and has a baby.

PM sent

Bumping this up

Hey all, looking for a few parts here before buying new. I'm searching for: - CO2 tank - CO2 regulator (Milwaukee specifically but another could work) - neptune systems PM1 module - ph probe - calcium reactor media - needle valve Let me know what you got, thanks for looking!