Oasisreefling

14 hours ago, techymechy said:

That refugium is an excellent idea.   How is it progressing?  How is the chiller working for cooling your tank?  Pleas take some pictures to show what your tank looks like now.

Well the fuge worked okay after the diatom uglies subsided. But the tank developed a leak (it was a used handme down) so i rebuilt it out of acrylic scraps i had lying around and turned it into a sump for an 8 gallon bow front. It still serves the function of being reasonably portable.

Here's some pix. The sump is smoked bronze acrylic so when the light is on its not too bright at night. (Alternate photoperiod). 

The iceprobe works great! I've got two heaters (50 and 150) set in stages for the cold nights. 

Is the list moving at all?

On 9/24/2017 at 6:32 PM, RobMBush said:

Hah. Funny thing is that my tank only pulls about 5amps on average these days with exception of the heaters. Used to be I had a 20amp dedicated circuit just for my lights!

I remember those days. Had to use an extension cord for the vacuum to vacuum the living room.

Man if my girlfriend saw this thread she'd want me to get rid of the tank lol.

Whoops, necropost. But whatever.

A lot of us are aware of GFI but I think we should also be considering installing arc fault interrupts. It is new electrical code for all living spaces. An internally arcing device can draw a large current without tripping a breaker and this is what caused the fire. A GFI will only trip if ground carry's 5mA more than neutral and so can't prevent these hot-neutral arc failures.

It only takes one splash to deposit enough salt for a humid environment to create a new ground path months down the road...

Arc fault breakers can be used in conjunction with gfi devices. Im very glad you and your property are okay. Thanks for sharing. 

1 hour ago, albertareef said:

I could see this working but I would want so many failsafes and redundancies in it before I would trust it that it would likely get too complicated... but that's just me 😁  If @TheClark has done it then that would be a good template - he knows his tech/automation.

The weak point is definitely the float switch in this chain. My relays are 20amp 600v rated lol.

31 minutes ago, Burningbaal said:

ok, one thing to maybe consider here...5 g is so small, you could probably cheat the system here...

Say it's really 5g of water, and you can run a dosing pump or other slow and reliable pump from a relatively large vessel of saltwater.

We want our reef at 1.026, but anything from 1.023 to 1.028 is probably fine, right?

So fill up that reef with 1.026, fill the vessel with 1.024, and once the cycle is done, start doing slow but large water changes daily, just push water in and let the excess fall out to your p trap.

yes, evaporation will happen, and yes, the salinity in the tank will average higher than the 1.024 you're putting in. Yes, the salinity in the tank won't be perfectly consistent as evaporation rates change, but that should be a pretty slow event. evaporation should mostly be happening when the house is warm, so you could focus the water changes during the hours your heater is mostly likely to run (and the room is warmest).

If you change a gallon a day, of maybe 5g a week, but do it as maybe a half or whole pint per hour for 8-16 hours in the day, water temp should be trivial. It will reach an equilibrium, and with this 20% daily change, I bet it's no big deal. Say one day's evaporation would raise salinity from 1.026 to 1.030

 

Quick math says if you lose 2 cups a day to evaporation (Seems high to me), and have your new water at 1.024 with 20% daily changes, your tank will trend to 1.0267. If in that same setup, your evaporation is only 4 oz/day, you'd trend toward 1.0246, which is a tad low, but probably okay for most things. If I'm vaguely right that evap will stay between a half cup and two cups per day, then you might be just fine, at least if you keep less sensitive species

It is about 2 cups a day, my lights are very close to the surface and I have high surface agitation. This was my initial thought. Without doing math I can mix up my 1.026 for the week and then just add the total I expect to evap. 

It has the benefit of never adding RODI to the tank directly so the salinity would fluctuate less daily, as obrien said.

I wonder how off I'll be with a single res setup, I would expect an amount of fluctuation where manual adjustments would be necessary every few days. With seasonal changes. So far my top ups have been very consistent daily. It is a small surface area in the most stable room of the house with no air vents near.

I suppose my goal here would be less salinity control and more overall parameter stability. Less chance of shock on Saturdays for a little Tuesday Thursday SG check. Algebra should help figure out what I need to add fresh or SW wise.

But there's no reason I couldn't use two reservoirs. Buckets stack. Im on a free.99 run what ya brung budget so lets see...

How about this. A float switch feeding a DPST relay at 120v with Terminal A feeding an RODI pump and terminal B feeding a SW pump. The relay is switched by 120v from my aquacontroller jr which also powers the valve. The valve is on a recycle timer X seconds ON max off.

So the ACJr kicks on for a minute, the valve opens and the sump section drains. The float switch engages the SW pump instead of the RODI pump. The valve closes after X seconds, the sump section fills until the float valve shuts off the pump and after one minute total the ACJr turns it all off before the recycle timer can complete its cycle and turn the valve on again. In the off state the float switch goes back to controlling RODI.

Just a quick trip to my shed, a couple beers, a rainy weekend, annnndddd....

My tank is 5 gallons and it's drilled and I intend to add a P trap in the wall for it so if I use a standpipe I can pump SW on a timer instead of RO on a switch. Seems simple enough. 

I'm wanting to figure out my top up/change over water salinity based on my current salinity and required make up water. A calculator would be nice but I'm wondering if any of you do this, even on larger tanks.

I am realizing with a 5 gallon even my make up water must be the exact temp when adding 1 pint. So less severe and more frequent changes seem like the answer considering I intended to do weekly 100% changes and keep SPS so might as well ditch the ATO.

On 3/22/2020 at 7:18 AM, xmas_one said:

I was originally about welding a couple of flat wings onto a drill bit, but I think that would likely jump around too much and make a mess of the rock.

How about nesting a bunch of diamond tipped glass hole saws around the 3/8” drill bit? Glass hole saws are super cheap and you should be able to get a ton of use out of them when cutting something soft like calcium carbonate live rock. 
 

 

 

I found this, Idk about the carbide for reef safety or whatever makes the bit that color but it would be super easy to lathe and thread a shortened bit to fit in place of the screw if there's enough meat in the bit.

https://www.dremel.com/en_US/products/-/show-product/tools/543-cutting-shaping-wheel

On 3/19/2020 at 10:03 PM, pdxmonkeyboy said:

Honestly, the best time for this stuff is right after the economy takes a shiet. You would NOT believe how much cheaper contractors are when the work drys up.


Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 

I'm actually getting busier. People are at home and thinking about projects and I'm getting lots of calls for small things like adding exterior doors and skylights. But quartz countertops are all from china and that supply has halted and I can't get custom glass out of california right now. I mean after 20-30 bathrooms in a row I really just want to do siding anyways LOL

On 3/16/2020 at 8:30 PM, xmas_one said:

I had an idea a while back to make a masonry bit that would drill the hole and countersink the frag plug head too. Got busy with other things.

What were you thinking for the counter sink portion? All I can really come up with is using a forstner bit but I'd hate to chew it up. If the rock is soft enough to get 100 drills out of it, it would be worth machining to accept a 3/8 drill bit. Most the stone grinders I can think of are too big, hole saws would take several sizes or some chisel action. I have a ton of vertical real estate in my new pico and think this would be perfect, I hate seeing plugs.

I use older 10k and 6kbtu window AC units and they barely touch my electric bill compared to heat in the winter. We only need them about 4 hours a day cause we're in the hills.

Use 1/2" PEX for the refrigerator DIY. I wanna say it'll transfer 33 BTU per linear foot at 50 degrees difference. You really don't need a whole lot of flow. Our floor runs at 90gph and drops from 128 to 124 in about 150lf to give you an idea.

One thing I hate about chillers though is that they heat up the space they are in. They are really no fun in a small room with a lot of water, they just fight themselves constantly. I think if the room is dominated by water you need to use an AC or the surface area of the tanks overall will transfer too much heat in a 90*+ room. I think using external return pumps as well also helps a lot. Those buggers really can put a ton of heat into a system.

I think I need more head room. What do you guys think? I could run the rock through my tile saw and get another inch and a half off the bottom. Should I?

Would love to hear an update about how this tank worked out for you. Particularly interested how the corrugated plastic did and if you had found any sort of harvesting method other than shaking the chaeto. 

Well gosh darn it I wish I had seen this a week ago!

I'd like a turn! No preference for which one. How longs the wait?

Also, super cool of you guys to offer this service.

On 12/30/2019 at 3:56 PM, batchelor said:

Hey Mike, I'm in Eugene too. I would love to trade frags for contractor advice!

I missed this before. Great! PM me for my phone number. There's no strings attached but if you're overgrowing I'd take you up on it!

That was a satisfying project. The smoked acrylic looks really cool with the lights on! Heat testing, might need vent holes. 

Sand is siliconed down with a bunch of loose on top.

Anybody else keeping fish in a tank this small? Im thinking about it more than I should honestly. I wanna check my PAR first and see what kind of coral I reasonably could keep, I know if i try SPS then I won't have bio-room for fish. I'm worried that 36 watts is way too much though and don't wanna fry my first coral.

In the spirit of using my miscellaneous random materials stash 🙃, I decided to bend some acrylic to make a hood for some dissected 12 year old LED tubes. Its just mocked up for now, needs work. 18w of 12kK and 18w of 16kK. No actinic. 

Just need some 18-3SJOW and a powerhead and its time to fill er up and start frag shopping!

Slow progress this month. Built this little fuge that snugs in behind my rock work. I'm currently flow testing with fresh water and really liking the circulation in the fuge. Not pictured is the hole where the sump pump outlet feeds into it.

I installed a drain. Modified a 1/4 turn stop to accept a spigot handle. Added a quick connect at the end. Drilled the bottom. I might use the feed function on my controller for water changes or use a stand pipe to keep the heaters wet. We'll see how it shakes out. The dual 50w heaters are set in stages.

I have a powerhead under the fuge and I need to find something that soft starts because my controller is so old it doesn't have that feature. I am using 1 minute oscillations and would like to use two pumps. I am hesitant to buy the Jebao RW4 due to a lot of premature failure reviews but I've been looking at it as an alternative to hidden power heads. I'm going to glue down a layer of sand methinks so i don't have to worry about that in respect to waterflow. Might even glue a rock to the back wall. Why not use all the real estate i can?

I think I'm going to silicone off about half the overflow slots and make a filter sock bracket and use a HOB filter as the sock. 80gpm is just a silly little trickle across 4 inches of slots.

Went to buy an Aquamaxx prism CC light and they're out of stock! Bummer! Hope it won't be long. Otherwise I'm open to suggestions, i have room left on the controller for multichannel lights, I just liked the ramp on/off feature of the aquamaxx. I thought about reworking my old T8 LED tubes but idk... I guess if I build a housing. Could hollow out some 5/4 mahogany. 

Welcome! Im local to you. Nothing to frag out yet but im looking for some!

Couldn't you just set the Apex so your phones hotspot is the wireless network? You wouldn't get alerts when away but the first time you have a flood you could use that as an excuse to call the internet bill part of your aquarium hobby. Lol

I have a 75 gallon I should part with due to its age. In eugene.

Good to know there's a place in Corvallis, and another Oasis (Oasis is also part of my company's name)! Im in the coast hills so its actually about the same distance to me as Eug.

Where on earth do you get cuttlefish? That would be COOL. Do you have a tank journal on here?

1 hour ago, Oregonic said:

 any other ideas?

Shop vac the water out of that portion of the sump afterwards?

1 hour ago, Oregonic said:

Flooded the floor club 🤣. I never flooded the rental home we lived in for over 3 years. Buy a home with hardwood floors and in less then 3 months flood the living room 🤦🏻‍♂️🤣 

My overflow siphon failed while I was backpacking and drained about 15 gallons onto my floor while I was gone. In my second floor apartment. Maintenance guys saw the tank was full and assumed it was the dishwasher and replaced it with a brand new one! 

On 1/1/2020 at 10:27 AM, Higher Thinking said:

 You might need to branch outta Eugene, though.

Yeah exactly. PDX sounds like selection is good the more I read this forum. But the internet seems like a better option when you factor the time in.