Thanks Li! And would you believe that was only one 60 lb bag? We were thinking it was going to be at least two, maybe three. Thanks again for all your help!
270g Starphire build thread (pic intensive) (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter morty
- Start date
Thanks Li! And would you believe that was only one 60 lb bag? We were thinking it was going to be at least two, maybe three. Thanks again for all your help!
Temp control (longish post)
The Aquacontroller III allows the user to set the lighting to go on and off at the same time each day, or to have it vary with the season, corresponding to sunrise/sunset times at a particular user-defined latitude. Similarly, seasonal water temperature is also programmable. Reef water temps are typically coolest in February and warmest in August, with little day/night variation. I wanted to be able to fairly tightly regulate my tank's water temps and avoid daytime temperature spikes from the lighting, but I was having trouble controlling the daytime temp of the tank when the metal halides would come on. Originally I thought that having an open-backed canopy and stand would keep overheating from being a problem, but I was way wrong about that one. Even when the 1/4hp chiller ran continuously, the daytime temp would still go up by over 2 degrees F from the ACIII setting. And once the chiller finally brought the temp down after the lights would go off, the chiller was cycling on/off at night much more often than I originally thought it was going to. Regarding other sources of heat I didn't think the Dart pumps were adding too much. But the skimmer, UV unit, and their pumps were obviously not helping. (The ozone reactor and its Velocity T1 pump weren't running yet. And because the refugium wasn't running yet, I had programmed the Velocity T4 that pumped water thru the refugium/chiller circuit to only come on when the chiller was running. But Velocity pumps, although nice and silent, are notorious for adding heat, so I knew that would be an additional problem later on.)
I bought a small 120V clip-on fan and placed it so it would blow air over the tank, but it made little difference. (It just stirred the air over the tank but didn't replace it with cooler air.) And the temp in the utility room would climb to close to 90 degrees in the day because the chiller was running continuously, so despite the canopy and stand being open to the utility room, there was nowhere for the water to dump its heat, as the air in the rear room was much warmer than the water itself! My house has a energy recovery ventilator, and I had added a duct to cycle the air in the utility room, but thad also didn't seem to make much difference (but it helps with humidity). The rear utility room also connects to a large sub-garage space, so I tried keeping the door open to the sub-garage and ran a large fan to exchange the air between the utility room and the sub-garage, but this only had a minor effect too (although the temp in the utility room didn't get as high when I did that).
So I needed to come up with something a lot more effective. I really did not want to get a big chiller because they're expensive, and expensive to operate. I did decide to go from a Current 1/4hp chiller to a Current 1/3hp chiller because they're identical in size/hookup locations so it would be an easy swap out, with about a 15-20% improvement in cooling. (1/4hp chiller for sale, used 2 weeks.) Along the front and sides of the tank, between the top of the tank and bottom of the canopy, there is a more or less continuous 1/4" gap. Put all this gap together and it adds up to a fairly significant "hole". Plus the canopy doors aren't real tight-fitting when they are closed. So I decided I would try to pull cooler air thru the canopy by enclosing the rear and installing an exhaust fan. I bought some 1/4" Plexiglas at HD and a small (10" square) 2-speed 120V fan at Ace for $16, and made a removable panel to enclose the back of the tank, with the fan installed. (Pic below.)
Man, what a difference this made!!! :shocked: The first chiller (1/4hp) now keeps up with the amount of heat created by the lighting, and even shuts off periodically during the day. At night, the chiller doesn't run at all, despite any heat added by the pumps. So my temp now doesn't vary by more than 0.3F. Also, for some reason, the utility room is much cooler. I think the canopy exhaust fan is forcing the warm air from the room, despite its small size. (And this is all with the fan at its low setting!) Of course the heat isn't magically disappearing and this will spell higher A/C bills in the summer, but the heat is going to better use in the rest of the house during winter. I am still going to go with the 1/3hp chiller because I think it will help when the Velocity pumps are finally running.
Here is a photo of the rear plexiglass partition. It's actually made up of several separate panels to allow for a tighter fit around the pipes etc. I took a strip of 1/2" wide 3/8" acrylic, drilled and tapped 1/4" holes along it, and silicone glued it to the top edge of the tank. I also added some strips of wood to the ceiling directly above the tank edge. This gave me anchor points for the panels. Most of the partition is made up of three large panels, and the holes for the screws that secure them are actually slots, so to remove them, the screws just need to be loosened a little and then they lift out of place. The middle partition has a door that opens so I can add food here etc.
I took the clip-on fan and placed it under the tank, blowing across the sump. This should give a little more evaporative cooling and allow for more kalk dosing.
Here is a pic of an Aquanotes graph, showing about 13-14 days of temp data recorded by the ACIII. Along most of the graph, each of the "humps" corresponds to daytime tank temp when the MHs were on. Nighttime temps are the flatter parts of the graph. The "zig-zag" pattern of the graph at night represents the chiller cycling. (The upward jump in nighttime temp around the 8th corresponds to me adjusting the seasonal temp. Aquanotes originally had the annual Feb low temp set at 75F, and I changed it to 77F. The annual Aug high temp is 80.5F and I kept that the same. And I was doing the aquascaping on the 3rd, so the canopy was wide open.) The right side of the graph shows the change that the new partition made. Note that once the temp goes over the set point by 0.1F during the day, the chiller now cools things back down, and only cycles 3-4 times while the lights are on.
The Aquacontroller III allows the user to set the lighting to go on and off at the same time each day, or to have it vary with the season, corresponding to sunrise/sunset times at a particular user-defined latitude. Similarly, seasonal water temperature is also programmable. Reef water temps are typically coolest in February and warmest in August, with little day/night variation. I wanted to be able to fairly tightly regulate my tank's water temps and avoid daytime temperature spikes from the lighting, but I was having trouble controlling the daytime temp of the tank when the metal halides would come on. Originally I thought that having an open-backed canopy and stand would keep overheating from being a problem, but I was way wrong about that one. Even when the 1/4hp chiller ran continuously, the daytime temp would still go up by over 2 degrees F from the ACIII setting. And once the chiller finally brought the temp down after the lights would go off, the chiller was cycling on/off at night much more often than I originally thought it was going to. Regarding other sources of heat I didn't think the Dart pumps were adding too much. But the skimmer, UV unit, and their pumps were obviously not helping. (The ozone reactor and its Velocity T1 pump weren't running yet. And because the refugium wasn't running yet, I had programmed the Velocity T4 that pumped water thru the refugium/chiller circuit to only come on when the chiller was running. But Velocity pumps, although nice and silent, are notorious for adding heat, so I knew that would be an additional problem later on.)
I bought a small 120V clip-on fan and placed it so it would blow air over the tank, but it made little difference. (It just stirred the air over the tank but didn't replace it with cooler air.) And the temp in the utility room would climb to close to 90 degrees in the day because the chiller was running continuously, so despite the canopy and stand being open to the utility room, there was nowhere for the water to dump its heat, as the air in the rear room was much warmer than the water itself! My house has a energy recovery ventilator, and I had added a duct to cycle the air in the utility room, but thad also didn't seem to make much difference (but it helps with humidity). The rear utility room also connects to a large sub-garage space, so I tried keeping the door open to the sub-garage and ran a large fan to exchange the air between the utility room and the sub-garage, but this only had a minor effect too (although the temp in the utility room didn't get as high when I did that).
So I needed to come up with something a lot more effective. I really did not want to get a big chiller because they're expensive, and expensive to operate. I did decide to go from a Current 1/4hp chiller to a Current 1/3hp chiller because they're identical in size/hookup locations so it would be an easy swap out, with about a 15-20% improvement in cooling. (1/4hp chiller for sale, used 2 weeks.) Along the front and sides of the tank, between the top of the tank and bottom of the canopy, there is a more or less continuous 1/4" gap. Put all this gap together and it adds up to a fairly significant "hole". Plus the canopy doors aren't real tight-fitting when they are closed. So I decided I would try to pull cooler air thru the canopy by enclosing the rear and installing an exhaust fan. I bought some 1/4" Plexiglas at HD and a small (10" square) 2-speed 120V fan at Ace for $16, and made a removable panel to enclose the back of the tank, with the fan installed. (Pic below.)
Man, what a difference this made!!! :shocked: The first chiller (1/4hp) now keeps up with the amount of heat created by the lighting, and even shuts off periodically during the day. At night, the chiller doesn't run at all, despite any heat added by the pumps. So my temp now doesn't vary by more than 0.3F. Also, for some reason, the utility room is much cooler. I think the canopy exhaust fan is forcing the warm air from the room, despite its small size. (And this is all with the fan at its low setting!) Of course the heat isn't magically disappearing and this will spell higher A/C bills in the summer, but the heat is going to better use in the rest of the house during winter. I am still going to go with the 1/3hp chiller because I think it will help when the Velocity pumps are finally running.
Here is a photo of the rear plexiglass partition. It's actually made up of several separate panels to allow for a tighter fit around the pipes etc. I took a strip of 1/2" wide 3/8" acrylic, drilled and tapped 1/4" holes along it, and silicone glued it to the top edge of the tank. I also added some strips of wood to the ceiling directly above the tank edge. This gave me anchor points for the panels. Most of the partition is made up of three large panels, and the holes for the screws that secure them are actually slots, so to remove them, the screws just need to be loosened a little and then they lift out of place. The middle partition has a door that opens so I can add food here etc.
I took the clip-on fan and placed it under the tank, blowing across the sump. This should give a little more evaporative cooling and allow for more kalk dosing.
Here is a pic of an Aquanotes graph, showing about 13-14 days of temp data recorded by the ACIII. Along most of the graph, each of the "humps" corresponds to daytime tank temp when the MHs were on. Nighttime temps are the flatter parts of the graph. The "zig-zag" pattern of the graph at night represents the chiller cycling. (The upward jump in nighttime temp around the 8th corresponds to me adjusting the seasonal temp. Aquanotes originally had the annual Feb low temp set at 75F, and I changed it to 77F. The annual Aug high temp is 80.5F and I kept that the same. And I was doing the aquascaping on the 3rd, so the canopy was wide open.) The right side of the graph shows the change that the new partition made. Note that once the temp goes over the set point by 0.1F during the day, the chiller now cools things back down, and only cycles 3-4 times while the lights are on.
I was getting a protein film on the water surface in the sump chambers (after the baffles), so I dug out an old air pump and put in a couple of cheap plastic airstones on either side of the last sump partition. The bubbles keep the film broken up and the proteins in solution, so they can later be taken out by the skimmer. :biggrin:
I stopped in at Ocean Devotion and made a few purchases for my first additions to the tank. 2 Bangii cardinals (M/F I hope), 3 purple firefish, and a royal gramma. Everyone seems to be doing ok. I also got a few corals: a nice-sized Pectinia, a maze and a Symphyllia brain, a neat moon coral, long-tentacled plate, and a pinkish sinularia. I'm a little worried about the plate getting beat up by a clown wanting to be hosted, so I'll move it to quarantine when an anemone/clowns get put in the tank until they're established.
Also, water params seem to be good, but Ca might be a tad low. New test kits coming.
Some algae appearing, I guess that's to be expected with a new setup.
Also, water params seem to be good, but Ca might be a tad low. New test kits coming.
Some algae appearing, I guess that's to be expected with a new setup.
dougers31
Senior Member
Really awesome tank!!! :icon_rock: :bow:
S
spazz
Guest
well well well i see water in the tank! wow its looking good after a years time. ha ha ha ha
good to see you finally got it up and running. lets hope it dont take another year to get it stocked. ha ha ha ha ha
good to see you finally got it up and running. lets hope it dont take another year to get it stocked. ha ha ha ha ha
latazyo
Senior Member
morty - this is a good example of extremes in the hobby and how different setups can be
I have been engaged in an epic battle of wills against microbubbles in my tank and you are adding bubbles to your sump
just a funny observation
I have been engaged in an epic battle of wills against microbubbles in my tank and you are adding bubbles to your sump
just a funny observation
latazyo - I too was wondering if the bubbles were going to be an issue. But they aren't adding microbubbles to the display I think for a couple of reasons. The plastic airstones don't create super-small bubbles, so the bubbles they make rise faster and are less likely to drift down to the pump intake. I think the microbubbles that are put out by a skimmer are so small that they respond more to water currents and less to the tendency to rise. Plus, I only put the airstones about 2" deep in the water. (I just need them to keep the surface broken up.)
I'm pretty convinced that sump baffles are not all that effective in eliminating microbubbles. At a minimum I think baffles should come to within 1/2" of the water surface, because I think when microbubbles are brought close to the water surface there is a better chance they will sort of "magnetically stick" to the surface and not be mixed back down again into the water. But even then this seems to be not completely effective.
I think a better way to get rid of microbubbles is to have sort of a barrier of live rock in between the skimmer and the return pump intake. The bubbles seem to stick to the live rock until they form bigger bubbles and float to the surface. Also not having too high of a flow thru the sump might help.
I'm pretty convinced that sump baffles are not all that effective in eliminating microbubbles. At a minimum I think baffles should come to within 1/2" of the water surface, because I think when microbubbles are brought close to the water surface there is a better chance they will sort of "magnetically stick" to the surface and not be mixed back down again into the water. But even then this seems to be not completely effective.
I think a better way to get rid of microbubbles is to have sort of a barrier of live rock in between the skimmer and the return pump intake. The bubbles seem to stick to the live rock until they form bigger bubbles and float to the surface. Also not having too high of a flow thru the sump might help.
seriously insane and brilliant
Lost one of the Bangiis. :crap: OD had just gotten the fish the prior day, and even though they fed them for me, it wasn't easy to see if they were all eating. The smaller of the two that I purchased showed just a minor interest in food the first day I had it. Some type of fin rot on its tail became apparent on the second day, and then it died overnight. Might've been a better idea to put a hold on the fish and wait for it to adjust to the shipping to the store before finally taking it home, but we thought we had picked out a m/f pair and it would have been tough for the store to keep them distinguished from the other bangiis in the tank. Maybe when they get all the tanks on a common water system they can move new fish that are on hold to a separate tank.
All other inhabitants still seem to be doing well though.
All other inhabitants still seem to be doing well though.
more skimmer mods
I made a few more mods to my ASM G4x skimmer so I took some photos of what I did. I wanted to minimize turbulence in the skimmer chamber, and add more air as well as reduce the overall bubble size.
The inlet from the feed pump seemed to create a lot of turbulence high up in the skimmer chamber, and slosh around in the cone area. I thought if I could widen the area of flow, as well as have that flow pointing upward, it might smooth things out. I found a closet flange at HD that would accept either 4" or 3" PVC pipe. This worked well as a pipe base. I cut a 15" high section of 3" PVC pipe to insert into it.
Then I cut a 14" long piece of 3/4" pipe that would insert down into the 3" pipe. The feed water comes in thru the 3/4" pipe at the bottom of the 3" pipe and then flows upward towards the skimmer neck.
I did the mesh mod to the Sedra 9000 recirc pump, and to spread its outlet around the 3" inner pipe, I built a pipe 'donut' out of 1" fittings (mostly 45deg elbows and street elbows). I had to trim most of the fittings down to get the assembly to fit inside the skimmer chamber. (Being able to use a bandsaw really helped with this.) Then I drilled holes around the ring for bubble outlets. Note that I used smaller holes closer to the pump, and they get larger farther away from the pump, to help keep the outlets balanced. The 90deg elbow on the ring inlet is there to get the ring down a little lower into the skimmer chamber for better contact time.
This is a view down into the skimmer showing these parts in place.
I then realized that the water being introduced at the bottom of the 3" pipe was getting no contact time with bubbles as it was flowing up the pipe (and this was a significant amount of the skimmer volume not being put to use), so I thought it would be helpful to intoduce air into the feed line as well. I had a 1/2" Kent venturi sitting around and I connected it to my OR2500 feed pump to see what kind of flow rate I got. It ended up being around 100gph, too low for my aquarium system volume. I was shooting for more like 350-400gph. So I thought that using two larger venturis running in parallel with a somewhat larger pump might be about right. I ordered two Kent 3/4" venturis from Aquatic Ecosystems, and picked up an OR3500 from Dirk. This ended up being just about perfect after I drilled the venturi throats out slightly to 7/32". This pic shows how I assembled the venturis, the two parts of the assembly press together.
I added a hose tee to join the venturi inlets, and added a valve so I could adjust the air flow if necessary. This also cut down the venturi noise a lot.
This is the venturi assembly next to the OR3500 feed pump:
The OR3500's outlet is just a smooth-walled hole, and its hose adapter just slips into this hole, sealed by o-rings.
This shows the feed pump assembly installed. Because everything just presses together, it's relatively easy to dissasemble for an acid-soak to remove calcium deposits. (The 3/4" plugs are there for holes I made from other feed pump experimentation/mistakes. It's a good thing the PVC of the skimmer body is forgiving. I think I could turn the thing into swiss cheese and it still wouldn't crack.)
And here is a view with the recirc pump installed, with the inner components too. Footprint is about 23" x 9". Just add the gate valve and the cone/collection cup and it's good to go!
It seems to be working pretty well. Before the mods, it was drawing about 4 lpm from the single Sedra 9000 needlewheel recirc pump. The mesh mod bumped this up to 8-10 lpm (with finer bubbles) and the venturis are adding about another 5 lpm. So, ~14 lpm for a 6-7gal skimmer seems pretty reasonable. It's producing some fairly stinky gunk, with not too huge of a bioload at this point. I may try to post a short video of it running at some point. It was a fun mod!
I made a few more mods to my ASM G4x skimmer so I took some photos of what I did. I wanted to minimize turbulence in the skimmer chamber, and add more air as well as reduce the overall bubble size.
The inlet from the feed pump seemed to create a lot of turbulence high up in the skimmer chamber, and slosh around in the cone area. I thought if I could widen the area of flow, as well as have that flow pointing upward, it might smooth things out. I found a closet flange at HD that would accept either 4" or 3" PVC pipe. This worked well as a pipe base. I cut a 15" high section of 3" PVC pipe to insert into it.
Then I cut a 14" long piece of 3/4" pipe that would insert down into the 3" pipe. The feed water comes in thru the 3/4" pipe at the bottom of the 3" pipe and then flows upward towards the skimmer neck.
I did the mesh mod to the Sedra 9000 recirc pump, and to spread its outlet around the 3" inner pipe, I built a pipe 'donut' out of 1" fittings (mostly 45deg elbows and street elbows). I had to trim most of the fittings down to get the assembly to fit inside the skimmer chamber. (Being able to use a bandsaw really helped with this.) Then I drilled holes around the ring for bubble outlets. Note that I used smaller holes closer to the pump, and they get larger farther away from the pump, to help keep the outlets balanced. The 90deg elbow on the ring inlet is there to get the ring down a little lower into the skimmer chamber for better contact time.
This is a view down into the skimmer showing these parts in place.
I then realized that the water being introduced at the bottom of the 3" pipe was getting no contact time with bubbles as it was flowing up the pipe (and this was a significant amount of the skimmer volume not being put to use), so I thought it would be helpful to intoduce air into the feed line as well. I had a 1/2" Kent venturi sitting around and I connected it to my OR2500 feed pump to see what kind of flow rate I got. It ended up being around 100gph, too low for my aquarium system volume. I was shooting for more like 350-400gph. So I thought that using two larger venturis running in parallel with a somewhat larger pump might be about right. I ordered two Kent 3/4" venturis from Aquatic Ecosystems, and picked up an OR3500 from Dirk. This ended up being just about perfect after I drilled the venturi throats out slightly to 7/32". This pic shows how I assembled the venturis, the two parts of the assembly press together.
I added a hose tee to join the venturi inlets, and added a valve so I could adjust the air flow if necessary. This also cut down the venturi noise a lot.
This is the venturi assembly next to the OR3500 feed pump:
The OR3500's outlet is just a smooth-walled hole, and its hose adapter just slips into this hole, sealed by o-rings.
This shows the feed pump assembly installed. Because everything just presses together, it's relatively easy to dissasemble for an acid-soak to remove calcium deposits. (The 3/4" plugs are there for holes I made from other feed pump experimentation/mistakes. It's a good thing the PVC of the skimmer body is forgiving. I think I could turn the thing into swiss cheese and it still wouldn't crack.
)
And here is a view with the recirc pump installed, with the inner components too. Footprint is about 23" x 9". Just add the gate valve and the cone/collection cup and it's good to go!
It seems to be working pretty well. Before the mods, it was drawing about 4 lpm from the single Sedra 9000 needlewheel recirc pump. The mesh mod bumped this up to 8-10 lpm (with finer bubbles) and the venturis are adding about another 5 lpm. So, ~14 lpm for a 6-7gal skimmer seems pretty reasonable. It's producing some fairly stinky gunk, with not too huge of a bioload at this point. I may try to post a short video of it running at some point. It was a fun mod!
A
alligator
Guest
Okay, two questions that I must ask. (1) When can we come see this? You have a lot of accumulated knowledge that would be great to pass on to others; and (2) give us a ballpark number of how much something like this sets a person back. $5k, $50k, $500k?
The tank is nothing right now because it's so new... It would be sort of embarrassing to show it in a club meeting until things get established!
Not sure how to answer your other question -- Are you really asking for a figure here? I guess it's sort of unconventional for me (or others) to get that specific in a forum, be it for a 25g, 250g, or 2500g tank... I can tell you the big-ticket items were the tank itself, and the live rock. I tried to save cost where possible. I ended up wishing I had shopped around more thoroughly for a tank mfgr. Lighting of course was another expense, but I was happy to get the MH fixtures on sale, and the rest of the lighting was retrofit. For a lot of other items, I guess I sort of went second tier in my choices, and tried to do diy mods to improve them, i.e. AquaMedic over Deltec for the Kalk stirrer, ASM over Euroreef for the skimmer, Coralife over Korallin for the Ca reactor. I have a home shop that I used quite a bit to make my own things, like the sump and other acrylic items (VHO fixtures, 'fuge, etc.) Doing my own plumbing and wiring of course saved cost too. I'm guess I'm saying the overall price was more like (or less than) your first number than your half-million number!
Gawd I would hope so. :lookaround:(Edit: Oh and I should have mentioned the Aquacontroller and assos equipment as one of the bigger expenses too. I could have gone with X10 controllers instead of the DC units, but had a bad experiences with the X10 modules in the past with them not functioning properly. It seemed like it made more sense to avoid malfunctions with the DCs than pay for potential disasters down the line.)
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Kvmn, I actually did do the mesh mod to the Sedra recirc pump. It made an improvement to the air intake and bubble size.
When I get a chance I might post some pics of the way I did this mod, but because there is a lot of info already out there on the mesh mod I decided to just hold off until later. If you'd like to see what I did just send a PM --So here is a photo of about 2-1/2 days of skimmate:
I'm thinking it's pretty good because of my light tank load at this point. But I don't know if the dual venturi design for the input is really helping much, I'm considering a needlewheel pump input for better air injection and feed rate. (Plus the higher-pressure feed pump has recently malfunctioned.) Results to follow soon I hope.
I'm thinking it's pretty good because of my light tank load at this point. But I don't know if the dual venturi design for the input is really helping much, I'm considering a needlewheel pump input for better air injection and feed rate. (Plus the higher-pressure feed pump has recently malfunctioned.) Results to follow soon I hope.
isnt that from the little bit that leaches from new pvc? its so small that most skimmers miss it.