Recent content by Roamer

Folks, I'm looking at redoing my sump setup and switching from my external Amp Master 3000 pump to a Sicce SDC 7.0 pump. This pump does not come with an intake filter/screen like it's little brother, so I was wondering what screen/filter do you use with this pump? Thanks!

I would have stopped at the first two (expensive/complex). "inherently more efficient"? Yeah, about that. Small, single phase induction motors are about the least efficient electric motors there are. Especially compared to BLDC motors. The little AC power heads are worse, but... Look at...

I had to laugh at this. Simply because TODAY I had my 25 year old Eheim 1048 give up the ghost (thankfully via tripping the GFCI instead of releasing the magic smoke) while transferring some salt water into my main tank. It served long and well. But it DID fail eventually! :)

I can't hear the air inlet unless I have the cabinet door open, so it isn't an issue for me.

I did. It is still breaking in, but it is already doing a pretty good job.

From talking to suppliers, the word I heard (grain of salt required) is Coralvue only brought in 10 units initially. Needless to say, they didn't last long! When I emailed Coralvue about this, they did not deny only getting 10 units initially and they said they are expecting 50+ units in early...

I called them and they are out of stock as well. Same April-May time frame as everyone else. Well, I just checked my credit card balance. The purchase is on there, but the refund has NOT been credited yet.

The explanation I got was basically that Reef Specialties leaves the item showing in stock so people can still place orders and get on the back order list. Of course, they could just as easily show them out of stock and DIRECTLY allow them to place a proper back order... Personally, I got the...

UPDATE: This was NOT Fragtasticreef!!! My mistake! It was Reef Specialty instead. My apologies to Fragtasticreef. They show them in stock on their website, but they are actually out of stock. I originally placed an order for one over the weekend and they called on Monday to let me know it...

So everyone seems to be out of stock until at least April. Does anyone know of anyplace with them in stock at this time? Also, it kind of makes me wonder what is going on with the delay in getting product out to distributors. Pump issues? Design issues? Just issues getting supplies? I hate...

And the windings REALLY don't like trying to carry 4X the current when you have dropped the voltage by 4. Not for long at any rate.

I still remember an incident with a mirror ball motor when I was in high school. That motor was not much different than the motors in the AC pumps. My friends dad wanted to slow it down, so he but a potentiometer on it. I told him it wouldn't work, but I couldn't remember WHY at that instant...

I don't want to be too picky, but this is an important safety topic. A GFCI DOES "interrupt" the current when it is triggered, but it has nothing to do with how MUCH current is flowing. That is the job of the main breaker in the panel (of course, it is only designed to protect the WIRING, not...

That link Jimbob posted would definitely be the easier way to for the pH probe interface. It's probably not as absolutely accurate as the amp I built, but it appears to be more than good enough for monitoring the pH of an aquarium.

Temp is easy. I'm currently looking at building a small temperature controller and I am thinking pretty hard about the DS20S18 part. It's got good accuracy and it is pretty easy to interface to an MCU. The pH probe is a whole 'nother ball of wax! You can't just stick a meter to the output...