150 Redux

[Ah64av8tor]

Jeff,
Thanks, for the pic I haven't found an ER yet that has the center of the T above the centerline of the transition by more than 1/4 of an inch, and it has ER scratching their heads too.

I have thought of a lot of ways to fix the problem, but I'm waiting to see what the good guys at ER offer first. There is some talk of a RC400.

I will recirc this 12-1 my self as a last resort.

 

[CMcNeil]

just get rid of the union.

 

[jeffbrig]

< hijack >

Hey checkinhawk, that pic in your avatar reminds me a lot of this acro I bought recently. This one was from a bali aquaculture shipment at a LFS, yours is from ORA?

< /hijack >

 

[Ah64av8tor]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9733138#post9733138 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by checkinhawk
just get rid of the union.

That would be to risky seeing it is glued to the elbo and that is glued to the body.

It has to clear the baffle and go through the sock and needs to be as tall as I can get it or I will have to Recirc it and lift it up on some egg crate. I can handle the Recirc mod but if the gate valve doesn't work it will be a bear to adjust. It is a new skimmer and I should not have to cut it up and modify it to get it to work.


Ill see what ER comes up with first

 

[boydx6]

I agree, ER should take care of it. As much as you pay for them, they should work without any mods!

 

[Ah64av8tor]

I took some pics to share and a few even came out pretty good.

I saw this and had to get the camera.

I figure it was over 8 inches long it was hard holding the tape measure and taking the pic.

I didn't really like corals much that you had to feed but these Fungia are pretty cool.

A few freak shots of corals.

and the whole thing again.

 

[boydx6]

Looks great Greg, I think you got that camera thing figured out!

 

[Ah64av8tor]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9737015#post9737015 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by boydx6
Looks great Greg, I think you got that camera thing figured out!

Stephen, I'm not doing any thing different and those are the only decent ones out of about 50.

I spent most of the day trying to get some resolution on the skimmer from ER and as it turns out the 12-1 is the only one that the center of the T is not aligned with the transition, they sent this nice pic.

The problem here is it wont make it over the baffle with out raising the skimmer several inches. John from Fish And Other Ichthy Stuff called ER and is working on getting me a new union that does not have Pipe glued into it so I can add a longer pipe to raise the T so its centered with the transition and then put the Gate valve and elbow on. It still means that the skimmer will need to be raised an inch or so off the bottom of the sump and if that is the case I will need to Recirculate the pumps to keep the sump level low enough to accommodate the back flow when power is off.


This is not exactly what I was looking to have to do but it will fix several issues with the sump water level. It looks like Ill be looking for some new pumps and uni-seals or adding unions to my pumps.

 

[boydx6]

So is ER saying that you are trying to use it in a way that it was not intended and that is why you are having the problems?

 

[Ah64av8tor]

No just that it needs to be as depicted and that it works as advertised. My problem is the custom sump that was designed with it being the same way as their other skimmers.

Ill just Recirculate it and it will be more efficient than it was, if I don't destroy it doing the mod.

 

[original-reefland]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9735333#post9735333 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Ah64av8tor
I took some pics to share and a few even came out pretty good.

Great picture, but thats not good placement. That Montipora will easily get 12 to 18 inches across. Hopefully the Acroporas are easy to move.

 

[Ah64av8tor]

Rich, Thanks the corals came from your old friend Chris Jessen.

They all are easy to move and not in their permanent spot yet. I have had to move things around a lot to keep them out of the way of the anemone that was on the move.

 

[original-reefland]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9746001#post9746001 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Ah64av8tor
Rich, Thanks the corals came from your old friend Chris Jessen.

How's Chris doing? Haven't seen him in a long time. Are these from his home tank? Most of my nicest Acroporas came from Chris.

 

[Ah64av8tor]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9746248#post9746248 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by original-reefland
How's Chris doing? Haven't seen him in a long time. Are these from his home tank? Most of my nicest Acroporas came from Chris.

Rich, Chris is a great guy and his shop is absolutely fabulous.

Alot of the corals are Chris Jessen L.E.s (a little joke for him because I have some Steve Tyree L.E.s that he busts on me about) I almost have him trained to know that if he has an accidental fragging that I want it, I still miss a few now and then

 

[jeffbrig]

Greg, I have to say that you seem to be putting together a nice collection or corals. I can tell already that I'm going to have to pay you another visit down the road. I owe you a piece of my blue tenuis anyway!

 

[Ah64av8tor]

Jeff, Thanks and you are welcome any time just plan on spending the weekend and well go out on the boat one day and do fish stuff the other.

I have a few small spectacular (LE) corals that will grow out to be very nice. I am supposed to get some large colonies this weekend and could have a lot of Frags from the move.

 

[mflamb]

Did you get the skimmer dialed in yet?
What about the recirculation modification?
What about the capital/capitol? (however you spell that)

The sand I got from you has all kinds of life crawling out of it.

 

[o2zen]

Man I raised my skimmer and dropped my T so it is in the middle of the transition line and it is still blowing the top. Was ok once again until I changed out my sock and since then it will not work right. I am getting very frustrated with my ER135 and starting to wish I had gone with another brand.

 

[Ah64av8tor]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9781597#post9781597 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by mflamb
Did you get the skimmer dialed in yet?
What about the recirculation modification?
What about the capital/capitol? (however you spell that)

The sand I got from you has all kinds of life crawling out of it.

Mike,

The skimmer is the same, the parts to do the recirc mod should be in the first of next week. ER was good enough to give me a new union with out the pipe glued in so I can change the configuration of the plumbing. I had to pay for the rest of the parts ( uniseals, drain valve and pipe) I still need to pick up some Sch 80 unions.

The capital has been in the 120 for a week now with no ill effect. This afternoon I gave it the sniff test and it just smelled like the sea, so I called in an impartial juror (boydx6) to do a blind sniff test and he said it smelled like a fish tank, so in the 150 it went.

That was good old fashioned, home grown (Southdown) live sand, I was sure that you would not have found any better.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9783347#post9783347 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by o2zen
Man I raised my skimmer and dropped my T so it is in the middle of the transition line and it is still blowing the top. Was ok once again until I changed out my sock and since then it will not work right. I am getting very frustrated with my ER135 and starting to wish I had gone with another brand.

Eric, Was it a new sock? I always wash mine before I use them the first time, if you don't they will make any skimmer do that.



Update, This morning I bought the contents of a SPS packed 46 bow that whitetiprs was tearing down, thanks for the sweet corals Matt. This bow was wall to wall coral, close to 40 colonies, boydx6 gave me a hand with the all the nug work, thanks Stephen. It only took about an hour and a half to get out all the corals and pack them up, I ended up with 2 5gal salt buckets a 100qt icebox and a large fish box full of corals. There were 2 large Monti caps that barely fit in the salt bucket. From just the move I ended up with some huge frags of the caps and enough frags from the rest of the corals to fill the prop tank, I glued frags to plugs for almost 3 hours this evening.

 

[Ah64av8tor]

It’s Sunday and all the normal stuff on the 150 is done. It has been taking me quite a bit longer to do the weekly tasks on the 150 than the 65 ever did. It takes for ever just to clean the cup on the skimmer. With 2 dirty socks to change every day I have to wash a load of socks now on Sunday also.

The water tests are in the recommended ranges but not quite where I like them, the #s were:
Sg 1.025
Ca 460
Alk 3.55 meq/l 9.9Dkh
Mg 1320
I adjusted the levels with 2 part to bring them back into balance and a little higher where I like them.

The skimmer has been tossing a lot of very wet skimmate and over time has been dropping my salinity a little. On Friday morning there was a ¼ inch of dark nasty gunk in the cup I didn’t think I need to empty the cup so I left it alone when I got home about 6 hours later the skimmer had gone crazy and over flowed the cup and there was about 6” of foam in the sump. I can’t wait for the parts to come in to do the recirc mod so I can get this thing dialed in.

I still have half of a doz corals sitting on the sand bed waiting for me to decide where I’m going to put them. The prop tank is packed with frags and I have a pile of frags to glue to plugs yet.