240 Inwall Construction (Image Intense)

[weatherson]

One of the issues with keeping an aquarium is being away from home and not knowing if the power goes out. Here in the Central Valley of California, summer heat can make a two hour outage devastating for a tank. So... I researched devices that could let me know of an outage and found one that can phone me as well as three others in the event I was not available (cell phone). This is the Sensaphone 1104 that I found used on EBay for a deal of a price. Basically, this unit will phone four numbers in order should the previous numbers not answer in the event the power goes out for a predetermined amount of time. It also has three other inputs for such things as temperature and water leak detection, both of which I use, as well as other options. It has a synthesized voice that introduces itself and explains which fault has taken place. It also has a battery backup so not to be reliant on the AC power. It's quite sophisticated in it's abilities but I won't get into them here. You can check them out here. Here's a shot of my unit in place and giving me piece of mind...

And here's an MP3 of the unit's voice...

http://www.weatherson.com/sensaphone.mp3

Joseph.

 

[Konadog]

Funny, I have thought of using one of the Sensaphone units to monitor my tank after installing a few of them in computer rooms! Great to see one actually being used.

 

[weatherson]

For a while now I've been injecting air into my closed loops at the point of when they cross over and both are on. I did this by installing a solenoid that is controlled by the AquaController to come on during this time for one minute. The solenoid allows air to flow through lines connected to inlets at both closed loop pump inlets. Air is sucked in by the low pressure area here and gets mixed with the water prior to being shot out the Penductors at both ends of the tank. This one minute burst of air takes place at the beginning of the fifteen minute, both pumps on, overlap between the six hour rotation of the closed loops. Here's a shot of this taking place...

Here's a fairly recent back-of-tank shot that you can see the air lines that run to the closed loop pump inlets. The solenoid for this system can be seen just above the blue ozone generator at the top right of the white board that holds the electrical devices on the wall. It's partially hidden by the chains that hold the refugium light. The air line feeding the solenoid is connected to the carbon air filter that also provides clean air to the skimmer. Here's the shot...

So... my reason for doing this is partially an experiment and partially based on my thoughts that it will aid in removing waste matter from the tank. It essentially works as an in-tank skimmer, pulling waste out of the water and to the surface where it goes through the prefilter boxes and to the mechanical filtering devices in the sump. I also like that some corals slime in response to the bubbles and this slime also gets filtered out. My thinking is that this helps the corals excrete waste better than without. Now, this is just speculation on my part but there appears to be absolutely no negative side effects received by the corals. I've been running this system for months now and have noticed greater coral growth since starting but can't be certain this is a direct result or not. At this point, I am going to continue this air injection because as a whole, I feel it is beneficial to my tank.

Joseph.

 

[weatherson]

And to finish this update up, here's a full tank shot from today followed by some recent macro shots for your viewing pleasure.

Joseph.

 

[hawaiianwargod]

Joseph,

Well done...again! Very nice pics and your tank is always on top
of the chain!!!

 

[LittleBlueGT]

I love when people make my tank loop like crap, gives me reason to work harder!

One quick question about your ozone (or a couple).

My tank has about 300 gallons of total water. Barebottom, things are growing like stink. No algea problems.

I have the red sea ozomizer (200 mg/hr) I have recently cleaned it, and that helped a bit with performance.

The highest ORP I ever get is about 320. I borrowed a friends ozonizer (250 mg/hr) and then I got close to 370.

What ozonizer do you have? Like it? Cleanable? Replaceable parts? How big? What size would you recommend for a 500 gallon tank (I may pgrade in the future)?

Thanks

 

[Stile2]

Joseph,

I have seen a fellow reefers tank that he says had AEFWs and he got rid of them by way of Yellow Chromis. He claims that his Yellow Chromis eats the AEFW right off the corals.

Now please understand that I have zero proof of this, but I thought I would pass along the info, just in case.

Keith

 

[servicky]

AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME.... Dont know what else to say and i thought my 150 gallon was gonna be bad......

 

[Pico Keeper]

Wow I just read the entire original and split of this thread in one sitting. I think I will have to sleep overnight before I can even begin to comment. I think tommorrow I will read it again with a notebook and take alot of notes for my upcoming reef upgrade next year. All I can say is WOW!

 

[weatherson]

hawaiianwargod,
Thank you very much.

LittleBlueGT,
I would suggest rather than borrowing a different ozone generator, you borrow a different ORP meter. Seriously, you may want to try this or at least recalibrate your probe. You don't want to rely on an ORP reading to assume you aren't adding enough ozone to raise your ORP. Ozone can be harmful if over used.

I have an Ozotech 150 which is just that... 150 G/hr. It has a dial for altering the amount of ozone created. This dial reads from 1 to 10 and I run mine at a level of 3. With this, I keep consistent low 400's ORP on my ~300-gallon system. If we assume this dial is accurate (more than likely not but close), that would suggest that I am feeding the tank 45 G/Hr. of ozone to achieve this level of ORP. Now the means of application will also come into play so there may be a difference between our systems there but consider my levels when sizing yours. I have mine injected into my dual Beckett skimmer through one of the two Becketts.

I've used this Ozotech generator for many years now with no problems at all. I have cleaned it previously but this was prior to running an air filter. The parts within are replaceable but again, I've not had a need to do so. I really feel this unit could easily provide more than enough ozone for a 500-gallon, heavily stocked tank.

Keith,
Thanks for the heads up on the Yellow Chromis. I'm always interested in finding a natural predator as opposed to chemical treatment.

servicky,
That says it all. Thanks.

Pico Keeper,
You plan to read it twice?!! WOW back at you. Thanks.
________________________________________________________________________________

I completely forgot to mention that I also did some lighting and controlling upgrades. As to lighting, I replaced two of the 250-watt MH bulbs with 400's. I was able to do this with the IceCap pendants that are convertible from 250 to 400 bulbs. My issue was with having to fit these into my existing light box. Beings the IceCaps are only an inch or two longer than the PFO 250 pendant, they worked quite well. What I id was to replace the two units that are on either side of the center unit. So now I have 250, 400, 250, 400 and 250. The 250's are 14K Hamiltons and the 400's are 20K PFO's. The colors between the two are pretty much identical and is imperceptible to the naked eye.

The controller upgrade was to move from X-10 controllers to the Neptune DC8's. I have three of these with everything running through them for silent turn on/off switching and no AC line noise interference from the electronic ballasts. When I added the 400-watt ballasts, the X-10 controllers proved to be inconsistent due to the line noise. Now everything is controlled with accuracy and provides great piece of mind being hard-wired to the AquaController II controller. Here's a shot of the ballasts and DC8...

Joseph.

 

[matt & pam]

Have you popped a fuse yet on the DC8 with all those ballasts? I had 3 M57 ballasts on one, and even with staging activation of each ballast I would blow the fuse. I subsequently swithched my lighting to a DC4HD without problem. Or do you a resettable breaker mod replacing the fuse?

Matt

 

[Bax]

Joseph

Thanks for the update!

Brilliant!!! ... as always!

 

[original-reefland]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8509167#post8509167 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by matt & pam
Have you popped a fuse yet on the DC8 with all those ballasts? I had 3 M57 ballasts on one, and even with staging activation of each ballast I would blow the fuse. I subsequently swithched my lighting to a DC4HD without problem. Or do you a resettable breaker mod replacing the fuse?

Matt

I had 3 HQI's starting on a DC4HD, melted the unit. Fuse never blew. I had to re-wire the light hood to stage the lights on. No problems on the new DC4HD.

 

[MyMonkey]

Your tank just keeps on getting better. Great job Joseph.

 

[maxxII]

I realize I'm asking kinda of a fruitless question as I dont live in California, but approximately how much of an increase did you se in your electric bill when you swapped out to the 400 watt lights? I'm really just looking at a % kind of number if you're able to do so....

Nick

 

[bheron]

Joseph - great update. As everyone's mentioned, this has to be the best tank and thread combination on RC. Im amazed everytime I check in. The nylon cover deal is phenominal - I went against eggcrate for the exact same reasons, and I have T5. I have to say, though, that in your animated GIF it almost looks brighter in the 3rd pic, with the eggcrate. Oh well.

Anyway, I was writing b/c it looks like you have some sort of moonlight LEDs mounted on the top front of your tank? Did you alwasy have this - thought you had them in your light box. Im asking b/c Im toying with different designs for my tank. How many LEDs do you use and do you feel its enough? Do you also have the blue bulbs underneath in the canopy?

As always, thanks for your time and dedication to posting and answering questions all in such detail.

PS - great pics too. that one of the wrasse peeking out is a great shot.

 

[LittleBlueGT]

Thanks for the ORP advice. I will test my probe.

 

[weatherson]

matt & pam,
I did pop the internal fuse when I added the two tank-top, sump and window fans to that DC8. Yes, I was really pushing the envelope and proved so by the fuse pop. But, I'd run all the lights (2-400's, 3-250's and both VHO ballasts) for months prior to that and since with no issues at all. I do have them all staggered as far as on/off times, as mentioned.

Bax,
You are welcome and thanks.

MyMonkey,
Thank you.

Nick,
I haven't actually done a direct comparison, ballast to ballast, but roughly, I'm using 300-watts more (2-250's replaced by 2-400's). I'm ALWAYS in the "Over 300% of Baseline" level so that equates to $0.33/Kwh currently. So... that would be ~$.10/hr. and at roughly 10-hours/day, that's roughly $1./day or $30./month more. I really hate it when people ask me to calculate what we pay here in electricity.

Bryan,
Take a look at the right hand, end wall of the tank when looking at those images. I think you will see the differences more easily there. The biggest issue with the egg-crate is that the light is allowed to pass only in a much more vertical path. Most all the angular light is diffused which then attenuates the levels.

For the moonlights information, refer to the following page of this thread...
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=553571&perpage=25&pagenumber=25
I removed the incandescent moonlights when I added the LED versions. This also provided more room in the light box for the two new IceCap pendants. Thanks and you are welcome. The Christmas wrasse shot was actually taken by a friend and PS'd by myself so I can't take full credit on that one... or the zoanthid shot as that was the same. Credit goes to jwedehase for his photo snapping assistance.

Joseph.

 

[bheron]

THanks Joseph. Ah, yes, I remember this part well. I too have the Lebos lights - I did the DIY b/c it seemed so cool! It was an xmas break project a few years ago. Thanks for the info.

A few more ques/comments:

- what the heck is a "45-degree chamfered edge" ?!?! LOL

- You think they might be too close. Good point, I should fool with mine to see what works best.

- How many do you have across the lenght of your tank (8' I think)?

- Do you think thats enough or would you add more?

- Have you seen Brett Lebo has some "wide angle" blue leds on his website now. I am going to use them.

 

[melev]

Joseph, I always look forward to the updates you post. To be completely frank, there isn't anything I can type that hasn't been said repeatedly in this thread, so I'll resort to these:

The airbubbles thing is interesting. I'll have to reread what you wrote. I really like the mesh screen you put on top, with the custom frames. We're you playing tennis one day and said...."Heeeey, I've got an idea! "

:thumbsup: