bag151
Premium Member
BM-300
BM-300
ITS FINALLY HERE!!! My BM-300 came in this evening. It has been quite an emotional roller coaster the last few days but I am a very happy camper as of the moment.
First with the Bad. Well on Sunday I came up with a excellent idea and I wanted a proof of concept before I shelled out some money. The idea is using large diameter masonry bits to bore through the center of my rock and so to make sure that I wouldn't just fracture the rock in half I got out one of my masonry bits, my drill, and went to town on a small rock. Proof of concept worked, I turned the rock in the hole to sand, ended up with a nice hole, and dropped the rock into the sump. Well I went to the sink to wash the bit off and while doing so I noticed that the chrome coating had be scowered off to reveal something that looks a heck of a lot like copper. After close examination I determined that the majority of the bit was a copper alloy of some sort with a misleading chrome alloy finish. My heart dropped thinking I just potentially introduced very fine copper grains to the tank which are stuck to the sand grains that removed the chrome finish. So to be on the safe side I immediately removed the rock, drained the sump and used a wetvac to remove all the small portion of sand that remained on the bottom of the chamber where the rock was. Not FUN!
Now on to better news, crisis averted and I will run copper sponge just in case for quite some time. After this was taken care of I ventured to home depot to rent a hammer drill. Returning home I went to town boring through some very large rocks in a manner of min. I then stacked the rock on with a 3/4in pvc pipe acting as a central post. This works awesome and I will be renting the hammer drill again in the near future, I have decided to order some more rock. I am getting some Lalo in most likely by the end of the week so next weekend let the drilling commence.
On to the best part, I got my BM-300 in from Reef Geek today and this thing is AMAZING!!! When I was originally looking for a skimmer the BM-250 was the top on my list so when I called up Greg at Reef Geek to ask a few questions about the 250 he filled me in on the 300 and I got my name right there at the top of the list. I have been bugging him for weeks on when the skimmer was going to come in and after being pushed back a few times because they were having custom packages made from foam, the shipment was sent my way. I am so glad that the skimmer was delayed for the packing because when it arrived at my place there was a number of 5in x 1in slashes and dents in the box, it looked almost like the delivery guy tried to put the dolly right through the side of the box 4 times. The packing worked out perfectly. I was very worried about getting this thing to fit in my sump but my sump design worked out perfectly, I set the base on 8x 1.5in pvc pieces to raise the skimmer to the correct height. This is just a temporary fix, I will be making a stand out of the extra poly from my base board under the tank. The collection cup will hold 3.1 gallons of skimmate before needing to be emptied and this thing honestly makes a bubble column so dense and so fine that I can barely tell the difference between one bubble and the next. I have no doubt that this thing will be able to handle my bioload with no problem.
As usual click the red house for more pics.
BM-300
ITS FINALLY HERE!!! My BM-300 came in this evening. It has been quite an emotional roller coaster the last few days but I am a very happy camper as of the moment.
First with the Bad. Well on Sunday I came up with a excellent idea and I wanted a proof of concept before I shelled out some money. The idea is using large diameter masonry bits to bore through the center of my rock and so to make sure that I wouldn't just fracture the rock in half I got out one of my masonry bits, my drill, and went to town on a small rock. Proof of concept worked, I turned the rock in the hole to sand, ended up with a nice hole, and dropped the rock into the sump. Well I went to the sink to wash the bit off and while doing so I noticed that the chrome coating had be scowered off to reveal something that looks a heck of a lot like copper. After close examination I determined that the majority of the bit was a copper alloy of some sort with a misleading chrome alloy finish. My heart dropped thinking I just potentially introduced very fine copper grains to the tank which are stuck to the sand grains that removed the chrome finish. So to be on the safe side I immediately removed the rock, drained the sump and used a wetvac to remove all the small portion of sand that remained on the bottom of the chamber where the rock was. Not FUN!
Now on to better news, crisis averted and I will run copper sponge just in case for quite some time. After this was taken care of I ventured to home depot to rent a hammer drill. Returning home I went to town boring through some very large rocks in a manner of min. I then stacked the rock on with a 3/4in pvc pipe acting as a central post. This works awesome and I will be renting the hammer drill again in the near future, I have decided to order some more rock. I am getting some Lalo in most likely by the end of the week so next weekend let the drilling commence.
On to the best part, I got my BM-300 in from Reef Geek today and this thing is AMAZING!!! When I was originally looking for a skimmer the BM-250 was the top on my list so when I called up Greg at Reef Geek to ask a few questions about the 250 he filled me in on the 300 and I got my name right there at the top of the list. I have been bugging him for weeks on when the skimmer was going to come in and after being pushed back a few times because they were having custom packages made from foam, the shipment was sent my way. I am so glad that the skimmer was delayed for the packing because when it arrived at my place there was a number of 5in x 1in slashes and dents in the box, it looked almost like the delivery guy tried to put the dolly right through the side of the box 4 times. The packing worked out perfectly. I was very worried about getting this thing to fit in my sump but my sump design worked out perfectly, I set the base on 8x 1.5in pvc pieces to raise the skimmer to the correct height. This is just a temporary fix, I will be making a stand out of the extra poly from my base board under the tank. The collection cup will hold 3.1 gallons of skimmate before needing to be emptied and this thing honestly makes a bubble column so dense and so fine that I can barely tell the difference between one bubble and the next. I have no doubt that this thing will be able to handle my bioload with no problem.
As usual click the red house for more pics.
