Aflac's 240 gallon buil
- Thread starter Aflac01
- Start date
For a ozone reactor I'm thinking maybe just use. Normal reactor like I use for my biopellets and just hook it up to a bubble blaster like the SRO skimmers use and fill it with bioballs. Just have that in series with a reactor with carbon in it and it should work.......I think
Well I am back and have been up all night getting the tank together......and im adding water to it right now.....
and here is a picture of the canopy frame with my lights in it....ill put it up on the tank in a few days....figure i will get it fillled and get some live rock in it before i put the canopy back on.
and here is a picture of the canopy frame with my lights in it....ill put it up on the tank in a few days....figure i will get it fillled and get some live rock in it before i put the canopy back on.
sasharotty
Moved on to my couch
I noticed you veered away from the Aquac to an SRO.Any reasons why just curious didnt see a reason if you had it in there.Any way nice build taggin along!!
Patrick....sorry for the lack of updates....there has been a lot of progress and so far only one emergency trip to home depot for new plumbing parts....turns out that when you are doing your plumbing while 30 hours into your day....after 21 hours of travel and needing to stay up all night to get on the right sleep schedule you can make some mistakes.....like not skrew in a MPT PVC part far enough so that when you start running water through it starts to drip water out of it. the only way to fix it was to cut it out and rebuild that section.....luckily i used the FPT and MPT parts for most of it so it only took $2.50 in new parts to rebuild that section....but its holding water now and its all circulating well....im at work now so cant upload any pictures....ill try to get some in tomorow.....my goal is to have it full running loaded with live rock by saturday.
Sorry if i didnt make the reason clear enough....it was a space issue. the EV-400 is 32 inches tall, i have 32 inches of vertical space in my stand. if i put it between the braces i could get 34 inches. but that left me with no ability to raise the skimmer and would thus limit me to about 8 inches of water depth in the sump. i wanted about 14 inches of depth for my refugium section because im doing the benthic zone, so 14 inches gives me 6 inches of benthic, 4 for live rock, and 4 for plants, from reading the thread on the duplex sump idea that seemed like a good way to set it up....but 8 inches of depth just wouldnt cut it. So the only way to make it work would have been to do a split sump with skimmer on one side and refugium on the other with the return in the middle. but that would have put the outflow of the simmer going almost right into the return pump and i had visions of microbubbles through the whole tank.
but with the SRO its 24 inches tall, from the reading it looks like it likes 6to 7 inches of water, so i can raise it 8 inches making for a total of 32 in height and 14 inches of water.....perfect.....
plus ive read hundreds of posts saying good things about the SRO and very few that even mention the AquaC.....that wasnt a deciding factor of course but it was an influence.
on the plus side my crazily designed siphon breaks for the returns that come in the back of the tank work perfectly, when i turn the pumps off it only drains about 5 gallons of water down into the sump.
unfortunatly i cant seem to get the head loss calculator on the home page of reefcentral to work...when i try it says select pump but the drop down list is empty....i was going to use that to figure out my flow rates through the sump....
unfortunatly i cant seem to get the head loss calculator on the home page of reefcentral to work...when i try it says select pump but the drop down list is empty....i was going to use that to figure out my flow rates through the sump....
little bear
New member
very good，waiting for more pics
I built a little stand out of eggcrate for the SRO to stand on in the sump....the plan is to have an 8 inch stand for the SRO with a DSB below that so as to not waste space. but i decided to put some silicone on the bottom of the eggcrate stand in order to dampen any vibrations that the skimmer pump might make....you can see in my sump picture that i did something similar with my return pumps....i took some long sponges and cut out some areas for the pumps to sit in....not to filter anything, just to dampen the vibrations of the pumps....since almost all the pump noise ive ever had has been from the vibrations on the glass not from the pumps themselves.....figured if i could dampen the vibrations i could get everthing to run quieter.
Hello Aflac,
I'm glad everything is coming along well.....a slight bummer about the
plumbing redo but I suppose these things happen. In regards to the mag pump vibrating on the glass I have had good results with employing a mouse pad from a computer to be placed underneath it to silence the vibrations. I also have noted that some have used thicker material like "horse stall matts" cut out to be placed in the sump.
As a side note I am a fan of placing the sandbed in the sump like your planning just attempt to make sure that you have sufficient flow in that section for the sandbed so that it can function properly. I aswell as others on here have noted placing sandbeds in refugiums/sumps with low flow has resulted in increased levels of nitrates/phosphates and significant amounts of detritus buildup.
Just something to think about,
Patrick
Patrick
I'm glad everything is coming along well.....a slight bummer about the
plumbing redo but I suppose these things happen. In regards to the mag pump vibrating on the glass I have had good results with employing a mouse pad from a computer to be placed underneath it to silence the vibrations. I also have noted that some have used thicker material like "horse stall matts" cut out to be placed in the sump.
As a side note I am a fan of placing the sandbed in the sump like your planning just attempt to make sure that you have sufficient flow in that section for the sandbed so that it can function properly. I aswell as others on here have noted placing sandbeds in refugiums/sumps with low flow has resulted in increased levels of nitrates/phosphates and significant amounts of detritus buildup.
Just something to think about,
Patrick
Patrick
Well its been 5 days since i put water in and 4 since live rock and everything seems to be going good so far. I had a lot of cloudiness from putting in the sand for the deep sand bed in the sump.....i kind seem to have forgot to turn the pumps of when i first started dumping sand in....and within seconds the whole tank was crazy cloudy.....but thats gotten better.....the SRO is pulling a lot of gunk out of the water. So far im geting zero accross the board on ammonia, nitrite and nitrate tests, but its probably still too to tell if the live rock was well cured already and i wont get any spikes or if i still have spikes to come.....we shall see....
not a lot of updates for my build....its mostly in the sitting and waiting stage....however the 14k lights dont have as much blue in them as i was hoping and so i think i need some suplimental lights.....like patrick suggested.....and have ordered some of the cree blue led's. i am just going to build one section of them to test out and see how they look before i buy more....who knows if it works well i might over time end up switching over completly from MH to led.....but still have not seen any detectible numbers on any of my test kits....well ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.....i havnt started testing for calcium or phosphate yet....
Ok.....ran into an interesting problem.....my apex seems to not be able to turn off aqualifters. I am trying to use aqualifters to do my ATO and was trying to set that up today.....been busy and hadnt had time to do research on how to program the float switches.....so i plugged in the aqualifter turned the outlet to manual on in the apex control, and it started pumping fine....went manual off and it kept pumping....unplugged it and it stopped pumping.....plugged i right back in and it stayed off....went manual on and the same thing happened again. and i have no idea how to fix it...the pump shows off and yet it keeps pumping until i unplug it.
ok, heard back from my question about the aqualifter on the apex...turns out it dosnt draw enough current to turn of the outlets i was trying. only outlets 4 and 8 which are the physical relay outlets, can turn it off, switched it to that outlet and it worked perfectly.
also i am experimenting with LED's and built a 12 LED light to give some blue into it....if it works well ill build more and maybe switch over competly to LED's over time.
unfortunatly it seems impossible to get good pics of the tank with the lights on....the camera makes things just looked washed out with blue.
yes i know my wiring sucks....it was my first time....the second one (i also made a white one for the refugium light) has much better wiring, but this was my first and its wiring sucks...ha.
sorry forgot to take a pic with the optics on before i put it up on the tank.....
i used a dimmable driver, have it hooked into my apex so it will be on 10% a night and 100% during the day and it will take an hour to slowly transition between the two.
also a few days ago i had a barley detectable rise in ammonia, but its back to undetectable, and so are nitrites and nitrates....so far that is the only sign of a cycle i have seen.
also i am experimenting with LED's and built a 12 LED light to give some blue into it....if it works well ill build more and maybe switch over competly to LED's over time.
unfortunatly it seems impossible to get good pics of the tank with the lights on....the camera makes things just looked washed out with blue.
yes i know my wiring sucks....it was my first time....the second one (i also made a white one for the refugium light) has much better wiring, but this was my first and its wiring sucks...ha.
sorry forgot to take a pic with the optics on before i put it up on the tank.....
i used a dimmable driver, have it hooked into my apex so it will be on 10% a night and 100% during the day and it will take an hour to slowly transition between the two.
also a few days ago i had a barley detectable rise in ammonia, but its back to undetectable, and so are nitrites and nitrates....so far that is the only sign of a cycle i have seen.
