Building Big Bertha: 800G
- Thread starter bbrantley
- Start date
(Continued from above.)
2. Thank you to those of you who suggested various tube vacuum arrangements. What I really want is a SW water vacuum pump that can initiate the siphon automagically and keep it going when it breaks.
I ordered a smaller Super Syphon from Mighty Magnets (those guys are great!) and will be putting it to first use tomorrow. I'm going to bust out the goggles and snorkel this time; there is a ton of hair algae growing on the sand bed and I want to do some serious physical removal.
3. Interestingly, all my tests are showing good. Plenty of Ca (not unexpected; no corals yet), low phosphates (no colorimeter yet though, so not sure how valuable that is), no nitrates. I think the BK500 is working its magic to keep the tank water essentially perfect. The thing is, I have yet to do a single water change. Not a drop. I don't PLAN on doing a bunch of changes (I'll keep the tank lightly stocked), but it's kind of weird. I think I am going to do a couple big changes anyway just to try to cut some of the brown out of the water. Carbon is not really doing much for it these days.
4. Tabitha still won't eat the really good nori and algae I got for her; even soaked in Selcon and clipped to the bottom of the tank where she likes to prowl. She seems perfectly happy to eat flake food, Spectrum pellets, and the hair algae on the rocks. <sigh>
5. I'm definitely going to try the school 'o Tabithas idea. I think it will look cool, and Tabby needs some help to keep this hair algae in check! I'll probably order 6 so if I lose one or two in shipping/acclimation I still have enough to "safely" school. Sound good? I'm looking forward to being home long enough to be able to order fish again.
6. I have decided the 65g water containers are too small. I am going to try to get at least one 160 or 175g vertical container. I will have to rearrange my support tanks a little bit to accommodate it since it can't sit in the middle of the room.
I'll post about what I actually accomplished TODAY (instead of all the "thinking" I've done over the last week) in a bit.
Ben
2. Thank you to those of you who suggested various tube vacuum arrangements. What I really want is a SW water vacuum pump that can initiate the siphon automagically and keep it going when it breaks.
I ordered a smaller Super Syphon from Mighty Magnets (those guys are great!) and will be putting it to first use tomorrow. I'm going to bust out the goggles and snorkel this time; there is a ton of hair algae growing on the sand bed and I want to do some serious physical removal.3. Interestingly, all my tests are showing good. Plenty of Ca (not unexpected; no corals yet), low phosphates (no colorimeter yet though, so not sure how valuable that is), no nitrates. I think the BK500 is working its magic to keep the tank water essentially perfect. The thing is, I have yet to do a single water change. Not a drop. I don't PLAN on doing a bunch of changes (I'll keep the tank lightly stocked), but it's kind of weird. I think I am going to do a couple big changes anyway just to try to cut some of the brown out of the water. Carbon is not really doing much for it these days.
4. Tabitha still won't eat the really good nori and algae I got for her; even soaked in Selcon and clipped to the bottom of the tank where she likes to prowl. She seems perfectly happy to eat flake food, Spectrum pellets, and the hair algae on the rocks. <sigh>
5. I'm definitely going to try the school 'o Tabithas idea.
I think it will look cool, and Tabby needs some help to keep this hair algae in check! I'll probably order 6 so if I lose one or two in shipping/acclimation I still have enough to "safely" school. Sound good? I'm looking forward to being home long enough to be able to order fish again.6. I have decided the 65g water containers are too small. I am going to try to get at least one 160 or 175g vertical container. I will have to rearrange my support tanks a little bit to accommodate it since it can't sit in the middle of the room.
I'll post about what I actually accomplished TODAY (instead of all the "thinking" I've done over the last week) in a bit.
Ben
I think they would work, yes, but they need to
a) be black or low-visibility so they don't stand out
b) be designed to stay in the water all the time (the wooden ones seem like that would be no good)
c) have a way to mount the Tunze brackets on them
If it comes down to it, I can use any of the generic cleaning magnets as huge magnets for mounting. Most of them, though, would require some serious hacking to get them to hold the pumps. Not impossible. Also not cheap.
Ben
Sorry my friend, there's nothing new to show, alas. I guess I could take pics of the tank room itself, since I have made some changes there. But Bertha herself has the same fish, with a lot more hair algae growing everywhere.
I did promise I would detail some of my "grunt work" that I got out of the way today. Let's do that:
First, all the Aquatronica probes and cables are too short. Some of them use standard USB connectors (but not USB voltages or protocols; beware), but a lot use these little two- or four-pin connectors. I have been slowly cutting these up and splicing in much longer cables, heat-shrinking the solder points, and taping everything back up nice and purty. I got the temp probes extended today so now there's actually enough length for them to stay in the tank without looking like a clothesline.
Second, I've been disappointed with my skimmer's position in the room. Without one of those pictures you asked about, asmodeus, it's hard to explain why it sucks... but I put it in a spot that wasn't ideal. So, today, I replumbed it and moved a couple feet over. Now I can walk around to my sump without tripping over a gaggle of power cords and accidentally unplugging something!
Unfortunately, in the process of doing that, something weird happened with the halides: five of them turned off all at once. I have no idea how that works: there are a total of six, and three each are on separate 15A circuits. I would have expected a breaker to trip and to lose three or six. In fact, no breaker tripped, and five went off all at once. I haven't tried to debug it yet... at the moment I'm not too concerned because I kinda want to kill the lights for a few days and cut down on the energy input to the hair algae. Tomorrow I will figure out what's up with that. Very weird.
Add in a bunch of time spent putzing around with weak Tunze magnet mounts (and some diving to the bottom of the tank to pick them up when I kept dropping them) and that about uses up four hours of quality time. Strangely enough, it was pretty fun.
Ben
Good question! I'm partial to both colors, and a mix would be neat. I'll have to see what the sellers have available, I think. I don't have a super-strong preference.
Yeah, you'd think that might be it -- except each lamp has its own independent ballast. And to lose five of them all at once, but not six, and two on one circuit and three on another, is just weird.
Anyway, I turned them on this morning and everything seems normal. I don't know how I managed to trip five of them. I hope it doesn't happen again!Ben
One circuit is 15A and the other is 20A. Each supports 3x400W ballasts. My meter says the ballasts steady-state draw is pretty much exactly 10A as I'd expect.
The wire gauge is some varied, since there's a 12AWG cord running to the relay's power cord, which is certainly smaller, and then a slightly thinner (not sure the gauge off the top of my head) extension cord delivering the power to the ballasts. All of the cords' packaging indicated 15A or greater capacity. The relays are rated to 15A as well, so presumably their cords are sufficient.
The only thing I can think of is maybe the controller shut down power to both relays for a short moment, and maybe one of the six halides managed to stay powered up and the others failed to re-strike? Seems like a low-probability event though. I've never tried hot-starting these lamps, but I know on my video projector that would be a big no-no... and the control circuitry wouldn't let it even attempt to re-fire.
Ben
cbui2
Premium Member
3 400w on each circuit is a lot IMO. you also have to remember that when peak current draw on MH will probably trip both circuits easy. i know for sure before i tested 3 400w MH on 12awg with 20a which trip my circuit 2hrs later when it finally powered up at peak. PFO 400w HQI ballast on 14k hamilton is what i am using. on mine i used 10awg romex 30a each circuit for 3 MH. the rule of thumb is to always have 133 times over the current draw, better to be safe then sorry. 12 awg is recommend to have max 20a. what controller are you running again?
Hey Bart,
I have a meter that lets me measure time-integrated draw. Technically there could be a weird "peak draw" perhaps at ballast start-up that my meter couldn't see. But I think most circuits and circuit breakers are designed to handle significant transient spikes. In any event, my 5-lamp failure occurred in steady-state... the lights had been on all day.
When you start talking about Romex, I think in-wall wiring. I don't know what wire was used for those runs, but my electrician is pretty good, so I'm sure it's the appropriate gauge for 20A. I do know that it's likely the gauge of my extension cords is at some point smaller than what's in the wall.
I'm using an Aquatronica controller, replete with numerous bugs that technical support has not yet helped me figure out. The parts that do work, work GREAT. The rest is a mess of Italy/language barrier/time delay/no dedicated customer service issues. I guess it's fortunate I'm not in a hurry. I do feel inclined to continue to complain until AQ gets its act together and empowers someone to provide us quality technical support more reliably in the U.S.
Ben
cbui2
Premium Member
the extension cords will not be a problem, i guess just keep an eye out for it to see if it happened again and if it does i will tried 30a breaker just for a day or so to see if the problem is in that area. what ballast are you running again? yeah i was scared to get the aquatronica since one of the RC sponsor told me i'm better off getting the neptune system. hopefully you can find out the problem but you will have to do some trouble shoot yourself to figure it out. whats the count on chromis and hows the water condition?
Yeah, I'm going to keep a close eye on it. I really hope I don't end up having to switch to 30A circuits; none of the existing ones are spec'ed that large.
The chromis seem stable at 11 now. I think there've been eleven for a whole 10 or 12 days, at least.
I tested the water again tonight:pH 8.1
density 1.025
NH4/NO2/NO3 0/unmeasurable
I'll start testing KH, calcium, and phosphate soon.
Now that I've closed the window and trusted the env controller to keep the room at around 80F/60% humidity or less, temperature stability is better and evaporative loss is lower, even though it is still peak summertime temps here with highs in the mid-80's outside. The next temp hurdle will be seeing if Bertha can stay warm in the considerably-more-challenging depth-of-winter weeks.
Ben
Even I was impressed with how fast the tank cleared out after the intense cleaning and vacuuming of yesterday. Amazing what a dose of filter floss, carbon, and bonzo skimming will do! The vis is quite good today -- to get it much better I will have to eliminate most of the algae and probably ozonize the thing, I'm guessing.
I'm leaving on a week-long work/wedding trip and so is the wife. So Chaco and Bonzo will have to take care of the fishies! That and our dog-sitter-and-now-fish-sitter.
Next week if luck holds maybe I will add another swarm of fish... ?!
Ben
I'm leaving on a week-long work/wedding trip and so is the wife. So Chaco and Bonzo will have to take care of the fishies! That and our dog-sitter-and-now-fish-sitter.
Next week if luck holds maybe I will add another swarm of fish... ?!
Ben
