How this Geezer did it in the beginning

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Thanks Paul. I take it you still use the split in half vinyl fence post and window screen.
Click to expand...

Yep that's it, but that screen has more coral growing on it now them my reef.
I hate to clean the thing
 
interesting. Which corals are reproducing in your trough? Any thoughts on redesign of the trough that will make it easier to clean? Or is it the corals growing on the screen that you want to keep which make it hard to clean the screen. You could cut the corals out of the window screen and add them to your aquarium. When the screen becomes too ratty it is easy to replace with a new piece.

I looked more closely at your pictures of the algae trough last night. It appears you wrapped the screen around the end of the return pipe, or is that a splash guard that is separate from the rest of the screening?

Do the snails crawl into the trough?

Thanks.
 
The corals growing in the trough are encrusting corals, brittle stars, amphipods and tube worms. Not very important. There is no algae in my trough just now or in my tank, I am not sure why as my nitrates and phosphates are very high. So much for that myth that algae always grows with high nitrates. That screen around the pipe is a splash guard.
I just added my test prototype bio reactor. It only has a few pellets in it as It was just an experiment and I am not sure if I will leave the thing in there or for how long.
Here is a video.

 
Paul, your videos only show up as pictures for me... No actual video. It could be my tablet. Just curious if there is another way I could view the video.
 
Sparta, what is that thing in your avitar? Is that a lump of something or a sniper?
That reminds me of a story, an Army story. Me and my Captain were sitting on a sandbag in Nam enjoying a nice hot beer and this guy comes up to us. He had a bandolier around him filled with ammunition, 5 or 6 grenades hanging on him, 2 knives, sticks in his helmit and that green chamafloge all over his face. He looked like he was out in the bush for 2 years and looked like Rambo. I asked him how long he had been in country?
He thought for a while, and said, I have been here since last tuesday.
I said, get away from us, your the first guy they are going to shoot. :uzi:
 
I am curious about the sequence of filtration in your system. I think it is: pump water out of aquarium, through biopellet reactor, into skimmer with ozone, then returned to aquarium via algae trough.

Which is very similar to a system with a sump equipment-wise, but you pump the water out of the aquarium and let gravity pull it though the equipment back to the tank. In a system with a sump the water is pulled out of the aquarium by gravity, then many people pump it back up through equipment, then pump it up back to the aquarium. I am surprised at how little people let gravity work for them in their aquarium. They take all of the potential energy and dump it into the bottom of the sump and not have it do some work for them.

Looking back on the last paragraph, I think I rambled a little bit. A little scary, as I am still young.

Do you know what size pump you use on to pump water to the skimmer?
 
Paul B said:
Sparta, what is that thing in your avitar? Is that a lump of something or a sniper?
That reminds me of a story, an Army story. Me and my Captain were sitting on a sandbag in Nam enjoying a nice hot beer and this guy comes up to us. He had a bandolier around him filled with ammunition, 5 or 6 grenades hanging on him, 2 knives, sticks in his helmit and that green chamafloge all over his face. He looked like he was out in the bush for 2 years and looked like Rambo. I asked him how long he had been in country?
He thought for a while, and said, I have been here since last tuesday.
I said, get away from us, your the first guy they are going to shoot. :uzi:
Click to expand...

Lol! Love that story! I'm an air force veteran, my job was weather forecasting and observing, I also briefed pilots and all sorts of officers. My last duty station was with the army, briefing helo pilots... When I got out, a friend of mine got me involved in airsoft. The avatar pic is of my son and I in our camo with our guns.
 
That's cool, I know all about helocopters, I even crashed twice, but no one briefed me about anything.

Behlke, I use gravity for everything, my tank is gravity fed with fresh water and one pump operates all that you mentioned with a gravity return. I have been working on a solar/gravity motor for a few years and it works great (on paper)
That pump I use is probably 30 years old and it doesn't say anything on it so I have no idea what size it is. I think they were 600 GPH. I have a few of them as they last forever. My tank now uses Korilia's and I am not thrilled. They are not built very well and you need to take them apart to clean them. Some of my older pumps are running 25 years with no cleaning or any maintenance. I barely know where they are. That's what I call a piece of machinery.
This is a LOH or light observation helicopter and we used them every day as I never saw a road in that country. I also never saw a roof, wall car, running water, Super Model, electricity, floor or a dry place. The place is all bamboo, mud, tigers and elephants. Oh and some banana trees.

 
I don't remember if I saw that movie. But everyone in a war experiences it differently depending on where exactly you were and what you were supposed to do. Many guys who went to Nam stayed in Saigon and I am not sure what they did there, but I have spoken to so many Nam Vets and they tell me stories about being there. I was in Saigon for a couple of hours to bring back a prisoner, an American prisoner. I forgot why I was there in the first place. The war in Viet Nam was fought from firebases like this, because there were no roads everything came on a chopper, even water. The Firebases were built on clearings in the jungle, some natural, some we cleared with artillery, C-4 and bangolor torpedos or pipebombs. They remained clear of vegetation by the use of Agent Orange.
We stayed on those firebases (or LZs) for a few weeks or sometimes monthes. From there, the infantry would go out and look for the enemy and when they found them, the firebase, with all the field artillery, would fire around our guys to support them. The LZs would get attacked all the time because we were very vulnerable, most of the infantry was out doing what they do and we were exposed. The enemy knew where we were and all we had was sand bags, that we filled for protection. The enemy would surround us and lob mortors and rockets at us or have a full out assault, which is what happened to me on April 1st 1970. About 225 of us were attacked by 400 Regular NVA troops. About 190 of us lived.
But that is the way that war was fought. Of course to make a movie, they have to make it more in your face every day. Many days, nothing happened and that would make a boreing movie. I think the movie Platoon was fairly realistic if I remember.
Those are not tents, they are poncho's, we had no tents.



Here are some comments guys there wrote about that battle. The last one was mine.

http://ezinearticles.com/comment.php?Memories-of-Firebase-Illingsworth,-Vietnam&id=1410492

There is a book coming out about that battle on Illingworth. Here is the story.
http://www.commandposts.com/2013/04/april-1-1970-fire-base-illingworth-hell-on-earth/

And this Gentleman Peter Lemon was there with us, he received the Medal of Honor and this tells what he did on Illingworth that night.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_C._Lemon
 
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Thank you for sharing Paul, I'm glad you're able too. I wasn't in any wars, but I don't not want to know what guys like you went through. To forget is to me disrespectful of guys like you. And there are other reasons not to forget as well. Though I could imagine you probably wish you could.

My grandfather was a sniper in WWII... He never talked about what he saw. He was a wreck. I wish he was still around now that I'm old enough, I would encourage him to get the load off. I miss him so much at times. We were very close.
 
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