JCole's box of rocks

That looks amazing! How are you dosing your two-part? At this point it would almost need a constant drip.
 
That looks amazing! How are you dosing your two-part? At this point it would almost need a constant drip.

Thank you! I am dosing BRS' Soda Ash and Calcium Chloride. I am at about 500ml daily and steadily increasing weekly it seems. Once I hit a gallon weekly then I am deffinetly putting a CARX on thw system. I am thinking of starting up kalkwasser again to help supplement.
 
How much does 500ml of 2-part cost these days? Seems like you could save some coin by upgrading to a calcium reactor.
 
How much does 500ml of 2-part cost these days? Seems like you could save some coin by upgrading to a calcium reactor.

About $6 for a gallon of each. Right now it costs around $24-$30 a month for both. Around $300-$360 a year at this rate. Once I start up kalkwasser then I shouldn't use as much 2-part. I know I will need to upgrade to a CARX soon. Is media hard to find these days? I used to use Reborn in the past but heard it's hard to get knowadays.
 
About $6 for a gallon of each. Right now it costs around $24-$30 a month for both. Around $300-$360 a year at this rate. Once I start up kalkwasser then I shouldn't use as much 2-part. I know I will need to upgrade to a CARX soon. Is media hard to find these days? I used to use Reborn in the past but heard it's hard to get knowadays.
Unsure what you mean media is hard to get for a calcium reactor? Plenty of places online sell it.
 
About $6 for a gallon of each. Right now it costs around $24-$30 a month for both. Around $300-$360 a year at this rate. Once I start up kalkwasser then I shouldn't use as much 2-part. I know I will need to upgrade to a CARX soon. Is media hard to find these days? I used to use Reborn in the past but heard it's hard to get knowadays.
Amazon has it from various suppliers.
 
Unsure what you mean media is hard to get for a calcium reactor? Plenty of places online sell it.

Good to know. The last time I was looking for media about 2 years ago it was hard to find. I am glad it's back now. That will be the media I would like to use.
 
Not sure, I used ARM when I ran a CARX.

Here's a link to Reborn. Indicated that it is 10mm in size.

Thank you. Yeah that's the smaller version. I remember reading others had issues with it clumping up do to the size. Still worth a try though when the time comes. I am hoping that by adding kalk back in the mix then that will hold me over for a little while.
 
Happy New Year everyone!

One of my new years resolutions is to do more DIY items to the tank. Back in the day that is what we all did. It was rare I would buy anything that I couldn't build myself. Over the last couple of years, I find myself spending a ton of money on things I can make myself.

I have been looking at skimmers because the two skimmers I have just don't seem to be cutting it on the system. They either overflow quickly or dry skim very slow. Skimmers for the size of my system would cost $3-4,000. I started thinking of some DIY skimmers I could make. I started pricing large PVC and Acrylic and still found it getting pricey.

I decided to try something out. It looks ghetto but this thing pulls skimmate out that makes my skimmers look like a joke. It is in my garage in my 300 stock tank sump so I don't care what it looks like as long as it works.

Built it for $30 minus the Jebao pump I had laying around. Meet the Venturi driven Bucket skimmer! This is my test run today. I took out my skimmate from my existing skimmer and dumped it in the test bucket. It pulled this out within 2 minutes.

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I wiped all the skimmate out and you can see how it still comes pumping out.

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I took the collection cup off and the foam looks good in the body.

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I ended up adding a third bucket on the bottom after the test run to add more dwell time. The final design is all glued and drying in the garage. I plan on turning this on in the system tomorrow to see what it can really do!

It might be ghetto but what do you all think?
 
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An often over looked beast of a skimmer
 


An often over looked beast of a skimmer

That is the one I was looking at if I couldn't make something work. If this doesn't work out then I will be looking into that one.
 
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