Fish Room Equipment
Fish Room Equipment
This post will discuss sump room equipment.
Auto Top
I went with AquaHub's DIY premium auto top off. I like this one because it's not expensive, I don't mind assembling electronics and it allows me to wire it up easily to my mixing station solution. I went with the premium because it comes with a second redundant float sensor (peace of mind). The kit has everything you need with the exception of the power wiring and for me I needed longer signal wires because my float sensors are on the far right side of the sump and the module is kept on the left side.
I added some tubing to protect my sensor wiring from rising water levels when the return pump is shut off.
Here's the assembled module and a little explanation of a cheat I did here to simplify my wiring mess.
Module is on top left. It plugs in twice, the two outlets on left. The 12V transformer connection is to power the relay that switches the 120 AC power on/off to the main mixing pump. This is what happens when my 3-way switch shown in a previous post is set to auto. The second connection is actually not an AC power outlet (remember my wiring diagram"¦). It's just a connection point for this auto top off module to keep my wiring that much cleaner. It has AC power on one wire and the other wire goes to the auto side of the mentioned 3 way switch. The result is that the auto wire only gets power when the float switches determine the sump water level is low.
I really like this setup and so far it has worked well for me and has allowed me to use my mixing pump for yet another task. I hope somebody else can use this idea.
UPS battery backup
I was planning on postponing this expense to later when there is actually more livestock in the tank but when I saw the power of the back siphon from upstairs to downstairs when the pump is shut off I got worried. About 20 gallons of water gets sucked back down when that pump is shut off in I'll estimate maybe 30 seconds. My worry is that I would get a 15 second power outage that would put the power back on when the back siphon was at its strongest reverse flow. I just don't want to put my made in China pump through that sort of stress. I was going to get this eventually anyway. My research found that the most economical solution is the one used for desktop computers. So I'm back at Costco. These things come with neat features too: current power consumption in watts, current battery life remaining in minutes at current power consumption rate, number of events (this is a count on the number of power failures, still zero so far but I'm watching it"¦). The one I went with displays that it will power my return pump for 60 minutes. After that I will need a generator"¦
Here it is and wired up so that I can still shut my pump off upstairs and downstairs without this thing keeping it on"¦
Sump lighting
My proper refugium is a future project. Still lots more higher priority items I want before I start with that but I do want to throw in some macroalgae now to see if I can use these to suck out phosphate/nitrate and avoid running GFO in a phosphate reactor. I don't want to spend a lot of money here and I still believe you don't have to, to grow this stuff. The constraint here, for me, is space. These lights need to be exactly in the path of the frequent removal of my big skimmer collection cup. I need a fixture that is easily removable for this frequent chore. Here is what I came up with and it didn't cost much at all.
2 sockets, an old small appliance power cord, some hook hardware and some left over 5/8" plywood.
The bulbs are 15w CF but are neat in that they come with a built in reflector and are encased in a protective glass casing (easy to clean salt spray of off) . They are daylight spectrum 6000K. I also picked up a standard 2 prong digital timer and set these things to run reverse cycle to the upstairs tank.
So far this has been working. Moving the lights out of the way has been easy enough. I've got chaeto, ulva and red bush living and growing with my phosphate continuously measuring less than 0.05ppm on the Hanna.
Heaters
I haven't discussed these yet. They've obviously been in for a while now. I'm running two at 300W each. This gives me redundancy and makes each that much less destructive in the event of a stuck in the on position problem. I couldn't make up my mind between the ViaAqua and the Finnex so I bought one of each. They both feature remote temperature sensors, an LCD display of the set temperature and an LED light signaling the heater is on. After a lot of stress I found my Finnex heater to be off by 4 degrees so now I support ViaAqua.
pH Monitor
Again, I found the Salifert test kit unsatisfactory for my needs. For the cost of the monitor, I like the idea of having a more accurate reading continuously available at a glance and having one less test to execute on a regular basis. I went with the American Marine with the optional power adapter. Can be seen in bottom left of first pic of this post.
Tip: This thing is a continuous 1 watt drain on my wallet and if I could do it over I might consider switching its power on the room lighting circuit.
RODI filter
I went with a 5 stage system with the chloramine filter and the dual TDS monitor. It comes with a valve to turn it on/off, it comes plumbed with valves to rinse the membrane and/or rinse a new carbon filter. I added an auto shut off valve. It's rated at 75 gal /day but again this was an overinflated spec"¦
