Mountains of sawdust (360g plywood, LED, Arduino build)

[XSiVE]

Lots of experience... I've built dozens. They've run in the local fish store even.

While visiting Marine World in Marin county, CA I noticed surges happening. I asked an employee about one. They promptly ushered me into the bowels of the place and showed me many of them running continuously. I was mesmerized by the simplicity of them.

Don't do it the way you are planning with a crook. Use a concentric design. Then your exit is out the bottom. You can set the height very easily. The screws are nylon and you just use your fingers on them. Use 3 around the tube at two levels, so you can maintain concentric alignment.

holy cow I love the simplicity and adjustability of this!!! The question now comes in, how loud is it? I am guessing it may be slightly muffled because the way one pipe fits over the other.

Also, I want to know too, does the outlet need to be underwater?

 

[XSiVE]

Laying in bed wide awake at 4:30 this morning thinking about this idea, that's the conclusion I arrived at. It's still going to be a little awkward - how do I fill the food tank slowly enough that it only surges once or twice a day? Do I use a typical pump on a timer to only run for a few seconds a day? If so, I don't need the surge, I can just have an open standpipe in the brine tank. Then I won't have to worry about balancing the input with the surge volume.

but how much brine would really go overtop of an open standpipe? I guess it depends on the pipe diameter coupled with how quickly you add the "surge volume" via a normal pump. A surge style pipe would create a much faster moving siphon and pull water from lower in the tank, probably where more shrimp are floating around.

 

[TheFishMan65]

I don't think you can create a siphon with a slow flow of water. Wouldn't the water level slowly increase and not cause a siphon. The water would reach the point of the drain and just trickle over. There would not be enough water to suck the air out of the pipe to create the siphon. That is the way I see, but I don't understand the full physics of starting the siphon.

 

[krikor]

Sorry, I jumped into that post in mid thought. This isn't for a surge to create water movement, it's for integrating my automatic water change with a live food prop tank.

Ha ha, ok, that makes alot more sense now.

I was also thinking that this kind of food surge would be great if you just had a fuge hooked up to it.

 

[Flanders]

this tank is looking awesome! great job.

a calfo style toilet flapper surge would work a lot better for this, I think. I think getting the siphon to start will be difficult if not impossible with such a low flow going into the surge tank.

I'm not sure I see the benefit of a food surge once a day as opposed to small feedings all day, which would simplify things.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

I'm not sure I see the benefit of a food surge once a day as opposed to small feedings all day, which would simplify things.

I don't know how effective an extremely low delivery rate from the food tank to the display tank would be for something like brine shrimp. For phyto, it would probably work, but if you're pumping at, say, 1 GPH I'm not sure how many brine shrimp will get "washed" into the display. Compare that to dumping 1 gallon in two seconds, in which case the flow of water will be strong enough to wash lots of brine shrimp into the tank.

On a completely separate note - if kcress or stugray see this I could use some help configuring my VFD. It's the FM50 from factorymation. I can imagine how the power connections and connections to the pump are supposed to be configured, and I think I know how the connections to the control terminals should be configured, but I am having trouble understanding the overall configuration.

Basically I want to set it up "statically" for the time being. That is, configure it to let me use the keypad to set an operating frequency, so I can set it at, say, quarter speed until I get my controller figured out. I THINK it's defaulted to keypad control out of the box, via the F_10 and F_11 parameters defaulting to zero. Given these defaults, to get my desired functionality, do I need ANYTHING hooked up to the control terminal? Or can I literally just connect the pump, connect power, turn on power, select a frequency, then hit "start/stop" to turn the pump on?

 

[kcress]

I thought brine shrimp breeding took hyper salty water. Like 10x tank salinity.?



As for these siphons. While they are really cool, cheap, and have no mechanical parts, there is a balance sheet you still have to deal with. Rather like those huge delicious banana splits - have huge calories.. :fun2:

With these siphons you need to fiddle a bit to get what you need. The size is loosely related to the filling speed. The initiation of a cycle occurs when the little space under the cap fills with water. If you have too big a siphon and too small a pump, it will just leak over continuously.

I'm a little concerned because I heard "peristaltic pump", which is the poster child for slow.

If you watch one of these siphons you will see the siphon "start".

There are kinetics involved. The water starts moving slowly then builds to a vacuuming crescendo. If the inflow is too slow you never get the kinetic build up happening. Just as it starts, it has just used some water. That may suspend further advancement of the cycle.

There is a ratio of the inflow rate verses the siphon diameter that needs to be met. I never actually figured out that ratio. I made siphons from 1/2" to 4" using the concentric design. I still come across them when I go deep diving in my PVC piles.

As for the outlet. You can develop a continuous "trickle siphon" if the outlet is completely in the water. The siphon will never reset. I always found that I had to have part of the outlet exposed to the air. Perhaps a small hole above the water would also do the trick. With the outlet completely submerged the siphon won't start as the trapped air prevents the outer tower annulus from ever filling.

Also with the outlet under water you will get a lot of macro bubbles because the entire vertical pipe structure is filled with air that has to go somewhere. What you see in this case is a bubble, then another, then more, then a whole bunch more, then a frothing blast, as all the remaining trapped air is purged.

Always build your siphon and try it out in the yard with the same inflow you will have in the installation. Use a 5 gallon pail hung from an eve or something. Punch a bulkhead thru the bottom and install your siphon. Your outlet too, has to be the same length you plan on using. Same with any angle couplings.

I then have a catch basin, like a 20g plastic bin, with a sump pump in it. I throttle the sump pump to the expected installed flow up to the pail. Then I start tinkering.

A lot of fun and a lot of surprises. Kids will go bonkers over them.

 

[kcress]

RE the FM50. Yes, "plug and chug".

Hook up the wires.

Power on.

Identify where to look on your pump to see shaft rotation direction.

Figure out the correct direction. (This is very important. The wrong direction can blow the end out of the pump. )

Open all valves.

Press "Run". Nothing should happen.

Press the UP arrow until the pump shaft just starts to move.

If the direction is wrong press the down arrow until you're back to zero.

Go to program state.

Go it to function "04" and change the state from "0" to "1".

Exit program state.

Press RUN.

Press UP.

Confirm correct direction.

Press UP to whatever speed you want.

Hear the keening whine? See the dog exiting stage left at maximum warp factor?

Press DOWN until stopped.

Press STOP.

Go into the functions and dork with each and every setting of the carrier frequency. Pick the slowest one that works.

I suggest that you always ramp down to zero. Otherwise when you hit RUN you will be shocking the whole system as the pump suddenly accelerates.

 

[Flanders]

I don't know how effective an extremely low delivery rate from the food tank to the display tank would be for something like brine shrimp. For phyto, it would probably work, but if you're pumping at, say, 1 GPH I'm not sure how many brine shrimp will get "washed" into the display. Compare that to dumping 1 gallon in two seconds, in which case the flow of water will be strong enough to wash lots of brine shrimp into the tank.

I see. this might be a good question for the NPS forum.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

kcress, thanks for the confirmation and blow-by-blow setup guide. It's installed mechanically and the wiring will hopefully happen soon.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

I thought brine shrimp breeding took hyper salty water. Like 10x tank salinity.?

They'll grow fine in reef tank salinity from what I've read. Some cyst vendors even suggest hatching them in low salinity, or using table salt to hatch them - so they seem pretty robust in that sense.

I'm a little concerned because I heard "peristaltic pump", which is the poster child for slow.

Yeah, that's why I'm thinking it won't work as part of the auto water change, and I should implement a separate system for that. Though, something else has just come to mind - I remember years ago one of the "DIY greats" doing a write-up on a siphon-driven ATO that filled and purged a large chamber to keep his RO/DI unit from running in short bursts. I'll have to see if I can find it.

 

[Foosinho]

Yeah, that's why I'm thinking it won't work as part of the auto water change, and I should implement a separate system for that. Though, something else has just come to mind - I remember years ago one of the "DIY greats" doing a write-up on a siphon-driven ATO that filled and purged a large chamber to keep his RO/DI unit from running in short bursts. I'll have to see if I can find it.

My thought was to have a larger reservoir that at a minimum level would trigger the RO/DI to fill it to a max level, and that reservoir would supply fresh water for top off (and, in my mind, as a source for water for fresh saltwater creation). Not super sophisticated, but basically acts as a buffer that allows batch operation of the RO/DI, but continuous operation of a top-off system.

 

[eznet2u]

I remember years ago one of the "DIY greats" doing a write-up on a siphon-driven ATO that filled and purged a large chamber to keep his RO/DI unit from running in short bursts. I'll have to see if I can find it.

Joe Weatherson's design.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=275455&highlight=weatherson+top+off

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Yes that's it, unfortunately it works differently in real life than I was remembering it, and I'm not sure if it's as applicable as I was thinking.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

So it turns out that the peristaltic pump is WAY too slow to start a siphon, even on 1/2" outflow plumbing. I tried some configurations over lunch and it just trickled out. I tested it with a little giant pump I had laying around and it worked great.

So I may try to come up with some other scheme rather than directly feeding the food tank with the water change pump.

 

[kcress]

Good to know that BS can be bred in lesser salt solutions. Thanks.

I still love your idea of PISF Partial Injection Siphon Feeding. You could just use a power head that gets timer'ed ON to drive the siphon.

Or power the PISF with a solenoid controlled siphon from your makeup DOWN to the PISF - if you somehow have the make up above it all..?

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

I'll definitely figure out SOMETHING but it's gonna take some brainstorming/creativity from the looks of it. I want it to be dirt simple and foolproof.

 

[H20ENG]

Have a look at the Geosapper feeder in one of the old RK zines. Its kinda what you want- small siphons for feeding. You could fill/ feed it with your peri or a small powerhead. IIRC it uses just airline tubing. May have to upsize to 3/8 for brine shrimp.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Well, time for a good news/bad news update.

Good news:

1) I'm happy with the LED experimentation so far. It's given me a great understanding of color mixes, positioning, and other factors.
2) The ATS is starting to take off. The first two cleanings were just brown "gunk" that simply washed away in the sink - diatoms or some other biofilm. Last night I cleaned again and there was definitely some "real" algae that was a little more persistent. And this morning, the screen actually looks green overall instead of brown. It's still just the single screen, and still CFL-lit, but it's definitely starting to work.

The bad news is pretty bad though. One of my family members was just diagnosed with a pretty serious health condition so I'm pretty much going to be ignoring the tank while we deal with that. I'll probably be on the forums from time to time but this thread will likely be pretty stale in the meantime.

 

[SpacedCowboy]

Sorry to hear that DWZM. I've been away myself for a variety of family reasons. I hope it goes better for you and yours than it has for me and mine recently.

Cheers,
Simon.