My 500 + gallon system. Last 13 years to now. Build, Aquascaping & more. Lots of pics

[acesq]

My RD3 came with imperial fittings -- 1.5" intake and 1" output.

Scott, I run my drain lines outside underground to my sump room and with these cold nights the tank temp dropped to 75.0 two nights ago. And that was with 800W of heaters on full blast! I put a small space heater in my sump room last night and that kept the water temp from dropping below 75.9. Rather than invest in another tank heater, I'll leave the space heater on for the cold nights. There really are so few we have to deal with.

 

[Nizz]

That's assuming he has he 80w pump

 

[woodnaquanut]

As of 7:30 am tank is at 75.8. I'm going to leave the recirc pump off a bit longer to see if it bottoms out anytime soon. House temp is 66. I sure hope that RD3 adds at least a little heat.

I think I read all of this thread but perhaps I missed it...

Have you considered bypassing the chiller loop and just draining it for the winter? Your tank might heat up a bit during the day but that would give you a bit of headroom (footroom ) for the nighttime cooling.

BTW, how's the coraline scraping going, Popeye? :hmm5:

 

[slief]

do you know what the gph is on the rd3 and how did you make the connections from metric to imperial?

They are supposed to come with 1.5" in and 1" out but because mine came direct from Germany, it came with the metric fittings. I have yet to plumb mine in as a result. That will happen next week with the imperial size fittings arrive from RE. Flow is rated at 2000 GPH at 0' head. They are coming out with a 230watt version that is 4000 or 5000GPH but that won't be about for a few months. I could see that pump potentially replacing my RD3 80 watt down the line depending on how this new pump performs. Then again, the way this pump willl be used and the fact that it exhausts through a 1" PVC manifold that circles my overflow under my rocks, 2000 GPH should be more than enough. In fact, I think my dart is being held back as a result of that setup.

My recirc pump is plumbed via 2" lines. They run through my AquaUV unit then go into a 2" T fitting that splits the line. Each end of that is reduced to 1". The pair of 1" lines enter the tank through the bottom via a pair of 1" bulkheads through the bottom of the overflow. There are elbows in the overflow where both 1" lines are directed through another pair of bulkheads in the sides of the overflow. Once beyond the overflow inside the tank, they both enter this 1" PVC pipe that circle the bottom of the overflow under my rock work. The PVC pipe has 1/4" holes drilled in it every inch or so. This provides flow from the pump all the way around the overflow so that detritus doesn't settle under my rocks in the middle of the tank. As a result of this flow, the area under my rocks around my central overflow is 100% bare and clean.

My RD3 came with imperial fittings -- 1.5" intake and 1" output.

Scott, I run my drain lines outside underground to my sump room and with these cold nights the tank temp dropped to 75.0 two nights ago. And that was with 800W of heaters on full blast! I put a small space heater in my sump room last night and that kept the water temp from dropping below 75.9. Rather than invest in another tank heater, I'll leave the space heater on for the cold nights. There really are so few we have to deal with.

It's funny you mention space heater. I was thinking about doing the same thing below the tank in the event that my temps aren't manageable with the new pump. It would be easy to control that with my Apex based on tank temps. With the second Dart pump, my temps aren't an issue but I don't know how this will play out with the RD3 and they UV. Since my test right now doesn't include the UV running, I can only speculate. If push comes to shove, the space heater will be much more efficient than a tank heater. No way I am running one of those. I'd sooner use the Dart as a winter pump and the RD3 as a summer pump. Since swapping pumps in my system takes only minutes, I could live with that if I had too. I just don't want to increase my power consumption and any savings at the power meter is a good one.

This RD3 will knock 100 watts off my tanks power consumption. When I switched from the Hammerhead to the Dart Super Gold for my return a couple months ago, I reduced my power consumption by 160 watts. These two changes combined willl reduce me usage over 260 watts + watts which is more than 20%. I am currently using 2000 watts during the day. That was previously 2165 watts with the Hammerhead. Night time consumption when my lights are off is 1500. Previously with the Hammerhead it was about 1665. The RD3 will drop me to 1900 during the day and 1400 at night. Little changes like this can add up fast at the meter. :beer:

5 years ago before I overhauled my sump, pumps and lighting, I was using more than 3x the power than I am currently using. My electric bill was $1100+ a month. While I did spend several thousand on the upgrades, it more than paid for itself the first year and dropped my bill down to $300-$350 depending on the time of year. In doing so, I was also able to increase the flow inside my tank which was a nice bonus.

 

[SPotter]

thanks for the resonse scott. the gph is a little low for my closed loops. Im running two dolphin 4750 pumps and estimate about 170 watts from each but Im getting about 3600 gph and no heat issues.

 

[iced98lx]

I love the experiments and optimization of power usage. how much system water volume will you give up if you do indeed take the garage loop offline thanks to the new pumps?

 

[slief]

I think I read all of this thread but perhaps I missed it...

Have you considered bypassing the chiller loop and just draining it for the winter? Your tank might heat up a bit during the day but that would give you a bit of headroom (footroom ) for the nighttime cooling.

BTW, how's the coraline scraping going, Popeye? :hmm5:

That is definitely a consideration and something I am thinking about. Only issue is that this is So. Cal and you never know when it will be 90+ even during the winter. As such, I may just rig up this solenoid I have and manage the garage loop through my Apex using the solenoid. If the tank temps are low in the tank, it will stay closed and only open for a minute or so a few times a day to keep it from stagnating. If the tank temps are warm, it will remain open to act as a chiller.

Once summer comes around, it's possible that with the RD3 in place of one of my Darts, I won't even need that loop anymore in which case I could remove it close it off permanently. I just don't want to make it a manual process and be out of town and find out after the fact that I should have opened it. That said, my gut tells me I won't be needing that loop anylonger. I know that even with the Dart, that chiller loop isn't needed when it's cold outside. I'm just not ready to drain it completely and since I have this solenoid that I bought for just such an occassion, I might have to put it to good use. Then I could program it to open for short periods of time every day to keep it from stagnating.

Coraline scraping is going well. Made some good progress but I'm now faced with the most stubborn stuff and the going is slow. I'm hitting it every day though and will continue to do so until it knocked all the way down to the edge of the viewing area.

 

[slief]

I love the experiments and optimization of power usage. how much system water volume will you give up if you do indeed take the garage loop offline thanks to the new pumps?

The volume consists of about 100' of 1" flex PVC and the water that is in my 1/2hp chiller. There are no tanks or sumps in that loop. If I had to guess , maybe 10-15 gallons.

 

[slief]

thanks for the resonse scott. the gph is a little low for my closed loops. Im running two dolphin 4750 pumps and estimate about 170 watts from each but Im getting about 3600 gph and no heat issues.

Those are decent numbers. You probably need the little bit of heat transfer from the pumps much like I do. I'd much rather have a 165 watt pump that puts out 4200GPH than 1000+ watts of heater to warm 650 gallons of water. While these Darts don't transfer much heat, the little that they do transfer has kept me from needing a heater in the winter but not necessatated the use of my chiller during the summer. A perfect balance compared to the hodge podge of pumps I was running several years back. Sadly I bought my new chiller a few years ago and it's never even been needed. It's sat idle since I bought it where as before my big upgrade years back, my previos half horse chiller ran 12 hours a day. On and and off every half hour or so.

 

[biecacka]

I don't run heaters either. I supplement my heat from my return pump(goby gold) and my skimmer pump(iwaki). I also use the MH to help. Here is ohio it gets somewhat chilly and in my apartment it gets warm. So mid winter I open my windows slightly sometimes and might drop a degree or two down to 76-75.
Now in the summer the halides kill me. My apartment is not hat big and my tank is large for my space so the heat is trapped and warms up or ac runs nonstop. That is a BIG reason leds might be on my horizon....so many options.....:sad2:

Corey

 

[slief]

Spent a lot of time working on my coraline. Making good progress too but still have a ways and many more algae dozer pads to go.

Started making a couple more Apex breakout boxes. I'm adding one more to my system that will connect to my PM2 and making another for a friend who is getting his first Apex. I was hoping that the din cables would arrive today but unfortunately they didn't so I will finish this up tomorrow.

Tomorrow should be a fun day. One that will lend it self well for an interesting post. I've been kind of working on a plan for a very compact thawed frozen food feeder that will feed ice cold thawed frozen food for days on end. One that can essentially dose thawed but refrigerated food and not leave any excess food in the lines after feeding. The last of the main components will be here tomorrow. It's actually really simple, VERY compact and will be completely automated via my Apex. I'll save the rest of the details and some photos for tomorrow once I have the heart of the system.

In the mean time, here is the start of breakout box project. Just need to solder in the Din cable which should take a few minutes per box.

 

[sowildpaul]

Tomorrow should be a fun day. One that will lend it self well for an interesting post. I've been kind of working on a plan for a very compact thawed frozen food feeder that will feed ice cold thawed frozen food for days on end. One that can essentially dose thawed but refrigerated food and not leave any excess food in the lines after feeding. The last of the main components will be here tomorrow. It's actually really simple, VERY compact and will be completely automated via my Apex. I'll save the rest of the details and some photos for tomorrow once I have the heart of the system.

Can't wait to see how it works. One member is working on the project that automatically measures salt mix to make new saltwater. I don't know if it works yet or not. Nice to have a full automatic system. One negative is that you have to scrape coralline off manually. lol

 

[slief]

FedEx arrived earlier than I expected. Here is the basis for my new refrigerated frozen food feeder. It was inspired by a solution I saw on the Santa Monica filtration site. It consists of a wine bottle/beverage cooler. This thing cools down to 32* depending on the setting you choose which is based on temp. The food will be thawed in a water bottle filled with tank water and placed in this bottle cooler at the 32* setting. I will place the bottle in a sock to prevent it from freezing.

The Neptune DOS will first run briefly in reverse to stir the bottles contents. Then immediately afterwards, run forward for a pre determined amount of time to add food to my display tank as well as my display fuge via the two separate heads. Once the food has been dispensed, the pumps will then run briefly in reverse to eliminate any food trapped in the lines.

I had been toying with using a pair of standard dosing pumps. One for the feed and another T'd in to flush the lines but that approach would have presented it's own share of issues where as the Dos solves all those with it's ability to run forward as well as reverse. Due to the tubing size in the Dos pump heads, I will be limited as to which froze food I can feed. Small mysis would be one type that will work well and maybe some of my LRS Reef Frenzy or Nano Frenzy. Both of which have smaller bits of food. I may start setting this up over the weekend as I need to decide how and where I am going to place the feeder tubing in my main display. I have some cool ideas for that that would run them through the back of the tank into the mounts that my Tunze's are connected to and allow one of my Tunze's to disperse the food.

More to come in the coming days on that. I've tested this wine bottle cooler and it works remarkably well. This is a discontinued Sharper Image one that I found new after searching eBay. I chose this model because of it's degree based temperature settings. My only gripe is it's noisy and continuous running cooling fan. While that wont really be an issue for where I plan on installing it, I may still opt to open it up and replace the fan with a higher quality but quieter fan.

Here are the main components.

 

[acesq]

Great idea Scott, I'll be watching this new project!

 

[slief]

Great idea Scott, I'll be watching this new project!

Thanks. As it turns out, patience was never my strong suit. Not moments after posting that, I started figuring out where the Dos was going to be mounted. That lead me to the necessary Apex firmware update.. Next thing I knew I was routing 1/4" tubing to test the concept. I temporarily connected the tubing to a point in the tank where it is slightly submerged and added some water to a bottle with some frozen mysis in it.

The next step was to create a program at which point I ran into a minor issue which I am seeking some advice for at the Apex forum.

The idea is that the Dos will first pump in reverse flow for a preset volume to stir up the food contents in the bottle, then forward to feed the tank and then in reverse again to flush food in the lines back into the bottle with water drawn from the tank.

The issue I am running into is the minimum time required for each dosing interval. It seems that there is a set limit that requires 10 minutes between start and stop time during a dosing interval and 1 minute between intervals which will cause issues for my feeding process as I really don't want food sitting in the lines and I also want the food to be kind of stirred up. While the latter isn't a big issue, the food in the lines would be best avoided if I can help it. Maybe with the 1 minute between intervals none of my concerns are really issues but I would much prefer the process be a lot quicker if at all possible. I was really hoping the entire process could be done within 3 minutes as opposed to 33 minutes.

In the end, it's probably not a concern.. I'm going to run a test shortly and will report back.

 

[woodnaquanut]

It's funny you mention space heater. I was thinking about doing the same thing below the tank in the event that my temps aren't manageable with the new pump.

There is no way a space heater is more efficient at heating the water than a submersible heater.

A small space heater is 1500 watts. That's pushing the 15A limit on a EB8 or EB4. Makes for an expensive controller!

Putting that kind of device under a tank freaks me out. Seems like queuing up for a Darwin award!

You don't need the heater to maintain a temp just bump up the low end a bit. That shouldn't take much.

Setting a submersible heater so the Apex is doing the controlling is much safer than having the heater do it. Much smaller chance of 'stuck on'. I've used Ebo (now Eheim)-Jager heaters for years. Some are still in service after 10 years.

And congrats on the coraline war!

 

[slief]

There is no way a space heater is more efficient at heating the water than a submersible heater.

A small space heater is 1500 watts. That's pushing the 15A limit on a EB8 or EB4. Makes for an expensive controller!

Putting that kind of device under a tank freaks me out. Seems like queuing up for a Darwin award!

You don't need the heater to maintain a temp just bump up the low end a bit. That shouldn't take much.

Setting a submersible heater so the Apex is doing the controlling is much safer than having the heater do it. Much smaller chance of 'stuck on'. I've used Ebo (now Eheim)-Jager heaters for years. Some are still in service after 10 years.

And congrats on the coraline war!

The space below my tank is about 80 square feet if that. It wouldn't take much to heat that area enough to keep the ambient temps up in there which would heat the sumps and pumps enough to warm the water. Granted, the small space heater I have is 800 watts. Even if it did work, I'd have serious reservations about running a small space heater in the closed confined space below my tank. I'd sooner stick with the dart pump for the winter months if that's what it boiled down to.

 

[slief]

I think I got the feeder programming figured out! It looks like I have to use advanced programming and not Fusion to accomplish what I was trying to do.

I created 3 profiles. I selected "Dose" as the as the profile type.
Profiles:

DosMix
Dose Rate: 250ml reverse
Per Dose Amount: 10
Dose Interval: 15
Number Of Doses: 1

DosFeed
Dose Rate: 250ml reverse
Per Dose Amount: 45
Dose Interval: 60
Number Of Doses: 1

DosFlush
Dose Rate: 250ml reverse
Per Dose Amount: 30
Dose Interval:60
Number Of Doses:1

I then set the Dos outlet for Advanced programming and used the following code as a test:
Fallback OFF
If Time 16:20 to 16:21 Then DosMix
If Time 16:21 to 16:23 Then DosFeed
If Time 16:24 to 16:25 Then DosFlush


The good news is it worked perfect. I do need to adjust the Speed for the DosFeed Profile as 250Ml/Min is probably to fast. Maybe not though but the DosFlush could certainly be slowed down. I also need increase the amount of food in my bottle as I only used 1 cube of baby mysis for my test and may need to increase the DosFeed dose amount time. Obviously I have some fine tuning to do but it seems like profiles in conjunction with advanced programming is the best way to accomplish this. I'm kind of excited! The contraption actually works.. The bottle is ice cold and the reverse cycle flushes any food out of the tubing and back into the bottle. Given that the food settles to the bottom, I probably don't even need the initial mix but if I decide to mix food, that initial reverse flow will help to mix the food up.

 

[slief]

Happy New Year!!

Finished up one of the new breakout boxes yesterday. Still waiting on the second cable for the other BoB to arrive. It was coming from an alternate source.

 

[slief]

I spend some time testing and making adjustments to the new auto feeder. I got it working pretty well after playing with pump speeds and the feed dose amount. The end result is a very decent supplemental feeding.

Here are my current settings that seem to work well. I have a mix of LRS Reef Frenzy Nano and frozen baby mysis in the bottle. It's a good mix for all the fish.

If Time 14:00 to 14:01 Then DosMix
If Time 14:01 to 14:03 Then DosFeed
If Time 14:03 to 14:04 Then DosFlush
If FeedD 000 Then ON


These are my current profiles:

DosMix
Dose Rate: 125ml reverse
Per Dose Amount: 20
Dose Interval: 40
Number Of Doses: 1

DosFeed
Dose Rate: 250ml Forward
Per Dose Amount: 120
Dose Interval: 200
Number Of Doses: 1

DosFlush
Dose Rate: 125ml reverse
Per Dose Amount: 60
Dose Interval:120
Number Of Doses:1

I put together a little video before I increased the feed amount. This video is an overview of the complete solution and a feeding at the lower feed amount of 80ml. I also had the dose speed adjusted to 125ml/min for this video. The increase in dose speed to 250ml/min coupled with the increased feed dose to 120ml made a major difference. Unfortunately, I did capture that feed on video (yet).

Here is a video covering the setup along with a smaller test feed.

<iframe width="1280" height="720" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/NJi_nj65vTU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>