My 500 + gallon system. Last 13 years to now. Build, Aquascaping & more. Lots of pics
- Thread starter slief
- Start date
slief
RC Sponsor
Not sure what noise you are talking about but when the feed is happening, you can definitely hear the pump in the video. It's not terribly loud but you can hear it if it's out in the open. In my case, I was standing about a foot from it when the feed was occurring while recording the video.. To put it in perspective, it's noisier than a Aquamedic or BRS doser, about the same as a litermeter pump and much quieter than a typical medical doser like the Cole Palmer. Unlike most aquarium dosers, the Dos uses very large heavy duty Stepper Motors which is why you can hear it. In this case, the noise is a sign of a heavy duty motor, The noise is also relative to the pump dose speed. In this case, I had it set to the high speed. At the lower speeds, it quiets down..
The noise for me isn't an issue because the pump is located in a closet adjacent to the tank which when the door is closed makes the pump inaudible. The pump is however really well made and the options for dosing speed and control make this one heck of a pump. There are a lot of great uses that one could use this for besides dosing. Obviously feeding is one of them. Automatic water changes is another as well as top off among other things.. This is by far the most robust, and solid controllable dosing pump I've ever played with. I was pleasantly surprises once I started playing with it.
sowildpaul
New member
Looking good to me. Since I am deaf, I don't know what you said in the video so I have two questions...
To thaw frozen food in rodi or saltwater?
How long is thawed food which is kept chilled by the wine cooler good for? 1 day or 2 days or even longer?
To thaw frozen food in rodi or saltwater?
How long is thawed food which is kept chilled by the wine cooler good for? 1 day or 2 days or even longer?
chris_kitedude
New member
reefgeek +++ 
love the ideas you come up with. keep em comin.
love the ideas you come up with. keep em comin.
slief
RC Sponsor
The food is thawed in salt water. I will be adding Selcon to it to enrich it further. That said, the food should be good for several days. I figure I will be changing it out by feeding the bottle contents every fews days and refillling the bottle at that time. Anything that remains in the bottle after a few days will get dumped into the tank.
The whole idea behind this is to add one more feeding a day. My daily hand feedings will continue but many of my fish will benefit from the from a mid day feeding while I am at work. This will also pay major dividends when I travel.
Great idea and video
Thank you very much!
reefgeek +++
Thank you as well! I will keep the ideas coming! :thumbsup:
sowildpaul
New member
Sounds like it's good for a weekend while you are away. Still, that's positive.
BTW, I noticed your cowfish didn't eat much because other fish were in the way. I had a cowfish before and my fish ate all food before the cowfish had a chance to eat. I recommend that you "wye" the feeding line (on each end of the tank) if possible to give the cowfish a chance to eat.
slief
RC Sponsor
I hand feed the cowfish every day. He gets hand fed Nori and frozen food for this very reason. He's much slower than the rest of the fish. He will hone in on food only to have it get flushed away by the current before he can get it or have the other fish eat it first. I keep him very well fed with the hand feedings. Otherwise, he'd be libel to pick at my coral or worse, starve to death. He is kind of smart though and I expect he will figure out this food feeder. My guess is that once he figures things out, the sound of the Dos pump activating will get him over to the feeding tube where he will wait for food. Time will tell on that though as it may be wishful thinking. Regardless, he will continue to be hand fed every day just as I have been doing for the last year.
I've made some code changes so I can trigger feeding via manual intervention using feed timers. Now I can push a button on my Apex display and trigger the thawed food feeder. The system is working great and there is plenty of food being dispensed. Then the pump reverses to pump the remaining food in the lines back into the bottle. Next I need to create a virtual outlet to trigger the feed remotely. That way if I am away, I can feed via remote connection.
My Apex Dos feed code is now the following:
Fallback OFF
Set OFF
If Time 13:00 to 13:01 Then DosMix
If Time 13:01 to 13:03 Then DosFeed
If Time 13:03 to 13:04 Then DosFlush
If FeedD 003 Then DosFlush
If FeedD 001 Then DosFeed
If FeedD 000 Then DosMix
Here is a short video of a full food dispense.
<iframe width="1280" height="720" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/vKlXpQgOMlg?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
slief
RC Sponsor
Mine is about 12"x10" also with a pair of 2" bulkheads in the bottom. It has the surface skimmer on 4 sides although I have the two 12" sides blocked off with ABS plates held in place with nylon screws so that water is drawn from the longer ends of the tank. I have a silly about of flow in my tank and found that blocking those two sides worked best due to my sea swirls and flow.
When I built my tank, it was not planned as a peninsula but instead it was backed up against a well with the front and part of each side viewable. When I moved it to my new home in '97, the Peninsula became a reality. Had I built this tank with a peninsula in mind, I probably would have done the overflow on one end of the tank instead of the center despite the fact that the central overflow does a great job for surface skimming. On the other hand, the center overflow does provide a great place to mount additional power heads or wave makers.
Now on a 240g Cube, the center overflow could work out great. Then again so would a rear mounted overflow. Especially if you could get the main part of the box on the back side of the tank. I think you could also put the dims down to 12"x10" provided you can get your bulkheads and plumbing in there. I have a pair o 2" and a pair off 1" going into the bottom off mine. The 2" are for the drains and the 1" are for my closed loop. In your case, you could run your returns through the overflow.
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Awesome tank! Liked to have one that big someday. For now I've been working on a 65 gallon with attached 20 gallon refugium and 29 gallon sump. I'm interested in some information about the mounts you made for the kessil a360. I going to be using 2 of these leds over my tank suspended on metal conduit. I haven't purchased any hardware yet. I've been trying to find out what screw size and thread count the kessil takes where the mounting ring is that comes with the light so I can figure out what I need to buy. I thought you might be able to help me out. Also where did you get those mounts you used? Any help you can offer is greatly appreciated. Thanks
slief
RC Sponsor
You can now get the articulating mounts from Premium Aquatics.
http://premiumaquatics.com/products/articulating-led-mount-kessil-leds.html
slief
RC Sponsor
Glad to help. I love the Kessils!
slief
RC Sponsor
I've got to say... That new feeder is working damn good! Almost too good. I could get real lazy with push button feeding. I hit the feed timer 3 times tonight plus the automatic feed that went off at noon today along with the 2PM automatic pellet feeding. My fish are loving this thing. The fish are like a bunch of kids when the ice cream man come around. The fish already know that food is coming when the hear the pump spin up. As soon as the first step kicks in, most of the fish charge that side of the tank and waited patiently. Well, maybe not so patiently but they know where to go and what's coming.
I still had to hand feed my cowfish though. He gets some of the food but certainly not enough. I'm sure I will always have to hand feed him to keep him fat and happy and away from my corals!
I still had to hand feed my cowfish though. He gets some of the food but certainly not enough. I'm sure I will always have to hand feed him to keep him fat and happy and away from my corals!
dave.m
Active member
The downside of auto-feeding is that fish that haven't gotten used to hand feeding don't associate people with food and tend to run and hide when you approach your tank - not what your hobby is supposed to be about. Hand feeding keeps them as pets, in my experience. I leave auto-feeding for the in-between times.
Dave.M
Dave.M
slief
RC Sponsor
I do agree 100%. I won't stop hand feeding. That was never going to happen. I enjoy it and it's part of my daily ritual. This is really for supplemental feeding but since it's a new toy I hit the button a number of times tonight. It was like a morpheme drip in the hospital. You can't enough presses of the button :lolspin:
sowildpaul
New member
That's good to hear that it works successfully.
How do you hand feed the cowfish directly while other fish like Tangs take it from your hand as well? I assume that you hand feed the cowfish at the same time other fish are busy eating food from the auto feeder.
slief
RC Sponsor
Good question.. The cowfish gets fed first. I just push the tangs away with my hand or fingers while feeding the cow. Occasionally, one of the tangs will sneak in for a bite before I can swat it away. We do have a routine down though and all the other fish know it. The only tang that really harasses me when I feed the cow is the Lieutenant Tang but it's not that big of a deal. A push here or there with my fingers or hand is enough to keep him at bay although he does bite me every now and then when he catches me by surprise. When that tang gets pi$$ed from being pushed away, it turns around and tries to smack me with it's tail repeatedly. Then it will wait for any scraps from the cowfish.
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