pictures of rock in new tank (finally!)

guilford

Premium Member
I know it has taken me absolutely forever to get these posted, but here are a couple of pictures of the live rock stacked in the new tank, along with a couple of other pictures of the equipment (from before I filled the tank with water).

Brad

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Center section underneath stand (skimmer, pumps, nitrate reactor)

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Left section underneath stand (chiller, calcium reactor, kalkwasser stirrer)

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Right section underneath stand (carbon filter, phosphate filter)
 
Part of it is an optical illusion (the equipment pictures are pretty close up). However, H&S and Deltec only make equipment so small. That's the smallest media reactor, calcium reactor and kalk stirrer that Deltec makes, and that's the smallest nitrate reactor and skimmer (with an Eheim pump) that H&S makes.

Most of the equipment would also work on a larger tank, but unfortunately it's also as small as you can get from those manufacturers. Also in my back pocket (but don't tell my wife ;-) is the fact that I can upgrade the tank size in the future without rebuying much of anything (and the stand will hold up to a 135).
 
The thing on the left is indeed the chiller. For reference, it's roughly 20 inches high in that picture, so it's a pretty small unit. The unit I have is rated for a 12 degree pulldown on a 105 gallon tank, and they have several models that can handle even larger tanks. It's an electronic chiller from Ocean Geotronic based on the Peltier effect, and the only moving parts are the four fans. Since it is electronic, it has a power supply that can vary the wattage anywhere from 15 to 300 watts. So when it just needs to cool the tank a little bit, it has a very low wattage draw, and it can ramp on up as the cooling needs increase. The other nice thing is that it automatically switches back and forth between a chiller and a heater and has a built-in controller that generally holds the temp within about 0.4 degrees.

The company's website is http://www.ocean.geotronic.it/index_gb.html and the US importer is FinsReef (note the company is Italian and the website could use a little help with their English translations :-)
 
Thanks for the info Brad. That thing is totally cool.

I dont know about the "Italian thing" though, they never made a mistake they'd admit to as far as my work experience goes.

So, the saltwater actually runs over the sincs? their site isnt very keen to show how it works. How do fans blow on sincs that are enclosed? the fins protrude out of the water compartment? Neat product, not that I could use it but I'm curious how it works because it's so neat and seemingly compact.
 
So to be just a bit nosey... how much money do you have sunk into this setup... like the chiller etc... I love the way you have everything. What size is you stand and tank??
 
imsqueak - I agree that their site doesn't have much detailed info. There are two connections for flexible hose on the bottom -you can see the red one (input) and a tiny bit of the blue one (output) in the picture. I believe those are connected to a metal pipe that winds it's way through the base of the chiller (kind of like a coil in a normal refrigerant chiller, only it is not coiled, it just kind of snakes around). I'm not an electrical genius by any means, but I think that a peltier device uses some kind of electronic transistor or some other kind of chip. When electricity is applied to the chip, it can transfer heat one direction or the other. So the chip is up against the metal pipe on one side and the heatsink on the other. I think there are two chips per heatsink/fan, so my unit with four fans has eight chips total. The water doesn't directly touch the heatsink or the chip. The fan just keep air flowing across the heatsink. The fans suck air in through the sides of the heatsinks that you see in the picture and then out through the top of the fan. The air coming off the heatsinks is cold when the unit is heating the water, and warm when the unit is cooling the water. And the rotation speed of the fans also varies a bit depending on how much cooling or heating is needed. I chose this kind of chiller for two reasons, number one it's not very loud (and I don't have a fish room or some other place to stick it, so I wanted it to be quieter) and number two, I like the fact that it draws just a little bit of electricity when all that's needed is a little bit of heating or cooling, so there's no giant spike in the current draw like a refrigerant chiller. Since the tank is only 58 gallons, the chiller should have a very low draw most of the time.

saycheesee - Let's just say I have too much invested in it! But I had a 72 gallon tank quite a few years ago, and when I had that one, I found myself buying some pieces of equipment several times (like skimmers and lighting and such). I'd buy something more towards the inexpensive end of the scale and then upgrade it. I discovered two things: (1) I don't like constantly fiddling with equipment just to get it to work and (2) the easier something is to perform maintenance on, the more likely I am to do the proper maintenance as often as I should. And so with this tank I spent a little more up front to get equipment that I won't be tempted to replace and to get stuff that was as easy as possible to perform maintenance on. Hopefully I'll come out okay in the long run. :-) Oh, and the tank is 58 gallons (Oceanic, 36" long, 18" wide, 21" deep) and the stand is for a 125/135 (72" long, 18" wide). The tank sits centered on the stand. I got the larger stand so I would have more room underneath for equipment. Especially being only 18" wide, there is not a lot of room at all underneath a normal stand for a 58 gallon, especially if you want to use external pumps.
 
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