Project 58!! (Image intense)

[maxxII]

Unfortunately...I seem to have a heat issue already. W/O lights, the tank is running at 81 degrees. Looks like I may need a chiller. I really didnt want to have to use one....but I dont think I have much of a choice. Any suggestions on whihc brand you like and why? I'm thinking I should get a 1/6 or 1/5 hp chiller for my tank.
Nick

 

[Arsenal11]

Nick-reverse the blade in your saw & it will cut egg-crate without disaster.

 

[maxxII]

Really??? Hmmm...did not know that.

Kinda makes you wonder who figured that one out too....Cause I never would have thought of that. Thanks Arsenal!
Nick

 

[SpankyStL]

Observations/Comments

Observations/Comments

Hey again. After reading the latest, I had 4 comments. If they are too sophomoric, I apoligize in advance.

1. I did a diagram once of my place for electrical outlets and fixtures. I think it's the opposite way than you stated. After I made a plan, I'd test each outlet by using a desk lamp, then I went to the box to find the breaker that supplied it, not go by each breaker then test what was hooked up to it.

2. An electrical engineer told me:

Amp x 110 = watt capacity on breaker

i.e. my area is being furnished with electricity by a 15 amp breaker (might be 20 for you). So the max load I should put on that breaker is 1650 watts (15 x 110) -- that's the capacity of that breaker. Make sense? I still have not added up what i'm running through mine to see how close to max I am now.

3. For the lightbox, did you put any safety thing in there if the box
falls? maybe a 1x1 block inside each corner right above the tank so that the box cannot get to the water? Just a thought.

4. You might want to consider 2 dowels for the lightbox, this will cut the strain on each rod in half. I like your idea of just boring holes in the frame instead of adding more wood (weight) on top. Will the holes reduce the integrity of the wood (abillity to hold weight) to any degree? If so, might the 2 holes be better on each side than 1 -- or would the 2 holes really weaken the frames ability to hold heavy things?

Just my 2 cents (maybe 4). Remember, I have no experience in these things, you do. Just observations.

Pete

 

[reefeater]

Just a little bit of electrical recommendation. If you have a 20 amp breaker you can only load it to 80% capacity, that is 16 amps. 16x110=1,760 watts. Most equipment has either the wattage or ampere ratings on them.

 

[maxxII]

Thanks for the info Reefeater...I know nothing about electricity.
I will tally up everything I can tonight.

Pete....

1. I did a diagram once of my place for electrical outlets and fixtures. I think it's the opposite way than you stated. After I made a plan, I'd test each outlet by using a desk lamp, then I went to the box to find the breaker that supplied it, not go by each breaker then test what was hooked up to it.

I must have phrased it wrong, cause I did exactly what you just said. there are some outlets here that dont work. The landlord used to to live in this apartment and he did some goofy stuff when having an electrician come by and rewire things. Not goofy in a hazardous way, goofy as in had outlets taken off line and didnt mark them as no longer working or have them removed.

2. An electrical engineer told me:

Amp x 110 = watt capacity on breaker

i.e. my area is being furnished with electricity by a 15 amp breaker (might be 20 for you). So the max load I should put on that breaker is 1650 watts (15 x 110) -- that's the capacity of that breaker. Make sense? I still have not added up what i'm running through mine to see how close to max I am now.

that makes sense to me, again I have no real experiance with electrical, but I will take your information and reefeater's and see what I can come up with.

3. For the lightbox, did you put any safety thing in there if the box falls? maybe a 1x1 block inside each corner right above the tank so that the box cannot get to the water? Just a thought.

I've been thinking about this for awhile now. I've made the lightbox longer than the tank by 2 inches. This doesnt mean much, but will slow the lightbox down in the event something fails and it falls. It may still be able to bounce back into the water after impact. I will be using eggcrate material to cover the top of the tank (keep fish INSIDE the glass box) which should help keep the light box outside the tank. Not much of a precaution there to be honest, but I'm using 3/32" braided steel wire wrapped in vinyl to hang the lightbox from. The lightbox weighs (w/o reflectors) right about 10 lbs. The wire is rated for a weight of 234 lbs so i'm not worried about that failing. The only weak points in this structure are the eye screws and the wood itself. The eye screws are screws that have a circle on the end (eyelet) for things to be hung from them. Its concievable that they might rip out of the wood of the lightbox under heavy weight, but I kinda doubt it. Especially since there are 4 of them used as mounting points. The dowel rod could snap under the weight of the lightbox...but I kinda doubt it also. Its 1 1/4" thick and made as a clothes rod for closets.It wont be under as much weight as it was made for. And the lightbox support arms might fail...but I've mounted braces for them too. I honestly wont know until I get this whole thing hooked up with lights inside as to whether or not it will fail and drop my lightbox. But I highly doubt it unless I really screw something up here.

4. You might want to consider 2 dowels for the lightbox, this will cut the strain on each rod in half. I like your idea of just boring holes in the frame instead of adding more wood (weight) on top. Will the holes reduce the integrity of the wood (abillity to hold weight) to any degree? If so, might the 2 holes be better on each side than 1 -- or would the 2 holes really weaken the frames ability to hold heavy things?

Hmm....I hadnt thought of this simply because the logistics of making some sort of gear to get the two rods sync'ed in terms of movement seemed like a major PITA. I'm also not really wild about drilling two holes in the 2x4's that make up the lightbox support arms. I think it might weaken the arms more than I'm confortable with. I dont think it would be a problem, i'm just pretty paranoid about that sort of thing...besides, I really couldnt figure out a way to have two dowel rods work right...
lol


Thanks for posting up those questions Pete. Not sophmoric at all. I like it when someone else brings a new perspective to the scene. Please feel free to ask any other questions that come to mind. Nothing is set in stone yet, and if you can help me make things better, by all means!!

Nick

 

[maxxII]

Okay I lied about figuring out how much electricity my tank stuff uses.....I've been so busy this weekend, I havent had a chance to do anything much....I'm jump starting things today. The plan is to finish up fitting the last remaining parts to the lightbox dowel (Raise/lower light box) and the mounts for that. I also need to get the hand crank started on that. Should be just few minutes with my mitre saw to make one in the shape of a stop sign. Luckily, I have lots of left over (already stained and sealed) wood from the original light box.

I hooked up the halides last night and turned them on. They are dual 250 watt Double Ended (DE) bulbs. I will also be running 190 watts of VHO actinics for color supplementation. I dont think they will add anything that the MH's wouldnt, temperature wise.
The lights were running for about 6 hours and the temperature rose to 82.4 degrees F. The house is at 69 degrees F so I think the ambient air temp has a larger effect on my tanks temp than I had hoped or expected.
I'm going to be figuring out a way to DIY a chiller from the old dorm fridge I have in the basement. I just want to lower the temp about 5 degrees or so and then use a heater to maintain the correct temp, (at least until I can afford to buy the right chiller). It's been sitting in the basement for a year or so and has collected all sorts of dust and crap on it to a degree that Rocio wont let in the house until I give it a surgery room level cleaning...anybody got an autoclave big enough for a small refridgerator? Yeah, anyway...
I'm also evaporating somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 1/2 gallons a day.

In the Things that make you go DUH!!! department:
I've been trying to figure out where a micro bubble problem was coming from since I moved the tank inside the house from the garage. The bubbles were coming from the OM unit and were all over the place...really annoying, I figured that it was just because the tank was new, and would eventually go away.
Wasnt happening. In fact, I could tell it was getting worse.
So I shut down the OM unit and pump and tried to figure out what the problem was... Checked to make sure the closed loop had enough water and wasnt causing some cavitation...everything was fine in there.
Turned it all back on...problem was worse than when I turned it all off and looked inside the priming hook....wait a minute??? All I did was open the priming hook cap! Leaving the pump running, I unscrewed the priming hook cap, (seen in this photo...the part sticking up to the right of the Loc-Line return Y...)

And suddenly bubbles starting flooding out from the closed loop....the priming hook from the closed loop intake started sucking air horribly.....
DUH!!!!?????!!!! This is the INTAKE...its sucking air stupid!!!! Thats why there are so many micro bubbles!!!
It hadnt done this in the garage because I cranked it tight attempting to prevent a geyser of water all over my motorcycle in the garage when I was wet testing....
Took the cap off completely, wrapped the threads with teflon tape, and cranked it tight by hand.
Turned everything back on.......no bubbles!!
Yeah, I'm a genius.....


Nick

 

[maxxII]

I've been as busy as Rocio would let me get on the tank today.....

Installed the dowel brackets today, cleaned of the little dorm fridge, bought a maxi jet 1200 to run water through tubing that will sit in the fridge, bought 100 feet of 1/2 ID tubing to sit in the fridge, plugged in the little fridge to see if it still works and how well it still works, (Froze a bottle of water in a couple of hours when placed on coldest setting), connected the American DJ PC-100A power centers today, and hung the ballasts for my MH's....And I took pictures of most of it.

Here is a close up of the dowel bracket.

I used a 1 3/4" hole saw to cut the hole. Heres a helpful tip those following along at home. When using a hole saw that uses a drill bit to get started, drill all the way through the wood, until the drill bit itself punches through, but not the hole saw. You can cut halfway through the wood with the hole saw if you like, but do not go all the way through with hole saw. Flip the piece over, place your drill bit in the hole it made from the other side, and cut from the other side of the piece. This time you're going all the way through the wood. In doing this, you avoid the wood splintering when the hole saw comes through. Its pretty ugly when that happens. This keeps that from happening.
In case thats really confusing to follow...drill halfway through with holesaw, all the way through with drill bit. flip piece over, line up drill bit into drill bit hole from the other side, and begin cutting. This should prevent any splintering. Its what I did here.

Here is a photo of the bracket with the dowel rod inserted. The dowel rod and the lightbox support arm still need to be stained and sealed. The hole is 1 3/4" but the dowel is only 1 1/4". I made the hole larger for two really good reasons. First, I wnated some room for the dowel to rotate with out binding up. Second, I only had 1 1/4" hole bits, and the 1 3/4" hole saw was the smallest one I had....nothing else would fit.

Nick

 

[maxxII]

Next I mounted up the Power Centers and hung up my Sunlight Supply BlueWave IV E ballasts. You can see the back of my new light weight lightbox in the image. I have not mounted the trim on the lightbox, but it will match the stand. The lightbox is just sitting on two 2x4's to keep it off the top of the tank. The 2x4's also give me a good frame of reference for the lowest I want my lightbox to hang.

Here is a close up of the Power Center mounted to the upright...I have two and they are mounted in the same place on both sides. The other ballast is in the same place on the other side as well.

Nick

 

[maxxII]

Still need to:

Stain lightbox support arms, and dowel.
Drill hole for light box cables to mount from the dowel.
Glue trim to the lightbox, (hide them gaps).
drill holes through the sides of the dorm fridge, run the ends of the tubing through the holes, and seal them with insulating foam.
Buy a smaller square-ish shaped bucket or something that will hold 100 feet of tubing and water, (Tubing sits in water inside the bucket for more efficient heat transfer).
Buy a top off resevoir somehwere in the neighborhood of 15-20 gallons.
Add salt mix and aquascape.....
sigh...I'm getting to the finish line!

Nick

 

[SaveOurReefs]

LOOKING GOOD!

 

[maxxII]

Have made some progress over the last couple of days, which is kinda surprising since Ive been sick as a dog, (if snot were gold, I'd own Fiji right now), and I've been working. Anyway...here we go:

First up was finishing up the lift mechanism for the lightbox. This was kinda kicking my butt for a bit. I'm still not wildly happy with it, but this will do until I come up with a better method.

I was concerned about the handwheel rotating, but not turning the dowel it was connected to, (kinda like when you turn a bolt and it rotates the nut also, so nothing changes...hope that makes sense), I initially thought about connecting the handwheel to the dowel with more than one screw, so it wouldnt spin uselessly. I didnt like that idea, since I was worried about the stress placed on all those screws from the rotational torque. Screws with the head twisted off are a ROYAL PITA to remove.
So I figured I'd build a collar that goes around the dowel rod, and connect it with screws to even out the stress placed on them. This is the collar. I had to go out and buy a 1 1/4 hole saw drill bit to get this right.

Even then I screwed it up a couple of times. I initially tried to use some leftover plywood since it was available and stained and sealed.....long story short, the screws inserted through the sides split the wood. I wound up using leftover 2x6 which was stained and sealed and cut it to fit.

You can see the screw on top running through the end grain of the wood here. I used one large screw per side to anchor this to the dowel. I'm sure if I tried hard enough I could rip the collar free of the dowel, but I'd have to work really hard to do that, and in any event that would be more stress than the collar will deal with while over my tank.

Here is a front shot of the handwheel attahed to the collar and dowel.
Again, I just used some scrap wood left over from the super heavy lightbox and cut it down to the shape it is now.

Here's a shot of the rear of the handwheel mounted to the collar and dowel.

Nick

 

[maxxII]

Here is a pic of the handwheel and everything mounted over the tank. I added this little knob planning on using it to raise and lower the lightbox.....doesnt work to well for that though. The knob is too small, ( I couldnt find a long straight handled knob/handle to use for this). So I wind up grabbing the sides of the handwheel and raising/lowering the lightbox that way. Rocio makes fun of the little knob....I dont care, I'm secure enough in my manhood have a little knob on my handwheel. I'm not compensating for anything...

Here are two photos of the cotter pins I bought to keep the dowel from sliding out of the brackets and causing my lightbox to come crashing down.
Found em at Home Depot for 3 bucks each. I use two, one on either end so the dowel cant move very far.

Here is the cotter pin with the safety clip closed.

Here it is with the safety clip open. You just pull it over the end of the pin...kinda tough, so it wont happen accidently.

Nick

 

[maxxII]

This part kept me thinking for a bit.....
I had difficulty finding an appropriate method of keeping the lightbox raised at whatever height I wanted. Basically I needed to keep the dowel from moving after I raised/lowered the lightbox to the desired height. This is what I settled on:

These are two hook and eye latches with spring clips that keep them from accidently slipping of the eye bolt. I use one on each side. There are 4 eyebolts circling the dowel, so I can raise/lower the lightbox and lock it into almost any height. I have two sets of eyebolts shown here in these pics cause I screwed up the first placement and had to redo it....some people who have read this thread actually have the crazy impression that I'm some DIY super genius and get all this right on the first try...I WISH THAT WAS TRUE!!! This is just one more way of showing I'm human and make mistakes. So anyione who thinks this sort of thing is too difficult, thats crap. Cause if I can do this, anyone (except maybe my dad.....) can do it. Ya just gotta be willing to try.

Top down shot of the locking mechanism, (LOL...Its not really a mechanism, just makes me sound smarter...anybody impressed?????? Hello.....Hello...is this thing on????)

Nick

 

[maxxII]

The lightbox is suspended with 3/32" diameter vinyl wrapped cable which actually increases the outer diamter of the cable to 1/8". I bought it at Home Depot along with the aluminum cable ferrules and stops. Basically you run the cable through one side of the ferrule, make a loop, and run the other end through the other side of the ferrule. Then you use a swaging tool to crimp the ferrule down and secure the cable. After this is done, the cable will not move. Its important to beg, borrow, or buy a swaging tool to do this. I almost gave myself the world's first simultaneous hernia and brain aneurysm trying to crimp the ferrules and stops with a pair of pliers. As soon as my camera battery is charged up again, I will take pics of the swaging tool so people can see what it looks like.
The stops are exactly what they sound like. They stop the cable from pulling though whatever they are run through. I need to take a close up pic of the stops.....

Here is a general view of the cables connected to the lightbox and the dowel.

Here is a close up of the cables and the quick disconnect clips I'm using.

Starting at the top of the above pic....
You can see the cable looped through the ferrule, (after being swaged...much smaller beforehand) and connecting to the quick disconnect clamp. The top cable is running through the dowel. The quick disconnect clip is basically a D rig type clip...that uh, isnt shaped like a D....so I guess its really a snap clip. But its purpose is to allow me to be able to separate the lightbox from the dowel for any sort of reason.
The snap clip is connected to the second cable. This cable is connected to two larger eye screws connected directly to the lightbox frame. There are two locking links that connect the cable to the eye screws. Locking links is not the correct term for them, but I cant remember the right one...sorry.

You can see the cables from my Reef Optix 3 reflectors coiled on top of the lightbox in this photo. They will not be like that when this is all said and done.
They will run up and around the lightbox support arms when I finally get off the computer and stain and seal them.
Nick

 

[maxxII]

Here is a top down photo of the lightbox. This shows the spaces between the top braces. The middle brace has a 4 inch space, the two side spaces are 3 1/2 inches wide. This allows for alot of natural heat venting so I dont need fans to move air into the box. The back of the box is very open as well.

Nick

 

[maxxII]

Here is a whole tank shot with the lightbox in a lowered position. The lightbox can actually rest on the top the tank. Here it is raised about 3 inches off the top of the tank. Please excuse the appearance of the lightbox....this is the crappy front panel for test purposes. The good one is finishing up the final coat of water seal, and trim will be put on the corners of the lightbox to match the stand.

Please excuse the box o plumbing parts in the right hand corner. Its sitting on my new chiller.

Here is a photo of the lightbox raised to its max height. This places the bottom of the lightbox at about 11.5 inches above the surface of the water, and puts the bottom of the reflectors at a little more 13 inches above the surface of the water.

Here is a photo of the lightbox as seen from a worms eye view. I actually had to lie on the floor under the dining room table, (dodging dogs who desperately wanted to lick my face and the camera...sigh....), to take this picture. I'm glad Rocio didnt see me doing that. She already thinks I'm a nutjob, no need to confirm it for her.

I only have the MH's in place right now. I still need to wire up the VHO's...

Nick

 

[maxxII]

Finally here are photo's of my new chiller. I bought it used from a reefer who was getting out of the hobby. Its a Pacific Coast CL-650 1/4 HP Inline Chiller. Its very quiet, and very capable for what I need. It was bought in May of this year, along with a Mag 950 which the guy threw in all for $400.00. The chiller has 5/8" ports and the same size heat exchanger coil inside, which really chokes down the Mag 9.5...down to about 350 gph. I'm thinking of using an Iwaki MD-40RLT I have lying around. I originally bought the Iwaki 40 MD-RLT to power the ETSS skimmer I bought and didnt use. I think the pressure pump would do better in this application.

Nick

 

[jfr]

Looking good!!!! Nice work and thanks for sharing the photo journal

 

[maxxII]

12-30-2004

The holidays have kept me pretty busy. I've still been trying to get things done though. Rocio and I are going to Inland Aquatics with the club on Jan 8th and I'd love to be able to buy something for the tank then. Its gonna be a few months before I can really put any corals or anemones in the tank, so I'm looking at fish. Inland breeds clowns so this would be a grerat time to pic some up....We'll see if they have anything I can bring home.

I did manage to finish the aquascaping though. I'm not real happy with the left side, but I LOVE the rock work on the right. The pics dont look too good IMO, but I definately got what I was looking for, open rockwork with lots of room for fish to swim.

Here is the right side. I took the pic with out flash since it really made the image tough to see properly through my crappy digi cam. The tower is actually 4 seperate rocks that were drilled and are held together with about 5 or 6 acrylic dowels (3/8" diameter). I just used a standard 3/8' wood drill bit, but it was 12 inches long. Cut the acrylic rod to fit and shoved it in the hole. works good. The little rock to the right of the tower is actually homemade by a guy from the reef club, Darren, (who gave the demonstration at Mark's house in the basement.