Randy's 180G Reef-Photo Journal

[rdmpe]

Wow those must have been some tough snails !!!

The room is about 76.5. I've been leaving two stand doors at opp ends open to get some air flow through there (no fans though). The inside of the stand does get kind of warm. Good point about the pump being next to the sump tank, I'll check that situation!

I will eventually work it out, just a matter of time, which I'm extremely short on right now due to massive work overload (check my occupation LOL I wish)

 

[rdmpe]

Well, in an effort to figure out exactly where the furnace in my setup is, I have turned off the sump pump. I stuck a powerhead in the sump that pumps into the fuge just to keep some flow through there.

The main tank still has the CL going. But I'm concerned - will my oxygen levels get so low that the clownfish et al will die??? But hopefully I'll see the temps drop down to 78 or lower.

 

[Kenfuzed]

Randy,

Since I have been running a Tarpon pump for a couple months, I can tell you mine has not passed any heat onto the tank. As a reference, I can place my hand on the pump and it is warm but not even close to hot. Unlike other pumps I've had that were either very hot or scalding, this pump appears to heat the water less than some of these small pumps did.

This time of year, my 150g tank is running without a chiller and only fans. My house temp stays at 70 during the day. I think you have a serious problem with one of those pumps. Just my own person opinion, but I wouldn't proceed with anything on the tank until you get this worked out. Otherwise you could end up waging a losing battle against heat for a long time.

One test you can try once you isolate the problem pump, is connect the pump to an old tank or sump and let it circulate at room temperature. measure if the pump increases the temp.

 

[steveo32]

hey rdmpe your closed loop looks freaking awesome !!! just wondering what paint you used to paint the pvc

 

[rdmpe]

Hey Ken - thanks for the info on the Tarpon. I'm not sure why my tank temps are so high. It's totally ridiculous. I'm definitely not going to add anything else to this tank until I get the heat thing figured out. I'm not even putting any fans on the sump or anything. There is no way I can move forward until the tank temperature is reasonable, and I don't think it is right now.

Room temp is about 75 to 76, tank temp was steady at 81 with only the dart and tarpon. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing the temperature in the morning with only the dart running.

Steveo - Thanks. So far I'm very happy with the CL. I do have some tweaking to do. Right now it has blown a large area of my tank bottom bare of sand. But I knew I'd have to play with it some. I have some low outlets that I'm going to put some locline nozzles on so I can aim them upward a bit...

I can't wait to have nice clear water some day! Added the sand on Saturday evening and I still can't see across the short side of the tank

I just painted the plumbing with regular flat black krylon enamel. It worked fine. People often recommend the Krylon type that specifically says made for plastic. But the regular krylon also says it sticks to plastic. In any case, it worked for me and I'm happy with it.

I painted the back glass on the outside with some roll on interior latex flat black.

 

[steveo32]

ohh and that s reef safe ? thats cool maybe ill try that. I'm still working on the plans for how to set up my cl. How do you plan on setting up your lr ?

 

[rdmpe]

Well, I already set some of it up. I want to do three separate islands of rock. I have the first island set up but I can't post pictures of it since it is hidden in the milk!

I basically sat the largest pieces of LR on PVC stands and loosely stacked it up around the PVC riser coming off the CL. I used zip ties to hold the LR against the pvc riser so even though the rock pile looks pretty loose and unstable, it actually can't fall over since it's attached to the riser.

The PVC stands that I made to hold the rocks off the bottom glass / sand are cut from 2" thin wall pvc. I just cut 4" lengths of it (since I wanted about a 4" dsb of southdown). I also cut a couple of 1" holes in each stand. Not sure if I really needed to but it seemed like a good idea. Since I put sand in after the rock was in place, I wanted sand do be able to get down inside of the stands...

Of course, I still have to put more rock in so I'll have to do that with the sand in. Probably will make more sand storms... I had a few really nice pieces of dead rock that I also mixed in with the LR. But I think I still need about another 100 lbs or so.

 

[tgunn]

Randy,

I think you should be fine for oxygen levels in the tank; as long as the surface is stirred up a bit in the tank it should be fine.

Let us know how the temps are doing without the sump return. I can't see it being the dart adding heat directly to the water but I guess stranger things have happened. You're running a Mag on your skimmer, right? Aren't they nutorious for adding heat?

Tyler

 

[rdmpe]

I haven't been running that skimmer pump for a few days now. The only sources of heat were the Dart and the Tarpon and the temp was steady around 81.

I shut the Tarpon off around 9 PM or so. At that time the temp was steady at about 81. This morning the temp had dropped down to 79.5. Hopefully it will continue to drop. Since it is a fairly large tank, I think it takes a while for the temp to drop.

The clownfish seems to be doing OK except that he really seems to get pushed around by the CL currents. There is a lot of water moving in the tank. The crabs have been eating the snails . One cool thing - I have a pretty giant hermit and he had this big wide heavy shell that he seemed to constantly be struggling with. Well, I found some big FW snail shells along with some other sea shells, and put them in the tank figuring he would switch. Well he did - the kids got a big kick out of it. They thought it was a different crab so I had to explain it to them. They have named him "King Coral" :lol:

 

[tgunn]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6249798#post6249798 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by rdmpe
I haven't been running that skimmer pump for a few days now. The only sources of heat were the Dart and the Tarpon and the temp was steady around 81.

I shut the Tarpon off around 9 PM or so. At that time the temp was steady at about 81. This morning the temp had dropped down to 79.5. Hopefully it will continue to drop. Since it is a fairly large tank, I think it takes a while for the temp to drop.

The clownfish seems to be doing OK except that he really seems to get pushed around by the CL currents. There is a lot of water moving in the tank. The crabs have been eating the snails . One cool thing - I have a pretty giant hermit and he had this big wide heavy shell that he seemed to constantly be struggling with. Well, I found some big FW snail shells along with some other sea shells, and put them in the tank figuring he would switch. Well he did - the kids got a big kick out of it. They thought it was a different crab so I had to explain it to them. They have named him "King Coral" :lol:

Almost sounds like the heat is coming from the sump / return pump area. Have you measured the temperature of the sump water now that nothing is running? I wonder if it's cooling down or not? Theoretically since nothing is pumping in it you'd figure it would be cooling down.

So how is the closed loop manifold working for you (sounds like it's working fine)? Do you find you're getting enough pressure and even pressure at the outlets? If I had to do it again I think a manifold similar to yours would've worked out well in my tank. Especially now that I have the Seq 1000 pump pushing 6000 GPH through the closed loop.

Heh, my clowns can get pushed around by the flow in my tank a bit, but they don't seem to mind. I've even caught my yellow tang riding the flow from one of the C/L jets. Heh.

Hey sweet, that's kinda neat to see! My wife saw a crab switching shells at the LFS; she pulled up a stool and sat there watching it. :lol: Gave me more time to buy more stuff though!

I thought one of my hermits was dead; saw him out of his shell the other day laying dead still and broken up a bit. Turns out he moulted because he was still peeking out of his shell; didn't realize they moulted so completely!

Tyler

 

[jay24k]

Mine this morning was 83. I have an iwaki and 2 seios and my asm skimmer. A buddy of mine has the same thing basically except a panworld and his temps are 79. I keep my AC at 77 and his around 76. So it's possible. I like mine to stay around 81 but for some reason, some days it just goes up an extra couple degrees.

 

[rdmpe]

Hey Tyler, the sump is cooling down now that it is disconnected from the tank. I have a small powerhead giving some small flow, but I had to stick a heater in there to make sure it stays warm enough. This morning the sump/fuge was round 77 or so. One thing I'm worried about in my sump - this morning the PH was way low. Somewhere around 7.6 or 7.7 I think. I guess it's because of the macro and LS and no light on it overnight? BTW, I have not noticed any change in the overall system temperature from my flourescent light over the fuge. So anyway now that the fuge/sump is not connected to the display, I think the PH swings may be magnified. I turned the fuge light on, hopefully the ph will come up some.

The CL seems to be working really well. It's running six 3/4" outlets. I could probably have gone with 8 or 9 outlets at that size and still been fine, just somewhat more dispersed flow. I may still ad a couple of outlets since I have two of the "risers" that still are not covered with LR.

So Jay - do you have any fans on your system to help cool it? Are you worried that it will go up even higher than 83 when your lights are on for a while?

 

[rdmpe]

After a full day of having ONLY the dart running on the closed loop, no other pumps, lights, etc. the tank is at 79.5 and the room is at 76 to 77. So it seems like the dart is keeping the tank about 3 degrees warmer than the room it's in. This is more than I was expecting. Are my lights going to boil my tank? I'm really bummed about this. I don't feel like I can do anything until I get the temps down.

 

[jay24k]

I have 2 100mm fans installed in the canopy. Things put out about 105 cfm and drop the temps good. I've never seen my temps below 80. Today for some reason I'm having temp issues. First time it ever hit 85 so I'm trying to watch it and am going to start checking pumps. Most of the time it sits between 81 to 83 max. On the hottest day it will hit 84 but it's very rare. I think I'm gonna ditch the Iwaki pump though.

 

[tgunn]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6250135#post6250135 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by rdmpe
Hey Tyler, the sump is cooling down now that it is disconnected from the tank. I have a small powerhead giving some small flow, but I had to stick a heater in there to make sure it stays warm enough. This morning the sump/fuge was round 77 or so. One thing I'm worried about in my sump - this morning the PH was way low. Somewhere around 7.6 or 7.7 I think. I guess it's because of the macro and LS and no light on it overnight? BTW, I have not noticed any change in the overall system temperature from my flourescent light over the fuge. So anyway now that the fuge/sump is not connected to the display, I think the PH swings may be magnified. I turned the fuge light on, hopefully the ph will come up some.

The CL seems to be working really well. It's running six 3/4" outlets. I could probably have gone with 8 or 9 outlets at that size and still been fine, just somewhat more dispersed flow. I may still ad a couple of outlets since I have two of the "risers" that still are not covered with LR.

So Jay - do you have any fans on your system to help cool it? Are you worried that it will go up even higher than 83 when your lights are on for a while?

Yeah, I think if your sump is dropping in temp that pretty much debunks my theory that perhaps the pumps were hearing the sump and thus heating the whole tank.

The Dart shouldn't be heating things that much though. I bet the tarpon is transferring the heat in then..

My two PCX-70 pumps run pretty warm and I know they transfer a decent amount of heat into the system. I almost always used to have 2 heaters running to keep my temp stable; with the two PCX-70s and my Seq 1000 the temp stays stable with little heater run time. Mind you I'm running 1000 watts of pumps so I'm bound to get some heating effect.

My 4 T5 lights don't seem to heat the water too much; my two 100CFM 120mm fans keep the canopy a decent temp and I think they even encourage extra evaporation (which further helps knock the temps down)..

I'd guess running some fans over the tank surface or over the sump (provided there is canopy ventilation) would probably help keep your temps down. More evaporation, but more cooling from it too.

Tyler

 

[rdmpe]

I'm going to have an open top, so I really don't want to have to put a fan up there on the top of the tank. I could put one on the sump though. Do you guys generally use the computer style fans? I think I'm going to pick up a few of those at least to run on the sump. This has really got me bummed out. I didn't expect the dart to heat the water up so much, but it is. With only the dart running, not the tarpon, the temps are running 3 deg. above room temp.

Tomorrow I'm going to run the tarpon sump return and turn off the dart. Going to see how that goes for a while.

I'm also thinking about a different pump for the skimmer. Maybe an eheim running external. Not sure.

 

[jay24k]

Yea I use the silverstone fans from newegg. 120mm not 100mm(my mistake) and they are adjustable. I think my fuge light is heating the tank up or something. Lights off my temp is 84 which is not right. I shut my fuge light off to see what it changes. The digital thermometer is showing 80.5 degrees in the air which my AC thermostat is showing 76 as the temperature 10 feet away. Which is more acurate?

The water doesn't feel that warm so I'm not sure what to believe yet.

 

[jay24k]

Well I'm not sure what is up. Temps are showing 84.8. The tank does not feel warm as it did before when it the 84's. I put the probe in my wife's nanocube and it hit the same temp. Only thing in that is a maxijet 900. I don't see how 76 room AC in a nano is going to make the temp with the lid open and lights off 12 degrees. I stuck a meat thermometer in there (cheap one) and it was above 80 also.

I guess I need to check this one on my friend's tank and compare it.

What do you guys think?

 

[FiberLux]

Randy, Awesome thread! I recently put in a 180 on my first floor with a basement fish room. Now that I've read about yours, I want to tear it down and rework several things.... But I won't!

You are doing an awesome job of working through the issues and we're all enjoying living the experience with you.

Stupid question #1 - Have you measured the temperature in the stand cavity? A local LFS told me that his customer had a heat issue and was able to 'cool' the tank by reducing the temp within the stand cavity.

Keep up the great effort!

 

[jay24k]

Stand was about 84 but I have my fuge light in there and my external pump. But it's only a 40 gallon sump. However, the nano has no bottom chamber and only has a maxijet 900.