Restarting an old 280 build

Each day since I have added more to the system. All of the refugiums are on line. Each has a milk crate full of dry rock.

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Everything is going well. Today I added the 325 and the entire system is on line (not counting the 92 gallon and 45 gallon tanks).

The new drops from the reservoir are working beautifully

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I can actually speed up the water going up and it flows down just as fast. I turned it down to what you see there.

So here finally is a FTS of the 280 on line with the entire filtershed. I added some rock it may be replaced by Live Rock next week. I am still in limbo.

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think I am in the clear now. I am going to get the other two tanks online this weekend and then start on all of the equipment, skimmer, ATO, calc reactor and such.

Once all of that is done I can start on my DYI LED's. shed some light on the subject and then maybe actually make a reef tank.

I dumped a whole crap load of nitrifying bacteria in the tank after I got all of the refugiums on line. all my tests are coming back 0 Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate.. I've thrown in a few things I thought would at least make a blip in ammonia. But so far nothing.

I think I am going to toss a bunch of food in there and see if I can get it to spike.

I still do not have the OM going, but I just want to add I cannot say enough good things about the customer service Paul over at Oceans Motions has displayed. My first email to OM was Sunday after it stopped running. I not only got an email that day. but we have been in constant contact ever since.

I am sure we will figure it out, I am working on a theory right now that it is failing because of sand getting into the intake and jamming the OM. I think most of the sand has settled now and the closed loop has been running wide open the past few days. I am going to give it another day and then clean it all up and reinstall the drum and see if it fires up. I will know a lot more after that test. But again Kudos to Paul and OM. I bought that thing 8 years ago and I have been treated as if it is still under warranty in every way by them.
 
your original union valves are not really that. they are made like that to replace the ball for high volume use of closing and opening. not to act as unions........ (i have seen a few tanks do what you described....... im just glad your on concrete and not a carpet floor/hard wood floor. if so, then your wife would have given you the look and then some.... (i know, i can see my wife doing the same thing)


on the OM, if you turn the pump off, and turn the OM on, can you hear or see it working? (fell it working) and it just doesnt with the pump on, or will it not turn while its all assembled? i ask, because i know the tolerances are tight. are any of the plumbing fittings sticking through the drum and causing the inner drum to not be able to turn (or maybe catching on them?)
second, measure how tall the drum is, and measure how tall the inner opening is for the drum. maybe there is a fraction off and when all assembled, its binding?

keep us updated!!!!
 
Ah, lol man I sure wish I would have paid just a little more attention to them before I put them on. it would have saved me a lot of money. I told my wife the good thing about this happening now is I got to fix it before I added livestock and then found out the hard way that they are not true union valves.. IN the end I really believe I dodged a much worse bullet. Having the house sump next to the tank has been a blessing.

The OM. You can hear the magnet sort of skip or click because the drum is stuck. when I turn the pump off. when I did the initial leak test with tap water I fired the OM up then and it ran for days just fine. The only thing that has changed is I added the aquascaping and sand.

Paul has had me modify the drum (the original only had one hole in it, the modified version has a new hole 180 from the first), I am fortunate enough to have a buddy with a full machine shop so he did the mod for me. the OM still sticks. I am really hoping it is just sand. I have the intake for the closed loop up pretty high.

here is an old pic but you can see the intakes and outlets those risers with the Y connections are the intake to the OM they tie together under the tank and then feed the Reflo Dart.

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So this is what my test kit is telling me.

I think I am going to try and mix up something really nasty and see if I can get an ammonia spike, any suggestions?

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is there a safe source without detergent?

specifically: "Household ammonia contains 5-10% ammonia " what is the other 85-90%?

Think I'll pass
 
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I put up a couple of polls on the topic of adding some live rock to my system. One here this being the first tank I have ever tried to use all dead rock. I have been torn.

based on the lack of the first building block to the nitrifying cycle, and my internal struggle to forgo at least some live rock. I am going to just add a few pounds of uncured rock and let the die off spike the ammonia and get the cycle going.

I will just keep a close eye on it and remove it if I see any truly bad nuisances like Bryopsis.
 
ammonia is a mixture of nitrogen, hydrogen and water. 85-90% is water. its safe to kick start a cycle in the aquarium, it has been done many times !. most people think of ammonia as a cleaning product only because most cleaning products contain ammonia.
 
What Is Household Ammonia Made of? Nitrogen
Physician and chemist Daniel Rutherford discovered nitrogen in 1772 when he removed oxygen and carbon dioxide from air. It exists in both liquid and gaseous forms. Nitrogen does not support life on its own. Earth's air contains 78.1 percent nitrogen. All life forms on Earth contain nitrogen. In fact, it is one of the primary fertilizers for plants and is essential to their growth. In addition, nitrogen is an element in all proteins.

Hydrogen
Discovered by chemist Robert Boyle in 1671, hydrogen is the most common element in the universe. The universe is comprised of 90 percent hydrogen by weight. It is one of the two elements that make up water. This makes it essential to life on Earth, since water is present in every plant and animal. Most of the hydrogen we use is chemically produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, or by adding acids or compounds to metals to free the hydrogen.

Water
Household ammonia is a diluted form of NH3, also known as ammonium hydroxide. Typical household ammonia formulations feature a 5 to 10 percent concentration of ammonia. Added water controls the strength of the compound,


just dont buy the lemmon fresh lol. its the same ammonia produced from a rotting shrimp or dye off from live rock. you can asked some of the chemists we have on the forum.
 
What you want to actually use is Ammonium Chloride. The mixture is 1 drop per gallon. If it cycles in 24-48 hours then you're in the clear.
 
RayJay recommended the same thing. It's dirt cheap too.

This is really good information guys, like I said I used a full tank of live rock in the past so I was going to go the LOOOOOONNNNNGGGGG route and blend up so food and let it break down. this is a lot better as there will be no organics to remove. Thanks Jimmy, and Newbie
 
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Need an idea to screen the top of my tank off for jumpers.

I might have to figure out a different plan for the tank returns.

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Looks like it will be a nightmare trying to make a screen for that. I am considering drilling the top of the Eurobrace in the back and plumbing the returns through there. Anyone have a better idea? They can definitely be shorter.
 
Instead of cutting holes in the screening material to fit around the pipes, you can just cut slits so that you can lift the screen up around the pipes and then fit it down again around them.

Dave.M
 
dave.m said:
Instead of cutting holes in the screening material to fit around the pipes, you can just cut slits so that you can lift the screen up around the pipes and then fit it down again around them.

Dave.M
Click to expand...

That's a really good idea. Thank You!

Update:

Well not much to see just a couple more tanks with dead rock in them.

the future clown tank. Aquascaping is still a work in progress.

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Seahorse tank:

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Both

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Also replaced the big Hammerhead I had on the systems. It was so powerful I have to really choke the outlet down. That was like throwing money in electricity down the drain.

Old Pump:

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New Pump:

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Side by side comparison:

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That little Blow Hole is amazing. I would like a bit more flow than what I am getting but for the size and cost of that thing I am impressed with how much and how far it is pushing the water.

I have a bit of a micro bubble problem but I think I have a fix for that. We'll see Tuesday when the parts get here. Other than that this portion of the build went really smooth and it is good just to have all of the tanks and filtershed online
 
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