Aaarrrggg's 144g Half Circle

[KevinB]

The tank looks great, and I love all the photos of the critters. I'm just starting out in the hobby, but thought I'd add my two cents about plumbing noise. My 75g came with ribbed flex hose for the overflows, and it was pretty noisy. I replaced one hose with spa flex hose from lowes and that side is easily 25% quieter now. I haven't gotten around to doing the second side yet, but I'm sure it will help as well.

Regarding combining the overflows, I've read a few threads on boards where people had problems after doing this, I'm not sure about the fluid dynamics involved, but you might want to do some research on it first.

Regardless, the smooth hoses definately help with noise. Cheers!

[+C Lo Slice]

Looking good! Any updates?

[Juiceman]

Did you end up with any motor left over from the Marco rocks set? Was it enough to get the job done?

[Aaarrrggg]

Crikey has it really been 2 weeks?! Grim and I have been working on the watercharge system this week... well, I mean Grim has been working on it and I've been bothering him. I need to take some more piccies, but I'll be back with a big update about that soon.

In the meantime I had fun with a little experiment...

I saw a thread on another board where someone asked if clowns might take a fake anemone as a host. Most of the responses came back "no," which got be wondering. I mean, if a clown will readily accept a powerhead host then why not a rubber nem?

As my nano has just been sitting there with my clowns, I thought I'd give it a go. I ordered a big (9") "Penn Plax" anemone ornament from eBay and added it to the tank.

TBH I didn't have a great deal of hope for it. Both clowns are captive bred and are happy to spend most of the day begging for food at the waterline. The B&Ws in my first tank took a couple of months to accept an actual RBTA; so at best I thought these guys might accept this fake one a few months down the line. You can imagine my astonishment less than a week later when I came downstairs to this...

Please excuse the poor quality pic. As soon as she sees me she comes rushing up to the surface (she's such a brat!) I had to commando crawl across the floor with my phone to catch this!

A couple of days later she started sleeping in it:

Guybrush (male domino) still sleeps in the corner, but I find him in there occasionally and I haven't actually seen her chasing him away so I think he's just getting used to it. I often find them both snuggled up in there in the morning.

The real test will be when I move them over to the 144g. I'm hoping that they'll recognize the nem in the new environment and continue to associate with it. In 5mths time when the tank is mature enough I can swap in a real RBTA and fingers crossed, they'll jump right in! I know it looks rather unsightly in the meantime, but I just see it as their "training wheels" until they can have the real thing to play in. It certainly looks more natural than having them begging at the surface all day long.

[Aaarrrggg]

Did you end up with any motor left over from the Marco rocks set? Was it enough to get the job done?

Actually I ended up ordering another 5lb tub... forgot to mention that! I probably could have made the 10lb one stretch, but it's not the kind of stuff you want to be stingy with. Having the extra bucket let me really dollop it on.

Once the rocks were in the tank I added some more mortar. I found it works quite well putting a big splat of it above joins. I had some sand at the bottom of the tank so I picked some up and sprinkled it on the wet mortar. It actually stuck really well and ended up the same color as the LR, (rather than the obvious grey cement color,) wish I'd thought of doing that sooner! I accidentally dripped some bits of mortar in the couple of inches of water I had at the bottom, which I was quite worried about... but as my alive CUC can testify to, it didn't seem to matter. (Whew!)

[Aaarrrggg]

I thought I'd have some fun and cartoonize Guybrush and Marley...

I must say pairing them has been a breeze (so far; touch wood!) There was a bit of aggression a few weeks ago but they've been best buds since then. Fingers crossed for some hybrid babies!

[afgun]

I haven't seen a pic of your doors, but if you're concerned about lighting your fuge, perhaps you could paint the inside of them black? If you get a nice even coat on them it shouldn't show through to the front, either...

[Aaarrrggg]

I haven't seen a pic of your doors, but if you're concerned about lighting your fuge, perhaps you could paint the inside of them black? If you get a nice even coat on them it shouldn't show through to the front, either...

Good idea! The only problem is there are quite big gaps around the edges of the glass doors. They don't notice when it's dark inside, but once I stick a light it there they'll look a bit blurgh. I have also considered adding some sort of curtain/blind on the inside of the sump to shield the light. Now that the rocks are going a little green I've been getting the itch to chuck some chaeto in the sump, so I may do one, or both of these things at some point.

[Stemple ATX]

This may be a little more ambitious than you'd like (or might not even be possible) but have you considered putting a frame around the glass doors (like, perhaps a black metal frame) to block the gaps??? I like the green puff idea; let us know if it works!!! I have several of those huge Amphiapods running around in the filter (in the back) of my tank and I have no light (just LR)...so I bet the puffs will work for you just fine!

[Aaarrrggg]

Time for the update I've been teasing you all with... the automatic water changer is finally ONLINE!

But first... a belated Merry Christmas FTS!

My husband surprised me with the Christmas Tree aquarium ornament. He put it in the tank when I wasn't looking, knowing it wouldn't be too long before I spotted it!

(You can't tell from the photo, but it's actually glittery!)

For Christmas I'd asked for LiveAquaria vouchers, but my husband and father-in-law took that wish to a whole new level by making me some fish vouchers! I'd been rabbiting on and on about wanting to get a pair of Banggai Cardinals and a Blue Spotted Jawfish, so my hubby secretly drew them for me and, with his Dad's help, made them into cardboard tokens! So cool! (...and it shows they've been paying attention to my aquarium ramblings!)

I'm now stalking Divers Den for the perfect specimens... so everyone else stay away from them!

The aquatic-themed pressies didn't stop there though! He also went above and beyond with a kickass caricature of mer-me and my 2 mer-doggies!

[Aaarrrggg]

This may be a little more ambitious than you'd like (or might not even be possible) but have you considered putting a frame around the glass doors (like, perhaps a black metal frame) to block the gaps??? I like the green puff idea; let us know if it works!!! I have several of those huge Amphiapods running around in the filter (in the back) of my tank and I have no light (just LR)...so I bet the puffs will work for you just fine!

That's a good idea too thanks!

Actually I'm a little worried that I might have killed my big Amphiapods. I've been adding RO top off quite quickly to the sump and it might have killed them...

Perhaps they're just hiding? Even if I did kill them it's possible some made into the DT, so they still might repopulate (fingers crossed!)

[Aaarrrggg]

There are still no fish in the tank... just a few more snails and some scarlet hermits. I'm still holding off adding Marley & Guybrush until the nitrate comes down. It's still hovering around 30... which tbh the clowns would probably be fine with, but they're my little preciouses so I'm being overly cautious. I figure the delay is probably helpful for the IPSFs critters to get established anyway.

Around Christmas I got a population explosion of tiny hydroids on the glass. They must have come over from my nano on one of the small pieces of LR.

As i found out previously, (after panicking when they showed up in my nano,) they're a harmless type of hydroids that will die back on their own. There were a crazy number of them for a few days, so many in fact, that it looked like there were snowflakes all over the glass! Yay festive tank!

Another hitchhiker from my nano is teeny tiny flatworms...

I'm not sure where I first picked them up from, but they've been in my nano for a while. I had hoped to keep them out of the big tank, but I guess they had other ideas. As soon as I saw them in my nano I ordered some FlatWorm Exit, bur further research suggested that they are in fact a tiny harmless pod eating flatworm (Amphiscolops sp.) http://www.wetwebmed...m/flatworms.htm. I don't want to risk hurting anything by nuking them, so I'm going to leave them be for now. Apparently their populations boom when there are abundant pods to eat. So I guess that's a good sign(?)

Another curious new critter I spotted are these white/clear tubes:

They're sprouting all over the place in the shadows of the left most rock tower. At first I was worried they might be colonial hydroids, but as I've never seen a feathered crown or any movement, I think they must be some sort of sponge. The place I first noticed them is the same spot where I tipped the LS Activator from IPSF, so I figure whatever they are must have come from that. Pretty cool!

[Aaarrrggg]

Ok time for the watercharger update! This is going to be a biggie so hang in there. I wanted to get as much information up as possible so it might help others set up something similar.

Let me start at the beginning...

My previous water-change routine went something like this...

Put 5g jug in sink and fill up with RO. Remember (= forget!) to set stopwatch for 2hrs so I don't waste a ton of water. Fill Rubbermaid trashcan with 20g of RO water and add salt. Let mix for 24hrs with pump and heater. Do water-change by manually siphoning out old water and adding new water -ie a lot of lugging of 5g jugs and potential for spillages(!)

This was all fine for my nano, but not really the most efficient procedure for a 144g. I started researching online and found some inspiring threads about water storage tanks and automatic water-changers. I knew I wanted in!!

I have a large cupboard next to the sink in the utility room which had just been used to store random tank related stuff -mostly 5g jugs. As you can see it wasn't a great use of the space:

I thought this would be a great place to put 2 water storage tanks; the only problem... it is quite far away from the aquarium! I needed some way to move the water from the storage tanks to the DT.

Lounge:

View from in gym into lounge:

View from lounge into gym:

I looked at the RENEW Automatic Water Change System, but in the end the LiterMeter III was a better fit for me due to the distance the water needed to travel. Both companies have excellent customer service! Well worth shooting them an email to see if they can figure out a system for you too.

I asked on here if anyone knew a creative handyman/plumber. I struck it lucky when Grim offered his services!

With Grim and Scott at SpectraPures guidance, I ordered all sorts of goodies!

- SpectraPure LiterMeter 3

- SpectraPure Water eXchange module

- 2 x 55g water tanks (from eBay. I would have liked to go a little bigger, but any wider and they wouldn't have fit through the cupboards skinny doorway)

- Black Float Switch (didn't end up being needed)

- Auto Shut Off Kit for Reverse Osmosis Systems

- Dual Inline TDS Meter

- SpectraPure Top Off Controler

- 1/4" Red and Blue RO Tubing

- PanWorld 40PX External Water Pump

Not pictured:

- SpectraPure Remote Pump (forgot to put it in photo! )

- Plumbing for water containers

- Black and White 1/4" RO Tubing (bought separately from Lowes)

[Aaarrrggg]

Grim took out the weird wooden step I had at the bottom of the cupboard and made a stand for the water drums:

Then he did all sorts of clever plumbing!

The RO/DI unit is plumbed in under the sink on the other side of the wall. Water travels through the black line to the RO unit. (Waste water from RO unit goes back to the sink drain via the yellow line.)

As the water goes through the unit the TDS is checked before the DI cartridge (blue "OUT") and after the water leaves the system (red "IN.") This lets me keep an eye on how the cartridges are doing. The water leaves the unit through the white line on the left.

The water goes into the freshwater tank via the Auto Shut Off Kit for Reverse Osmosis Systems. This float switch cuts off the RO/DI unit when the freshwater tank is full. Whenever the water drops below that level, the RO/DI unit kicks in automatically and fills the tank until it's full again. No more setting (and forgetting!) my stopwatch for 2hrs to make 5g of RO!

Now comes lots of plumbing!

I can move the water around by opening different valves and turning the yellow pump on/off.

To move the RO water into the salt tank:

CLOSE: 1, 2, 4, 5

OPEN: 3, 6

PUMP: ON

Once the RO water is in the SW tank I open the lid and pour in the correct amount of salt.

To mix SW tank:

CLOSE: 1, 3, 4, 5

OPEN: 2, 6

PUMP: ON

The plumbing continues under the water lvl inside the SW tank. This makes the mixing nice and quiet when the tank is full. All I can hear is the slight whirr of the pump. The brown stuff is from the Oceanic Salt. It did the same thing in my nano SW mixing bin. I'm thinking of switching to Instant Ocean salt instead to save a bit of money and hopefully get rid of these horrible (clay?) deposits.

The other taps are used for draining the system or taking out a little SW or RO for my nano.

Draining tank water into sink using pump (it was regular tap-water that we'd used to leak test)

Draining last drops of water out of pipes (no pump used.) There was a tiny bit of water left in the bottom of the tanks which was impossible to get out, but hopefully that shouldn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

Pumping 5g of SW out to do a water-change on my nano.

[Aaarrrggg]

Next up was getting the water from the 2 tanks to the aquarium. Both the SW and RO tanks have tubing inside that extends to the bottom.

The tubing comes out the back of the tops of both tanks and through a hole in the wall

Grim found some electrical wire hiding stuff at Lowes that worked perfectly to hide the colored tubing. (It even has sticky back plastic backing for easy installation!)

Through another wall... (the black line you can see is for waste water; more on that later)

Nearly there! (Aquarium on left)

[Aaarrrggg]

Now comes the LiterMeter magic!

Here's the email Scott at SpectraPure sent me explaining how everything should hook together:

If you want to do both ATO and water exchange, get the LM3, the TCM, one RPM and one WXM. It would be best if they were all installed under the tank.

See the manual here:

http://spectrapure.com/manuals/PRINTER_FRIENDLY/LiterMeter3J-PF.pdf

I'll suggest a different scheme than shown in the manual.

You can run a bundle of three, 1/4" poly tubes any way you want to, generally along your blue dotted line. High, low, inside, under, around, it won't matter. #1 - let's call it white - will take new salt water from the closet and deliver it to the sump. #2 - call it black - will take old salt water from the sump and send it to your sink drain. #1 and #2 are for the water exchange. #3 - blue - will take fresh DI water from the closet and deliver it to the sump for ATO. You could use one color for all three, if you keep them straight.

Install the sensor tube for the TCM in the constant-level side of the sump. It will guard against a sump over-fill, as it will shut off the LM3 if the over-all sump level gets too high. Use the built-in Pump A to take water out of the sump and send it to the drain on the black line. This line is only one-inch into the constant level part of the sump, so it can't possibly accidentally drain the sump.

Use the RPM as Pump B to put new salt water into the sump, using the white line. Set the LM3 to move the same number of liters per day for Pump A and Pump B. Easy Water Exchange!

Use the WXM (with its own sensor tube level control) as Pump C to do the ATO. Set it for a little bit more than you think you are evaporating, and the sensor tube (in the evaporating part of the sump - usually a bit lower than the constant level) will keep that level constant.

I've seen people build a 3-sided wood "cover" for the bundle of tubes to hide them on the wall. Also, a 45-degree piece of wood can cover them up along the baseboard. There are also rubber "doorway sills" for computer cables that you could run in front of the doorway along the floor.

The LiterMeter plugs into the Top-Off Control Module which is then plugged into a power socket.

The funny tube is a water level sensor. It's placed in the constant lvl of the sump to guard against overflowing. If the water rises it will shut off the LiterMeter and all the attached pumps. (Oh, I almost forgot to say... we flipped the sump around so the water now runs from right to left.)

The LiterMeter has a built in pump (Pump A). It draws water from the tank via the white tube and carries it outside through the white/black line. The tip is held 1" under the water by a magnetic clip so if something ever did go wrong, it couldn't drain the whole system.

There is a tiny hole drilled in the wall next to the dog flap so the water can empty into the garden.

The water is replaced by the Remote Pump Module (Pump B). It pulls water from the SW holding tank via the red line and delivers it to the sump.

Finally there's the Water eXchange Module (Pump C.) Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of this one before I installed it, but it looks exactly like the previous pump, but with a water lvl sensor (like the top-off control module had.)

This pump sends water from the RO storage tank to the sump. The water lvl sensor tube is in the variable lvl of the sump so when the water reaches the max lvl, the pump shuts down and cannot deliver any more RO until more evaporation occurs.

Here's how it looks altogether!

(I have the Top-Off Control Module stuck to the back of the stand so it's well away from any splashing.)

Side Note: I discovered these things are awesome for sticking components onto the inside of the stand! MUCH stronger than velcro! Highly recommended!

The next step was calibrating the 3 pumps. This involves putting the LiterMeter into calibration mode for each pump and letting it time how long it takes to move 500ml. Button wise it's very easy; push button to start... wait for 500ml to pour into measuring jug, push button to stop... easy!

...but it gets a little bit more complicated when one of the lines goes outside! I ended up going outside with the measuring jug and phoning my husband to tell him when to push the buttons!

Once all the calibration is done, all that's left is to tell the LiterMeter how much water you want it to move. My nitrates are still pretty high, so I decided a 20% weekly WC would be prudent for the time being (eventually I'd like to get it down to 10%.) I set up pump A and B to move the same amount of water per day; 5g (18.9 liters) and pump C to deliver around 4g (15 liters) per day (a little more than I've been manually topping up, but the water lvl sensor tube will prevent it from adding more than is actually needed.)

So that's that! I'm going to be monitoring the SG, water lvl, nitrates and general CUC "aliveness" very carefully over the next few days/weeks to make sure everything is working correctly. It is rather nerve-wracking having something drawing water automatically to and from my tank, but luckily there is some wiggle room with such a large tank. Even if it messes up it can't do THAT much damage... and I still only have CUC in there so nothing too serious can happen (sorry CUC!)

[Grim]

Looking good.......

[Aaarrrggg]

Thanks Grim! And thanks again for all your help, I totally couldn't have done this without you!

[afgun]

I haven't seen a pic of your doors, but if you're concerned about lighting your fuge, perhaps you could paint the inside of them black? If you get a nice even coat on them it shouldn't show through to the front, either...

Good idea! The only problem is there are quite big gaps around the edges of the glass doors. They don't notice when it's dark inside, but once I stick a light it there they'll look a bit blurgh. I have also considered adding some sort of curtain/blind on the inside of the sump to shield the light. Now that the rocks are going a little green I've been getting the itch to chuck some chaeto in the sump, so I may do one, or both of these things at some point.

Perhaps some black foam rubber weatherstripping between the doors and stand? Just thinking out loud here; don't want you to put anything ugly on your beautiful setup, but trying to help

[pbnj]

I don't know how much waste water is used to make 55g of RO/DI or how often your system will be making that much RO/DI, but just be mindful of how much water you dump outside and so close to your foundation. Excessive amounts of water in the soil (I have no idea how much) can make the ground swell, putting pressure on the foundation.

[Robb in Austin]

Try to move it around so to avoid dumping a bunch in the same spot.

In NW Austin, you are on more rock than clay so it wont move too much but it will happen. Over here, NE Austin, our foundation moved 3" due to swelling/shrinking of the clay.

[JasonJones]

Great updates. The entire water system is very well done. Keep it up.

[bimmerzs]

The water goes into the freshwater tank via the Auto Shut Off Kit for Reverse Osmosis Systems. This float switch cuts off the RO/DI unit when the freshwater tank is full. Whenever the water drops below that level, the RO/DI unit kicks in automatically and fills the tank until it's full again. No more setting (and forgetting!) my stopwatch for 2hrs to make 5g of RO!

I have a question about this setup, is there a lower level float switch on this that turn's on the water in order to refill back up to the float valve as shown in the pic. I guess my question is how much water get's used before the reservoir refill's?

Cheers,

[afgun]

On my 55 gallon barrel, only a gallon or so gets used before the float switch kicks down enough to start the RODI. I'm ordering another latching float setup to do it, allowing for more like 5-6 gallons (that's what I plan on setting it at anyways).

[Aaarrrggg]

Yikes I didn't know there was a problem with damp foundations in TX! I'd seen it mentioned a few places online that keeping the foundations hydrated here was actually a GOOD thing. Hmmm... well I have some RO tubing left over,; I'll add a longer bit and have it empty away from the house. I just hope the dogs don't decide it's a chew toy! Thanks for the tip guys!

The float switch turns the RO/DI unit on as soon as it sinks -ie immediately. Someone on another thread has just pointed out that this is actually a bad thing because RO/DI units don't operate as well for small amounts. Blast... going to have to look at a 2 float switch setup (with max-min water lvls)... or maybe something that stops water flowing to the RO/Di unit for set periods of time...? In the meantime I'm going to start turning the water on/off under sink so the water lvl in the RO tank can drop a little more in between top-ups.