Joining the club... my new 240G build :) - Page 2

Spaced Cowboy · 09/14/2011, 08:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Warnock316

DUDE that Looks awsome! cant wait to see it filled and a year mature. Looks like youre having a blast! and moving rather quickly I might add.

Cheers

Progress is being made, but it's going to slow down a bit now because I'm in real-time. I was just documenting the things I'd done to-date...

Simon.

Spaced Cowboy · 09/15/2011, 03:05 PM

Media Frenzy

I'm waiting around for an online order to come in so I can actually finish the plumbing, so I thought I'd put in the media chambers (for carbon and GFO). This is the first use of the manifold

The center-brace just overhangs the sump, so the plan was to mount the media containers on the center-brace, drill a hole through the brace to supply the water for each container, and just drain vertically downwards (through a pipe, of course) into the sump. I hung the media-container-spanner on the vertical, so it'll always be close-to-hand...

The second photo shows the other side, where one of the media-containers is linked up - I have to go to Home Depot for some more Murlok fittings to link up the other one. The piping is so rigid it can't be bent in tight angles, so I'm using the angled connectors to link things up. Once I have everything linked up properly, I'll straighten it all up and make it look pretty

It's not obvious from the photo, but there's actually a ball-valve that will go onto each of the supply-pipes to the media-containers. This will allow me to fine-control the gph of water through each container.

Plumbing Porn

Well, maybe not porn - this is a pretty simple setup, so let's call it a '15 certificate'

As mentioned, I'm waiting for some elbows and adapters to finish off the below-sump plumbing, but here's a look at where it stands right now:

If it's not clear, there are 3 horizontal pipes on the left-hand side, the top one will be the open drain, the middle one will be the siphon, and the lower one is the return (out the back of the stand and over the top of the tank). Both the open drain and siphon will drop down vertically from where they currently end, and terminate in the sump. The siphon will go through the gate valve that's resting on the sump at the moment, which is how I'll control the BeanAnimal overflow.

There's about 2mm of gap between each of these horizontal pipes - it wasn't much to aim at, but it fitted [grin]. There's not much space for the turn and drop before we hit the media containers either, but I think it'll all fit

The right-hand side is the manifold for future purposes, and the right-hand side return pipe. The untidy red, blue and black pipe behind are the pipes to the water-storage area, which the LiterMeter will make good use of.

Simon

swflfisher · 09/15/2011, 06:10 PM

oh and tank also. I'm hoping to get a similar size soon.I dont think I can make that stand though.

marrstarr · 09/15/2011, 06:13 PM

bump

Spaced Cowboy · 09/15/2011, 10:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by swflfisher

holly nice stand!

Quote:

Originally Posted by swflfisher

oh and tank also. I'm hoping to get a similar size soon.I dont think I can make that stand though.

Thankyou

... and welcome to the thread, both you and marrstarr

Well, I won't say the stand was easy, because with my level of woodworking skill (i.e. almost nonexistent), it wasn't. There's nothing overly difficult about the technical side of making it, it's just the ability to consistently do accurate work. I wish I had that [grin]. Let me put it this way - there's quite a bit of scrap wood waiting to be turned into charcoal in the garage now

Cheers
Simon

ef200098 · 09/16/2011, 09:19 AM

I can't wait for a large tank! looking good so far!

robferrari · 09/16/2011, 06:53 PM

Beautiful work on that stand! Simple and elegant. I like the idea of the wood work to complement the tank. I have built furniture by hand myself so I can relate to building that first piece that will be in your home. Would you mind stating how you applied stain and varnish? Awesome build!

Spaced Cowboy · 09/17/2011, 02:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by robferrari

Beautiful work on that stand! Simple and elegant. I like the idea of the wood work to complement the tank. I have built furniture by hand myself so I can relate to building that first piece that will be in your home.

Thanks

And welcome to the thread

Yeah, it's a bit nerve-wracking to have to do something you know there's no way back from, and you have to do it, and you've put all this effort into getting to the position you're currently at. I'm really good at prevaricating when that's the situation

Quote:

Originally Posted by robferrari

Would you mind stating how you applied stain and varnish? Awesome build!

Sure - First thing I did was to test out the strength of the dye by getting a test board and adding dye, diluting by two, doing another section, repeat until bored. I think I did 1:1, 1:2, 1:4, 1:8 and 1:16 tests. We liked the 1:4 best, so that's the one we went with.

Next I spent some time sanding the entire stand a couple of times, once with a coarse grit, once with a fine grit. I don't recall the exact numbers, but it was just what Home Depot had in stock at the time. I don't think it's particularly important which one you choose, just that you do the sanding! Then I rubbed it all down with a damp cloth to remove the dust, and let it stand for a day. Probably way overkill, but I wanted to be sure.

Next I started to apply the dye ("LockWood #871 English Brown Oak water-soluble dye") using rags. I'd bought a bag of 50 white rags from Home Depot for this, and I only went through about 10 or so doing the whole thing. I was more concerned about trying to make it look uniform than the specific shade - the dye is pretty dark anyway. Once it was on, I let it dry for a week, basically until it was dry to the touch, and there was no smell left.

Next I used the rags again to apply the stain ("General Finishes Brown Mahogany gel stain"). Here I rubbed it on, worked it into the grain, waited for 10 seconds or so then rubbed it off with the rag again. I repeated this until the white grain of the Red Oak wasn't visible any more.

Then I let it dry until the smell was no longer present again, and applied a varnish ("Tung Oil Varnish") on top. I think I didn't let it sit long enough before applying the varnish though because it took forever to stop being "tacky" afterwards - like about 4 weeks. If I'd let the stain dry for longer, I think the varnish would have dried faster.

And that's it. Here's a shot of the (right hand side, this time) finished product. I tried to show the inlay and the moldings on this one.

Simon

Spaced Cowboy · 09/17/2011, 02:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ef200098

I can't wait for a large tank! looking good so far!

Thanks for the kind words and welcome to the thread

Hope you get as much out of following as I'm getting out of building it...

Simon.

Bax · 09/17/2011, 07:53 PM

very nice work Space Cowboy!

Wish I could place my sump room outside!

Spaced Cowboy · 09/18/2011, 03:39 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bax

very nice work Space Cowboy!

Thanks

And welcome to the thread

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bax

Wish I could place my sump room outside!

Well, the sump is still below the stand - it's just the water-storage that's outside. I'd love to have the space to have a fish-room, a real fish-room, but that's just not going to happen unless we move house... Especially with a baby on the way... I'm going to get less space, not more!

Simon.

Spaced Cowboy · 09/18/2011, 03:40 PM

Handling restraint...

Ok, so nothing major happening until Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday when the deliveries arrive, but figured I'd clean up some loose ends...

The outlets from the media filters (GFO and Carbon) are from 1/2" RO/DI-type pipe, and have a lot of curve in them due to being shipped in a coil from BRS. I wanted these to dump directly into the sump immediately below the media-filters themselves, so yesterday I cut off some small slivers of 1" piping, and superglued them to the inside of the sump using a coupling as support while the glue hardened. Today I could restrain the pipes natural tendency to bend towards the center of the sump skimmer section as you can see in the first photo...

I'd also bought some handles a while back for the "doors" that just pull off. I noticed it was tough to properly support the (rather large) doors as you lift them off, and having a handle would be better. I didn't want them to look like they pulled off though, so we have the fake-door handles attached as if they pull the door open [grin]. Here's a profile view of the entire stand, with doors in place, and sporting their handles

Pity about the lighting - the iPhone 3GS doesn't have that great a camera and the wood's not that dark, but I think the handles just add that final finishing touch to the doors.

Simon.

Spaced Cowboy · 09/20/2011, 02:52 PM

A "DI"rty business

So, for the last week or so, the RO/DI system has been churning out RO/DI water, I've been mixing it with salt in the mixing tank, and then storing it in the NSW tank. So far, I've got ~70 gallons of pure RO/DI water and 290 gallons of NSW water ready to go. That's a total of ~360 gallons, and my RO/DI meter started to say it was reading 1ppm on the output.

Now this is a dual-stage DI-resin system, so there are two, not one, media chambers full of DI resin. I'm thinking that ~360 gallons of purified water is a little low for this system. The input water pressure is ~70psi, and the PPM readings out of the RO side (before DI) are ~20ppm, which seems to be a bit high compared to what others are seeing. I'll be contacting BRS to see if there's anything they can do...

Hopefully BRS will come up with a reason why it's not working as well as it ought to, and I won't be changing resin every couple of months...In any event, I've changed the resin - now that it's registering 1ppm it's done, as far as I'm concerned. You can see the difference between the before/after below...

Note: I do like the refillable canisters that BRS use. It took about 10 minutes to change out both canisters this lunchtime and fill with new resin.

Simon

Spaced Cowboy · 09/22/2011, 05:27 PM

Rock on!

So the BRS rock arrived today. I can't do too much with it until the weekend, but I've put it outside ready to be seriously powerwashed before I start trying to come up with ideas for aquascaping...

To give an idea of scale, the large flat circular rock with all the protrusions on it towards the upper left is approximately 16" across. It's going to make a wonderful cap to a rock-island in the tank.

This isn't all the rock I'll be using - it's 100 lbs of rock in a 240-gallon tank. I'm going to get some real "live" rock as well - probably about 50 lbs or so, which will still leave me "under" the normal rock quota, but I'm going for a minimalist aquascape, with space for fish to swim. The vision here is a large tank with lots of space, and lots of smaller fish, rather than blowing the 'budget' with a smaller number of tangs. Ok. There may be one (possibly 2) tangs, but only the smaller ones...

I was planning on using aquacon for rock - I liked the way they would specify the size of rock you get, but after reading about their reputation, I'm not considering them any more. Now I'm thinking of using liverocknreef and going for 50 lbs of their Cherry Primo Picked Decorator rock - the photos look amazing.

I've bought some of the "driveway reflectors" from Home Depot, and I'm going to epoxy them into a schedule-40 piping stand, then drill holes in the rock to let me place the rocks on top of each other in islands, and have some stability to boot. I'm thinking 2 main islands, with an arm extending from one of them into the middle of the tank, sort of like an archipelago but underwater

Simon

Spaced Cowboy · 09/24/2011, 11:03 PM

RockIn'

Having power-washed the rock, and found about 6 metric tons of stuff-I-didn't-want-in-my-tank deposited on the floor, I started to play around with how the rocks ought to be positioned. The goal is to keep some open swim-space for the fish, to provide some tunnels and allow for line-of-sight to be broken, and to provide plenty of places to put corals.

I also wanted to keep to the minimalist style, although I'm not sure I actually managed that. For 100 lbs of rock, it sure takes up a lot of space in a 240-gallon tank...

I'll probably get a couple more smaller pieces of tonga-branch or similar live-rock to seed the dead rock with, and I'll be adding dead-sand to the bottom, followed by a live-sand layer on top. I'm shooting for 4-5" of sand-bed, and I may end up raising the rocks up a bit so they're not half-buried in sand.

Anyway, this is the design so far. Nothing is set in stone - pun intended - I've yet to apply any epoxy, the rocks are just balanced on each other. Thoughts and comments welcomed

Simon.

Spaced Cowboy · 09/27/2011, 10:13 AM

The Dead Sea

Incremental progress is being made! The dead material is all in the tank now - the sand and rocks are set up how I want them to be, and it's actually starting to look like an aquarium, rather than a glass box...

You can see that I changed the angle of the stand supporting the large flat plate in the middle of the tank. I thought it was too beautiful a piece of rock to be mostly-hidden by nature of being too high up and horizontal. The slight inclination to the front shows off the piece much better, and I'll still be able to attach corals etc. to it later on...

Maybe it's just me, but the rock structure on the right looks like a duck, with possible a duckling (or pigeon) sitting just below and to the left of it. Perhaps I'm just bird-brained! Having said that, the one on the left looks a bit like a Scottie dog, so maybe the rocks are just like clouds - you see whatever your brain tries to fit to match the abstract shapes...

The next step is to finish off the plumbing at the top of the tank (the lower plumbing is all done now) and start to add water! Before the water can be added, though, I need to get the LitreMeter working so it can pump the NSW from the storage tanks, so 3 more tasks and the dead sea will be ready to start cycling.

Once the water is in place, the plan is to get some live sand and live rock from liverocknreef. The experiences forum seem to be mostly good (one bad story) for these guys, so hopefully that'll all go well. I'm not going to be getting *too* much more rock / sand. I kind of like the open space in the aquarium...

Simon

Spaced Cowboy · 09/28/2011, 10:36 AM

Lighting, the way

So much of this is just thinking ahead, trying to make sure it's not like being in the army ... hurry up, and wait ... hurry up, and wait ... ad nauseum.

The lighting set up is going to be DIY LEDs. This is for a couple of reasons:

Cost is important - the less money I spend on lighting, the more I can spend on corals... oh, and the baby due in February [grin]
Control is important too. The way I'm planning to ultimately set it up is a little more expressive than most. To start off with it'll be more basic, but I intend to enhance it over time

The plan is to use a whole bunch of 3W LEDs from CREE - the Bridgelux LEDs are cheaper, but they're not rated as having the higher current-load capacity as the CREE ones, so they're out. There's not sufficient price difference between CREE and any of the other major vendors to warrant me going with anyone other than the market leader, so the rest are out, too.

I'm not ready to spill the beans on the controller I'll be using just yet - keeping that one up my metaphorical sleeve, but the driver circuit is below:

The board is way larger than it could be, but that's because I'm using the copper on the board as a heatsink for the CAT4101 chips (the 7 large chips on the right-ish side). In my experiments, 1" of double-sided 1oz-copper is sufficient to keep the CAT4101's only warm to the touch. This board actually almost doubles that figure, so the CAT4101's ought to be ok. It's a bit more expensive to build the board in the first place, but that'll pay off with lower failure risk in the long run.

The left side are the outputs that drive the LEDs. There are 7 4101's, so there are 7 +/- connectors for the LEDs to be attached to. On the left are the inputs to the board. In this case I've incorporated a few debugging features (there is a 9-way serial port and several LEDs), as well as the ethernet and power connectors. Ethernet ? Yup, the board runs as a webserver, and the lights can be controlled interactively from there.

All very well, but what's it actually driving - well I've not built it yet, but here's a model of the lighting-pods I'll be making:

This is all T-slot Aluminium extrusion, so it's easy to bolt together and it's very strong. My thinking at the moment is to anodise the extrusion (either at home or get someone to do it) to a black colour, and to not run a canopy - the lights will be the only thing above the tank, which has a very neat black rim around it - it's almost like a rimless tank. There will be 4 of these pods over the 8' tank, with each pod being 23" wide. The extension at the rear of the module is to both attach to the automatic raise/lower mechanism, and as a support basis for the PSU and LED driver board.

You can see there are 7 rows of LEDs, each of which correspond to one driver circuit. That gives me a lot of lengthwise-along-the-tank control of the lighting intensity, since each driver circuit has PWM (pulse wave modulation) ability, and can therefore dim the LEDs along that row. The intention is to have a lengthwise sunrise/sunset ability, ramping the LEDs up or down in brightness to simulate the suns progress across the sky.

The resolution isn't quite as high as it looks because the LEDs are in groups of 6, but each group will be homogenous - so the pattern will look more like:

... where the darker blues are 'royal blue', the whites are neutral white or warm white, and the center row is an ordinary 'blue' LED. Thus, the resolution is effectively halved because the blues and whites combine to form the "colour temperature" of the tank, so will two-rows-at-a-time.

I'm going to be using the BJB LED connectors...

to attach the LEDs because it makes replacement easier in future, and LEDs are constantly getting better and better. If any of them fail, it also makes it easier to swap them out.

Speaking of LED failure, this setup (like most) wires a set of LEDs together in a circuit - in my case 6 LEDs are driven by a single driver. If a single LED fails in closed-circuit mode, ie: the path through the LED becomes very low resistance, all that really happens is that the CAT4101 has to sink a lot more power for that single 6-LED circuit, which it does by heating up. The large copper heatsinking area ought to help out here. The (still rare, but far more likely) failure is an open circuit failure, where the LED "blows" and there is no circuit path left. In this case, all 6 LEDs would normally shut down, and you have to (a) figure out which LED has blown, then (b) replace it before any of the LEDs in that circuit will operate again. This is usually a stressful experience...

Enter the PLED. These little devices are designed to act as a shunt if ever the LED fails. They are transparent to the circuit in normal use, but if the LED fails open-circuit, it provides a circuit path which allows the rest of the LEDs for that driver to continue to operate. This means only a single LED will go dark, and removes the "I must fix this now!" mentality - a single LED failing is neither here nor there. A whole strip failing has much more of an imperative psychological effect, and indeed (on larger strips-of-LEDs than mine) can even have a real negative effect on the lighting.

So, Every LED will get a little bypass circuit attached to it in the wiring harness. For the minimal extra cost, I think it's worth it. These weren't my idea, by the way, I got them from nuclearheli's build

So, that's the basic setup. It gives me quite a bit of flexibility, but it's not all the way there. Once I started thinking about the PLEDs and how they could be used, it seemed to me there was a lot of potential going to waste. Since a PLED can take over the duties of its associated LED, it effectively allows individual control of each LED. The idea is that once I have this protection per LED, I could also wire in a transistor along with it, and allow programmatic bypass of individual LEDs, with the PLED carrying the burden

At first, I was thinking that the 'on' LEDs would be limited to the same PWM level within the same string, but actually that's not the case. If the circuit is laid out as

{A} master ATMega88 PWM controller for 7 strings, connected via I2C to
{B} ATTiny per string, controlling the individual LEDs in that string, which
can switch on or off a transistor that simulates an open circuit on individual LEDs

Where B has the PWM from A as an input, it can modulate the (known) PWM signal via the shunt and remove pulses in the stream. Each LED would actually be individually controllable - only by removing pulses, but that's not a problem because the PWM rate is also under control. Just set the PWM frequency to be that needed for the brightest LED on the string, and the rest are necessarily at most as bright, if they're darker remove some PWM pulses... Bob's your auntie's live-in-lover...

With this in place I was thinking I could do things like simulating storms / cloud-cover with the sun breaking through in places; I could do spot-lighting of the areas within the tank that I wanted (eg: the three islands); I could move that lighting around programmatically. If you wanted to be silly, you could set the lighting to music like people do their houses at halloween - fun for, oh at least 5 minutes... There's more possibilities, is what I'm saying, even if I don't really condone the 'halloween' effect...

So that's the long-term plan. I'll be wiring things up so that this can be done, but the first iteration of the driver won't actually provide for the fine control, I'm on a time-limit here (did I mention the baby in February ?) so getting things sorted out, up, and running is more important than getting everything perfect first time.

For now, I have to check over the circuit for the driver a few dozen more times, then send it off to be made (which takes a couple of weeks), so that when the next task (water in the tank) is complete, I'll have the ability to start the lighting straight away... Planning, planning, planning...

Simon.

Fish4Me2 · 09/29/2011, 07:42 AM

I continue to be impressed by the details, and the thought you've put into this. Thanks for sharing everything. I can't wait to see the water in it.

On your DI, what's your TDS look like before the RO? I run through DI resin about as quickly as you do, but my tap water's TDS is 500-600+, so I'm not too surprised. Not too happy, either, but not too surprised!

Spaced Cowboy · 09/29/2011, 02:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish4Me2

I continue to be impressed by the details, and the thought you've put into this. Thanks for sharing everything. I can't wait to see the water in it.

Thanks for the kind words - I can't wait for the water either [grin].

I got in touch with Spectrapure to confirm that filling the tank using the water-exchange system wouldn't cause the motor to overheat or anything - it'll be running solidly for ~15 days to fill the tank! They also confirmed that the 70' span between the storage tanks and the display tank shouldn't be a problem

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fish4Me2

On your DI, what's your TDS look like before the RO? I run through DI resin about as quickly as you do, but my tap water's TDS is 500-600+, so I'm not too surprised. Not too happy, either, but not too surprised!

Well, BRS got back to me (quite quickly, actually) and said the values were not unreasonable, if a little on the low side. They asked me to do some water tests (pH, Alkalinity, TDS) but I'm waiting for the test kits to be delivered... I had only bought the 'cycling' tests up until now (NO2, NO2, Ammonia) and was going to do pH via the (not yet set up) controller. So when they arrive I'll do the all the tests at the same time and we'll see.

Simon.

Spaced Cowboy · 10/01/2011, 05:53 PM

So the plumbing is all "done". That is to say, I've made all the connections and all the BeanAnimal standpipes appear to be at the correct heights. We'll see if it's truly "done" once water is rushing through it...

Which brings me to a question:

I was planning on filling up the tank using the LitreMeter pump, but it occurred to me that this will take some time (~2 weeks!). During all that time the dry rock will presumably be leaching the phosphates I didn't get out of it into the water, without any benefit from the GFO, because there's not enough water in the tank to run the sump, which is where the GFO is plumbed off the return pump...

So, is this a good idea ? I'm leaning towards ... 'not'. The other option is to quickly fill the tank, but this means going and buying 100' of 3/4" vinyl hose, so I can pump the water from the other end of the house into the tank. I can do that (mail order, HD only has 20' lengths), but I really wanted to fill the tank this weekend (d@mmit! [grin]).

Anyone fancy chiming in ?

Simon

SPotter · 10/01/2011, 06:09 PM

What about connectors for each 20' piece of hose? what about a 32 gallon brute on a dolly that you can move with the water in it and then pump it into the tank?

Spaced Cowboy · 10/01/2011, 06:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SPotter

What about connectors for each 20' piece of hose? what about a 32 gallon brute on a dolly that you can move with the water in it and then pump it into the tank?

Both good ideas. My local HD is out of barb/barb connectors... I guess I could try making some barb/slip/barb combos though. Perhaps I'll go tomorrow and see if they've got those in stock...

The tank-on-a-trolly (brute on a dolly sounds a bit iffy [grin]) is a bit difficult because there's a lawn in-between the storage tanks/display.

Cheers,

Simon

SPotter · 10/01/2011, 06:22 PM

Yeah moving that across the lawn would not be easy. You might try garden shops that sell pond equipment or irrigation supplies.

You could get a bunch of guys, buckets and beer and have beer and bucket party!!! Once the buckets are empty of water they can fill them with beer.
Good luck!!!!

Steve

Spaced Cowboy · 10/03/2011, 01:26 PM

Well, after a visit to Lowes (not Home Depot, who were extortionately expensive), I got 100' of tubing and proceeded to start filling just the overflow on the left-side of the tank. The goal was to test out the plumbing before committing to filling the tank up. The water filled up the overflow, drained to the sump, and overflowed into the second chamber of the sump as it ought to. Then I could check the return by closing off various ball-valves underneath the tank, and redirecting the returned water into the overflow itself rather than the tank.

Glad I did that... The manifold with all the ball-valves "for future use" (a future that will now never come) had a dodgy connection right in the middle of it. As far as I can see, that makes the whole thing useless, and I'll have to replace. It looks as though I didn't put enough of the gray goo into the joint, and there's a small but persistent leak between a 'T' section and a 1.5" -> 1" reducing bushing that has got to be fixed. Since I didn't put any unions in-between the ball-valves (for space reasons), the whole thing has got to be re-done.

Still, I'm looking at this as a blessing in disguise. A very good disguise... Once the piping was in place, I couldn't actually reach down behind the sump to get to the bulkhead that feeds the pump. If I re-plan it slightly when I do it over, I ought to be able to still have access to that bulkhead without stripping everything down like I have to at the moment.

Oh well... I guess I'd rather find out now...

Simon

Spaced Cowboy · 10/15/2011, 10:42 PM

Fill 'er up

Well, the moment has finally arrived. It's been a hectic last few weeks (both at work and at home) so I haven't had too much time to play with the tank, but after re-doing some of the underneath plumbing, the tank and plumbing appear to be holding water

To test things out, I did as before, and short-circuited the plumbing so I didn't need to fill the tank, but once there were no leaks for a good hour or so of pumping, I could start to fill the tank up... Here's the start...

And here's the progress so far

Looks like it's finally starting

It won't have filled up by the end of today, so I'll just let it sit and finish up tomorrow...

Simon.

09/16/2011, 06:53 PM	#32
robferrari Registered Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Posts: 52	Beautiful work on that stand! Simple and elegant. I like the idea of the wood work to complement the tank. I have built furniture by hand myself so I can relate to building that first piece that will be in your home. Would you mind stating how you applied stain and varnish? Awesome build! __________________ Home of the Whole Enchilada Current Tank Info: Mixed reef LPS dominant 80 gallon custom Starphire, 6x54w ATI sunpower, Reef Octopus BH-2000, 3 Koralia EVOs, TLF 150, 140lbs fiji

09/17/2011, 07:53 PM	#35
Bax Premium Member Join Date: Jan 2004 Location: New Jersey Posts: 5,619	very nice work Space Cowboy! Wish I could place my sump room outside! __________________ 150 gallon Perfecto with 1500 gph GH overflow / DIY stand-wine bar / Dart Return / SRO XP3000 Ext skimmer / 75 g frag / 40 g fuge / 40 g DIY sump / Orphek P156 & Kessil 150A Current Tank Info: 150 DT/ 40B fuge/ 75g frag/ 40 g sump/ SRO XP 3000 Ext/ TUNZEs & VorTechs circulation/Dart return/ MTC Pro Cal/ UV & Oz

09/28/2011, 10:36 AM	#42
Spaced Cowboy South Bay Reefer Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 395 Blog Entries: 29	Lighting, the way So much of this is just thinking ahead, trying to make sure it's not like being in the army ... hurry up, and wait ... hurry up, and wait ... ad nauseum. The lighting set up is going to be DIY LEDs. This is for a couple of reasons: Cost is important - the less money I spend on lighting, the more I can spend on corals... oh, and the baby due in February [grin] Control is important too. The way I'm planning to ultimately set it up is a little more expressive than most. To start off with it'll be more basic, but I intend to enhance it over time The plan is to use a whole bunch of 3W LEDs from CREE - the Bridgelux LEDs are cheaper, but they're not rated as having the higher current-load capacity as the CREE ones, so they're out. There's not sufficient price difference between CREE and any of the other major vendors to warrant me going with anyone other than the market leader, so the rest are out, too. I'm not ready to spill the beans on the controller I'll be using just yet - keeping that one up my metaphorical sleeve, but the driver circuit is below: The board is way larger than it could be, but that's because I'm using the copper on the board as a heatsink for the CAT4101 chips (the 7 large chips on the right-ish side). In my experiments, 1" of double-sided 1oz-copper is sufficient to keep the CAT4101's only warm to the touch. This board actually almost doubles that figure, so the CAT4101's ought to be ok. It's a bit more expensive to build the board in the first place, but that'll pay off with lower failure risk in the long run. The left side are the outputs that drive the LEDs. There are 7 4101's, so there are 7 +/- connectors for the LEDs to be attached to. On the left are the inputs to the board. In this case I've incorporated a few debugging features (there is a 9-way serial port and several LEDs), as well as the ethernet and power connectors. Ethernet ? Yup, the board runs as a webserver, and the lights can be controlled interactively from there. All very well, but what's it actually driving - well I've not built it yet, but here's a model of the lighting-pods I'll be making: This is all T-slot Aluminium extrusion, so it's easy to bolt together and it's very strong. My thinking at the moment is to anodise the extrusion (either at home or get someone to do it) to a black colour, and to not run a canopy - the lights will be the only thing above the tank, which has a very neat black rim around it - it's almost like a rimless tank. There will be 4 of these pods over the 8' tank, with each pod being 23" wide. The extension at the rear of the module is to both attach to the automatic raise/lower mechanism, and as a support basis for the PSU and LED driver board. You can see there are 7 rows of LEDs, each of which correspond to one driver circuit. That gives me a lot of lengthwise-along-the-tank control of the lighting intensity, since each driver circuit has PWM (pulse wave modulation) ability, and can therefore dim the LEDs along that row. The intention is to have a lengthwise sunrise/sunset ability, ramping the LEDs up or down in brightness to simulate the suns progress across the sky. The resolution isn't quite as high as it looks because the LEDs are in groups of 6, but each group will be homogenous - so the pattern will look more like: ... where the darker blues are 'royal blue', the whites are neutral white or warm white, and the center row is an ordinary 'blue' LED. Thus, the resolution is effectively halved because the blues and whites combine to form the "colour temperature" of the tank, so will two-rows-at-a-time. I'm going to be using the BJB LED connectors... to attach the LEDs because it makes replacement easier in future, and LEDs are constantly getting better and better. If any of them fail, it also makes it easier to swap them out. Speaking of LED failure, this setup (like most) wires a set of LEDs together in a circuit - in my case 6 LEDs are driven by a single driver. If a single LED fails in closed-circuit mode, ie: the path through the LED becomes very low resistance, all that really happens is that the CAT4101 has to sink a lot more power for that single 6-LED circuit, which it does by heating up. The large copper heatsinking area ought to help out here. The (still rare, but far more likely) failure is an open circuit failure, where the LED "blows" and there is no circuit path left. In this case, all 6 LEDs would normally shut down, and you have to (a) figure out which LED has blown, then (b) replace it before any of the LEDs in that circuit will operate again. This is usually a stressful experience... Enter the PLED. These little devices are designed to act as a shunt if ever the LED fails. They are transparent to the circuit in normal use, but if the LED fails open-circuit, it provides a circuit path which allows the rest of the LEDs for that driver to continue to operate. This means only a single LED will go dark, and removes the "I must fix this now!" mentality - a single LED failing is neither here nor there. A whole strip failing has much more of an imperative psychological effect, and indeed (on larger strips-of-LEDs than mine) can even have a real negative effect on the lighting. So, Every LED will get a little bypass circuit attached to it in the wiring harness. For the minimal extra cost, I think it's worth it. These weren't my idea, by the way, I got them from nuclearheli's build So, that's the basic setup. It gives me quite a bit of flexibility, but it's not all the way there. Once I started thinking about the PLEDs and how they could be used, it seemed to me there was a lot of potential going to waste. Since a PLED can take over the duties of its associated LED, it effectively allows individual control of each LED. The idea is that once I have this protection per LED, I could also wire in a transistor along with it, and allow programmatic bypass of individual LEDs, with the PLED carrying the burden At first, I was thinking that the 'on' LEDs would be limited to the same PWM level within the same string, but actually that's not the case. If the circuit is laid out as {A} master ATMega88 PWM controller for 7 strings, connected via I2C to {B} ATTiny per string, controlling the individual LEDs in that string, which can switch on or off a transistor that simulates an open circuit on individual LEDs Where B has the PWM from A as an input, it can modulate the (known) PWM signal via the shunt and remove pulses in the stream. Each LED would actually be individually controllable - only by removing pulses, but that's not a problem because the PWM rate is also under control. Just set the PWM frequency to be that needed for the brightest LED on the string, and the rest are necessarily at most as bright, if they're darker remove some PWM pulses... Bob's your auntie's live-in-lover... With this in place I was thinking I could do things like simulating storms / cloud-cover with the sun breaking through in places; I could do spot-lighting of the areas within the tank that I wanted (eg: the three islands); I could move that lighting around programmatically. If you wanted to be silly, you could set the lighting to music like people do their houses at halloween - fun for, oh at least 5 minutes... There's more possibilities, is what I'm saying, even if I don't really condone the 'halloween' effect... So that's the long-term plan. I'll be wiring things up so that this can be done, but the first iteration of the driver won't actually provide for the fine control, I'm on a time-limit here (did I mention the baby in February ?) so getting things sorted out, up, and running is more important than getting everything perfect first time. For now, I have to check over the circuit for the driver a few dozen more times, then send it off to be made (which takes a couple of weeks), so that when the next task (water in the tank) is complete, I'll have the ability to start the lighting straight away... Planning, planning, planning... Simon.

10/01/2011, 05:53 PM	#45
Spaced Cowboy South Bay Reefer Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 395 Blog Entries: 29	To fill, or not to fill, that is the question... So the plumbing is all "done". That is to say, I've made all the connections and all the BeanAnimal standpipes appear to be at the correct heights. We'll see if it's truly "done" once water is rushing through it... Which brings me to a question: I was planning on filling up the tank using the LitreMeter pump, but it occurred to me that this will take some time (~2 weeks!). During all that time the dry rock will presumably be leaching the phosphates I didn't get out of it into the water, without any benefit from the GFO, because there's not enough water in the tank to run the sump, which is where the GFO is plumbed off the return pump... So, is this a good idea ? I'm leaning towards ... 'not'. The other option is to quickly fill the tank, but this means going and buying 100' of 3/4" vinyl hose, so I can pump the water from the other end of the house into the tank. I can do that (mail order, HD only has 20' lengths), but I really wanted to fill the tank this weekend (d@mmit! [grin]). Anyone fancy chiming in ? Simon

10/01/2011, 06:09 PM	#46
SPotter Registered Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Mt. Pleasant, SC Posts: 5,691	What about connectors for each 20' piece of hose? what about a 32 gallon brute on a dolly that you can move with the water in it and then pump it into the tank? __________________ Steve Am I really doing all of this for a fish tank?????? Current Tank Info: 360g Envision Acrylic Tank, Closed Loops, Vectra L1's, MP40QD's, 400w Radiums, Regal 300ext, Dastaco Ext3 CaRx, Controlled by GHL Profilux

09/15/2011, 03:05 PM	#27
Spaced Cowboy South Bay Reefer Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 395 Blog Entries: 29	Media Frenzy I'm waiting around for an online order to come in so I can actually finish the plumbing, so I thought I'd put in the media chambers (for carbon and GFO). This is the first use of the manifold The center-brace just overhangs the sump, so the plan was to mount the media containers on the center-brace, drill a hole through the brace to supply the water for each container, and just drain vertically downwards (through a pipe, of course) into the sump. I hung the media-container-spanner on the vertical, so it'll always be close-to-hand... The second photo shows the other side, where one of the media-containers is linked up - I have to go to Home Depot for some more Murlok fittings to link up the other one. The piping is so rigid it can't be bent in tight angles, so I'm using the angled connectors to link things up. Once I have everything linked up properly, I'll straighten it all up and make it look pretty It's not obvious from the photo, but there's actually a ball-valve that will go onto each of the supply-pipes to the media-containers. This will allow me to fine-control the gph of water through each container. Plumbing Porn Well, maybe not porn - this is a pretty simple setup, so let's call it a '15 certificate' As mentioned, I'm waiting for some elbows and adapters to finish off the below-sump plumbing, but here's a look at where it stands right now: If it's not clear, there are 3 horizontal pipes on the left-hand side, the top one will be the open drain, the middle one will be the siphon, and the lower one is the return (out the back of the stand and over the top of the tank). Both the open drain and siphon will drop down vertically from where they currently end, and terminate in the sump. The siphon will go through the gate valve that's resting on the sump at the moment, which is how I'll control the BeanAnimal overflow. There's about 2mm of gap between each of these horizontal pipes - it wasn't much to aim at, but it fitted [grin]. There's not much space for the turn and drop before we hit the media containers either, but I think it'll all fit The right-hand side is the manifold for future purposes, and the right-hand side return pipe. The untidy red, blue and black pipe behind are the pipes to the water-storage area, which the LiterMeter will make good use of. Simon

09/15/2011, 06:10 PM	#28
swflfisher Registered Member Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: SW Florida Posts: 70	oh and tank also. I'm hoping to get a similar size soon.I dont think I can make that stand though.

09/15/2011, 06:13 PM	#29
marrstarr Premium Member Join Date: Jun 2003 Posts: 69	bump

09/16/2011, 09:19 AM	#31
ef200098 Registered Member Join Date: May 2011 Posts: 57	I can't wait for a large tank! looking good so far!

09/18/2011, 03:40 PM	#37
Spaced Cowboy South Bay Reefer Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 395 Blog Entries: 29	Handling restraint... Ok, so nothing major happening until Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday when the deliveries arrive, but figured I'd clean up some loose ends... The outlets from the media filters (GFO and Carbon) are from 1/2" RO/DI-type pipe, and have a lot of curve in them due to being shipped in a coil from BRS. I wanted these to dump directly into the sump immediately below the media-filters themselves, so yesterday I cut off some small slivers of 1" piping, and superglued them to the inside of the sump using a coupling as support while the glue hardened. Today I could restrain the pipes natural tendency to bend towards the center of the sump skimmer section as you can see in the first photo... I'd also bought some handles a while back for the "doors" that just pull off. I noticed it was tough to properly support the (rather large) doors as you lift them off, and having a handle would be better. I didn't want them to look like they pulled off though, so we have the fake-door handles attached as if they pull the door open [grin]. Here's a profile view of the entire stand, with doors in place, and sporting their handles Pity about the lighting - the iPhone 3GS doesn't have that great a camera and the wood's not that dark, but I think the handles just add that final finishing touch to the doors. Simon.

09/20/2011, 02:52 PM	#38
Spaced Cowboy South Bay Reefer Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 395 Blog Entries: 29	A "DI"rty business So, for the last week or so, the RO/DI system has been churning out RO/DI water, I've been mixing it with salt in the mixing tank, and then storing it in the NSW tank. So far, I've got ~70 gallons of pure RO/DI water and 290 gallons of NSW water ready to go. That's a total of ~360 gallons, and my RO/DI meter started to say it was reading 1ppm on the output. Now this is a dual-stage DI-resin system, so there are two, not one, media chambers full of DI resin. I'm thinking that ~360 gallons of purified water is a little low for this system. The input water pressure is ~70psi, and the PPM readings out of the RO side (before DI) are ~20ppm, which seems to be a bit high compared to what others are seeing. I'll be contacting BRS to see if there's anything they can do... Hopefully BRS will come up with a reason why it's not working as well as it ought to, and I won't be changing resin every couple of months...In any event, I've changed the resin - now that it's registering 1ppm it's done, as far as I'm concerned. You can see the difference between the before/after below... Note: I do like the refillable canisters that BRS use. It took about 10 minutes to change out both canisters this lunchtime and fill with new resin. Simon

09/22/2011, 05:27 PM	#39
Spaced Cowboy South Bay Reefer Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 395 Blog Entries: 29	Rock on! So the BRS rock arrived today. I can't do too much with it until the weekend, but I've put it outside ready to be seriously powerwashed before I start trying to come up with ideas for aquascaping... To give an idea of scale, the large flat circular rock with all the protrusions on it towards the upper left is approximately 16" across. It's going to make a wonderful cap to a rock-island in the tank. This isn't all the rock I'll be using - it's 100 lbs of rock in a 240-gallon tank. I'm going to get some real "live" rock as well - probably about 50 lbs or so, which will still leave me "under" the normal rock quota, but I'm going for a minimalist aquascape, with space for fish to swim. The vision here is a large tank with lots of space, and lots of smaller fish, rather than blowing the 'budget' with a smaller number of tangs. Ok. There may be one (possibly 2) tangs, but only the smaller ones... I was planning on using aquacon for rock - I liked the way they would specify the size of rock you get, but after reading about their reputation, I'm not considering them any more. Now I'm thinking of using liverocknreef and going for 50 lbs of their Cherry Primo Picked Decorator rock - the photos look amazing. I've bought some of the "driveway reflectors" from Home Depot, and I'm going to epoxy them into a schedule-40 piping stand, then drill holes in the rock to let me place the rocks on top of each other in islands, and have some stability to boot. I'm thinking 2 main islands, with an arm extending from one of them into the middle of the tank, sort of like an archipelago but underwater Simon

09/24/2011, 11:03 PM	#40
Spaced Cowboy South Bay Reefer Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 395 Blog Entries: 29	RockIn' Having power-washed the rock, and found about 6 metric tons of stuff-I-didn't-want-in-my-tank deposited on the floor, I started to play around with how the rocks ought to be positioned. The goal is to keep some open swim-space for the fish, to provide some tunnels and allow for line-of-sight to be broken, and to provide plenty of places to put corals. I also wanted to keep to the minimalist style, although I'm not sure I actually managed that. For 100 lbs of rock, it sure takes up a lot of space in a 240-gallon tank... I'll probably get a couple more smaller pieces of tonga-branch or similar live-rock to seed the dead rock with, and I'll be adding dead-sand to the bottom, followed by a live-sand layer on top. I'm shooting for 4-5" of sand-bed, and I may end up raising the rocks up a bit so they're not half-buried in sand. Anyway, this is the design so far. Nothing is set in stone - pun intended - I've yet to apply any epoxy, the rocks are just balanced on each other. Thoughts and comments welcomed Simon.

09/27/2011, 10:13 AM	#41
Spaced Cowboy South Bay Reefer Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 395 Blog Entries: 29	The Dead Sea Incremental progress is being made! The dead material is all in the tank now - the sand and rocks are set up how I want them to be, and it's actually starting to look like an aquarium, rather than a glass box... You can see that I changed the angle of the stand supporting the large flat plate in the middle of the tank. I thought it was too beautiful a piece of rock to be mostly-hidden by nature of being too high up and horizontal. The slight inclination to the front shows off the piece much better, and I'll still be able to attach corals etc. to it later on... Maybe it's just me, but the rock structure on the right looks like a duck, with possible a duckling (or pigeon) sitting just below and to the left of it. Perhaps I'm just bird-brained! Having said that, the one on the left looks a bit like a Scottie dog, so maybe the rocks are just like clouds - you see whatever your brain tries to fit to match the abstract shapes... The next step is to finish off the plumbing at the top of the tank (the lower plumbing is all done now) and start to add water! Before the water can be added, though, I need to get the LitreMeter working so it can pump the NSW from the storage tanks, so 3 more tasks and the dead sea will be ready to start cycling. Once the water is in place, the plan is to get some live sand and live rock from liverocknreef. The experiences forum seem to be mostly good (one bad story) for these guys, so hopefully that'll all go well. I'm not going to be getting too much more rock / sand. I kind of like the open space in the aquarium... Simon

09/29/2011, 07:42 AM	#43
Fish4Me2 Registered Member Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: TwinCities Posts: 650	I continue to be impressed by the details, and the thought you've put into this. Thanks for sharing everything. I can't wait to see the water in it. On your DI, what's your TDS look like before the RO? I run through DI resin about as quickly as you do, but my tap water's TDS is 500-600+, so I'm not too surprised. Not too happy, either, but not too surprised!

10/01/2011, 06:22 PM	#48
SPotter Registered Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: Mt. Pleasant, SC Posts: 5,691	Yeah moving that across the lawn would not be easy. You might try garden shops that sell pond equipment or irrigation supplies. You could get a bunch of guys, buckets and beer and have beer and bucket party!!! Once the buckets are empty of water they can fill them with beer. Good luck!!!! Steve __________________ Steve Am I really doing all of this for a fish tank?????? Current Tank Info: 360g Envision Acrylic Tank, Closed Loops, Vectra L1's, MP40QD's, 400w Radiums, Regal 300ext, Dastaco Ext3 CaRx, Controlled by GHL Profilux

10/03/2011, 01:26 PM	#49
Spaced Cowboy South Bay Reefer Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 395 Blog Entries: 29	Well, after a visit to Lowes (not Home Depot, who were extortionately expensive), I got 100' of tubing and proceeded to start filling just the overflow on the left-side of the tank. The goal was to test out the plumbing before committing to filling the tank up. The water filled up the overflow, drained to the sump, and overflowed into the second chamber of the sump as it ought to. Then I could check the return by closing off various ball-valves underneath the tank, and redirecting the returned water into the overflow itself rather than the tank. Glad I did that... The manifold with all the ball-valves "for future use" (a future that will now never come) had a dodgy connection right in the middle of it. As far as I can see, that makes the whole thing useless, and I'll have to replace. It looks as though I didn't put enough of the gray goo into the joint, and there's a small but persistent leak between a 'T' section and a 1.5" -> 1" reducing bushing that has got to be fixed. Since I didn't put any unions in-between the ball-valves (for space reasons), the whole thing has got to be re-done. Still, I'm looking at this as a blessing in disguise. A very good disguise... Once the piping was in place, I couldn't actually reach down behind the sump to get to the bulkhead that feeds the pump. If I re-plan it slightly when I do it over, I ought to be able to still have access to that bulkhead without stripping everything down like I have to at the moment. Oh well... I guess I'd rather find out now... Simon

10/15/2011, 10:42 PM	#50
Spaced Cowboy South Bay Reefer Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: San Jose, CA Posts: 395 Blog Entries: 29	Fill 'er up Well, the moment has finally arrived. It's been a hectic last few weeks (both at work and at home) so I haven't had too much time to play with the tank, but after re-doing some of the underneath plumbing, the tank and plumbing appear to be holding water To test things out, I did as before, and short-circuited the plumbing so I didn't need to fill the tank, but once there were no leaks for a good hour or so of pumping, I could start to fill the tank up... Here's the start... And here's the progress so far Looks like it's finally starting It won't have filled up by the end of today, so I'll just let it sit and finish up tomorrow... Simon.

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