Tank moved, new journal

[danny zubot]

Just an update, I've been wondering if I would get better coloration in my corals with more actinic than my current 14K MH lights provide. So I've ordered a dual HO t-5 retrofit from J&L with Geismann (sp) true actinics. I'll post before and after pics later.

[danny zubot]

Thought I'd post some "before" pictures of a few frags so that I can refer to them a few months or years from now to gauge their progress. Or mine for that matter.

These have started to grow rapidly since getting my T5 HO actinics and new Reeflux 12K 400 watt bulb.



















And a recent Full tank shot




And a recent addition:

Unknown colony I bought from Finnadict.

[04scoobysti]

Aquascaping Looks great!

[danny zubot]

Just added an auto top up this past weekend. Not sure what brand it is because my buddy just bought an extra one for me when he placed the online order.

Basically its just a float valve to run off of my RODI filter. I drilled a 1/2" hole and plugged it in, works perfectly. No more lifting heavy jugs of water to fill the sump. No more micro bubbles from water crashing through the baffles when my water levels got too low. I'll add a pic of it later for anyone who wants to see it.

[Delphinus]

Is it hooked up directly to your RO/DI unit or do you have a reservoir?

[danny zubot]

Right to my RO unit.

Which brings to mind a concern of mine. Since the valve on the RO unit needs to be open at all times for the system to work, its always dumping waste water down the drain. Is there any way around this? I was thinking of just closing the main valve for the RO unit a bit so that less water will be wasted.

[Delphinus]

Hmmm, Ok I was kind of worried you were going to say that. Having been down this road myself .. let me spare you some things I learned the hard way.

First of all, in answer to your question, what you want is a solenoid shutoff kit for your RO/DI unit. The float valve closes, the output line pressures up, and this pressure drives closed another valve on the input side of the RO/DI. Thus, when the output valve is off, the unit is off, no longer dumping waste water.

But !!

That's still not quite enough. The problem with this scenario is that the water will get replaced at the rate of evaporation. Which could mean that you end up having the unit on for like 10 seconds every 5 minutes. This is very hard on the RO membrane, I ended up going through 3 membranes in a year until I figured out what I was doing was killing my membranes (the RO would output TDS at 80-100 .. the membranes were shot).

So.. you need a sort of buffer in between the sump and the RO/DI. What I do is I have a bucket I use as a RO/DI reservoir. In my case it's like a 50g food grade barrell. I fill it up manually and let it fill overnight (it still has the shutoff kit so no worries about overflows), and then turn off the RO/DI manually. This lasts me about 2 weeks between fills. (It's still not a perfect arrangement - more on that later). Then, basically the float valve on the sump is attached to the reservoir. So the water can enter into the sump at whatever rate the evaporation is, and I don't have to worry about destroying my membrane.

Now .. (here's the "later" part I promised..) It turns out that it's also not great to have your RO/DI sit idle for 2 weeks at a time because you still get TDS creep. Right now I find myself having to flush the membrane every time I run the unit, which shouldn't be necessary.

What would be perfectly ideal is have a sprinkler timer on the input and have the RO/DI turn on for an hour each night. Thus it still has the benefit of a single run (ie., when it's on it's on, and the shutoff kit is then at that point a failsafe in case the bucket fills to the top), AND it has the benefit of not allowing the TDS to accumulate.

There is a clever design of a reservoir using a check valve that basically allows you to have it self-fill if (and only if) the reservoir empties completely. I don't have the URL handy but it was talked about on Canreef so there are some threads on it somewhere. I figure the hose/sprinkler timer thing would work fine too (I just have been too lazy to look for one at HD. I probably will when I get my basement further along.)

This is the shutoff valve kit: http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/s..._ID=ro-kpfshut

This is the flush kit:
http://www.jlaquatics.com/phpstore/s..._ID=ro-kpflush

(Although they are "Kent" brand it doesn't really matter what brand you use - they just fit on 1/4" tubing basically, so they will work on other brands of RO/DI units.)

[danny zubot]

Hey Tony, I'm trying to edit my picture post to add some progress pics, but I get the red X when adding the URL. Is there anyway to fix this?

[Delphinus]

Sure there isn't a typo in the URL, like an extra "/" after the "http://" or something? Maybe PM me the links and I'll see what I can see..

[danny zubot]

I figured it out Tony. In Photobucket there is a "shared" URL and a "URL link". I used the wrong one. I'll update the pics soon.