Marc`s 1k gallon system.

[hawk]

It looks like your canopy does a great job in containing the heat and exhausting it before it has a chance to build up. I was almost resigned to buying a chiller for this upcoming summer but I'm going to try making the same type of canopy first. Thanks for the info.

[Ruth]

Marc you rock and one of these days I am going to have to come and see your tank in person (snippers in hand of course). I have read your thread on RC a while ago now and what you with Jamie's help have built is truly amazing.
I like the "Superfudge" tag - you can be my reef hero - rubber skirt and all.

[niloc16]

hey marc since you are talking about dehumidity. what is an ok humidity level for a house or room. the highest mine has reached in the room with the tank has been 56%. but if i run my furnace fan it maintains about 42 - 45% humidity.

[SuperFudge]

Hey, now im truly a superhero (or supernerd) ..i have my own avatar.

Colin, i would guess 50% an average, with adequate air movement no mold or mildew should happen.
This is hard to achieve sometimes with our climate, as were limited to outside humidity. But if some new air is pulled from inside the house it can be dropped somewhat lower than the outside.

Hawk, it works better than i had hoped....but there are some downfalls aswell.
Moving it out of the way can be a PITA sometimes...but hardly a reason for not doing it.
I also didnt like that when i did move it i had no good light to view the tank...so i put up a couple extra reflectors and some old bulbs, so when its moved i just plug them in an existing ballast.





Thank you Ruth, when you visit ill be sure to wear it. :P



The reactor (Ca++)......Small Deltec Kalk reactor/stirrer mod to follow.

The original reactor was built on the k2r design, with a few changes that i wanted to see.

Saving time again, ill just show the finished product...





Running...



Changed a couple minor things...added a Mazzei effluent valve




All in all, it worked fine....but in the end wasnt really happy with the design, i now realize i dont like downflow style.
Aswell, it pumped out too much P04 for my liking.

So i ended up buying a bigger reactor, so i could also get some p04 remover in there aswell as some Mg supplement in there.



Marc.

[christyf5]

Love the avatar Marc

That last reactor pic is pretty impressive. I like the idea of adding the extra chambers for other media. Smart idea

[justinl]

hahaha awesome avatar.

beer always makes projects go more smoothly. Im a sleeman's fan myself.

[SuperFudge]

A couple of small projects,

The Stirrer was a simple mod,

If you look at the top flange set of the old ca reactor in the pics above, you can see where the new stirrer body came from.



I just hacked the top half off and replaced the bottom, and routed out the flange to accept the motor casing off the old stirrer.



All i really did here was increase the body size so it could accept more kalk without bogging down the stirrer too much.



You know your in a sad state when you take a Deltec and make it into a DIY.

The reseviour,

This was an old 220 plexi that had a corner blown out of it...so i repaired it and put it into use.



I wanted to keep it simple and use only one pump for mixing and pumping to the tank.

In this pic`s lower left you can see the valves used to do this.
When they are in the position shown, the pump inside is feeding up through and back into the res for mixing.



Then when waters needed i just have the valves oppposite to what is shown, then it uses the same pump to push water into the sump after a water change.

Also in this pic you can see a small blue valve....this is plumbed into the intake of the pump, this was done becuase the feed to the sump is running along the floor back up over the sump edge.
I didnt want water to go stagnant in this line when not in use....so this small line acts as a venturi, when the water change is done, i open the small blue valve and it suck all the unused water out of the lines running along the floor.


Many Projects yet to come....

[SuperFudge]

Sorry...im slow i know, being sick this weekend allowed me to have time to scour for pics.


The largest amount of time and effort was put into the skimmer(s).
Always an ongoing saga for me, on this system it started here....

The first trial was another single beckett injected skimmer similar in size to a Bullet 3.
This one i knew was a bit undersized at the time, so an experiment was done using a single housing, but 2 becketts in it.
This one also had a spray bar to clean the neck, a later scrapped idea.





To be honest, i dont think that one even got anymore than tested before another was built.

The next one i wanted to try several idea`s, I hated most venturi`s becuase of the too small holes in them...so i wanted to make my own type.

These i made out of solid acrylic, so i could see if they got plugged or not.





Here is how i tested them,







The skimmers injector housing had to be removable to continuously change and test these, aswell as injector tower hieghts.

Here`s a version with 2 of them,





These were being tested while the skimmer had no change in neck diam and no cup to speak of.
In these pics you can see i just bulkheaded the top, and it just spit the foam out the side.



Then another injector was added ,aswell as heightened injector towers.



And an auto shut off.... good testing requires that you flood out your house several times during your build before making one of these.



Then, for some unknown reason, i had to play more...

[SuperFudge]

I later was able to make a cup and neck, but at this time i wanted the skimmer to recirculate, use 4 injector`s, and raise the injector column height.

I took the previous idea of single house for multiple becketts, and stuffed 4 of them in a single 5 " diam housing.



Becketts proved to be easier to work with, and less time consuming so was finally all put together here.




Last but not least, actually..probably not last either.

Was as my fellow reefer Tony dubbed it, "Dalek" a monster Dual dart meshwheel skimmer.



Most of its build was posted here.

http://216.187.96.54/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=30974

Marc.