kien's 150g Room Divider Mixed Reef & Stuff

[lorenz0]

tank looks awesome. love it

[kien]

Thanks everyone! And yes, those are hospital scrubs I'm wearing :-)

So this evening I finally got around to plugging in the Bubble Magus. I had assembled it on Friday but didn't have a chance to actually start using it until today. Luckily I have plenty of room in the sump to wrestle that beast in. Here he is busy skimming away.



So when I plugged the Magus in I decided to clean out and replace my carbon. This process took about 20 minutes plus another 10 minutes of cleaning up. After I reinstalled the carbon reactors I took a peek at Mr. Magus to see what he was up to. I was quite shocked at what I saw. This is 30 minutes worth of skimming..



Fish poop on the walls of my brand new shiny skimmer cup!



I am officially a Bubble Magus fan boy!

Mmmm.. seafoam..

[Coleus]

Originally Posted by kien

I am officially a Bubble Magus fan boy!

Mmmm.. seafoam..

Wait until BM breaking in and you will be more impressed.

Great picts and description as always

[kien]

Today I decided to top up my NP BioPellets and while I was at it, I figured I'd re-plumb the reactor. The reactor, although performs beautifully, is kind of awkward to plumb. Currently I have a crap load of hose adapters to go from my MaxiJet 1200 into the Vertex with hose snaking through the sump. Not a very clean setup but got the job done.

Instead of flex hose all over the place I decided to use rigid 1/2" PVC and cemented all the pieces together. I also wanted to minimize the footprint of the whole rig so it took a little playing around with. I also wanted to increase the input so I threw a bigger pump at it.

Utilizing this cheap-o 500gph pump from Odyssea.



Here's what I ended up with..







here she is in the sump.



Even with all of those 90 degree bends I still have to throttle back (about 1/4 turn) the input or the pellets get blasted through the outlet. Also, as you can see here the outlet drops right in front of the inlet to the skimmer.



and here is my new full sump shot.

[kien]

Originally Posted by Coleus

Wait until BM breaking in and you will be more impressed.

Great picts and description as always

i am impressed! Here is what the Bubble Magus pulls out of my system.



yummy!

[Delphinus]

What's the blue stuff wrapped around the pump? I see you have it in the water as well.

[Coleus]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

What's the blue stuff wrapped around the pump? I see you have it in the water as well.

was going to ask that as well the yellow and blue sponges that you have in tank. What are those for?

[kien]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

What's the blue stuff wrapped around the pump? I see you have it in the water as well.

A few layers of foam to dampen the vibration from the pump. The pump comes with a foot that has suction cups but I found it a little annoying how it suctioned to the bottom of the sump. Plus, the foot added a little bit of width to the whole thing which I wanted to reduce :-)

Originally Posted by Coleus

was going to ask that as well the yellow and blue sponges that you have in tank. What are those for?

The sponges are dish sponges that are quite porous and I used to use them for bacteria culture when I migrated everything from my previous 90g to the new 150g. I was going to take them out but discovered that copepods love to use them as breeding grounds so I leave them in there now. They are so porous that they don't seem to gunk up as I've never had to rinse them out in the entire year that I've had them. It might also be because they float. I'm thinking of throwing a few more in there to use as bacterial seeds for my quarantine tank. That is, whenever I need to set up a quarantine, just grab some of these sponges and throw them into the QT tank. If things get bad and I have to treat the QT with say, copper, I can throw out the sponges and buy new ones with little impact to my wallet.

[kien]

And here's a video of the reactor with the new plumbing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEyPg8tatDo

[Delphinus]

Wait, what, no HD video? Get with it man, I expect more from you. If they can film an entire episode of House on your camera then you can film pellets in HD.

Seriously, looks like a keen little setup for them pellets. Pun only semi intentional (noticed it after I typed it in, but think I'm gonna leave it in. )